Flu vaccine: "It's Bush’s fault!"
Flu vaccine issue: The failure of a British company to
successfully produce a flu vaccine and cutting America’s supply of flu
vaccine in half has become a political football, and Sen. John Kerry
is trying to make political gains from it.
"If you're an elderly man or woman, if you're a young child, if you're
a pregnant woman, George Bush and the Republicans have this to say on
health care: Don't get sick," is the message of a new Kerry campaign
ad.
"I'm sorry that this is becoming a political issue," said Dr. Julie
Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. "This is a health issue."
"If you can't get flu vaccines to Americans, what kind of health care
program are you running?" Kerry said in an interview with National
Public Radio. "It's a serious demonstration of the failure of
leadership."
"John Kerry has done nothing in 20 years to help the problem. In fact,
he's exacerbated it," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy
Thompson said.
The House opposes Bush
It’s a Bush House divide: The House branch of the Bush family
has a website opposing their second cousins reelection according to
the Boston Globe:
The site, www.bushrelativesforkerry.com, consists of personal
statements from a group of decidedly liberal second cousins of the
president, none of whom knows him personally. All are grandchildren of
Mary Bush House, the sister of Prescott Bush, a former US senator from
Connecticut and the father and grandfather of the two Bush presidents.
Sinclair comes up short
The Sinclair Group reports that it will not air the entire documentary
"Stolen Honor."
Sinclair announced that it would air "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure
and the Media" that includes a discussion of the allegations
surrounding Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities.
"The experience of preparing to air this news special has been trying
for many of those involved," the Baltimore, Maryland-based broadcaster
said. "The company and many of its executives have endured personal
attacks of the vilest nature, as well as calls on our advertisers and
our viewers to boycott our stations and on our shareholders to sell
their stock."
"Stolen Honor" is the story of POW’s and their wives telling of how
anti-war activist John Kerry was a part of an operation called Winter
Soldier that allegedly gathered testimony from Vietnam veterans who
committed war atrocities. It has been proven that most of the
testimony was false and that Kerry’s testimony before the U.S. Senate
resulted in American POW’s being tortured further.
Will Bubba join Kerry?
The Kerry campaign is excited by the fact that the Democrat Party’s
big gun is going to be in Philadelphia next week. Democrat officials
have confirmed that former President Bill Clinton and Sen. John Kerry
will campaign together in the important battleground state of
Pennsylvania.
Former Clinton spokesman now working as a Kerry press spokesman, Mike
McCurry discounted Kerry's suggestion that Clinton would be hitting
the campaign trail any time soon. He told reporters that his new boss
was only "expressing a hope."
"If he is able to travel, we would like him to consider Pennsylvania
among other locations, but we have not had a firm answer on whether he
was able to campaign or not," McCurry told the AP.
Condoleezza helping out
The Washington Post reports [LINK]
on how President Bush’s National Security Advisor is helping her
boss’s chances of winning another four years at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 2 election, national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice has traveled across the country making
speeches in key battleground states, including Oregon, Washington,
North Carolina and Ohio. In the next five days, she also plans
speeches in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida.
The frequency and location of her speeches differ sharply from those
before this election year -- and appear to break with the
long-standing precedent that the national security adviser try to
avoid overt involvement in the presidential campaign. Her predecessors
generally restricted themselves to an occasional speech, often in
Washington, but counting next week's speeches, Rice will have made
nine outside Washington since Labor Day.
Soros financed voter fraud
Hundreds of questionable voter-registration applications -- including
duplicates and workers shredding registrations in favor of one party
-- are under being investigated by local, state and federal
law-enforcement and election authorities in Colorado, New Mexico,
Nevada, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, West Virginia, Oregon, Ohio,
Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida. Billionaire George Soros helped
finance some of these efforts in his passion to destroy President
Bush.
Soros has given millions to a group known as America Votes, which
encompasses a wide range of liberal Democrat organizations dedicated
to reshaping America’s political landscape. Americans Coming Together
(ACT) is one of the groups who make up this coalition that Soros has
given $10 million to.
This week in Ohio it was reported that a worker was paid with crack
cocaine and turned in 130 fraudulent voter registration forms.
Catholic newspaper ad
The Washington Times reports [LINK]
on a Bush/Cheney sponsored ad running in battleground states that is a
Catholic slap in the face to Sen. John Kerry:
Five newspapers in presidential battleground states will publish a
full-page ad today from Catholic elected officials and voters chiding
Democratic Sen. John Kerry for his pro-choice stance on abortion.
The ad, titled "An Open Letter from Fellow Catholics to John Kerry,"
was funded by the Bush-Cheney campaign. It is running in mid-sized
newspapers with strong Catholic readership in Pennsylvania, Iowa, New
Hampshire, Wisconsin and Florida.
Poll watching
The survey of 850 blacks by the Joint Center for Political and
Economic Studies, a think tank that focuses on issues affecting
African Americans, found they preferred Kerry over Bush, 69% to 18%,
with 2% favoring Ralph Nader and 11% undecided.
New Jersey
New Jersey looks like ti is going over to Kerry if the latest poll is
accurate.
The Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers Poll. Oct. 14-17, 2004. N=794
registered voters statewide (MoE ± 3.5); 661 likely voters (MoE ±
3.8):
Bush 38%
Kerry 51%
Other 2%
Unsure 10%
Oregon
Oregon also looks to be out of reach for Bush as well.
Research 2000 for The Portland Tribune, et al. Oct. 11-14, 2004.
N=600 likely voters. MoE ± 4 (total sample):
Bush 44%
Kerry 50%
Other 3%
Unsure 3%
Ohio
Ohio is still to close to call.
University of Cincinnati's Institute for Policy Research. Oct.
11-17, 2004. N=757 likely voters. MoE ± 4:
Bush 46%
Kerry 48%
Other/Undecided 2%
Colorado
Colorado is definitely safe in Republican hands and Rep. Senate
candidate Pete Coors has taken a lead as well.
CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Oct. 14-17, 2004. N=815 registered
voters statewide (MoE ± 4); 666 likely voters (MoE ± 4):
Bush 51%
Kerry 45%
Nader 1%
Unsure 3%
Sinclair says campaign's public war
obscured efforts to make balanced show
According to WorldNetDaily [LINK],
for the past two weeks, Sen. John Kerry's campaign has waged a
multi-pronged attack on the Sinclair Broadcast Group while the Kerry’s
representatives privately participated in negotiations over the airing
of "Stolen Honor," an executive with the television chain contends:
In an interview with WorldNetDaily, Sinclair's vice president for
corporate relations, Mark Hyman, said the discussions have taken the
form of meeting face-to-face with Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth
Cahill, telephone calls and written correspondence.
Hyman, who said the latest contact with Kerry's campaign was today,
asserts "flawed reporting" repeated by numerous outlets has
contributed to the perception that Sinclair planned to run the entire
42-minute program as a right-wing hatchet job on Kerry and then scaled
back as Democrats launched a full-fledged attack.
"We told [the Kerry campaign] the entire show format was on the table
and it was contingent on the level of [their] participation," Hyman
said. "We also told them we were willing to travel to any location in
order to accommodate the senator's campaign schedule. We finally left
it that we will accommodate the senator right up until air date should
he change his mind and elect to participate."
The only requests have been, he said, that Kerry "or a reasonable
designee with some standing on the subject" participate and that the
interview would not be restricted by requiring provision of questions
in advance or narrowing the topic.
Cahill did not immediately respond to WND's request for a response.
Sinclair announced yesterday that stations in its markets, covering 24
percent of the country, will broadcast a program Friday titled "A POW
Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media," examining allegations
concerning Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities and the role of media
and the use of documentaries in influencing voters.
The company has issued a
list of the local stations and broadcast times.
As WorldNetDaily first reported, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never
Heal" presents former POWs who tell how Kerry's 1971 testimony to the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee was used as propaganda against them
by their North Vietnamese captors, intensifying their persecution and
prolonging the war and imprisonment.
Democrats have responded on many fronts to Sinclair's announcement to
air the allegations in "Stolen Honor."
"All of this has been intended to draw attention away from the heart
of the matter which are the allegations made by the 13 men --
including two Medal of Honor winners -- who appear in the
documentary," Hyman said. "These POWs allege that John Kerry's 1971
testimony before the Senate had a direct impact on them during their
captivity in North Vietnam."
The challenges to Sinclair include:
·
The Democratic National Committee filed a complaint with
the Federal Election Commission charging that the broadcast by
Sinclair would amount to an illegal campaign contribution.
·
A group of 18 Democratic senators asked Federal
Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell to probe whether the
program violated regulations on the use of public airwaves.
·
The Kerry campaign wrote a legal brief to the president
of Sinclair, insisting the Democratic presidential nominee should be
given equal time and allowed to run his own program.
·
Sinclair received a letter from a Democrat comptroller
in New York on behalf of a retirement fund that holds 256,600 shares
of the broadcast company, warning the controversy could damage the
investment.
·
A Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist who appears in
the documentary has announced the filing of a libel suit against
Sherwood, claiming he was falsely characterized as a "fraud" who
charged soldiers with war crimes but "never set foot on the
battlefield."
·
A Democratic party donor, William S. Lerach, sent a
letter yesterday to the news company calling the broadcast plan
"reckless," alleging insider trading by officers and threatening a
shareholder lawsuit.
Hyman said he is perplexed by Kerry campaign officials and surrogates
referring to the POWs statements as "lies" and "scurrilous."
"We're not certain what part of the POWs story they label as lies," he
said. "Is it that they served in Vietnam? Were captured? Were held in
captivity? Or that they suffered horrific abuse and unspeakable
torture for years?"
He also noted that critics have referred to filmmaker Carlton Sherwood
as a "Washington Times reporter" in an attempt to show the left he is
beholden to a conservative bias.
"They don't mention that he has had a 36-year career in journalism
that includes winning both the Pulitzer and the Peabody, the most
prestigious journalism awards in both print and television,
respectively," Hyman said. "He also has Emmys in TV journalism. He has
worked for Gannett, CNN and at local television stations. Out of a
36-year career they cite the less than one year he spent at the
Washington Times."
Hyman said no one has earned the right to speak out on Vietnam more
than the POWs.
"For the news gatekeepers to ignore them when they've ended 31 years
of self-imposed silence is shameless," he said.
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