History Repeats

50 days before an election, one of the 3 major news organizations broadcast a report critical of a sitting president, with whom they have unhidden hostility, using forged documents.

Imagine this had happened 6 days before the election and John Kerry had squeeked out a victory.

Well, something worse than this happened in the 2000 election and nobody talks about it anymore. In 2000, most major broadcast and cable networks actually conceded Florida to Gore before the polls closed.

The western panhandle of Florida, not only is more Republican than the rest of Florida, it is in a different time zone. So when polls closed in Dade County, they were still open in Tallahassee.

Some analyst have estimated that Bush lost 10,000 votes due to voters not bothering to go to the polls. Later in the evening, the media put Florida back into play, then ultimitely awarded it to Bush.

Think for a moment about how extrodinarly that really is.

The media came within a few hundred votes of changing the election of the President of the United States - on election night.

I'd say they dodged a bullet when Bush ultimitely prevailed on all counts and recounts, but I highly suspect this was one bullet most in the media would have been willing to take.

Isn't it obvious too many are willing to take it again.

CBS

CBS spent 5 years working on a story about President Bush's National Guard service. What's so extraordinary about that fact is that the network would spend so much time, effort and resources on an issue that most people believe is trivial. Trivial even if true. 5 years!

Besides the glaring bias evident in their fixation on Bush, something else is apparent - disingenuous.

Let me explain.

Does anybody think the Democrats would consider their candidate "unfit" for office had they used family connections to join the National Guard instead of volunteering to fight in Vietnam? Of course not.

So what are CBS and the Democrats trying to accomplish? Are they trying to persuade Republican's that Bush is unfit for office?

So even if the story were true, it wouldn't matter very much.

Now let's look at the reverse. I can't image the Republicans ever nominating a man who once accused our soldiers of war crimes (during war), met with the enemy(during war), threw his medals away (during war)... The Republicans would never consider a man with John Kerry's background as a candidate, but the Democrats would embrace Bush's.

So what is going on here? CBS is so angry at the president for whatever reason that they perused an almost meaningless story with the zeal as if it were Watergate II. They were talking to themselves.