Quick Hits For September 16, 2004

16 Sep, 2004 by John Hawkins

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(*** I wanted to try something a little different. So for this post, I’m going to cover a variety of different topics in three sentences or less ***)

— The Kerry campaign seems to still be obsessively attacking Bush on Iraq and National Security, which is a really dumb move if you ask me. Kerry is NEVER going to measure up to Bush on National Security and if that remains the big issue in the public’s mind, Bush will be tough to beat. That’s why Kerry should try to change the public’s focus to domestic issues where he stands a chance instead of continually playing up an issue he can’t win.

— This memogate scandal is bad for Kerry in more ways than one. Not only would it be damaging if it were traced back to the Kerry campaign or the DNC, but it’s sucking up all the political oxygen. As long as people are consumed with finding out if these documents are legal, they’re not going to be paying attention to Kerry and that’s bad news since he’s trying to come from behind.

— I’m not sure if it’s because of the memogate scandal or what, but traffic has been way up this month. If I simply do as well for the 2nd half of the month as I did for the first, I’ll beat last month’s total by 30,000 daily uniques.

— We have Dan Rather standing by fake memos, a Kerry fundraiser like Ben Barnes who has been called a liar by his daughter being treated like a credible source, Kitty Kelly and Seymour Hersh making outrageous allegations based on anonymous sources, and staggering levels of Democratic partisanship being displayed by supposedly “unbiased” sources like the New York Times & CBS, and the guys over at Editor & Publisher are worrying about the influence of blogs? If the MSM did its job, no one would turn to blogs for information in the first place…

— It looks like Michele Catalano from A Small Victory is back in biz after taking a few weeks off to rest and recuperate. Welcome back Michele..

— Dana Rohrabacher has introduced a Constitutional Amendment that would allow anyone who has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years to run for President. I’d strongly oppose such a measure because only someone who was born in the United States should be eligible to become the POTUS. That’s an important provision of the Constitution, designed to prevent foreign powers from having an inordinate amount of influence on our country and it would be wise to keep it in place.

— I opposed the assault weapons ban so I’m pleased that it expired. Assault weapons were only used in a small percentage of crimes before the ban went into effect and many of the weapons covered under the ban were impacted for cosmetic reasons (In other words, this was “feel good” legislation for the anti-gun crowd). In any case, it’s nice to crawl back up the slippery slope once in a while.

— Anyone know of a cheap way to get LexisNexis access? I’d love to have that as a resource, but who can afford $75 a week?

— I’ve been looking hard at the Real Clear Politics battleground state polls and things look pretty good for Bush. But, with Michigan trending towards Kerry & Ohio trending towards Bush, I think the election could very well come down to the two most hotly contested electoral rich states, Pennsylvania and Florida. If the race stays tight, I believe Kerry will need to take both states to win and right now he is leading in neither…

— There’s a lot of political money flying around this campaign season and if there are any rich guys out there who want to make a big difference, how bout sending me $20k? Along with the money I make off of advertising, I figure that would be enough to let me go full-time — for good. You wouldn’t get anything for your money except the knowledge that I’d have more time to do what I do, but hey, over the long haul, I think I’ll make a bigger impact for conservatism than a few ad buys during this election.