BlackFive

Instapundit points to the Recycler's blog where the video of John Forbes Kerry's daughters are booed at the MTV Music Video Awards.

BTW, I tried watching the VMAs last night. Is it just me, or were these the absolute worst VMAs of all time?

ZZZzzzzzzzzzz....

UPDATE: AntiJohnKerry points to a similar happening when Hillary Clinton was booed at a 911 benefit...and then VH1 edited the boos into cheers. According to Media Research Center, 20/20's John Stossel featured it and has a link to the actual Stossel video (real player).

Below is a story from the Chicago Tribune (registration required) about Mark Banks - a Chicago police officer and a Major in the Illinois National Guard. He and his son recently served in Iraq about 50 miles apart. I'll post the whole article (since is a reg. req. and it may disappear into the Tribune archives).

Mark Banks is truly a hero in every sense of the word.

Dying vet shows pals how to live
After fighting in Iraq, a cop with cancer vows to give family and friends an unforgettable lesson By Jon Yates Tribune staff reporter Published August 28, 2004

Mark Banks returned from Iraq in April figuring he had cheated death yet again.

As a policeman and soldier, the 46-year-old father of three had seen young men blown away on the battlefield and colleagues gunned down in the line of duty. Always, he had escaped unscathed.

At 6 feet 4 inches and 280 pounds, the former Golden Gloves boxer had never feared anything in his life.

Then the doctor showed him the X-ray.

The cancer started in his stomach but had spread throughout his body--dozens of tumors that invaded his spine, ribs and lymph nodes. When he was diagnosed May 27, his doctor gave him less than a year to live.

That night, Banks sat on his porch and made a decision. A lieutenant in the Chicago Police Department's training academy and a major with the Illinois Army National Guard, Banks has spent most of his life as a leader. He knew his time was limited, but he had one more lesson to give.

Conflicting Chicago Tribune stories make me wonder if there were two different protest marches in New York today...

First, there's this story about the protest:

Thousands fill N.Y. streets in anti-Bush protest
By Flynn McRoberts and Leon Lazaroff Tribune staff reporters Published August 29, 2004, 7:22 PM CDT

NEW YORK -- Under a beautifully clear blue sky and a brutally hot sun, tens of thousands of boisterous but orderly anti-war protesters streamed through the canyons of Manhattan today.

Groups ranging from young anarchists to gray-haired veterans of the 1960s anti-war movement worked their way past Madison Square Garden, site of this week's Republican National Convention, as hundreds of helmeted New York City police officers looked on.

"I need to say no. I need to say, 'Not in my name,'" said Pat Halsey, 64, a retired home furnishing designer from Oakhurst, N.J. Halsey walked with a poster bearing a silhouette of one of the Iraqi prisoners tortured at Abu Ghraib and a one-word caption: "Shame."
<...>
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Danny Glover and Leslie Cagan, leader of United for Peace and Justice, walked at the head of the line.

The following crowd extended back across much of Manhattan, shouting, chanting, singing, carrying banners and waving signs. They headed north into midtown Manhattan.

Shortly after noon, the first marchers reached Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street in front of Madison Square Garden. There, police stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the big arena.

As the crowd, echoing speechmakers at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, chanted, "Hope is on the way, hope is alive," leaders of the march sat down in the street. They sat there for five minutes, as though waiting for the rest of the group to catch up. Then, they got up and started walking again....

'Fox news sucks!'

By Charlie Madigan
Tribune senior correspondent
Published August 29, 2004, 7:15 PM CDT

The sad thing about not being here in the heart of it all, of course, is that even dedicated CSPAN viewers think this mammoth, steamy demonstration in the heart of Manhattan was basically all about yelling "Fox News Sucks" or even worse as the long, loud line made the turn at Madison Square Garden.
<...>
Marty's assessment:

If I were one of the RNC's leaders, I'd have a whole crew of video cameras out on NYC's streets…to catalog the weirdos whom middle-American voters are supposed to find common cause with.

It's not just the bunch of folks sporting their "Buck Fush" t-shirts; it's also the mindless ninnies for whom the height of intellectual discourse is to march past Fox News' HQ chanting, in apparently substantial numbers, "**** Fox News! **** Fox News!" ad nauseam. If Republicans wanted to secretly pay a bunch of disreputables to disgust normal people "from sea to shining sea," they could not come up with a better cast of characters.

In fact, I'm guessing the Kerry campaign will "discover" sometime in the next couple of weeks that there was a conspiracy of RNC agents-provocateurs whose task was to make today's march look like it's peopled with idiots. If the discovery turns out to be true, the RNC-ers succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.)

There's an interesting battle going on in Minneapolis.

Basically, two of the Powerline bloggers (John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson) co-authored an Op-Ed piece about the Swift Boat Veterans claims going unheard by the main stream media. In return, Jim Boyd, the Star Tribune's deputy editorial page editor, launched a counter piece that Hugh Hewitt described as "an actionable defamatory screed directed at the Powerline writers".

Below are links to the latest in this battle between some extremely smart bloggers and *ahem* the big freakin' media. The Powerline boys argue with facts. Boyd claims he would take them on if only he had the space...

John H. Hinderaker and Scott W. Johnson: Reply to Cambodia piece left main points unchallenged

Jim Boyd: This year, the political smear is exposed even as it's happening

Read them both, then decide for yourself who is winning this one.

My father-in-law pointed this one out to me when we were having coffee at our local Caribou Coffee joint:

From the front page of the Chicago Tribune (above the fold - registration req. - emphasis is mine) today:

Rebels leave mosque
Top cleric al-Sistani takes control of site; Sadr claims victory

By Ken Ellingwood and Edmund Sanders, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times; staff writers Tyler Marshall and Mark Mazzetti in Washington contributed
Published August 28, 2004

NAJAF, Iraq -- Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani resumed control over the Imam Ali shrine Friday as a final handful of militiamen loyal to a rebel Shiite cleric exited the compound after a deadly three-week standoff with U.S.-led and Iraqi forces.
<...>
In the quiet that prevailed Friday afternoon, one of the pro-Sadr fighters, 26-year-old Ali Adai, said it would be difficult to go back to his job driving a taxi. His car, a Volvo, was destroyed in the fighting, along with the family's home.

Rebuilding begins

Asked what he would do now, Adai, his left elbow and head bandaged from what he said were shrapnel wounds, gestured toward shattered buildings nearby and said construction work would soon be available.

"The Americans destroy, we build," he said...

Oh, the poor jihadi can't drive his taxi any more...BECAUSE HE WAS TRYING TO KILL AMERICANS! Sadr picked this fight. Maybe, they'd feel better if Saddam were back? Why didn't this reporter ask "Why are you trying to kill Americans? What have you built?"

Screw that guy! Too bad he wasn't in his taxi at the time it met it's doom.

On my way home from work, I stopped by the largest Borders in the area. I need a new book.

On the door and on every info desk was the sign,

"Unfit for Command is sold out. Be the first to receive the Best Seller by ordering now."

Hugh Hewitt's book - If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It - was also out.

Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment had three copies left of her latest book.

Maureen Dowd had a ton and no one was reading them.

James Carrol had a bunch that no one was reading, either.

Tommy Franks - American Soldier - was there in the dozens, and people were picking them up and reading them.

I think I moved to the right town.

John Kerry has said many, many things which have been "seared" into his memory. And it's natural for us, after thirty odd years of lies, to question just about everything he says.

Most of you military types, gun enthusiasts and physicists will know this fact. If you fire a bullet from a rifle, it will fall just as fast as if you held it in your hand and dropped it.

The bullet, while fleeing in a trajectory, cannot evade the law of gravity.

The truth is like gravity, and lies are like bullets. No matter how fast you "deny, deny, deny" or counter-accuse your detractors, truth, like gravity, will win out. Lies will impact.

Escape velocity won't happen in this case. Too many veterans are pulling down on the lies - creating the gravity of truth. And it's only going to get worse for John Forbes Kerry...

Like I said, this is only the beginning, folks. It's going to get tough for John Kerry:

From Robert Novak's column at Town Hall where he interviews William Schachte - a commander in the Swift Boats who had John Kerry under his wing when he first "reported" for duty (really reported for duty).

..."Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 (grenade launcher)," Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, "Kerry requested a Purple Heart." <...> Grant Hibbard, who as a lieutenant commander was Schachte's superior officer, confirmed that Schachte always went on these skimmer missions and "I don't think he (Kerry) was alone" on his first assignment. Hibbard said he had told Kerry to "forget it" when he asked for a Purple Heart.

Ted Peck, another Swift boat commander, said, "I remember Bill (Schachte) telling me it didn't happen" -- that is, Kerry getting an enemy-inflicted wound. He said it would be "impossible" for Kerry to have been in the skimmer without Schachte.

"I was astonished by Kerry's version" (in his book, "Tour of Duty") of what happened Dec. 2, Schachte said Thursday. When asked to support the Kerry critics in the Swift boat controversy, Schachte said, "I didn't want to get involved." But he said he gradually began to change his mind when he saw his own involvement and credibility challenged, starting with Lanny Davis on CNN's "Crossfire" Aug. 12.

The next time he saw Kerry after the first Purple Heart incident, Schachte said, was "about 20 years" later on the U.S. Senate subway in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building. "I called, 'Hey, John.' He replied, 'Batman.' I was absolutely amazed by his memory." He said they "talked about having lunch" but never did.

Schachte said he has never been contacted by or talked to anybody in the Bush-Cheney campaign or any Republican organization. He said he is a political independent who has voted for candidates of both parties.

David Mobley at a Physicist's Perspective has more...

Via the Chicago Tribune:

Report: al-Qaida May Target VA Hospitals

By CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press Writer
Published August 27, 2004, 10:16 AM CDT

WASHINGTON -- Al-Qaida may attempt to attack Veterans Affairs hospitals as an alternative to more heavily guarded U.S. military installations, the FBI and Homeland Security Department warn in a new nationwide terrorism bulletin.

Although U.S. authorities say there is no credible intelligence regarding a specific threat against such hospitals, the bulletin said there have been persistent reports of "suspicious activity" at medical facilities throughout the United States.

That includes "possible reconnaissance activities" this year at unspecified military medical facilities in Bethesda, Md., and Aurora, Colo., the bulletin said. Even though later investigation of these two incidents uncovered no links to terrorism, the bulletin urges vigilance at VA hospitals on the part of police and security personnel.
<...>
The new bulletin repeats a number of previously released indicators of possible terrorist surveillance. These include unusual interest in security measures or access points of buildings; operatives possibly disguised as "panhandlers, shoe shiners, food or flower vendors"; discreet use of video cameras in areas not frequented by tourists; and individuals seen observing security drills or procedures....

It's Glenn's birthday today. That means no making fun of the professor. In all seriousness, where would we be without him? Can we send his parents a thank you?

Happy Birthday, Glenn!