J$P Extra! Matt Drudge speaks out on 60 Minutes, Bill O'Reilly, Wal-Mart, and plays the Ultimate John Kerry Ad.

From The Drudge Report radio edition, September 26 2004:

I’ve got my hands on a speech Ted Kennedy is set to deliver Monday claiming George Bush makes the US more vulnerable to a nuke attack. That’s going a little bit beyond “the economy’s bad”. This is the ultimate rhetoric; where do you go from there? Now it’s nuke week. We’ve moved on past the VietNam war, we’ve moved past 1978 documents, maybe we’re going back now to the the daisy-pick ad from the Goldwater era. It’s the end of the world if Bush is re-elected. Coming to a new moveon.org ad near you. Now you’re planting the idea of a mushroom cloud in people’s heads. I think somebody has been sampling the mushrooms.

Congestion at the port of Los Angeles at Long Beach is getting worse and worse by the day, just as the holiday shipping season kicks into high gear. At any given time in recent weeks, there have been as many as 83 vessels waiting to be unloaded, and it’s taking six to eight days to unload each ship. This is because Wal-Mart has moved a decision to get everything in September or October rather than waiting for November. So thank you very much Wal-Mart for screwing up the nation’s ports, getting all your Made in China goods in there. Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we just made this stuff in America? How embarrassing. Shouldn’t that be coming from Ohio? Let’s leave Beijing out of this. I would love to see a video montage of all those ships lining up to get into Los Angeles from Communist China. Santa’s new bag.

They’ve got this dynamic duo investigating inside CBS. You have the source down in Texas saying Lockhart wanted to see my documents, and they had to fix that up at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, saying they misquoted him. Anytime you start getting retractions, and we didn’t get this quote right, you know they got it right. It’s just too much pressure. So many retractions on one story is just unbelievable.

When will Dan Rather relinquish the anchor chair, and to whom? They don’t seem to have an heir apparent over there. Under serious consideration is a plan to have Rather step down next May, after Tom Brokaw takes all of his bows. I reported two years ago they had approached Tim Russert, just before he signed a lifetime contract with NBC. So I have to wonder who is available. How about we make Bill O’Reilly the new anchor of CBS News? He’s got an ego big enough to fill the fishbowl there.

O’Reilly’s telling people catch me tonight on 60 Minutes. Did they say on the air that they own his radio show, by the way? It’s Westwood, his radio show is syndicated, and 60 Minutes is owned by the same company that owns Westwood. Didn’t they have Standards and Practices, back in the Paley days, back when it was the Tiffany network? The passive viewer must not know or care that you’re looking at an infomercial.

Do you remember the hit piece 60 Minutes did on Chris Ruddy? And Chris Ruddy over at NewsMax posted the interview, and then a tape recording of the interview, and there was not one complete sentence between the 60 Minutes and the actual recording. That’s why I said no to 60 Minutes. If you sit for a 60 Minutes interview now you are certifiable. Oh yeah, Bill O’Reilly did, that’s right. Now we know why he was so light on Dan Rather. You’ve got Rather by the short hairs and then someone like O’Reilly says, I’m going to give him a pass, because my program is syndicated by CBS.

This is what Bill O’Reilly says about Rush Limbaugh: “He’s an entertainer. I’m a journalist”. When you start talking like that, it begins to get a little ugly out there. This is what I’ve been critical of the Fox critics for. Who are they to say that Fox isn’t journalism and PBS is? Information is information, and I think Limbaugh is the anchorman for American radio. There’s nobody who is being heard more in this country, giving information for the first time to a national audience, before Peter Jennings can get out of makeup, before Bill O’Reilly can get out of makeup. Not just these anchormen at the top of the hour with their official AP trumpets or their big John Williams score. It’s public communication. When a story is breaking over the AP and Rush Limbaugh is reading it, what do you call that, Bill O’Reilly, versus what any of these other people sitting there on the boob tube with pounds of makeup on?

O’Reilly is sitting there wearing the CBS crown tonight. Little does he know that’s a laughing stock, to be accepted by 60 Minutes. You sold your entire reputation for a piece of spoiled pottage. The last scene we’re going to see of Bill O’Reilly will be the Jack Nicholson scene in the Kubrick masterpiece The Shining--Bill O’Reilly’s going to be running all up and down 6th Avenue, broadcast row, with an axe, because he’s going to snap.

There’s a local host in New York, Mark Simone, who has put together clips of John Kerry’s greatest hits [The Ultimate John Kerry Commercial]:

ANNOUNCER: John Kerry is the candidate for all Americans. No matter what side you’re on, John Kerry is on your side. John Kerry supported the war.
JOHN KERRY: We need to disarm Saddam Hussein.
ANNOUNCER: John Kerry argued against the war.
KERRY: It’s the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
ANNOUNCER: If you think we spent too much money on the war, John Kerry agrees with you.
KERRY: I would not have made the wrong choices that are now forceing us to pay nearly the entire cost of this war, 200 billion dollars that we are not investing in education and health care, job creation here at home. That’s the wrong choice.
ANNOUNCER: Or if you think we didn’t spend enough money on the war, John Kerry agrees with you.
TIM RUSSERT: Do you believe that we should reduce funding that we are now providing for the operation in Iraq?
KERRY: No, I think we should increase it.
RUSSERT: Increase funding?
KERRY: Yes.
RUSSERT: By how much?
KERRY: By whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win.
ANNOUNCER: If you think the President made the right decision going to war in Iraq, John Kerry agrees with you.
KERRY: I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the President made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.
ANNOUNCER: If you think the President made a big mistake going to war, then John Kerry also agrees with you.
KERRY: I think it was a huge mistake for the President to go to war the way he did. I’ve said that a dozen times.
ANNOUNCER: Maybe you think Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction. John Kerry had the courage to say so.
KERRY: Based on weapons of mass destruction, the President distorted that and I’ve said that.
ANNOUNCER: Or maybe you think Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction. John Kerry had the courage to say so.
KERRY: Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents, and is capable of quickly producing, weaponizing a variety of such agents, including Anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles, such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the US itself.
ANNOUNCER: If you think it was wrong to vote against the 87 billion dollars to arm our troops, John Kerry agreed.
REPORTER: Will you then vote against the 87 billion?
KERRY: I don’t think any US Senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq. That’s irresponsible. There’s a way to do this properly. But I don’t think anyone in the Congress is going to not give our troops ammunition, not give our troops the ability to be able to defend themselves.
ANNOUNCER: If you think it was right to vote against the 87 billion dollars, then John Kerry also agrees with you.
KERRY: I’m proud to say that John joined me in voting against that 87 billion.
ANNOUNCER: Or, if you’re simply not sure, John Kerry has a position for you.
KERRY: I actually did vote for the 87 billion dollars, before I voted against it.
ANNOUNCER: If you think it’s wrong to go it alone in a war, John Kerry agrees.
KERRY: Going it alone in Iraq, that’s the wrong choice, that’s the wrong direction.
ANNOUNCER: If you think it’s OK to go it alone, John Kerry agrees with you.
KERRY: The President, as I also wrote in that article, always reserves the right to act unilaterally to protect the interest of our country.
ANNOUNCER: John Kerry, the only candidate with the courage to take every position on every issue. It’s not easy defending multiple positions. John Kerry had the courage to try to do it on 60 Minutes.
LESLIE STAHL: You voted for this war. Was that vote given what you know now a mistake?
KERRY: What I voted for, Leslie, see you’re playing here, was an authority for the President to go to war as a last resort if Saddam Hussein did not disarm and we needed to go to war.
STAHL: But I’m trying to find out if you today, now that you know about that report, think the war was a mistake.
KERRY: I think I answered your question.
ANNOUNCER: Even when Dan Rather catches you, John Kerry had the courage to just deny it.
DAN RATHER: You voted for the war but now didn’t vote for the money--
KERRY: That’s not a flip-flop. That’s not a flip-flop.
ANNOUNCER: John Kerry. More positions than any other candidate, and the courage to stand by all of them.

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