PRESTOPUNDIT

The technique President Bush is using against John F. Kerry was perfected by his father against Michael Dukakis in 1988, though its roots go back at least to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

And Patterico exposes editor Michael Kinsley and his Timesmen for the vacuous weasles they are. Quotable:

Speaking of the charges raised by the Swift Boat Vets, the editors at the Los Angeles Dog Trainer sanctimoniously proclaim: "These Charges Are False ... " Very impressive. Only: which charges are they talking about, anyway? The ones about John Kerry claiming he was in Cambodia in Christmas 1968? The claim that John Kerry initially sought a deferment to avoid the Vietnam war? The claim that he joined the Naval Reserves, rather than the Navy, at a time when men his age who believed they would be drafted anyway often chose the Naval Reserves as a safer route? The claim that, when Kerry initially volunteered for Swift boat service, it was considered relatively safe? ..

You have got to read the paper's editorial this morning. Not only does it officially bestow "victim" status on John Kerry --which is the highest honor the Times' ever bestows-- it also creates its own factual world and its own legal reality, stating of Kerry and MoveOn and Bush and the Swift Boat Vets for Truth that "either man could shut down the groups working on his behalf if he wanted to," an objectively and manifestly absurd claim. But because the editors at the Times, upset at the rapid dissolution of the Kerry campaign, want to believe it, they choose to believe it. No wonder this paper has fallen on the hardest of times: It isn't bound by even elementary facts.

Then there's this stunner of a paragraph:

"No informed person can seriously believe that Kerry fabricated evidence to win his military medals in Vietnam. His main accuser has been exposed as having said the opposite at the time, 35 years ago. Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question, as well as by documentation. His accusers have no evidence except their own dubious word."

Put aside that the editorial does not include the word Cambodia, about which Kerry has been fabricating evidence for years, does not mention Kerry's refusal to release his records, or that Kerry won't meet with the press. Even with those exclusions, this is an amazing level of ignorance on display. Or deceit. But either way the Los Angeles Times should acquaint itself with the work of the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs, whose Sunday account, while it does not side either with Kerry or his accusers, contains enough in its third paragraph to embarrass the editorial writers at Los Angeles Times, if indeed these ideologues are capable of embarrassment:

"For the Massachusetts senator's critics, who include three of the five Swift boat skippers who were present that day, the incident demonstrates why Kerry does not deserve to be commander in chief. They accuse him of cowardice, hogging the limelight and lying. Far from displaying coolness under fire, they say, Kerry was never fired upon and fled the scene at the moment of maximum danger."

Note the Los Angeles Times asserted that "Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question," but the reporting in the Post easily shows that statement to be false: "three of five" commanders blasting Kerry cannot be squared with the Los Angeles Times' assertion that "Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question." Is it stupidity or deceit? Whichever, it sure isn't journalism.