PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

MATT KELLY,

the AP's Pentagon correspondent, continues to doggedly pursue George Bush's military records. 31 more pages have now turned up. Send Mary Mapes and Dan Ra^ther a note and let them know that no personal memos printed in Microsoft Word Times New Roman and signed by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian were found.

In other news, Matt Kelly continues to go missing in action on the John Kerry military records story.

"THE PRESS

has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president's strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. I have been involved in the war on terrorism for two decades, and in my view no world leader has better understood the stakes in this global war than President Bush."

-- Paul Bremer in today's NY Times.

STEYN.

He was in the same state he was in in early 2003, just before launching the Iraq war, when he was tired and punchy and stumbling round the country not making a case against Saddam but just droning the same phrases over and over: "He's a dictator." Smirk. "He gassed his own people." Smirk.

On Thursday, his own people seemed to have gassed him .. [Bush] said: "It's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard .. It is hard work," again and again .. [But it's also] tough and .. hard doing the title number of Singin' in the Rain, but Gene Kelly made it seem blithe and effortless and graceful. And the President of the United States owes his people a performance - in wartime especially. Churchill didn't just communicate the weight of the burden that he carried but also that he had the strength to bear it.

More. You can also find this in the Chicago Sun-Times.

EDITORS TO REPORTERS --

Give us dirt on the President. Quotable Bill Gertz:

Former Bush colleagues in the guard have been interviewed scores of times. They tell some interesting stories about their press contacts. One retired officer quotes a reporter for a major East Coast daily as telling him she wants off the Bush guard beat, but her editors tell her to keep digging. "I tell them there's nothing there," the retired officer quotes the reporter as saying. That officer recalls another reporter saying, "My editors don't want any good stuff on Bush."

TRANSCRIPT --

O'Reilly interviews the President. Quotable:

O'REILLY: A "Time" magazine investigation says, 3 million illegal aliens crossed the Mexican border, and we talked about this four and a half years...

BUSH: We have. I know it's a issue that you're concerned about.

Note that the President did not say that this is an issue that he's concerned about. The President's inflection if you heard the interview made this even more clear. Read the rest of the interview to see how unconcerned -- and unserious -- Bush really is about our unsecured borders.

It's really tragic for our nation that this country doesn't have two viable political parties. A one party state just doesn't cut it.

UPDATE: Don't miss this.

THE LEFT ANGELES TIMES

does its run-up-to-the-election hit piece on Bush's Guard service. The Times weirdly calls Bush's Guard service a "tour", in an effort, it seems, to evoke David Brinkley's "Tour of Duty", his book on John Kerry's service in Vietnam. Check Patterico sometime tomorrow for a fisking. UPDATE: Here it is.

And your quiz for the day, how stupid is the Los Angeles Times?

GEORGE BUSH

volunteered for duty in Vietnam. This is old news to me, but it might not be to you. (It was news to Glenn). The source and the quotations are, however, new.

MICHELLE MALKIN --

"DON'T GO THERE, W."

Andrew Ferguson, "Has George W. Bush Killed Off Conservatism?"

THE AP's MATT KELLEY --

like a Pit Bull with a hamster after the unreleased military records. No, not John Kerry's records. But you knew that.

"I SERVED WITH

George W. Bush."

IS IT

Saturday Night Live or is it George W. Bush. (mp3)

PANDER EFFORTS BACKFIRE

on George Bush. The bribe can never be big enough for those whose vote turns on the use of the fire-power of the Feds to take goods and services from their fellow citizens.

NATIONAL REVIEW --

the case for backing Bush is hard to make if you believe in limited government.

A GOOD

QUESTION.

"The Wilson story has, of course, had a catastrophic effect on Bush. One thing I've been wondering: how, with most of the facts on its side, did the Bush White House manage to lose the battle over Wilson a year ago?"

BUSH PROMISES TO SOCIALIZE MEDICINE

in his second term. I kid you not. In a speech outlining his agenda for a second term , the President said "[the] government can and should help citizens gain the tools to make their own choices and to improve their own lives .. when men and women have a sound education and the skills to seek new opportunities, and the security of health care, they will achieve great things for themselves and for our nation." Quoted by the NY Times -- "Bush Sketches His Agenda for U.S. in a Second Term".

The promise to give people "the security of health care" can be nothing other than the promise to give us socialized medicine.

Here's a suggestion. If the President wants to provide my family with "the tools to make [our] own choices and to improve [our] own lives" he can send me a government check -- make it 10 thousand dollars -- for a full set of construction tools from Sears -- and a couple hundred thousand more for really serious tools like a new pickup truck, a cement mixer, a dump truck, a scoop shovel and a storage shed. This would allow me to "make my own choices and improve my own life." But these are just starters -- I'd also like books and electonic teaching gear for the kids, sports equipment, cooking tooks, etc. etc. On second thought, Mr. President, I'll just send you the bill.

Any doubt that the man who ran against Gerald Ford in 1976 would be running against this President and his big government / big spending agenda?

(For political theory geeks only -- notice how close Bush's position comes to the account of human freedom known as positive liberty? This is a "new liberal" or Marxist position -- and it is not a conservative or classical liberal position. Draw your own conclusions.)

A whopping 431 political appointees

work on the staff of the Office of the President.

Elsewhere, Scaled Composites, staffed by "a few dozen dedicated employees" managed to build and launch a craft into outerspace.

Anti-Bush press tops press Nixon hatred.

"I think the attack on Bush has been, if anything, more vicious." -- Charles Colson, Nixon aid. Quoted by Greg Pierce.

Bush -- an "unwillingness to make serious arguments"

"Truth be told, I'm fairly disgusted with the GOP these days. Again, I think conservatives sacrificed a lot when we bought into the notion that the President of the United States doesn't need to be an effective communicator. Yes, it's nice to know that Bush's gut instincts are often right (though they're also often left), but his inability or unwillingness to make serious arguments hurts. And that style informs the GOP style across the board these days. Being the majority party in a system which so effectively empowers the minority party means that everyone has to listen to your arguments, it doesn't mean your arguments automatically win.

So, when the majority party refuses to ground its actions in principle and defend them with reason it will, of necessity, look like it is ruling by whim rather than governing by conviction. With a few important exceptions, Bush's domestic priorities look like an attempt to buy support rather than persuade the public about anything. That works for Democrats because the Democratic Party is, at the end of the day, about bribing the electorate. The Republican Party is supposed to be the party which persuades the electorate that they'd be better off not accepting the bribes. And everyone -- America and the GOP included -- loses when the two parties get into a bidding war like divorced parents over who can spoil Americans more." Jonah Goldberg in The Corner.

BushCheney '04 "F"-bombs the Michael Moore Democrats.

George Bush may get my vote after all. BushCheney '04 goes bare knuckles against the Michael Moore Democrats in this web-only video ad [wmv] from the The Official Re-election Site for President George W. Bush.

And the unspoken F-word here is Fascist. BushCheney 04' is laying down the gauntlet and saying what needs to be said -- the Michael Moore Democrats have seriously raised the stakes by promoting a kind of anger and deceit unheard of in America discourse outside of the circles of the Fascist Left.

The consequential lies and rage of Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, etc. must be opposed forthrighty and with clear eyes -- with a clear understanding that this ain't bean bag and these aren't decent people and these "big" lies aren't without civic and mortal consequence.

Let's be straight. Kennedy, Moore, et al are not Communists or Fascists, but it is right and necessary to say that consistent "big lie" raging certainly is behaving like the Communists and Fascists -- and this is absolutely intolerable in America.

If you don't understand how Kennedy or Moore or Dean have been practicing the politics of lies, read a book or get the facts from someone like Sean Hannity on the radio. It ain't my job to make sure you know what the truth is -- the truth is out there and its easy to get. That's your job.

Read the AP story on the Bush ad here.

UPDATE: This may explain alot when you consider that the Democrat Party has been led in recent years by the likes of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Terry McAuliffe and Al Gore.

UPDATE II: Read an alternative perspective here.

UPDATE III: Michael Barone's latest "The Media Joins the Big Lie Game" is a must read.

Quotable: "Bush and Cheney have in fact been careful not to claim that Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborated on 9-11. Yet Democrats and many in the media claim they have. Their argument -- I heard it recently from Clinton National Security Council staffer Nancy Soderberg -- is that by mentioning Iraq-Al Qaeda ties many times, Bush and Cheney are trying to fool the public into believing that they collaborated on 9-11. So while they don't claim collaboration on 9-11, they do. Words evidently mean the opposite of what they mean. George Orwell's Winston Smith would feel at home."

"The media and the Democrats have been using one Big Lie after another to attack Bush. Another example: the Times' White House reporter wrote that Bush claimed the threat from Iraq was imminent. But Bush actually said was the threat wasn't imminent, and then he proceeded to argue that we should act anyway. It's interesting that no one at the Times caught this obvious error."

"It is common knowledge that about 90 percent of journalists vote Democratic, and it is common sense that this must affect their news coverage. A recent survey of journalists found that only 7 percent call themselves conservative versus 34 percent liberal and 59 percent moderates, and that the large majority of moderates took liberal stands on issues. Ordinarily most journalists try to be fair and accurate. But it's hard to resist the conclusion that at least some have crossed the line and are, consciously or unconsciously, actively trying to defeat the president."

6-1.

Americans believe by a factor of 6-1 that Ronald Reagan was a better President than is George W. Bush.

Quotable: "Reagan was a man primarily of ideas," said Don Devine, a former Reagan administration official and a conservative activist. "Bush is a man primarily of politics."

And this: "President No. 40 had a vision, conservatives say. President No. 43 doesn't .. ".

George W. Rockefeller.

"The role of government is to stand there and say, 'We're going to help you.' The job of the federal government is to fund the providers .. " -- George W. Bush quoted by Jonah Goldberg, who got the quote from Andrew Sullivan.

Home Land Insecurity.

I've never had much faith in the naive idea that the Bush administration is putting my safety first when it comes to home land security .. now here's more evidence that politics and political correctness are trumping national security once again. At what point did America go insane?

Steyn - Bush vs. Reagan.

"Bush�s conservatism is neither a romance nor a balance sheet. He�s adopted a lot of the soft fatuities of the Left � �Leave no child behind� � and he doesn�t care how expensive they are to implement. On Labor Day last year, Bush said, �We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.� With conservatives like that, who needs Sweden?

Reagan knew better: �Outside its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.� He didn�t say that as president or even as governor, but one Sunday night back in the Fifties as the host of General Electric�s weekly playlet �GE Theater�. There�s more conservative philosophy in the average Reagan intro to those old shows with Joan Crawford and Burgess Meredith than we�re likely to get in Bush�s keynote address at this year�s convention ..

Three years on [since 9/11], I think one can make the argument that this fuzziness about the precise nature of the enemy is one reason so many Americans have checked out of the war .. Bush had an opportunity to shift the broader cultural landscape in 2001 � to take on the enervated, self-loathing, multiculti self-absorption that in the days after 9/11 looked momentarily vulnerable. But he chose not to do so .. ". More MARK STEYN.

George Bush -- The Anti-Reagan.

Jonah Goldberg has the goods. Quotable: "The first rule of politics is that you have to say what you believe before you do anything about it ..

.. Discussing the importance of dogma, William F. Buckley wrote in 1964, "If our society seriously wondered whether or not to denationalize the lighthouses, it would not wonder at all whether to nationalize the medical profession." Reagan's rhetoric and actions moved America closer to a country where we argue about denationalizing lighthouses. George W. Bush's rhetoric and actions are moving us in the opposite direction. Last Labor Day, George W. Bush told a crowd, "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." Reagan would never had said something like that ..

.. the first President Bush believed, as he put it in his first inaugural speech, that America had "more will than wallet." The current President Bush has lots of will and a wallet full of credit cards. On the domestic side, Bush has asserted that the federal government has a central role in education � once a local concern � and he's backed that up with a 60 percent increase in federal funding. He's created a new Cabinet agency, massively expanded entitlements in the form of a prescription drug benefit and asked for a major new commitment by the federal government to insert itself into everything from religious charities to marriage counseling ..

.. at minimum, Bush seems to have abandoned the rhetorical high ground. Reagan declared that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem. In countless ways, Bush has been saying the reverse. And once you concede that the "government has to move" every time "somebody" hurts, you've pretty much abandoned your dogma and picked up the opposition's. What makes things even worse is that while Bush may be good and decent and unfairly criticized for a host of things, he's a terrible spokesman for conservative principles. One cannot listen to four decades of Reagan speeches and off-the-cuff remarks and not be amazed by the man's ability to enunciate a coherent philosophy. Bush gives some excellent written remarks, but off the cuff he can make even sympathetic listeners cringe .. ".

Reagan Republicans to Bush - We May Just Sit This One Out.

"The Bush administration may be moving leftward in the belief that Reagan conservatives have no place else to go. If so, it is a colossal mistake. Reagan conservatives do have someplace to go: it's called home. They can sit on their hands and not vote at all .. ". more LYN NOFZIGER. And Nofziger has this reminder for the White House: "When the president's father took conservatives for granted, he lost."

If President Bush loses, it will be because small-government Reaganites like me sat on our hands and refused to pull the lever for an "I'll buy every vote I can" Republican. If this is the kind of President we wanted, in 1980 we'd have voted for the President who supported LBJ in 1964, rather than the Republican.

And don't be mistaken. President Bush continues to grab money that doesn't belong to him in order to buy his own re-election -- he's certainly doing this in the case of home buying. He's taking the money my wife and I planned for and worked our butts off for -- and desperately need to pay our morgage -- and he's taking our money and he's using it to buy votes for himself -- and a house for someone else -- someone who didn't work for that money and has no right to that money. It's a crime -- and like many crimes, one perpetrated by the state and sanctioned by law.

This is just one of many ways in which things from a Reagan Republican perspective have taken steps for the worse rather than the better after four years of Bush of the Presidency.

George W. Nixon.

"In previous columns, I have warned that George W. Bush is in danger of appearing Nixonian � that is, using Richard Nixon�s political methods, such as a willingness to subordinate everything to a re-election effort, including abrogation of one�s own principles; punishing staffers with genuine policy disagreements for being disloyal; and keeping secret information that might undermine decisions one has already made. The clearest evidence yet of Bush as Nixon has arisen .. ". more BRUCE BARTLETT.

Bush on Autopilot.

"Bush should come to San Francisco. A challenging audience would make him disengage the autopilot. Dubya's delivery Thursday was stale. It lacked fire. He told the crowd he was "looking forward to a spirited campaign, " but I'm still waiting for the spirited part. Instead, I heard the same stock phrases the president has delivered for so long that they have ceased to have any effect .. Bush should come to San Francisco to mix it up. Let him talk to people who aren't sold on him yet. Let him work for the applause. Let hecklers yell at him. That always worked for his predecessor .. ". more DEBRA SAUNDERS. It's hard to tell that Bush wants another term in the White House. Maybe he doesn't. And certainly anyone who really believes in lower LONGTERM tax rates and limited government surely isn't all that excited about four more years of this presidency.

Bush vs. your family's health. "Does Bush want to be portrayed as the minion of religious extremists who'd stifle science even at the cost of lifesaving medical technologies? If he doesn't, then he's going about things all wrong .. ". more GLENN REYNOLDS