posted November 01, 2004 11:52 AM            

In a 3,225-mile detour from the mainland battleground states, the vice president made the most of a surprise visit to traditionally Democrat Hawaii by ripping into Kerry in the final hours of the campaign.

"We are standing just a few miles from Pearl Harbor, the site of a sudden attack ... Three years ago, America faced another sudden attack," Cheney told a crowd estimated by his aides at 9,000, the vice president's biggest crowd at a campaign event.
Cheney said that "the clearest, most important difference in this campaign is simple to state: President Bush understands the war on terror and has a strategy for winning it. John Kerry does not."

Though it seems a huge task for Bush to win a state that has been a Democrat stronghold, Cheney's overnight trip is aimed at fueling the perception the president's re-election is assured.

Nationally, however, the latest national polls show the race to be extremely tight.

Outside the convention center where Cheney spoke, some 80 people gathered across the street carrying anti-war and Kerry-Edwards signs in support of Kerry and running mate John Edwards. Several demonstrators inside the convention center briefly interrupted Cheney's remarks, but they were drowned out by audience chants of "four more years."

The vice president's remarks on national security paralleled the basic campaign speech he has been giving for months, with the added punch of tying together the sneak attack that began U.S. involvement in World War II with the attacks of Sept. 11.

Kerry's campaign says the senator has spent the better part of his career working on behalf of the military and that he has been concerned about the consequences of giving the president a blank check in Iraq. "We're seeing the consequences of that in Iraq. It's a tragedy," Kerry's campaign spokesman Phil Singer said Sunday.

Kerry has said his combat experience during the Vietnam War shows he is not the weakling that Cheney, who received deferments to avoid military service, portrays him to be. Kerry says he will fight the terrorists "with all of the intensity with which I went at it, and I went at it, and the guys who were on my boats will tell you how we went at it. We fought."

Lipstick on a Pig

Cheney told the cheering crowd in Honolulu: "Now in the final days of this campaign, John Kerry is running around talking tough. He's trying every which way to cover up his record of weakness on national defense. But he can't do it. It won't work."

The vice president then delivered what he tells crowds is his favorite line: "As we like to say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on a pig, but at the end of the day, it'll still be a pig!" The line draw such a roar that Cheney, as he sometimes does, asked if the crowd wanted to hear it again. They did, and he repeated it.

"If you want a president who will keep his word, and stand behind our military 100 percent of the time, send George W. Bush back for four more years," the vice president said, framing the battle against Osama bin Laden's terrorists as the most important issue facing the nation.

It has been 44 years since a major party candidate on a national ticket made a campaign stop in Hawaii and it is unprecedented this close to Election Day.

Only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan among Republicans have won Hawaii since it became a state, but recent polls have shown Bush and Kerry in a close race.

After receiving no notice from national political figures, Hawaii and its four electoral votes are suddenly a focus of attention. Former Vice President Al Gore spoke at a rally of more than 1,200 Democrats on Friday.

"This time around, Hawaii may very well have the deciding vote," declared the former Bush foe who lost the 2000 election on a long recount in Florida finally decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In declaring that the Bush administration was seeing the war in Iraq through a "rose-colored lens," Gore cited retired U.S. Gen. Eric Shinseki, a native of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Shinseki's advice was ignored when he said a war in Iraq would require "hundreds of thousands of troops."

Former President Bill Clinton did interviews with Hawaii TV stations for Kerry on Wednesday.

Cheney Mocks Democrat Polling on bin Laden's Tape

Earlier Sunday on the mainland, Cheney said Kerry's first response to Osama bin Laden's new videotape was to take a poll to find out what he should say about it.

A spokesman for Kerry's campaign did not deny polling on the bin Laden videotape, but suggested President Bush had done so. Bush's campaign strategist said he asked no poll questions about the al-Qaida terrorist.

"The thing that I find amazing about it is that John Kerry's first response was to go conduct a poll," Cheney told supporters in Fort Dodge, Iowa. "He went into the field ... to find out what he should say about this tape of Osama bin Laden."

"It's as though he doesn't know what he believes until he has to go and check the polls, his finger in the air, to see which way the wind is blowing and then he'll make a decision," said the vice president, who offered no evidence to back up his claim. "George Bush doesn't need a poll to know what he believes, especially about Osama bin Laden."

"I don't think that's a man who is up to the task of being commander in chief," Cheney said of Kerry.

Kerry's spokesman Joe Lockhart said Cheney "should examine his own house before throwing stones."

Asked whether Kerry's polls included questions about the videotape, Lockhart said, "We don't talk about our internal polls."

Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's strategist, said he did not ask about the videotape.

"We have not asked any questions related to bin Laden, this tape, or any other tape in our polling," Dowd said. "The president stands on principle, and so does the campaign."

Lockhart said Cheney was referring to a Democracy Corps poll and inaccurately linked it to the Kerry campaign's private polling. Democracy Corps is a Democrat organization and not part of Kerry's campaign, though its management has worked closely with Kerry's team.

Its most recent poll asked voters about the bin Laden tape and found that more people said it made them feel like Bush had taken his "eye off the ball" in the war on terror than thought it underscored the importance of the president's approach.

A conference call with reporters on the poll included Kerry campaign staffers.

"For the Kerry campaign to say that this poll is not their own is laughable when Tad Devine and Joe Lockhart are the ones presenting the results," Cheney's campaign spokeswoman Anne Womack said as the vice president arrived in New Mexico for a campaign appearance.

Singer said, "For the Bush campaign to continue making this charge when they know it's not true is laughable."

Cheney's new attack followed his comments earlier in the day that Kerry had turned his back on U.S. troops to get ahead politically.

Kerry "is not a steadfast leader. Our president is," Cheney told hundreds of Republican supporters at stops in Ohio and Michigan, as he opened a nonstop leg of campaigning that will take him to Hawaii.

Cheney started the day in Toledo, Ohio, pressing one of the campaign's most consistent lines of attack on Kerry's Senate vote against $87 billion to help finance the U.S. war in Iraq. Bush's re-election campaign says the U.S. senator voted as he did because of the then-surging anti-war candidate Howard Dean. Kerry has rejected the accusation.

Cheney said that Kerry "in order to advance himself turned his back on the troops."

posted November 01, 2004 11:59 AM              

eeeeeee! What a creep!

Did Cheney ever speak of his activity in the MK-Ultra Project Monarch???

I don't suppose he wants anyone to know about that???? "For reasons of national security"

posted November 01, 2004 12:01 PM              

Cheney's the typical American pig

Hawaii isn't going to Bush. In the last vote, only 36% voted for Bush. Gore won by a landslide in Hawaii. Sure, Bush might have mind-f'd a few more percentages out of the Hawaiian people, but they're traditionally Liberal. Hawaiians prefer Love to Fear.

posted November 01, 2004 12:09 PM            

Cheney did not call Kerry a pig...if he had Kerry would be squealing like a pig by this time.

Cheney said Kerry cannot dress himself up now in the clothes of a strong on defense leader when he's consistently voted against the defense of America at every opportunity to do so.

Of course, Kerry's absolutely defenseless positions that would have disarmed America is exactly what the radical leftist Marxists want.

posted November 01, 2004 01:06 PM              

All of this BS is because jwhop is afraid that Kerry is going to win the election. Which I'm sure he is because most Americans aren't contolled by fear and they aren't brainwashed from reading nothing but Bush's propaganda machines in the media.

Cheney is a psycho and the puppeteer of Bush. Everyone knows that.

posted November 01, 2004 01:26 PM            

John Kerry has adopted each and every point of the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx.

posted November 01, 2004 01:49 PM              

Tomorrow we will hear from the American people ( hopefully without any vote tampering or illegalites) and tomorrow will decide the future course of our country and the world.

Remember to report anything out of the ordinary at your precincts so it can be dealt with speedily. Remember your rights under the Constitution to a free election and to vote without harassment or intimdation of any kind. If your precinct does not have your rights posted remind them that by law they are obligated to post those rights. And report it if they don't.

No matter what the weather is like get out and vote. The future depends on it.

posted November 01, 2004 02:05 PM              

cheney's dispicable activities in the MK-Ultra Project Monarch....

quote:

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Kerry's spokesman Joe Lockhart said Cheney "should examine his own house before throwing stones."

---

Yes!

posted November 01, 2004 02:34 PM            

**edit**

Oh yeah, I posted a link to a website a while back about kooky conspiracy theories.