Dan Rather Is Committing Professional Suicide On Live Television

If anyone needs some spare cash, check out this website. You can make a quick $10K

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http://defeatjohnjohn.com/2004/09/10000-part-two-ibm-selectric.htm

Rather than making the argument against Rather's rather lame defense earlier this evening on the news, I'll let Jim Geraghty do the heavy lifting for me.......

"Nothing about kerning. Nothing about the paper size. Nothing about the stationary. Nothing about the widow or the son. Nothing about proportional spacing. Nothing about the difference in tone and writing style from other memos by this author. Nothing about the anachronistic language.

They changed the story from coming from his personal files, to admitting that CBS only had a photocopy to work from. The said some typewriters had superscript. Yes, but how common were they? Would they have one of those typewriters in an Air National Guard office?

They said the font Times Roman had been around for many years before the memo. Yes, but could you do it on a typewriter?"

(This is me speaking now)......The nail in the coffin for me is the proportional spacing of the letters. It was impossible........let me say that one more time.........IMPOSSIBLE for a typewriter to do that in the early 70's. Impossible. It required a computer. So everyone can debate Times New Roman and superscripts and blah blah blah, the fact of the matter is there is NO WAY to explain the proportional spacing except to admit the document/s is a fake.

Please take special note: Rather said NOTHING about proportional spacing, and you know why? Because he knew there was no way to explain it. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

The documents are fake.

Stick a fork in Dan, he's done.

Culinarily yours,

FFF

FFF Is Spaced Out, Disproportionately

>(This is me speaking now)......The nail in the coffin for me

>is the proportional spacing of the letters. It was

>impossible........let me say that one more

>time.........IMPOSSIBLE for a typewriter to do that in the

>early 70's. Impossible. It required a computer. So everyone

>can debate Times New Roman and superscripts and blah blah

>blah, the fact of the matter is there is NO WAY to explain the

>proportional spacing except to admit the document/s is a fake.

>

>

>Please take special note: Rather said NOTHING about

>proportional spacing, and you know why? Because he knew there

>was no way to explain it. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

>

WHAT FFF DOESN'T KNOW AND CAN'T TAKE 2 MINUTES TO FIND OUT WITH A GOOGLE SEARCH:

1) IBM introduced proportional spacing for typewriters in 1941.

2) The IBM Selectric, with proportional spacing and changeable fonts, was introduced in 1961.

1941: IBM announces the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing. By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a printed page, an effect that was further enhanced by a typewriter ribbon innovation that produced clearer, sharper words on the page. The proportional spacing feature became a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters.

http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941.html

The IBM Selectric typewriter (occasionally known as the IBM Golfball typewriter) is the electric typewriter design that brought the typewriter into the electronic age.

Instead of typebars it had a pivoting typeball that could be changed to use different fonts in the same document.

The ability to change fonts, combined with the neat regular appearance of the typed page, was revolutionary and marked the beginning of desktop publishing. Later models with selective pitch and built-in correcting tape carried the trend even further. Any typist could produce a polished manuscript.

Due to their speed (14.8 character/s), immunity to clashing typebars, and reliability, Selectric models were also widely used as terminals for computers, replacing Teletypes.

The machine had a key lockout feature that smoothed out the irregular fingerstrokes of the typist. When a key was pressed a narrow metal tab was pushed into a slotted tube full of ball-bearings under the keyboard. These balls were adjusted to have enough horizontal space for only one tab to enter at a time. The typist could press multiple keys at the same time and was guaranteed that they would cycle the machine in the order they were pressed (and held down). This gave some users the impression that there was a storage buffer.

The Selectric typewriter was first released in 1961 and is generally considered to be a design classic. After the Selectric II was introduced a few years later, the original design was designated the Selectric I. The Correcting Selectric II differed from the Selectric I in many respects:

The Selectric II was squarer at the corners, whereas the Selectric I was rounder.

The Selectric II had a Dual Pitch option to allow it to be switched (with a lever at the top left of the "carriage") between 10 and 12 characters per inch, whereas the Selectric I had one fixed "pitch".

The Selectric II had a lever (at the top left of the "carriage") that allowed characters to be shifted up to a half space to the left (for inserting a word one character longer or shorter in place of a deleted mistake), whereas the Selectric I did not.

The Selectric II had optional auto-correction (with the extra key at the bottom right of the keyboard), whereas the Selectric I did not. (The white correction tape was at the left of the typeball and its orange take-up spool at the right of the typeball.)

The Selectric II had a lever (above the right platen knob) that would allow the platen to be turned freely but return to the same vertical line (for inserting such symbols as subscripts and superscripts), whereas the Selectric I did not.

Both Selectric I and Selectric II were available in standard, medium, and wide-carriage models and in various colors, including red and blue as well as traditional neutral colors, and both used the same typeballs, which were available in many fonts, including symbols for science and mathematics, OCR faces for scanning by computers, script, Old English, and more than a dozen ordinary alphabets. The typeballs came in two styles: Original models had a metal spring clip with two wire wings that squeezed together, later models had a fragile flip-up black plastic lever that could break off, which was later redesigned to have a substantial plastic lever that did not break. Over the years, there were several different styles for the ribbons, even in the same model Selectric, and they were not interchangeable. Selectric I models used either a cloth cartridge ribbon or a spool film ribbon. Correcting Selectic II models had a cartridge film ribbon instead of the spool style, although the non-correcting models used the earlier cloth cartridge.

In the 1980s IBM introduced a Selectric III and several other Selectric models, some of them word processors or type-setters instead of really typewriters, but by then the rest of the industry had caught up with the trend, and IBM's new models did not dominate the market the way the first Selectric had.

http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/IBM%20Selectric%20typewriter

****

By the way -- I agree that the superscripts look suspicious.

RE: FFF Is Spaced Out, Disproportionately

What is this all about?

However, CBS Will Find This Hard to Explain....

Man named in Bush memo left Guard before document was written

BY PETE SLOVER

The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN, Texas - (KRT) - The man named in a disputed memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat" President Bush's military record left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo was supposedly written, his own service record shows.

An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972. CBS News reported this week that a memo in which Staudt was described as interfering with officers' negative evaluations of Bush's service, was dated Aug. 18, 1973.

That added to mounting questions about the authenticity of documents that seem to suggest Bush sought special favors and did not fulfill his service.

Staudt, who lives in New Braunfels, Texas, did not return calls seeking comment. His discharge paper was among a packet of documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News from official sources during 1999 research into Bush's Guard record.

A CBS staffer stood by the story, suggesting that Staudt could have continued to exert influence over Guard officials. But a former high-ranking Guard official disputed that, saying retirement would have left Staudt powerless over remaining officials.

The authenticity of the memo and three others included in Wednesday's "60 Minutes" report came in for heavy criticism Friday, prompting an unusual on-air defense of the original work. Experts on typography said they appeared to have been computer-drafted on equipment not available in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

And the family of the officer who supposedly wrote them, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984, said it wasn't his nature to keep detailed personal notes.

In its network news broadcast Friday, CBS said the documents were supported by both unnamed witnesses and others, including document examiners.

Earlier, CBS anchor Dan Rather told The Dallas Morning News that he had heard nothing to make him question the legitimacy of the memos. He attributed the backlash to partisan politics and competitive journalism.

"This story is true. The questions we raised about then-Lieutenant Bush's National Guard service are serious and legitimate," he said, expressing confidence the memos are authentic. "Until and unless someone shows me definitive proof that they are not, I don't see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill."

The interview concluded before The Dallas Morning News determined the date of Staudt's departure, so that issue was not included. But a CBS staffer with extensive knowledge of the story said later that the departure doesn't derail the story.

"From what we've learned, Staudt remained very active after he retired," the staffer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "He was a very bullying type, and that could have continued."

In the "60 Minutes" report, Rather said of the memo's contents: "Killian says Col. Buck Staudt, the man in charge of the Texas Air National Guard, is putting on pressure to `sugar coat' an evaluation of Lt. Bush."

Staudt was the person Bush initially contacted about Guard service, and he was the group commander at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston when Bush arrived there to fly an F-102 jet. He later transferred to Austin, where he served as the chief of staff for the Air National Guard.

In the disputed memo, Killian supposedly wrote "(another officer) gave me a message today from group regarding Bush's (evaluation) and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it."

It continues: "Austin is not happy either."

The CBS staffer said that the memo appears to recognize that Staudt has retired, since it differentiates between his displeasure and that of Austin, where he served his final Guard stint.

But another Texas Air National Guard official who served in that period said the memo appears to wrongly associate Staudt with his group command in Houston, and - based on that mistake - the memo distinguishes his views from that of the Austin Guard headquarters.

Retired Col. Earl Lively, who was director of Air National Guard operations for the state headquarters during 1972 and 1973 said Staudt "wasn't on the scene" after retirement, and that CBS' remote-bullying thesis makes no sense.

"He couldn't bully them. He wasn't in the Guard," Lively said. "He couldn't affect their promotions. Once you're gone from the Guard, you don't have any authority."

The report about the memos originally appeared to stir anew longstanding questions about Bush's Guard service, including whether he defied a direct order to take a physical exam, and whether his suspension from flying was partly for failure to meet military performance standards.

The campaign of Bush's Democratic rival, John Kerry, stood mostly mum, saying Bush should answer all questions about his service. Earlier this year, though, Kerry aides raised the exact points the memo seemed to address.

Bush has not commented publicly about the CBS report, and aides say his honorable discharge proves he fulfilled his obligations.

But the White House, which contends that all known records of Bush's service have been released, also took the unusual step of distributing the CBS memos to reporters the night of the broadcast.

"We don't know whether the (CBS) documents were fabricated or are authentic," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Friday.

More great points on the "they're forgeries" LIE...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/10/34914/1603

message deleted by author

message deleted by author

Back to the proportional spacing and, dare I say it, KERNING!

I'll let "Corky" a true expert speak for me:

Go to http://www.ibmcomposer.org/docs/Selectric%20Composer%20Operations%20Manual.pdf

which is a user's manual showing some sample typed text using this typewriter.

The typed text in the "Killian memos" is kerned (check out letter combinations like "fo"

and "fe"), but the Composer text is clearly not. Kerning is a computationally complex

task beyond the capacity of any mechanical typewriter--even one as expensive and elaborate

as the IBM Selectric Composer. Moreover, the proportional spacing in the sample text is

rather crude (look at the typesetting of "11" for example) which is the best that a

mechanical typewriter--even one as complex as the Composer--can do.

Consult someone who understands the typography behind modern word processing.

The "Killian memos" are word processed documents.

Robert "Corky" Cartwright

Professor of Computer Science

Rice University

ACM Fellow

Let me say this again, the documents are fakes and, once again, stick a fork in Dan, he's done.

Repeatedly yours,

FFF

Fin just WISHES Dan Rather were "done." Dan, of course, must be quaking in his boots about Fin's pronunciamentos. Oops, wrong. That's just Dan laughing all the way to the bank.

Somehow, I suspect Fin will be finished long before Dan Rather is. . .

Of course Dan Rather isn't done! Fawning liberals thrive in the modern news media. Hasn't FFF figured that out by now? On the other hand, if Dan Rather had blindly espoused glaringly fraudulent "evidence" that attacked John Kerry, he would be a journalistic leper.

>Go to

>http://www.ibmcomposer.org/docs/Selectric%20Composer%20Operations%20Manual.pdf

>which is a user's manual showing some sample typed text using

>this typewriter.

>

>The typed text in the "Killian memos" is kerned (check out

>letter combinations like "fo"

>and "fe"), but the Composer text is clearly not. Kerning is a

>computationally complex

>task beyond the capacity of any mechanical typewriter--even

>one as expensive and elaborate

>

First of all, it is virtually inpossible to tell whether these memos have been "kerned" as the effect is also produced by the proportional spacing allocated to different letters by the IBM machine. There is simply not enough text to be that defiite and the comment tells more about where this guy is coing from than the memos.

Was the memo written in Times Roman not available at the time? No, if you look at page 10 of the manual you will find IBM had a typeface called PRESS Roman that is exactly the same as that used in the Bush memos. The killer confirmation of this is that the entire manual is printed in this typeface and if you look at page 2, they boast it was produced on the machine.

The "Defeat JohnJohn" site also makes much play of the superscripting yet a typewriter with a supercript "th" must have been available at that office because one of Bush's record cards has just such an entry. I have used one of these machines and the ball has the "th" "nd" and "st" in place of the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 on the standard balls.

The deeper the Reich try to convince people these are fake, the more evidence comes out that they are genuine.

Rather's not a leper yet, but the story isn't over. Rather's defense last night only touched on the handwriting, the fact that Times New Roman has existed since the 1930's as a typeface, and a cursory (couldn't resist the pun) glance at the superscript th. If you were watching closely, the one from an undisputed document has a line under it and does not actually go above the top line of the other letters, which the ones in question do. He did not address kerning, the mysterious curved apostrophe, or, what is becoming more important, the fact that Staudt had already retired when these memos were supposedly written.

I found Rather shrill and defensive last night. He gave almost as much time to a repeat recital of the charges against Bush, complete with power point graphics to underscore them, as to a defense of CBS and its journalistic integrity. That shows me that CBS wishes to perpetuate the charges whatever happens to the evidence. But if there is truth to the charges of forgery, the story will not die, even if the principal "official" media outlets decide to kill it, because they no longer control the spread of information. I suspect that lust for The Big Story will propel the other mainstream media to go for Rather if he's wrong. And then he will probably pass the blame on to some underling and try to shift responsibility a la Jayson Blair at the NY Times. Not a pretty sight.

>The deeper the Reich try to convince people these are fake,

>the more evidence comes out that they are genuine.

So true. Another expert weighs in:

"...if you need to measure type (body size, ledding, letter spacing) and match it exactly, you have to work with original documents. If you are measuring a photocopy of an original document, the measurements can be off by half a point or more. If you are measuring a photocopy of a photocopy, the distortion grows to more than a point. If you are measuring a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy scanned into a PDF file, e.g. the Killian documents, forget it. The 'kerning' and letter spacing you think you see may or may not exist on the original document. Probably not, in fact.

I know this because I learned it from my old film patching days. If all I had to work with was a photocopy, my patch wouldn't match. I had to measure the original printed page.

"So, let's dispense with the 'proportional type' theory. I've looked at the PDF files, and IMO the quality thereof is too far removed from the original (the wavy baselines are a dead giveaway) to know what the original type proportion was. And any 'kerning' one might see is probably the result of distortion that occurs in photocopies that are generations removed from an original."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/10/205917/730

Another Kerny Joke from FFF

The Killian documents would look much less like something done on an IBM typewriter, and much more like something done with a word processor, if they actually showed any kerning. What they show is the effect of making copies of copies of copies.

You can spot kerning by trying to draw a vertical line between letter combinations like VA and MW. If parts of the first letter are east of the line and parts of the second are west of it, you have a sophisticated word-processing program. If the letters just blur together, you probably have a third or fourth generation copy or scan.

The conspiracy theorists can't see the forest for the typography here. CBS says it does not have originals of the documents, yet they send out the copies to a handwriting expert. Surprise! The signatures seem to be that of Killian. But how do we know that the signature line from one document, wasn't pasted on another, and then copied?

Of course, CBS is not really THAT stupid. The key issue here is the source who gave the documents to CBS, and whose identity has not yet been revealed. When push comes to shove, that person or organization might come forward. It's more likely to happen, than the criminal in Cheney's office confessing to the grand jury investigating leaks of CIA secrets to the right-wing media.

RE: Another Kerny Joke from FFF

It's clear that liberals aren't the only ones guilty of knee-jerk reactions.

The documents may be genuine.

The documents may be forgeries.

The idea that CBS News or Dan Rather would knowingly fob off forgeries as genuine is as ludicrous as the idea that the Bush Administration orchestrated the attacks on Sept. 11.

Furthermore...........

You guys so want these fake (PHOTOCOPIED) documents to be real that you're trying to put together a perfect storm of particulars that did not exist on ONE MACHINE.

Once again, the kerning in the fake document can only be created on a computer. The "th" can only be done on a computer because typewriter balls don't have a smaller font of the "th". Period, end of discussion.

And lastly, an IBM Selectric Composer - which may have had the capacity to generate a document similar (please note: SIMILAR, not EXACT) to the CBS document, cost $4,000 in 1972, which would be the equivalent of a $17,900 piece of equipment today. And this equipment would be in an Air National Guard office?

I think it's time to invoke Occam's Razor, which I will paraphrase: when faced with an infite number of possiblitles to explain something, just cut the shit and drama and pick the obvious explaination.

ergo: The Air National Guard didn't have today's equivalent of an $18,000 typewriter sitting around in the office for people to type memos on. The documents smell like fakes, because they are fakes - and no matter how much Dan Rather loathes W, they aren't going to become real.

Stick a fork in Dan Rather, he's done.

Repeatedly yours,

FFF

RE: Dan Rather Is Committing Unprofessional Suicide

Foom was so much more fun when he was dissecting reviews and not mindless political dribble.

RE: Another Kerny Joke from FFF

>The documents may be genuine.

>The documents may be forgeries.

Yes, exactly. This thread illustrates so vividly what is so repugnant about partisan political arguments in this country.

Nobody knows for certain if these documents are forgeries.

And yet all of the Bush-haters keep posting article after article containing arguments as to why the documents may be authentic and pretending that those articles "prove" that they are authentic.

Identically, all of the Bush-worshippers keep posting article after article containing arguments as to why the documents may be fraudulent and pretending that these areticles "prove" they are fake.

And neither side bothers to read each other's arguments or address them, opting instead to just pretend that the arguments they made are dispositive and they just keep parrotting them over and over.

Of course, none of the people in this thread really give a shit if the documents are fake or not.

Does anyone have any doubt that if these documents attacked Kerry, rather than Bush, then Rick Munroe and the other Bush-haters would be posting all of the articles which FFF and the Bush-worshippers are now posting and arguing that these documents are fake, and FFF would be posting all of the articles posted by Rick and arguing that the documents are real?

It's really repulsive to watch people sacrifice their intellectual integrity and autonomy and just immediately start echoing whatever version of the facts helps their side and hurts the other side - without any regard whatsoever to whether the facts they are trumpeting are true.

Just like how Republicans thought military service was so important in the 1992 and 1996 elections and Democrats argued it was irrelevant; and now both sides have completely switched positions for 2004.

Just like how the Republicans in 2000 just so happened to think that no votes should be counted after the legal deadline in Florida and the Democrats just so happened to want the voting to go on past the deadline.

You can list literally an infinite number of examples where you know that both the Republicans and Democrats would completely switch the "facts" they claimed were true if those facts hurt, rather than helped, their side.

2 points that really matter about this issue:

(1) Does anyone doubt that the Bush family used its connections and influences to get Bush into the National Guard, regradless of whether these documents are fake or not?

(2) How fucking stupid are the Democrats? We have record defecits, a war that was fought on innaccurate pretenses, a net job loss for the first time since the Depression, and religious beliefs limiting potentially life-saving medical research, and what is this election focused on and what are Democrats talking about?

For all of August, it was whether or not Kerry deserved his VietNam medals.

Now, in September, it's whether the Times Roman proportional font existed in 1973.

Is Karl Rove running Kerry's campaign? Could the Democrats play into Bush's hands any more completely and stupidly???

>The idea that CBS News or Dan Rather would knowingly fob off

>forgeries as genuine is as ludicrous as the idea that the Bush

>Administration orchestrated the attacks on Sept. 11.

Both sides have no limit on the fabrications and idiocies they are willing to utter in order to harm the other side.

Bill Clinton had Vince Foster killed.

George Bush let 9/11 happen in order to start a war to help his oil friends, and will cause another attack if he thinks he's going to lose the election.

John Kerry shot himself twice so he could get Purple Hearts and help his political career.

Dan Rather purposely fabricated documents to make George Bush look bad.

It's babbling, self-serving irrationality and manic stupidity which passes for political discourse in our country.

RE: Another Kerny Joke from FFF

"It's babbling, self-serving irrationality and manic stupidity which passes for political discourse in our country."

Well, I agree. It is politics on both sides. The Bushies are just better at it than the Kerries. I join you, brother Doug, in calling for an elevation of the level of debate. You go first!

RE: Another Kerny Joke from FFF

>And yet all of the Bush-haters keep posting article after

>article containing arguments as to why the documents may be

>authentic

>Identically, all of the Bush-worshippers keep posting article

>after article containing arguments as to why the documents may

>be fraudulent

Actually, you're wrong as usual, Doug. True, I posted articles showing why the memos may be authentic, but what was coming from the other side were declarations that they were absolutely without-a-doubt fake, not arguments as to why they may be fradulent. There's a difference. And when have I ever said that I hated Bush? I don't hate him; I don't want him in office any more than you do. You're very quick to label others, and equally as quick to remind us all of how rational and fair-minded and intelligent you are. It's very entertaining.

>It's really repulsive to watch people sacrifice their

>intellectual integrity and autonomy and just immediately start

>echoing whatever version of the facts helps their side and

>hurts the other side - without any regard whatsoever to

>whether the facts they are trumpeting are true.

I posted information from people who say that these memos could very well be genuine. What "version of the facts" did I ever echo?

>It's babbling, self-serving irrationality and manic stupidity

But we love you for it. :*

RE: Another Kerny Joke from FFF

"Of course, none of the people in this thread really give a shit if the documents are fake or not."

Thanks, Doug, for your own passion. But I do give a shit, and about a lot of other things than this one issue as well and in my posts I try to bring some perspective. I am a Republican unhappy with Bush, and not at all happy with Kerry. I am trying to sort this out and these posts are helpful. Rick Munroe has turned out to be a font (couldn't resist that one) of technical information sources and has led me to one of the more interesting extreme left blogs, which I am now reading. Others are actually contributing as well, not without making their point of view known along the way, which is ok with me.

I agree that out and out partisanship is not helpful, especially when it is just assertion, and so I try, and some others do too, to point out the problems as we see them. If I point out more of Kerry's than of Bush's, it is my way of sorting out whether this fairly unknown quantity is worth voting for. I already know pretty much everything I need to know about Bush, and so does everyone else. It's Kerry who needs to be under the white light of scrutiny right now, and that's what's going on.

I met Ralph Nader years ago in college and worked for his organization as a volunteer for a while. He is a man of principle and integrity, most of whose whose views I do not share. But I would rather vote for him than Kerry at this point because Kerry and the people who surround him seem to me to be pushing every button and pulling every lever in an elevator whose only direction at the moment is down. They seem to be willing to do anything to do Bush in, including very possibly fabricating evidence. In other contexts this is a crime, with serious penalties. I have seen almost nothing in Kerrry's character which makes him preferable to Bush to me, including his more inclusive stance on gay people, because he just can't seem to take a stand and stay there on anything. And just asserting that he's better doesn't do it for me, because in fact I rather like Bush as a person and although I disagree with much of what he has done, he is straightforward.

So I participate here by raising issues about Kerry, hoping to see my way to a vote in November. The Democrats have foiled democracy in New York and kept Nader, a bona fide national figure, off the ballot, so I can't vote for him. So I like this debate, and hope it continues, and the fact that it is passionate doesn't bother me much.

Making It Up As He Goes Along

>Furthermore...........

>

>You guys so want these fake (PHOTOCOPIED) documents to be real

>that you're trying to put together a perfect storm of

>particulars that did not exist on ONE MACHINE.

>

>Once again, the kerning in the fake document can only be

>created on a computer.

But there is no kerning in any of the four documents.

>The "th" can only be done on a computer

>because typewriter balls don't have a smaller font of the

>"th". Period, end of discussion.

Other documents from the period, which have been authenticated, have the "th" character in a smaller font. There were hundreds of type balls available, with special characters like this one.

>And lastly, an IBM Selectric Composer - which may have had the

>capacity to generate a document similar (please note: SIMILAR,

>not EXACT) to the CBS document, cost $4,000 in 1972, which

>would be the equivalent of a $17,900 piece of equipment today.

>And this equipment would be in an Air National Guard office?

You could also lease one for $150 a month. That was retail to a single customer; the government would have received a much better price. For an interesting article about how these were used in home-typing businesses, see

http://www.motherearthnews.com/index.php?page=arc&id=5307

Let's see -- the National Guard spent a million dollars training Bush how to fly a multimillion-dollar aircraft, but they couldn't afford $100 a month for the company clerk/typist to produce professional looking documents? People who served in the military at the time, tell me otherwise.

>

>I think it's time to invoke Occam's Razor, which I will

>paraphrase: when faced with an infite number of possiblitles

>to explain something, just cut the shit and drama and pick the

>obvious explaination.

And then there is the FFF Corollary, which I will paraphrase: get yourself a spell checker.

FFF wrote

>(This is me speaking now)......The nail in the coffin for me

>is the proportional spacing of the letters. It was

>impossible........let me say that one more

>time.........IMPOSSIBLE for a typewriter to do that in the

>early 70's. Impossible. It required a computer. So everyone

>can debate Times New Roman and superscripts and blah blah

>blah, the fact of the matter is there is NO WAY to explain the

>proportional spacing except to admit the document/s is a fake.

Ignoto already demolished this claim.

But FFF hasn't admitted his error. Just to make

sure he gets the point, this ad is from 1954:

http://www.etypewriters.com/1954-b-2.JPG

FFF--

GREAT to see you're back! I've missed your prose for months and I'd just about decided to abandon this site. Now I even find out I agree with you! The evidence about the forgeries is overwhelming.

Confusion about the variety of IBM typewriters/fonts/vertical spacing/superscripts/centering/kerning and so on has confused some of the Rather defenders here--but it's really rather simple. There is already an offer to pay > $10,000 to anyone who can produce a similar text on any IBM (or other) typewriter available at the time--surely easy money as plenty of used typewriter stores still stock them! Go out and claim your prize! (for more details see: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1212595/posts)

RE: Another Kerny Joke from FFF

>"Of course, none of the people in this thread really give a

>shit if the documents are fake or not."

>

>Thanks, Doug, for your own passion. But I do give a shit, . . .

Why do you give a shit about whether these stupid documents are authentic or fake?

Do you have any doubt about whether Bush's family used its influence to get him into the National Guard? I don't - and that's true whether these documents are real or fake.

This is September 11 - as good a time as any to remember that we have very dangerous enemies in the world plotting to destroy our country.

We only have about 50 days left before the national election which will decide, among many important things, how we will protect ourselves against that threat.

Don't we have a lot more important things to be debating and discussing than whether Kerry's medals from 35 years ago were all deserved or whether or not these 1973 National Guard memos are real or fake. WHO THE FUCK CARES???

I care about which party is going to implement the most effective strategy for obliterating Islamic militants and which party will be most effective in avoiding futher harm to our economy. I'm interested in that discussion.

But the obssesssion with these petty, inconsequential, personality-driven partisan matters 50 days before a truly crucial national election is as sad as it is disgusting. We are a fat, bloated, stupid nation and we are well on our way on the rapid, steep descent to which all fat, bloated empires succumb.

Anyone with any doubt about that should look at the American obsessions - from trashy reality television to its political cousins (Swift Boat veterans and National Guard memos and rumored drug use at Camp David) - shortly before a truly vital presidential election and any such doubt should rapidly dissipate.

RE: Another Kerny Joke from FFF

>Actually, you're wrong as usual, Doug. True, I posted

>articles showing why the memos may be authentic, but what was

>coming from the other side were declarations that they were

>absolutely without-a-doubt fake, not arguments as to why they

>may be fradulent. There's a difference.

Please stop lying, Rick. This is what you said in the other thread:

RICK SAID: ""They're not fakes, and Bush is a liar."

You came out and as categorically as possible said that the memos are not fakes. No intellectaully honest person can possibly claim to know for sure if they are or not. Every reasonable liberal blogger I've read has acknowledged that there are serious questions about the authenticity of these documents. There's no DISPOSITIVE proof that they're fake, but there sure as hell is no dispositive proof that they're real.

But you see that the Democrats say they're real and the Republicans say they're fake, and so rather than try to figure it out, or be open one way or the other, you immediately say: "Oh, the Democrats think X, and the Republicans think Y. I'm a Democrat, so I'll think X, and then proceed to argue X."

You have no regard for the truth. You only have regard for partisan advantage. You haven't tried to figure out if the documents are real or not. All you know is that if they're real then that's good for Kerry and bad for Bush. So, presto. . . . to you, they're real.

Do you really have any doubt that if these documents were anti-Kerry documents rather than anti-Bush documents, and Kos and Moveon.org were constantly drumming into your head that the documents were fake, that you would be coming here arguing just as vehemenly that these documents are forgeries, based on the same arguments that FFF is making now?

If you have a molecule of objectivity about yourself, you can't have any doubt about that.

And when have

>I ever said that I hated Bush? I don't hate him; . . . .

LOL!! Yeah - you come here and publicly call him a liar - even though he hasn't even commented on the authenticity of these documemnts at all - but why would anyone think you hate him? I run around publicly calling people I like liars all the time.