30 September 2004

For an interesting summary of the mess Florida has become not only from the hurricanes but from flawed voting machines this website has the complete and discouraging facts. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=566688

Amid the hoopla of the world we value greatly where we live and last night while waling we thought of friends an family and want to share the result of those good feelings.

          Harvest Moon

At midnight a lone cricket chirps
As walking ‘neath the Harvest Moon
We hum the old familiar tune
And feel the frost begin to form

Yesterday the forest trees
That outside our window grow
Signaled to us change had come
As they donned their autumn leaves

The cows are happily afield
Where hay so recently was cut
Finally after weeks of grass
Luxury alfalfa fills their gut

Cows are but eating machines
As farmer Pete does often say
They live to eat and eat to live
And that they do from day to day

They know nothing of the world 
Beyond the fences that are home
So peaceful with their bellies full
Content and cudding as they roam

Little Pooper now alone
Every morn does bark away
The night scent coons and skunks
Have left where she claims sway

She guards the meadow ‘low the house
And hill that rises in the south
She runs to cornfield and to barn
Warning all that she’s around

The cats are happily hunting now 
Mouse and rat and tiny shrew
Provide them both with rapid chase
And usually lose the deadly race

When walking o’er the well trod ground
We marvel at our luck and life
For here among our nature sound
A home away from worldly strife


                                    BL9/04

Another View:
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By JOHN EISENHOWER
Guest Commentary   from  http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=44657

THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3½ years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.

Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we “always have.” We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

The fact is that today’s “Republican” Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republican” has always been synonymous with the word “responsibility,” which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.

Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.

In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the United States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush stayed within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying an entire nation.

Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, “If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both.” I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today.

The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of the economy allowed it to do so. The Eisenhower administration accomplished that difficult task three times during its eight years in office. It did not attain that remarkable achievement by cutting taxes for the rich. Republicans disliked taxes, of course, but the party accepted them as a necessary means of keep the nation’s financial structure sound.

The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small business. Today’s Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for the loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in the direction of a society of very rich and very poor.

Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will vote for him enthusiastically.

I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely because it carries the label of the party of one’s parents or of our own ingrained habits.

John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the White House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing “The White House Years,” his Presidential memoirs. He served as American ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine books, largely on military subjects.

29 September 2004

George Bush’s America:

News item #1 9/28/04: Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest maker of heavy equipment, boosted its 2004 revenue outlook on Tuesday, citing strong demand. The Peoria, Illinois-based company said it now expects its full-year sales to be up 25 percent to 30 percent. In July, it had estimated sales and revenue would be up 25 percent. Caterpillar said it still expects profits per share to increase 80 percent to 85 percent, in line with its previous estimate.

News item #2 9/28/04 It was the second time since negotiations began Dec. 10, 2003, that the UAW - which represents about 9,000 Caterpillar employees in four states, including 5,000 in the Peoria area - rejected a company proposal calling for employees to begin paying a share of their health-care costs and for a two-tiered wage scale.

This website http://www.electoral-vote.com/  has a good electoral vote count and follows all the state polls. Today it is projecting a 50/50 Senate and possibly a 51/49 D/R Senate. It’s a good one to bookmark although it has Wisconsin for Bush by 10 points which is wrong.

We don’t know how this can be corrected since very few folks take the time to discern how polls are constructed. But the announcement of the CNN, USA Today, Gallup poll yesterday showed Bush with an 8 point lead. As http://www.theleftcoaster.com/  points out, the lead only occurs because Gallup fiddled with the voter sample. If Gallup had used last elections R/D/I distribution Kerry would be ahead among likely voters.

Had 12% GOP Bias

Gallup has done it again . After supplying CNN and USA Today with a poll two weeks ago that showed a double-digit Bush lead amongst likely voters that turned out to have a significant bias in its sample favoring the GOP, Gallup did it again yesterday.

Except that yesterday, they not only did it again, they apparently felt that a 7% GOP bias wasn't good enough. So they perpetrated the same fraud upon the media (including their partners CNN and USAT) and voters and this time used a 12% GOP bias in their likely voter screen. I kid you not.

Here is the text from the email I got from Gallup this morning outlining the party ID breakdown in their likely voter samples from their two most recent national polls:

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 13-15
Reflected Bush Winning by 55%-42%

Total Sample: 767
GOP: 305 (40%)
Dem: 253 (33%)
Ind: 208 (28%)

Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 24-26
Reflected Bush Winning by 52%-44%

Total Sample: 758
GOP: 328 (43%)
Dem: 236 (31%)
Ind: 189 (25%)

Looking at this, again I have a simple question: how can anyone, especially USA Today and CNN, let alone the rest of the media take a Gallup national poll seriously when Gallup knowingly puts a poll out there for consumption with a 12% GOP bias in its likely voter sample that everyone knows does not exist in the country today or at any time in the last three presidential elections?

Yet this flawed poll showed a narrowing Bush lead from their similarly flawed poll of two weeks ago. So if a poll with an unsupportable GOP bias of 12% in its likely voter sample, shows an 8% Bush lead amongst likely voters when a poll they used two weeks ago with a 7% GOP bias showed a 13% Bush lead with likely voters, then how can anyone not conclude that Kerry is doing much better than Gallup would have you believe?

By presenting these polls with this kind of bias, and then ensuring through CNN and USA Today the farthest possible media saturation, why is Gallup not guilty of engaging in a political disinformation campaign?

Steve Soto :: 7:25 AM :: Comments (6) :: TrackBack (0)

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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and pours water into the coffeemaker to start the
morning.  The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal
fought for minimum water quality standards.

With his first swallow of coffee, Joe takes his daily medications, which are
safe because at least one stupid commie liberal fought to ensure they are,
and that they work as advertised.  All but $10 of Joe's medications are paid
for by his employer's medical plan thanks to a group of liberal union
workers who fought for paid medical insurance. Now, Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast -- bacon and eggs.  Joe's bacon is safe to
eat because some pro-feminist liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat
packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly
labeled with each ingredient and its percentage of the total contents  Some
crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on (and in)
his body.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath.  The air he breathes is
clean because more than one environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws
to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station
for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money
in parking fees and it all came about because some fancy-pants liberal
fought for affordable public transportation.

Joe begins his work day.  He has a good job with very good pay, medical
benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation thanks to some lazy liberal
union members who fought and died for these working standards. Joe's
employer pays for these benefits so the employer doesn't have to hassle with
the union.  If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a
worker compensation or unemployment check.  That was the work of stupid
liberals who thought he shouldn't lose his home because of a temporary
misfortune.

It's noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit, which is federally
insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's
money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the
Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market
federal student loan.  It turns out that a band of elitist liberals had decided
that Joe and the government would be better off if he were educated and
earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father that evening at his farm
home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the
safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car
safety standards.  Joe arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third
generation to live in the house, financed by Farmers' Home Administration
since bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have
electricity until some big government liberal (FDR) stuck his nose where it
didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

Joe is happy to see his father, who is now retired, and living on Social
Security and a union pension.  This came about because some wine-drinking,
quiche-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe
wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show.
The radio host repeatedly says that liberals are bad and conservatives are
good.  The radio host forgets to mention that his beloved Republican
conservatives fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys
throughout his day.

But Joe thinks the radio host is right:  "We don't need those big government
liberals ruining our lives!  After all, I'm a self-made man who believes
everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

Reuters reports that the newspaper in President George W. Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry. The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare. "The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry."  It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country."

28 September 2004

Polls, polls, and more polls: http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm

There is a great repartee between Joe Biden and Chris Wallace here:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,133579,00.html

We keep hearing that Kerry is not presenting himself to the public or undecided in the proper way. Bush has the common touch and Kerry comes across as an aristocrat. We’ll that may all be true and we certainly hope he is able to shorten his sentences and pop Bush a couple of times this Thursday in a nice way that doesn’t upset the pundits. But, Kerry has ideas and the ability to lead the country out of the morass it is in and that is the main point of supporting him for president.

On this point  from http://americablog.blogspot.com/

Kerry, God Help Him, Cares About The Issues
by Michael in New York - 9/27/2004 02:46:14 AM

The Sunday New York Times did a lengthy piece about Kerry and what he's like . It describes a man who asks probing, thoughtful questions, constantly reaches outside his inner circle for the opinion of others and -- when it comes to the election campaign -- is clearly the man in charge.

"Mr. Kerry reads briefing books and newspapers in the morning (often grousing about stories critical of him), watches television interview shows like Charlie Rose's late at night (sometimes leaving phone messages for his friends who appear as guests, offering critiques of their performances) and dials senators and old friends at all hours. At meetings, Mr. Kerry poses contrarians questions in an often wandering quest for data and conflicting opinions, a style that his aides, sometimes with a roll of the eyes, call Socratic."

Compare this to their description of Bush:

"For better and for worse, Mr. Bush takes his counsel from a small, unchanging group of strategists. His senior campaign staff has not changed in 18 months. Mr. Bush's hunger for information and conflicting opinions is limited. His management style is crisp and insular, and it does not change between easy days and tough ones."

Here's the kicker: this is supposed to be a weakness of Kerry. Yep, caring about the issues instead of caring about campaigning is bad.

"Representative Ted Strickland of Ohio said that during a recent bus trip through the small towns of the Appalachian region that make up his district, Mr. Kerry peppered him with questions about the way the reduction of import tariffs had affected the pottery industry — not about the voting patterns in a state he is struggling to win back from the Republicans."

It's all because the "Alice in Wonderland" world of the media is more comfortable reporting on changes in behind-the-scenes campaign personnel than on the issues, the facts and where the candidates stand on them.

But reading these two descriptions, who would you rather have running the country?

And for those who say Kerry doesn’t present a plan or ideas for the future we present selections from Kerry's speech last Friday at Temple:

My fellow Americans, the most urgent national security challenge we face is the war against those who attacked our country on September 11th, the war against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. As president, I will fight a tougher, smarter, more effective war on terror. My priority will be to find and capture or kill the terrorists before they get us.

President Bush was right to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban. I supported that decision. So did our country and our allies. So did the world.

But since then, again and again, the President has made the wrong choices in the war on terror… around the world and here at home.

Instead of using U.S. forces to capture Osama bin Laden… the President outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, who let bin Laden slip away. That was the wrong choice. ... That was the wrong choice. ... That was the wrong choice. ... That was the wrong choice. ... That was the wrong choice. ... That was the wrong choice.

The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy – Al Qaeda -- which killed more than three thousand people on 9/11 and which still plots our destruction today. And there’s just no question about it: the President’s misjudgment, miscalculation and mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on terror harder to win. Iraq is now what it was not before the war – a haven for terrorists. George Bush made Saddam Hussein the priority. I would have made Osama bin Laden the priority. As president, I will finish the job in Iraq and refocus our energies on the real war on terror.

… Twelve years ago, we began a bipartisan program to help these nations secure and destroy those weapons. It is incredible – and unacceptable -- that in the three years after 9/11, President Bush hasn’t stepped up our effort to lock down the loose nuclear weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. More such materials were secured in the two years before 9/11 than in the two years after.

When I’m president, denying our most dangerous enemies the world’s most dangerous weapons will become the central priority for America.

At our seaports we’re physically inspecting only 5% of the cargo coming into America. The Bush Administration is spending more in Iraq in four days than they’ve spent protecting our ports for all of the last three years.

For al Qaeda, this war is a struggle for the heart and soul of the Muslim world. We will win this war only if the terrorists lose that struggle. We will win when ordinary people from Nigeria to Egypt to Pakistan to Indonesia know they have more to live for than to die for. We will win when they once again see America as the champion, not the enemy, of their legitimate yearning to live in just and peaceful societies. We will win when we stop isolating ourselves and start isolating our enemies. The world knows the difference between empty promises and genuine commitment.

So we will win when we show that America uses its economic power for the common good, doing our share to defeat the abject poverty, hunger, and disease that destroy lives and create failed states in every part of the world. The world’s poorest countries, suffering under crushing debt burdens, need particular attention. As president, I will lead the international community to cancel the debt of the most vulnerable nations in return for them living up to goals of social and economic progress.

We will win when we work with our allies, to enable children in poor countries to get a quality basic education. More than 50 percent of the population in the Arab and Muslim world is under the age of 25. The future is a race between schools that spark learning and schools that teach hate. We have to preempt the haters. We have to win the war of ideas. New generations must believe there is more to life than salvation through martyrdom.
(via John Kerry transcript)

In a television interview Sunday Bush said he would give his “Mission Accomplished” speech again even knowing what has occurred. He also said he would put on a flight suit  to give it.

From http://americablog.blogspot.com/ : The New York Times article said, "Some estimates put the total debt owed by the poorest countries at around $200 billion."

That coincidentally, is the very amount Bush has spent so far on invading Iraq (not to mention the cost in lives). Instead of invading Iraq, Bush could have paid off the ENTIRE debt of some 30+ Third World countries, given countless nations a radical chance at improving their economic livelihood, created tremendous good will for the US, encouraged them (through incentives) to embrace democracy and economic reform (which would be far harder for governments to avoid with the huge opportunity this would have provided) and in the end helped turn impoverished nations into vibrant nations and -- hey, it's good for the US economy -- growing markets for our goods and services.

Finally for today from http://americablog.blogspot.com/

Time to take on the freepers - Pretend it's Florida
by John in DC - 9/26/2004 11:07:52 PM

Folks, I can't prove it, but I have a very strong suspicion that the rightwing wackos are playing games with the news stories we see on Yahoo News, and we need to start fighting back.

At the bottom of every story there's a box that looks like this:

You can use that box to rate the story, and depending on your rating, it helps the story pop up higher in some of Yahoo's ratings.

Well, I've noticed that anti-Bush stories usually tend to have lower ratings than pro-Bush stories, and I suspect some right wingers are making a concerted effort to throw the results.

So, what I'm asking is that every time you read a story on Yahoo, if it's pro-Kerry or pro-Democrat or makes the left look good in some way, rate it a 5. If it makes the right look bad, rate it a 5. But if the story in any way isn't helpful to our cause, rate it a 1. Just make sure you vote like this in the future whenever you visit Yahoo News. Just pretend it's Florida.

27 September 2004

The Republican National Committee admitted yesterday that they sent flyers to two states suggesting that Liberals would ban the Bible if elected. And in the wording of the admission as reported by the NYT the RNC spokesperson didn’t apologize but excused. "When the Massachusetts Supreme Court sanctioned same-sex marriage and people in other states realized they could be compelled to recognize those laws, same-sex marriage became an issue,'' Ms. Iverson said. "These same activist judges also want to remove the words 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance."

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has said the US-led invasion of Iraq made the world a more dangerous place. Though an ally of the United States, Musharraf on Friday described the invasion as a mistake and said it had complicated the "war on terror".

"It has ended up bringing more trouble to the world," Musharraf said in a television interview. "The world is more dangerous because the Iraq war has aroused the passions of the Muslims more," he added. “The war in Iraq has complicated the war on terror ... it has made the job more difficult."

We guess Musharraf has not read the RNC talking points. Maybe his fax machine is broken?

Rumsfeld on elections in Iraq: "Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn't because the violence was too great. Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet." Hope e isn’t considering that for the U.S. elections also.

The British are going to reduce the number of soldiers in Iraq from 15000 to 13000 over the next month. Of the 15,000 British troops about 5000 are combat troops and that is where the reduction will occur. How does this square with the increase in violence that Bush and Allawi forecast in the run up to the January elections. That was reported in the Liberal Guardian. USA Today is reporting: the British are considering sending up to 8,000 soldiers to Afghanistan, but that would be offset by withdrawal of a similar-sized contingent from Iraq. There are only a few hundred British soldiers in Afghanistan in the NATO-led international security force.

There is and interesting article on “framing” of political talking points at http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19969/

At this website you can see the paths of the three hurricanes in Florida and the voting patterns of the 2000 presidential election at http://www.bartcop.com/message-from-God.gif .

We did not serve in Vietnam. Luckily, while in College we were refused a commission in ROTC after serving two years when we said we would rather have a desk job at the Pentagon than lead a platoon on the front lines in Vietnam and we were also turned down by the Navy Officer Training Corps failing their entrance exam. We actively sought and received student and fatherhood deferments that kept us from service in Vietnam.

Walkers and Talkers: Recognizing who served: Of our national leaders it is interesting to note who among the doves and hawks on Iraq have military experience. This could be the last election where military service in Vietnam has any political currency. But just for the record, it's worth noting who really served among the heavyweights in each of the major political parties. Be sure to check out the bottom   where the people who spend their time jabbering about military service (the TV pundits) have their military credentials exposed.

Democrats

• Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71
• David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72
• Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72
• Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan, 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade
• Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
• Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-'47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
• John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V Purple Hearts.
• John Edwards: did not serve.
• Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
• Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
• Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-1953.
• Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
• Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
• Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII, receiving the Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
• Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal.
• Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
• Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
• Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
• Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star
• Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
• Chuck Robb: Vietnam
• Howell Heflin: Silver Star
• George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
• Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments Entered draft but received 311.
• Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
• Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
• John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
• Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.
• Wesley Clark: U.S. Army, 1966-2000, West Point, Vietnam, Purple Heart, Silver Star. Retired 4-star general.
• John Dingell: WWII vet
• John Conyers: Army 1950-57, Korea

Republicans

• Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
• Tom Delay: did not serve.
• House Whip Roy Blunt: did not serve.
• Bill Frist: did not serve.
• Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
• George Pataki: did not serve.
• Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
• Rick Santorum: did not serve.
• Trent Lott: did not serve.
• Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
• John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
• Jeb Bush: did not serve.
• Karl Rove: did not serve.
• Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
• Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
• Vin Weber: did not serve.
• Richard Perle: did not serve.
• Douglas Feith: did not serve.
• Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
• Richard Shelby: did not serve.
• Jon Kyl: did not serve.
• Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
• Christopher Cox: did not serve.
• Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
• Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as aviator and flight instructor.
• George W. Bush: six-year Nat'l Guard commitment (in four).
• Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
• Gerald Ford: Navy, WWII
• Phil Gramm: did not serve.
• John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
• Bob Dole: an honorable veteran.
• Chuck Hagel: two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, Vietnam.
• Duke Cunningham: nominated for Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, Silver Stars, Air Medals, Purple Hearts.
• Jeff Sessions: Army Reserves, 1973-1986
• JC Watts: did not serve.
• Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
• G.H.W. Bush: Pilot in WWII. Shot down by the Japanese.
• Tom Ridge: Bronze Star for Valor in Vietnam.
• Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
• Clarence Thomas: did not serve

Pundits & Preachers

• Sean Hannity: did not serve.
• Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'Pilonidal cyst.')
• Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
• Michael Savage: did not serve.
• George Will: did not serve.
• Chris Matthews: did not serve.
• Paul Gigot: did not serve.
• Bill Bennett: did not serve.
• Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
• Bill Kristol: did not serve.
• Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
• Michael Medved: did not serve.

24 September 2004

Congress is rushing through a $145 billion tax cut by extending popular child credits and elimination of the marriage penalty and expanding the 10% tax bracket through 2010 when the issues will have to be addressed again. All three are laudable and would help the economy. But at the same time the Republicans are introducing an amendment that has no chance of passage to balance the budget by 2010. Do they really believe voters are such fools?

Several days ago we made an ironic comment about the drug companies and anti depressants given to young teens. Our contempt for the drug companies is as fervent as ever, but we have heard and read enough to have a better understanding of the dilemma faced by parents who have to choose between the small risk of potential suicide and the benefit of having a whole child. It is not an easy choice and we are sorry for our acerbic comment.

The Department of Energy is talking of tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because of the hurricanes. We are certain it doesn’t have anything to do with the election campaign. Where are all the Republican war whoops that emanated from Congress when Clinton talked of this and when energy prices were running amok because of the Enron et al machinations in 2000/2001?

The hollow world of George Bush

The power of positive thinking is the president's shield from reality

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday September 23, 2004
The Guardian

The news is grim, but the president is "optimistic". The intelligence is sobering, but he tosses aside "pessimistic predictions". His opponent says he has "no credibility", but the president replies that it is his rival who is "twisting in the wind". The UN secretary general speaks of the "rule of law", but he talks before a mute general assembly of "a new definition of security". Between the rhetoric and the reality lies the campaign.

In Iraq, US commanders have plans for this week and the next, but there is "no overarching strategy", I was told by a reliable source who has just returned after assessing the facts on the ground for US intelligence services. The New York Times reports that an offensive is in the works to capture the insurgent stronghold of Falluja - after the election. In the meantime, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists linked to al-Qaida operate from there at will, as they have for more than a year. The president speaks of new Iraqi security forces, but not even half the US personnel have been assigned to the headquarters of the Multinational Security Transition Command.

George Bush's vision of the liberation of Iraq has melted before harsh facts. But reality cannot be allowed to obscure the image. The liberation is "succeeding", he insists, and only pessimists cannot see it.

In July, the CIA delivered to the president a new national intelligence estimate that detailed three gloomy scenarios for Iraq's future, ranging up to civil war. Perhaps it was his reading of the estimate that prompted Bush to remark in August that the war on terrorism could not be won, a judgment he swiftly reversed. And at the UN, Bush held a press conference where he rebuffed the latest intelligence. 

Bush explained that, for him, intelligence is not to inform decision-making, but to be used or rejected to advance an ideological and political agenda. His dismissal is an affirmation of the politicisation and corruption of intelligence that rationalised the war.

In his stump speech, which he repeats word for word across the country, Bush explains that he invaded Iraq because of "the lesson of September the 11th". WMD goes unmentioned; the only reason Bush offers is Saddam Hussein as an agent of terrorism. "He was a sworn enemy of the United States of America; he had ties to terrorist networks. Do you remember Abu Nidal? He's the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer. Leon Klinghoffer was murdered because of his religion. Abu Nidal was in Baghdad, as was his organisation."

The period of Leon Klinghoffer's murder in 1985 on the liner Achille Lauro (by Abu Abbas, in fact) coincided with the US courtship of Saddam, marked by the celebrated visits of then Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld. The US collaborated in intelligence exchanges and materially supported Saddam in his war with Iran, authorising the sale of biological agents for Saddam's laboratories, a diversification of his WMD capability.

The reason was not born of idealism, but necessity: the threat of an expansive Iran-controlled Shia fundamentalism to the entire Gulf.

The policy of courting Saddam continued until he invaded Kuwait. But realpolitik prevailed when US forces held back from capturing Baghdad for larger, geostrategic reasons. The first Bush grasped that in wars to come, the US would need ad hoc coalitions to share the military burden and financial cost. Taking Baghdad would have violated the UN resolution that gave legitimacy to the first Gulf war, as well as creating a nightmare of "Lebanonisation", as secretary of state James Baker called it. Realism prevailed; Saddam's power was subdued and drastically reduced. It was the greatest accomplishment of the first President Bush.

When he honoured the UN resolution, the credibility of the US in the region was enormously enhanced, enabling serious movement on the Middle East peace process. Now this President Bush has undone the foundation of his father's work, which was built upon by President Clinton.

Bush's campaign depends on the containment of any contrary perception of reality. He must evade, deny and suppress it. His true opponent is not his Democratic foe - called unpatriotic and the candidate of al-Qaida by the vice-president - but events. Bush's latest vision is his shield against them. He invokes the power of positive thinking, as taught by Emile Coue, guru of autosuggestion in the giddy 1920s, who urged mental improvement through constant repetition: "Every day in every way I am getting better and better."

It was during this era of illusion that TS Eliot wrote The Hollow Men: Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow."

23 September 2004

That is no evidence that the Iraqis are falling into civil war. Quite the opposite, Kurds and Shia and Sunnis are working together to build a new Iraq," Condoleezza Rice told NBC's "Today" show on September 22. "This insurgency has no political program. This is an anarchist insurgency. They simply either want to take Iraq back to the old days of Saddam Hussein or to turn Iraq into the Taliban," she added. - Reuters

From http://www.dailyhowler.com/index.shtml : Oh, by the way, one final note: The emergence of the CBS story kills any last chance we may have had for an intelligent campaign discourse. This detective story will supersede Iraq, as Gary Condit superseded everything else in the delicious summer before 9/11. It’s part of your nation’s fallen culture; you’re now part of a vacuous nation, a country incapable of conducting real discourse. (For the records, the obsession with Bush’s Nat Guard service is as dumb as the focus on Rather.) Everything changed on September 11—everything changed except for that! And guess what, readers? When al Qaeda destroys New York with a bomb, we’ll be debating the latest irrelevance. The next day, well-trained pundits will yell “liberal bias” when some news outlet short-waves the thought that things in New York look quite bad.

This next comment is long but it is important because it shows how the press created quotes that are damaging to candidates out of whole cloth. The Daily Howler dissects these types of statements every day and does an excellent job. Read and learn. http://www.dailyhowler.com/index.shtml

Smile-a-while: Kerry’s dumb comment

WHO AMONG US DOESN’T LOVE FUNNY COMMENTS: Of course, we all know what a big dumb-ass John Kerry is! We know because Frank Rich told us in his September 5 column:

RICH (9/5/04): Mr. Kerry, having joined the macho game with Mr. Bush on the president's own cheesy terms, is hardly innocent in his own diminishment. From the get-go he’s tried to match his opponent in stupid male tricks. If Mr. Bush clears brush in Crawford, then Mr. Kerry rides a Harley-Davidson onto Jay Leno’s set. When the Democrat asks “Who among us does not love Nascar?”...he is asking to be ridiculed as an ''International Man of Mystery.”

Kerry was “asking to be ridiculed,” Rich said, and the mighty Times has been there to oblige him. “Who among us doesn’t love NASCAR!” A Times reporter, Timothy Egan, also mocked Kerry’s comical line on August 22. Indeed, the plummy line was such vintage Kerry that Sheryl Gay Stolberg couldn’t forget it. She couldn’t get the line out of her head. She said so on July 30:

STOLBERG (7/30/04): To anyone who has listened to Mr. Kerry extemporize at length—who among us can forget his “Who among us doesn’t like Nascar?” remark? —the thought of the Brahmin from Boston disdaining speechwriters and trying humor seemed odd, shall we say, for the most important address of his career.

It was simply delish to see the scribe wittily playing on Kerry’s remark! Five days earlier, John Tierney had cited the Kerry quote too, as part of a comical quiz on the solon. And of course, no one tweaks the high-and-plummy quite the way Maureen Dowd does. At the Times, she was first to mock Kerry’s silly locution, noting it in her March 18 column. Dowd, of course, is a brilliant scholar. For her, the solon’s comical quote quickly brought Austen to mind:

DOWD (3/18/04): Mr. Kerry is Pride...

Even when he puts on that barn jacket over his expensive suit to look less lockjaw—and says things like, “Who among us doesn't like Nascar?”—he can come across like Mr. Collins, Elizabeth Bennet’s pretentious cousin in “Pride and Prejudice.”

Dowd clued us to Kerry’s “smugness” and “stupidity” this day. She was the first to savage his statement—the stupid statement that, alas, John Kerry may not have made.

Yes, according to the Nexis archive, this statement seems to start with Dowd. There is no prior record of Kerry saying “Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR” or “Who among us doesn’t love NASCAR,” the variants which have floated around among the Times’ witty scriveners. If Kerry actually made this statement, no one ever told them at Nexis. But my dear Mr. Bennet! A month before Dowd’s column appeared, Kerry did make a NASCAR remark. On February 15, Bush had traveled to Daytona, where he pretended to enjoy the big race. The next day, Kerry sagely rebutted. Tape of Kerry’s statement was played on that day’s Inside Politics:

KERRY (2/16/04): George Bush went down to Daytona yesterday to do a photo opportunity at NASCAR. Now, I happen to like NASCAR, and I'm particularly pleased that Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the race, for a lot of reasons that many of you who follow it will understand.

Let me tell you something, we don't need a president who just says, “Gentlemen start your engines.” We need a president who says “America, let's start our economy and put people back to work.”

“I happen to like NASCAR.” According to the Nexis record, that’s the closest Kerry has come to the comic locution they’ve flogged at the Times. Who knows? Maybe Dowd, Stolberg, Tierney, Egan and Rich have some other moment in mind. (For a partial Times explanation, keep reading.) But given this mangy gang’s track record, we find ourselves driven to doubt.

After all, Dowd and Rich are the fallen creatures who invented the Love Story lunacy—the stupid, bogus tale about Gore that helped decide Campaign 2000. We’ve discussed the role the twin terrors played in the invention of this plupotent myth. And we’ve discussed what Time’s Karen Tumulty said about such dumb-ass colleagues:

TUMULTY (9/5/00): I am the reporter to whom Al Gore claimed that Love Story was based on him and Tipper...I was sort of appalled to see the way it played in the media.

Tumulty knew what Gore had said. And she said she was “sort of appalled” at the way fallen colleagues like Dowd and Rich spun it. “I thought [it] was very unfair,” she said. For a fuller record of Tumulty’s statement, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/5/04.

No, this NASCAR moment hasn’t changed the outcome of the current race. But did Kerry really voice the pleasing statement the Times keeps quoting and re-quoting? The Times has run the quote five times; each time, a clever scribe has put the wood to the silly solon for his utterly comical comment. But did Kerry actually utter this statement? Or have Times quote-improvers been up to old tricks, again showing their dread liberal bias?

WHY WE ASK: We raise this topic because Atrios mentioned it yesterday, linking to a site which once asked us about it. (We had never pursued the topic ourselves.) In a follow-up post, Atrios notes that Arthur Bovino (Times public editor’s office) has explained the origin of the troubling quotation. According to Bovino, “Dowd got the quote from someone who had been at a Kerry rally and confirmed it with a reporter who had been there. The quote later appeared in The Times in a political points column. The reporter was not quoting Ms. Dowd but working from her own notes.”

Obviously, that reporter is Stolberg. (We quote her “political points” piece above.) And guess what? Stolberg was traveling with Kerry on February 16, the day he made his NASCAR remark! She didn’t mention the remark in her next-day story. But other scribes did quote the un-funny comment, the one which was played on Inside Politics.

No, none of this makes a bit of difference, except as a portrait of high press corps culture. But on what day did Lockjaw Kerry make the comment that called out for ridicule? As Atrios notes, isn’t it strange that no one else ever mentioned the silly remark—that there is no record of the comment, except the record the Times has established? Given the way Kerry’s persona has been spun, wouldn’t a pleasing remark like this have received a wider airing?

So when did Kerry make this remark? When, aside from February 16, did Kerry ever comment on NASCAR? Cough it up, Bovino! Lay out the facts! Remember what we’re telling Dan Rather—the cover-up is always worse than the crime! Just as a point of curiosity, the Times does need to lay out the facts about this repeated story.

This What if post is from www.juancole.com :

What if America were Iraq, What would it be like?

President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country.

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?

What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?

There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if, during the past year, the Secretary of State (Aqilah Hashemi), the President (Izzedine Salim), and the Attorney General (Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim) had all been assassinated?

What if all the cities in the US were wracked by a crime wave, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries, and carjackings in every major city every year?

What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?

What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95 anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire.

What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?

What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis?

What if municipal elections were cancelled and cliques close to the new "president" quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors?" What if several of these governors (especially of Montana and Wyoming) were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by guerrillas?

What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States are, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and that freedom and democracy are just around the corner?

posted by Juan @ 9/22/2004 06:53:11 AM   

22 September 2004

10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.
9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.
8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.
7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair; it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.
6. Attorney General (John) Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.
5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.
4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa (Heinz Kerry) to cover the whole damn thing.
3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.
2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it "nuclear" instead of "nucular."
1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.

John Kerry’s speech on Iraq at NYU on September 20, 2004

CNN and Fox and the major networks can’t bring this to you because their reporters are too busy placing their own spin on Kerry and the speech.

New York, NY - I am honored to be here at New York University -- one of the great urban universities, not just in New York, but in the world.  You have set a high standard for global dialogue and I hope to live up to that tradition today.

This election is about choices.  The most important choices a President makes are about protecting America… at home and around the world.  A president’s first obligation is to make America safer, stronger and truer to our ideals.

Only a few blocks from here, three years ago, the events of September 11 reminded every American of that obligation.  That day brought to our shores the defining struggle of our times:  the struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism.  And it made clear that our most important task is to fight… and to win… the war on terrorism.

With us today is a remarkable group of women who lost loved ones on September 11th … and whose support I am honored to have.  Not only did they suffer an unbearable loss – they helped us learn the lessons of that terrible time by insisting on the creation of the 9/11 Commission.  I ask them to stand.  And I thank them on behalf of our country -- and I pledge to them and to you that I will implement the 9-11 recommendations.

In fighting the war on terrorism, my principles are straightforward.  The terrorists are beyond reason.  We must destroy them.  As president, I will do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to defeat our enemies.  But billions of people around the world yearning for a better life are open to America’s ideals. We must reach them. 

To win, America must be strong.  And America must be smart.  The greatest threat we face is the possibility Al Qaeda or other terrorists will get their hands on a nuclear weapon.

To prevent that from happening, we must call on the totality of America’s strength.  Strong alliances, to help us stop the world’s most lethal weapons from falling into the most dangerous hands.  A powerful military, transformed to meet the new threats of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And all of America’s power – our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, the appeal of our values – each of which is critical to making America more secure and preventing a new generation of terrorists from emerging.

National security is a central issue in this campaign.  We owe it to the American people to have a real debate about the choices President Bush has made… and the choices I would make… to fight and win the war on terror.

That means we must have a great honest national debate on Iraq. The President claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror.  In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

This month, we passed a cruel milestone:  more than 1,000 Americans lost in Iraq.  Their sacrifice reminds us that Iraq remains, overwhelmingly, an American burden.  Nearly 90 percent of the troops – and nearly 90 percent of the casualties – are American. Despite the President’s claims, this is not a grand coalition.

Our troops have served with extraordinary bravery, skill and resolve.  Their service humbles all of us. When I speak to them… when I look into the eyes of their families, I know this:  we owe them the truth about what we have asked them to do… and what is still to be done.

In June, the President declared, “The Iraqi people have their country back.” Just last week, he told us: “This country is headed toward democracy… Freedom is on the march.” 

But the administration’s own official intelligence estimate, given to the President last July, tells a very different story. 

According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the President is saying to the American people.

So do the facts on the ground.

Security is deteriorating, for us and for the Iraqis. 

42 Americans died in Iraq in June -- the month before the handover.  But 54 died in July…66 in August… and already 54 halfway through September. 

And more than 1,100 Americans were wounded in August – more than in any other month since the invasion. 

We are fighting a growing insurgency in an ever widening war-zone.  In March, insurgents attacked our forces 700 times.  In August, they attacked 2,700 times – a 400% increase. 

Falluja…Ramadi… Samarra … even parts of Baghdad – are now “no go zones”… breeding grounds for terrorists who are free to plot and launch attacks against our soldiers. The radical Shi’a cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who’s accused of complicity in the murder of Americans, holds more sway in the suburbs of Baghdad.

Violence against Iraqis… from bombings to kidnappings to intimidation … is on the rise.

Basic living conditions are also deteriorating.

Residents of Baghdad are suffering electricity blackouts lasting up to 14 hours a day. 

Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees.  Children wade through garbage on their way to school.

Unemployment is over 50 percent.  Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 for tossing grenades at passing U.S. convoys.

Yes, there has been some progress, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our soldiers and civilians in Iraq.  Schools, shops and hospitals have been opened.  In parts of Iraq, normalcy actually prevails. 

But most Iraqis have lost faith in our ability to deliver meaningful improvements to their lives.  So they’re sitting on the fence… instead of siding with us against the insurgents.

That is the truth.  The truth that the Commander in Chief owes to our troops and the American people. 

It is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger.  But it’s essential if we want to correct our course and do what’s right for our troops instead of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. 

I know this dilemma first-hand.  After serving in war, I returned home to offer my own personal voice of dissent.  I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it those risking their lives to speak truth to power.  We still do.

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell.  But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war.  The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure. 

The President has said that he “miscalculated” in Iraq and that it was a “catastrophic success.”  In fact, the President has made a series of catastrophic decisions … from the beginning … in Iraq.  At every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn and led us in the wrong direction.

The first and most fundamental mistake was the President’s failure to tell the truth to the American people.

He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war.  And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.

By one count, the President offered 23 different rationales for this war.  If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.

His two main rationales – weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection – have been proved false… by the President’s own weapons inspectors… and by the 9/11 Commission.  Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts.  Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat.

The President also failed to level with the American people about what it would take to prevail in Iraq. 

He didn’t tell us that well over 100,000 troops would be needed, for years, not months.  He didn’t tell us that he wouldn’t take the time to assemble a broad and strong coalition of allies.  He didn’t tell us that the cost would exceed $200 billion.  He didn’t tell us that even after paying such a heavy price, success was far from assured.

And America will pay an even heavier price for the President’s lack of candor. 

At home, the American people are less likely to trust this administration if it needs to summon their support to meet real and pressing threats to our security.

Abroad, other countries will be reluctant to follow America when we seek to rally them against a common menace -- as they are today. Our credibility in the world has plummeted.

In the dark days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Europe to build support.  Acheson explained the situation to French President de Gaulle.  Then he offered to show him highly classified satellite photos, as proof.  De Gaulle waved the photos away, saying:  “The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me.”

How many world leaders have that same trust in America’s president, today?

This President’s failure to tell the truth to us before the war has been exceeded by fundamental errors of judgment during and after the war.

The President now admits to “miscalculations” in Iraq. 

That is one of the greatest understatements in recent American history.  His were not the equivalent of accounting errors.  They were colossal failures of judgment – and judgment is what we look for in a president.

This is all the more stunning because we’re not talking about 20/20 hindsight.  Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bi-partisan Congressional hearings… major outside studies… and even some in the administration itself… predicted virtually every problem we now face in Iraq. 

This President was in denial.  He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences.

The administration told us we’d be greeted as liberators.  They were wrong.

They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq’s infrastructure.  They were wrong.

They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots.  They were wrong.

They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy.  They were wrong.

They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it.  They were wrong.

In Iraq, this administration has consistently over-promised and under-performed.  This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence.  And the President has held no one accountable, including himself.

In fact, the only officials who lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth. 

General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq.  He was retired.  Economic adviser Larry Lindsey said that Iraq would cost as much as $200 billion.  He was fired.  After the successful entry into Baghdad, George Bush was offered help from the UN -- and he rejected it.  He even prohibited any nation from participating in reconstruction efforts that wasn’t part of the original coalition – pushing reluctant countries even farther away.  As we continue to fight this war almost alone, it is hard to estimate how costly that arrogant decision was. Can anyone seriously say this President has handled Iraq in a way that makes us stronger in the war on terrorism?

By any measure, the answer is no.  Nuclear dangers have mounted across the globe.  The international terrorist club has expanded.  Radicalism in the Middle East is on the rise. We have divided our friends and united our enemies. And our standing in the world is at an all time low. 

Think about it for a minute.  Consider where we were… and where we are.  After the events of September 11, we had an opportunity to bring our country and the world together in the struggle against the terrorists.  On September 12th, headlines in newspapers abroad declared “we are all Americans now.” But through his policy in Iraq, the President squandered that moment and rather than isolating the terrorists, left America isolated from the world.

We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no imminent threat to our security.  It had not, as the Vice President claimed, “reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

The President’s policy in Iraq took our attention and resources away from other, more serious threats to America.

Threats like North Korea, which actually has weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear arsenal, and is building more under this President’s watch…

… The emerging nuclear danger from Iran…

… The tons and kilotons of unsecured chemical and nuclear weapons in Russia…

… And the increasing instability in Afghanistan. 

Today, warlords again control much of that country, the Taliban is regrouping, opium production is at an all time high and the Al Qaeda leadership still plots and plans, not only there but in 60 other nations. Instead of using U.S. forces, we relied on the warlords to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered in the mountains. He slipped away.  We then diverted our focus and forces from the hunt for those responsible for September 11th in order to invade Iraq.

We know Iraq played no part in September 11 and had no operational ties to Al Qaeda.

The President’s policy in Iraq precipitated the very problem he said he was trying to prevent.  Secretary of State Powell admits that Iraq was not a magnet for international terrorists before the war.  Now it is, and they are operating against our troops.  Iraq is becoming a sanctuary for a new generation of terrorists who someday could hit the United States.

We know that while Iraq was a source of friction, it was not previously a source of serious disagreement with our allies in Europe and countries in the Muslim world.

The President’s policy in Iraq divided our oldest alliance and sent our standing in the Muslim world into free fall.  Three years after 9/11, even in many moderate Muslim countries like Jordan, Morocco and Turkey, Osama bin Laden is more popular than the United States of America.

Let me put it plainly: The President’s policy in Iraq has not strengthened our national security.  It has weakened it. 

Two years ago, Congress was right to give the President the authority to use force to hold Saddam Hussein accountable.  This President… any President… would have needed the threat of force to act effectively.  This President misused that authority.

The power entrusted to the President gave him a strong hand to play in the international community.  The idea was simple.  We would get the weapons inspectors back in to verify whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  And we would convince the world to speak with one voice to Saddam: disarm or be disarmed. 

A month before the war, President Bush told the nation:  “If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible.  We will plan carefully.  We will act with the full power of the United States military.  We will act with allies at our side and we will prevail.”  He said that military action wasn’t “unavoidable.” 

Instead, the President rushed to war without letting the weapons inspectors finish their work.  He went without a broad and deep coalition of allies. He acted without making sure our troops had enough body armor.  And he plunged ahead without understanding or preparing for the consequences of the post-war. None of which I would have done.

Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again, the same way.  How can he possibly be serious?  Is he really saying that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq?  My answer is no – because a Commander-in-Chief’s first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.

Now the president, in looking for a new reason, tries to hang his hat on the “capability” to acquire weapons.  But that was not the reason given to the nation; it was not the reason Congress voted on; it’s not a reason, it’s an excuse. Thirty-five to forty countries have greater capability to build a nuclear bomb than Iraq did in 2003.  Is President Bush saying we should invade them?

I would have concentrated our power and resources on defeating global terrorism and capturing or killing Osama bin Laden.  I would have tightened the noose and continued to pressure and isolate Saddam Hussein – who was weak and getting weaker -- so that he would pose no threat to the region or America.

The President’s insistence that he would do the same thing all over again in Iraq is a clear warning for the future.  And it makes the choice in this election clear: more of the same with President Bush or a new direction that makes our troops and America safer.  It is time, at long last, to ask the questions and insist on the answers from the Commander-in-Chief about his serious misjudgments and what they tell us about his administration and the President himself.  If George W. Bush is re-elected, he will cling to the same failed policies in Iraq -- and he will repeat, somewhere else, the same reckless mistakes that have made America less secure than we can or should be.

In Iraq, we have a mess on our hands.  But we cannot throw up our hands.  We cannot afford to see Iraq become a permanent source of terror that will endanger America’s security for years to come.

All across this country people ask me what we should do now.  Every step of the way, from the time I first spoke about this in the Senate, I have set out specific recommendations about how we should and should not proceed.  But over and over, when this administration has been presented with a reasonable alternative, they have rejected it and gone their own way.  This is stubborn incompetence.

Five months ago, in Fulton, Missouri, I said that the President was close to his last chance to get it right. Every day, this President makes it more difficult to deal with Iraq – harder than it was five months ago, harder than it was a year ago.  It is time to recognize what is – and what is not – happening in Iraq today.  And we must act with urgency. 

Just this weekend, a leading Republican, Chuck Hagel, said we’re “in deep trouble in Iraq … it doesn’t add up … to a pretty picture [and] … we’re going to have to look at a recalibration of our policy.”  Republican leaders like Dick Lugar and John McCain have offered similar assessments.

We need to turn the page and make a fresh start in Iraq.

First, the President has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don’t have to go it alone.  It is late; the President must respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.

 Last spring, after too many months of resistance and delay, the President finally went back to the U.N. which passed Resolution 1546.  It was the right thing to do – but it was late.

That resolution calls on U.N. members to help in Iraq by providing troops… trainers for Iraq’s security forces… a special brigade to protect the U.N. mission… more financial assistance… and real debt relief. 

Three months later, not a single country has answered that call.  And the president acts as if it doesn’t matter.

And of the $13 billion previously pledged to Iraq by other countries, only $1.2 billion has been delivered.

The President should convene a summit meeting of the world’s major powers and Iraq’s neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly.  He should insist that they make good on that U.N. resolution.  He should offer potential troop contributors specific, but critical roles, in training Iraqi security personnel and securing Iraq’s borders.  He should give other countries a stake in Iraq’s future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq’s oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.

This will be difficult. I and others have repeatedly recommended this from the very beginning.  Delay has made only made it harder. After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this President may not have the trust and confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq.  But we cannot hope to succeed unless we rebuild and lead strong alliances so that other nations share the burden with us. That is the only way to succeed.

Second, the President must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.

Last February, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform.  Two weeks ago, he admitted that claim was exaggerated by more than 50 percent.  Iraq, he said, now has 95,000 trained security forces.

But guess what?  Neither number bears any relationship to the truth.  For example, just 5,000 Iraqi soldiers have been fully trained, by the administration’s own minimal standards.  And of the 35,000 police now in uniform, not one has completed a 24-week field-training program.  Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can’t stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order?

The President should urgently expand the security forces training program inside and outside Iraq.  He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double classroom training time, and require follow-on field training.  He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq.  He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries.  And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers.  

Third, the President must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people.

Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise spending priorities in Iraq.  It took 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority … 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical … 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers.

One year ago, the administration asked for and received $18 billion to help the Iraqis and relieve the conditions that contribute to the insurgency.  Today, less than a $1 billion of those funds have actually been spent. I said at the time that we had to rethink our policies and set standards of accountability. Now we’re paying the price.

Now, the President should look at the whole reconstruction package…draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects… and cut through the red tape. He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers, instead of big corporations like Halliburton.  He should stop paying companies under investigation for fraud or corruption.  And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.

Fourth, the President must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee the promised elections can be held next year.

Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly to write a Constitution that yields a viable power sharing arrangement. 

Because Iraqis have no experience holding free and fair elections, the President agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role.  Yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. Secretary General and administration officials themselves say the elections are in grave doubt.  Because the security situation is so bad… and because not a single country has offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission… the U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff it needs in Iraq to get the job done.

The President should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force.  This won’t be easy.  But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq should still help protect the U.N. We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened.  Otherwise, U.S forces would end up bearing those burdens alone.

If the President would move in this direction … if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and forces  … train the Iraqis to provide their own security …develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people … and take the steps necessary to hold credible elections next year … we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring all our troops home within the next four years.

This is what has to be done.  This is what I would do as President today.  But we cannot afford to wait until January.  President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track.  Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families, whose sacrifice is a testament to the best of America.

The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear:  We must make Iraq the world’s responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should share the burden.  We must effectively train Iraqis, because they should be responsible for their own security.  We must move forward with reconstruction, because that’s essential to stop the spread of terror.  And we must help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it’s up to them to run their own country.  That’s the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.

On May 1 of last year, President Bush stood in front of a now infamous banner that read “Mission Accomplished.”  He declared to the American people: “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”  In fact, the worst part of the war was just beginning, with the greatest number of American casualties still to come.  The president misled, miscalculated, and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective – a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government, harder to achieve. 

In Iraq, this administration’s record is filled with bad predictions, inaccurate cost estimates, deceptive statements and errors of judgment of historic proportions. 

At every critical juncture in Iraq, and in the war on terrorism, the President has made the wrong choice. I have a plan to make America stronger.

The President often says that in a post 9-11 world, we can’t hesitate to act.  I agree.  But we should not act just for the sake of acting.  I believe we have to act wisely and responsibly. 

George Bush has no strategy for Iraq.  I do. 

George Bush has not told the truth to the American people about why we went to war and how the war is going.  I have and I will continue to do so.

I believe the invasion of Iraq has made us less secure and weaker in the war against terrorism.  I have a plan to fight a smarter, more effective war on terror – and make us safer.

Today, because of George Bush’s policy in Iraq, the world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans.

If you share my conviction that we can not go on as we are …that we can make America stronger and safer than it is… then November 2 is your chance to speak... and to be heard.  It is not a question of staying the course, but of changing the course.

I’m convinced that with the right leadership, we can create a fresh start and move more effectively to accomplish our goals. Our troops have served with extraordinary courage and commitment.  For their sake, and America’s sake, we must get this right. We must do everything in our power to complete the mission and make America stronger at home and respected again in the world.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

21 September 2004

First Person: For whom did my son die in Iraq?

Saturday, September 18, 2004

By Diane Davis Santoriello

For the last year and a half, the pain in my gut screamed at my head write about this war, speak out against the war! But my aching heart said, "You can't undermine your son's confidence in what he is doing." Memories of people scorning and smearing Vietnam vets ran rampant through my mind. You see, my son, 1st Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello Jr., was living his dream. He had fulfilled his dream of becoming a military officer. I thought he was fulfilling his destiny of being a man of purpose, compassion and justice working to make the world a better place.

Now my son is dead. How did he die? According to the Army, he was killed on Aug. 13 in western Iraq when an IED -- an "improvised explosive device" -- detonated near his vehicle. According to me, he was killed by the arrogance and ineptitude of George W. Bush aided by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

I hear people talk about how well-bred John Kerry and Bush were. What constitutes good breeding? What constitutes good character? My father taught me that when you make a mistake the first thing you do is own up to it and the second thing you do is fix it. Bush made mistakes. Did he own up to them right away? No, he waited until recently and admitted to miscalculations.

What Bush needed to do a year or more ago was to go to the United Nations with his hat in his hand and say, "We made a mistake. We thought we were doing the right thing, but now we have a mess that we can't handle. But now we are mired in a country that must be made stable; we don't have the right kind of troops on the ground to do the job right. You folks have the people and the Iraqi people will trust you. Will you help us fix this mistake?"

My son compulsively planned everything. For every Boy Scout outing, every ski trip, he was prepared for any eventuality.

This presidential administration ignored experts who told them that they could win the war, but winning the peace presented the challenge. Did they prepare for that? Of course not -- they were too arrogant to change their direction even as the insurgency increased.

Did our men and women in harm's way have what they needed? No.

Did we have enough tanks on the ground? No.

Could we supply parts as they were needed? No.

This Bush team could be on a poster for the old axiom: People don't plan to fail -- they fail to plan.

Their actions tarnished the reputation and honor of the United States. We are supposed to be better than other countries because we believe in individual rights.

The Abu Ghraib scandal not only tarnished our reputation, but has put all of service people in jeopardy for decades to come. If we could abuse prisoners, what country will honor the Geneva Conventions when it comes to U.S. troops? The January 2002 memo by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales about the treatment of prisoners scares me. He wrote that because "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," it "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." In my mind, this memo is Bush's Watergate. I do not understand how people who claim they believe in the ideals of our Founding Fathers can ignore this.

My son voted for Bush. If he were alive, would he be voting for him again? I am not sure. His wife and I avoided political discussions with him before and during his deployment. He would have never talked badly about the president, because you do not criticize your commander in chief.

But I sensed frustration in his letters. When he came home, I would have talked to him about it. I can't ask him now. Now I speak for him.

He worried about his men, his stateside friends set to deploy next month. I did not speak out against the war earlier and for this I am angry with myself. My son, a man of incredible honor, died from the actions of dishonorable men. I cannot bring him back. But I speak out now to protect the people still serving, to try to restore honor to our country.

John Kerry was not my first choice for president, but I believe he has demonstrated a willingness to be open-minded. He knows that changing your position is not a character flaw, but a character plus. I believe he is the only person capable of getting the rest of the world to help us clean up the mess created by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the administration's other Iraq hawks.

20 September 2004

A USA Today poll by the Gallup Organization released on Friday showed Kerry trailing Bush by 13 points. Presidential candidates have won after trailing by similar margins. One was George W. Bush himself. In 2000, he was behind Al Gore by 10 points among registered voters in early October and then prevailed in the Electoral College, though he lost the popular vote. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was down 8 points in the Gallup Poll in late October but won in a landslide after doing well in the only debate held with President Carter. Those results coupled with the other polls showing an even race would lead us to believe the Gallup folks are doing something wrong in their polling operation.

Screwy. But no screwier than 2000, when Gallup had Gore up by 10 on September 20 and Fox had the race dead even a day later. This pattern persisted: On October 26, Reuters/MSNBC had Gore up by 2 and Gallup had Bush up by 13. So take 'em all with a grain of salt.

From http://atrios.blogspot.com/ Asscroft in action: Sept. 15 - The first U.S. government-declared "enemy combatant" in the war on terror will soon be released from a military prison in South Carolina under an agreement that will allow him to fly home to Saudi Arabia as a free man, administration officials tell NEWSWEEK.

The agreement to free Yaser Esam Hamdi represents a stunning reversal for the Bush administration, which argued for more than two years that the former Taliban fighter was potentially so dangerous that he had to be detained indefinitely in solitary confinement with no access to counsel and no right to trial.

But in a landmark ruling last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that Hamdi, an American citizen, be allowed to consult with his lawyer and challenge the basis for his imprisonment. This pushed the case back into federal court and forced the Justice Department to mount a hasty retreat.

The result, officials say, is a highly detailed agreement that is expected to be made public later this week. It will result in Hamdi being flown back to Saudi Arabia on a U.S. military aircraft without ever being charged with any terror-related activity—a symbolic victory for critics who have long pointed to the case as a prime example of what they see as the Bush administration's overreaching in combating the terrorist threat.

Still, Justice Department officials said today the agreement contains important provisions to protect U.S. interests, including requirements that Hamdi renounce his U.S. citizenship, agree not to return to the United States and consent not to travel to an extensive list of countries, including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq or Syria, where he could be presumably be recruited for terrorist activity. Hamdi is also supposed to keep Saudi authorities notified of his whereabouts—a requirement that even government officials say will do little, if anything, to restrict his movements in the country.

Atrios’ comment: So, our government keeps a guy locked up for 3 years without trial because he's too dangerous to let go. When he was allowed to challenge his imprisonment, the JD backed off. And, then, to end the whole thing they're going to require that he renounce his citizenship.

From liberal Oasis at http://www.liberaloasis.com/

SUGGESTED ANSWERS FOR TOUGH

QUESTIONS ABOUT JOHN KERRY

This is an unofficial, unauthorized document, designed to help independent grassroots volunteers answer critical questions about Kerry that undecided voters may pose. These suggested responses are not meant to supercede any official instructions you may be given by a campaign or organization, but to provide guidance in case you have not been provided with assistance in this regard. Always defer to your team leaders to ensure maximum message penetration.

This document is not meant as a hand-out, but for your private use to help you prepare for voter interaction.

Keep in mind that Kerry doesn't have the luxury to respond to Bush's lies and distortions point-by-point, as it would knock him off-message and take pressure off of Bush. You can complement Kerry's attempts to go on the offensive by helping play defense at the grassroots level.

Documents of this nature can always be improved. If in your experiences you find that certain answers didn't work out well, suggest revisions to contact@liberaloasis.com.

TAXES

Q. I'm worried about my taxes going up with Kerry. I hear he's voted to raise taxes 98 times.

A: That's actually been proven to be a bogus claim. For example, that stat counts 16 votes -- such as amendments and procedural measures -- related to just one bill, Bill Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction package, which raised taxes on the wealthy, restored fiscal responsibility, and the laid the foundation for the booming economy of the 90s.

(Source: http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=247)

In fact, Kerry's economic team includes many of the same people that advised Clinton, and Kerry has a similar plan, reducing the tax burden on the middle class and having those that make more than $200,000 a year contribute their fair share. That way, we can cut the deficit and grow the economy again.

[NOTE: Offering the factcheck.org document cited above as a leave-behind may prove helpful, if someone wants more detail about the other "votes".]

Q. Kerry supports raising gas taxes. Gas prices are already through the roof.

A: Bush has been spreading that Kerry believes in a 50 cent gas tax hike, but in reality, Kerry has never sponsored legislation or voted for such a thing, and there is no such tax hike in his current platform.

Interestingly, it was Dick Cheney, who as a congressman in the 80s, supported an oil import tax that would have raised the price of gas.

He said at the time "Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States."

(Source: NY Times, 4/6/04, "Cheney Tax Plan From '86 Would Have Raised Gas Prices")

IF PRESSED: It is true that there was a small 4.3 cent gas tax hike as part of the Clinton's larger deficit reduction bill, which Kerry and the Democrats voted for. It was a tough vote, and the Democrats probably lost the Congress because of it, but the overall package got the economy back on track in the 1990s.

Q. George Bush says that since the fat cats will hire attorneys and accountants to avoid payer higher taxes, Kerry's tax hikes will fall on the rest of us.

A: Under Bush's logic, why bother asking the rich to contribute at all? And in fact, that's what his policies have done, reduce the tax burden on the rich, increase it for the middle-class.

Now, Bush is discussing a flat tax or a national sales tax, and either of those would further shift the tax burden to the middle-class and the poor -- shifting the burden from wealth to work.

OR

A: A lot of these same charges were thrown at the Democrats in 1990s, but taxes on the wealthy were raised, the budget was balanced, and the economy flourished, benefiting Americans across the economic spectrum,

Q. George Bush says since Kerry can't pay for his additional spending with just raising taxes on the wealthy, then taxes will eventually go up on me.

A: Bush often inflates the real costs of Kerry's proposal when making this charge, but the truth is, rolling back the tax cuts on those earning more than $200,000 a year will pay for his education and health care proposals.

He has also said that he will impose spending caps, so if Congress can't control spending on its own, across-the-board cuts will automatically kick in. By keeping spending down, we can get back to cutting deficits again.

Bush, on the other hand, turned a five trillion dollar surplus into a two trillion dollar deficit. And his current platform has a three trillion price tag, and he hasn't said how he would pay for it.

IRAQ

Q: Kerry seems to go back and forth on the war. I don't know where he stands.

When Kerry voted in 2002 to give Bush the authority to use force if necessary, he said on the Senate floor:

"In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days.

"To work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force.

"If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out."

And that's what happened. Bush failed to let the inspectors do their job and failed to rally allies to our side. Even worse, he misled the country about the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

So while Kerry is pleased that Saddam is out of power, he would have handled the situation differently. He wouldn't have rushed to war, and he would have had a plan to win the peace. And we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.

Q: I agree Iraq is kind of a mess, but what plan does Kerry have to fix it?

A: Unfortunately, Bush has lost a lot of credibility with foreign leaders, and hasn't been able to put a real coalition on the ground.

Since the coalition is basically just us, a lot of Iraqis think we want to exploit the country, not liberate it. And that feeds the insurgency.

A new president will wipe the slate the clean, so Kerry will have a much better chance of getting international involvement. Bush has been pessimistic about getting more involvement, but he hasn't given it a serious effort.

Once we get troops from other countries in, do a better job of training Iraqi forces, and stabilize the country, Kerry will start bringing troops home. He has set a goal of four years to do that.

Q: Bush says that by saying we'll leave in four years, then the terrorists will just hang back until we leave.

A: Kerry isn't saying he'll leave in four years no matter what. He's saying once he gets more international troops in and Iraqi forces are properly trained, and it is determined that the country is stable enough, then he'll start withdrawing troops. Four years is just the goal for when to get that done by.

Q: Kerry said the question of whether to support troops in combat was "complicated"

A: Bush often puts words in Kerry's mouth, that's just one of things he claims Kerry said that isn't true.

Bush equates the vote for $87 billion, mainly for Iraq, as a vote to support the troops.

But even though Bush got the money he asked for, the troops still don't have enough body armor, and families have been holding bake sales to raise money for armor.

The question for Bush is, what was so complicated about getting the troops the armor they needed?

Q: Why did Kerry say he voted for the 87 billion before he voted against it?

A: That's another case where Bush only gives you a part of a quote and strips out the context.

Kerry was wary about giving Bush an effective blank check without a change in strategy that could avoid a quagmire, but he was willing to compromise and support a version that paid for it by repealing tax cuts for the rich.

After voting for that version, which failed to pass, he voted against the final bill registering his disapproval of the strategy.

Bush also wasn't willing to support just any $87 billion bill. He threatened to veto the version Kerry supported.

It wouldn't be fair to say Bush thinks tax cuts for those that make more than $200,000 is more important than supporting the troops.

And it's not fair to say Kerry wouldn't support the troops just because he wanted a better strategy and shared sacrifice.

DEFENSE AND TERROR

Q: Kerry voted to cut all these weapons programs that we're using today.

A: It's an old trick to distort the meaning of votes on big bills that involve lots of items.

In fact, an investigation into the cited votes by Slate magazine found "there was no vote on those weapons systems specifically."

And it also noted that in 1992, former president Bush and Dick Cheney were pushing hard for some of the defense cuts that they're hypocritically  attacking Kerry for now, including money for B-2s, M-1s, F-14s, and F-16s.

(Source:  http://slate.msn.com/id/2096127/ )

[NOTE: This is another good article to offer as a leave-behind]

Q: Kerry said he only wait until we're attacked to respond, when we need to go after the terrorists where they live.

That's another case of Bush and Cheney not telling the full story. In fact, Kerry said this back in April:

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/news/news_2004_0414.html

"The most important weapon in our arsenal is knowing who they are, what they are, what they're planning and being able to go get them before they get us. And the most important ingredient in doing that is to have the best cooperation we've ever had with all of those other countries, which this administration does the worst"

And he made similar comments in his acceptance speech: " we need to rebuild our alliances, so we can get the terrorists before they get us."

It's true that Kerry also said, " Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response." But Bush and Cheney have made that out to mean that's all Kerry would do, which is not true.

Q: Kerry said he wants to fight a sensitive war on terror. We can't negotiate with terrorists.

A: No one's proposed negotiating with terrorists since the Iran-Contra scandal.

And Kerry never said we should treat Al Qaeda sensitively. That's another case of Bush and Cheney being disingenuous and hypocritical.

Kerry said we should be more sensitive to our allies so we'll get the cooperation we need to get the terrorists before they get us.

In fact, many members of the Bush Administration have said similar things

For example, soon after 9/11, Rumsfeld said " Our task is to certainly be sensitive to the views" in the Afghan region, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Richard Myers also said we need to be "culturally sensitive."

(Sources: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t11052001_t031cjcs.html, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t11042001_t1104pak.html, http://www.liberaloasis.com/archives/080804.htm#081304 )

GENERAL

Q: I just don't know where Kerry stands on anything, he shifts in the wind too much. At least with Bush, I may not agree, but he takes a clear position and knows how to lead.

Keep in mind that Bush regularly distorts Kerry's words and positions, and you can't trust the media to report anything straight these days.

I've gone to his website to read Kerry's own words for myself and I find him to be very consistent and principled, as well as thoughtful and decisive. That's a big reason why I'm supporting him so strongly.

And you might be surprised with how much Bush has flip-flopped on this issues.

He opposed a 9/11 Commission then supported it, opposed a Homeland Security department then supported it, supported steel tariffs then opposed them, opposed campaign finance reform then supported it, said he wouldn't tolerate a nuclear North Korea, then did nothing when they built as many as 6 nukes.

The list goes on, just put "Bush flip flops" into Google. [OR offer this document: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=42263 ]

Version 1 -- 9/17/04 -- created by LiberalOasis.com

17 September 2004

Especially for you Loie: if you are getting down on the fact that the polls are all over the place read Jimmy Breslin’s article at http://www.newsday.com/.

Breslin points out that most pollsters poll only land line phones which means that 170 million cell phones are never in the polls. That’s because the areas codes of cell phones don’t correspond to the geographical area needed to be polled for statistical value. But as Breslin points out, excluding 170 million cell phones skews the polling results. No self respecting young voter has a land line phone. In fact in the article Zogby, who is a pollster who does not use phones to poll, has the race even.

You know you're living in 2004 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with some friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
6. You go home after a long day at work and still answer the phone in a business manner.
7. When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial "9" to get an outside line.
8. You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
10. You learn about your redundancy on the 11 o'clock news.
11. Your boss doesn't have the ability to do your job.
12. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.
13. Every commercial on television has a website at the bottom of the screen.
14. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
15. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.
16. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :)
17. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.
18. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
19. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.
20. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t #9 on this list.

"Vice presidential candidate John Edwards promised a West Virginia mother on Wednesday that if the Democratic ticket is elected in November the military draft would not be revived." Are Kerry/Edwards setting Bush up with this statement?

"In Washington today there was some depressing news for Iraqis. A State Department official said there that the United States cannot guarantee that Iraqis will have essential services in the next three years, including clean water. That's because the Bush administration wants to shift the bulk of billions of dollars earmarked for reconstruction to military operations." - ABCNews, World News Tonight, 9/15/04

Kerry said Bush's actions have made it harder for the next president to withdraw troops. “What you ought to be doing, and what everybody in America ought to be doing today, is not asking me. They ought to be asking the president, what's your plan?'' Kerry told Imus.

Kerry is finally taking it to Bush and that bodes well for the debates and the election. From this day forward Kerry climbs in the polls. A lot of what he said yesterday was lost in the hurricane overkill but his message is the right one now and will resonate.

The media had been going after Bob Shrum who is one of Kerry’s top advisors and the media is creating stories about overcharging and lousy planning that are right out of the RNC playbook. Shrum is a personal friend of ours and that affects our opinion but the reality is that Shrum’s guy won the last election for president and Rove’s guy lost. The press never mentions this because we are all supposed to put the stealing of the election behind us. We don’t know who made the after election decisions in the Gore camp but that is where the election was finally lost, not at the ballot box. And that is why we know Kerry is going to win this election. He has guts.

How we decide elections in America: A recent Washington Post article examined whether Kerry risks losing the state of Wisconsin because he mispronounced the Green Bay Packers' Lambeau Field as "Lambert Field" last month. A Kerry spokesman, David Wade, responded by saying, "Bush has fumbled on Iraq, did a double reverse on the assault weapons ban and dropped the ball on health care." Then Wade added, "I don't think we need any lectures in sports from a former cheerleader," referring to one of Bush's extracurricular activities in prep school.

Juan Cole has an interesting discussion in his 9/16 post at http://www.juancole.com/   of the election issue in Iraq. Sistani wants them and Allawi may want to delay them. We think Sistani wants them because with all the trouble in the Sunni Triangle, the Shiites should have no problem winning. That would be bad news for peace since the Sunnis aren’t going to cede authority in Iraq without a much greater fight. And American troops would be right in the middle.

The Harris poll, conducted by telephone Sept. 9-13, shows Sen. Kerry leading Mr. Bush 48% to 47% among likely voters nationwide. The poll also found that a slender 51% to 45% majority doesn't believe that Mr. Bush deserves to be re-elected.

The previous poll in which likely U.S. voters were asked which candidate they preferred showed Messrs. Kerry and Bush tied 47% to 47%. That survey was conducted before the Republican National Convention in New York City, which ended earlier this month. An earlier poll in June indicated a Bush lead over Mr. Kerry of 10 percentage points, at 51% to 41%.

The latest poll was conducted within the U. S. among a nationwide cross section of 1,018 adults. It has a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.

Kerry is on message now: "W stands for wrong. Wrong choices, wrong direction, wrong everything. He goes around America telling Americans he makes big decisions. But it's not just about making big decisions. That's a requirement of being president. It's making the right decisions that counts. And when you make the wrong decisions, it's about having courage enough to say we're making a mistake.”

"George Bush is proud of the fact that not even failure can cause him to change his mind."

This next post is from Baghdad Burning at http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ . We read this website during the war and afterwards. The writing is excellent and we have seen it mentioned on other websites. The writing is so poignant that we sometimes wonder if it really is someone in Iraq writing this since we can’t understand how the writer can be so composed with the hell that surrounds them. So for what it’s worth we present an excellent piece that is supposedly written by an Iraqi living in Baghdad.

Fahrenheit 9/11...
August was a hellish month. The heat was incredible. No one remembers Baghdad ever being quite this hot- I think we broke a new record somewhere in mid-August.

The last few days, Baghdad has been echoing with explosions. We woke up to several loud blasts a few days ago. The sound has become all too common. It’s like the heat, the flies, the carcasses of buildings, the broken streets and the haphazard walls coming up out of nowhere all over the city… it has become a part of life. We were sleeping on the roof around three days ago, but I had stumbled back indoors at around 5 am when the electricity returned and was asleep under the cool air of an air-conditioner when the first explosions rang out.

I tried futilely to cling to the last fragments of a fading dream and go back to sleep when several more explosions followed. Upon getting downstairs, I found E. flipping through the news channels, trying to find out what was going on. “They aren’t nearly fast enough,” he shook his head with disgust. “We’re not going to know what’s happening until noon.”

But the news began coming in much sooner. There were clashes between armed Iraqis and the Americans on Haifa Street- a burned out hummer, some celebrating crowds, missiles from helicopters, a journalist dead, dozens of Iraqis wounded, and several others dead. The road leading to the airport has seen some action these last few days- more attacks on troops and also some attacks on Iraqi guard. The people in the areas surrounding the airport claim that no one got any sleep the whole night.

The areas outside of Baghdad aren’t much better off. The south is still seeing clashes between the Sadir militia and troops. Areas to the north of Baghdad are being bombed and attacked daily. Ramadi was very recently under attack and they say that they aren’t allowing the wounded out of the city. Tel Affar in the north of the country is under siege and Falloojeh is still being bombed.

Everyone is simply tired in Baghdad. We’ve become one of those places you read about in the news and shake your head thinking, “What’s this world coming to?” Kidnappings. Bombings. Armed militias. Extremists. Drugs. Gangs. Robberies. You name it, and we can probably tell you several interesting stories.

So how did I spend my 9/11? I watched Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit 9/11 . I’ve had bootleg CD version since early August. (Grave apologies to Michael Moore- but there’s no other way we can see it here…) The copy has been sitting in a drawer with a bunch of other CDs. One of my cousins brought it over one day and said that while it was brilliant, it was also quite depressing and distressing all at once. I had been avoiding it because, quite frankly, I cannot stand to see Bush for five minutes straight- I wasn’t sure how I’d cope with almost two hours.

Three days ago, I took it out while the house was relatively quiet- no cousins, no cousins’ children, parents busy watching something or another, and E. asleep in front of the air conditioner for the next three hours.

The CD was surprisingly clear. I had expected some fuzziness and bad sound quality- it was fine. Someone had made the copy inside a movie theater. I could tell because in the background, there was a ringing mobile phone a couple of times and some annoying person in the front kept getting up to adjust his seat.

I was caught up in the film from the first moment, until the very last. There were moments, while watching, when I could barely breathe. I wasn’t surprised with anything- there was nothing that shocked me- all of the stuff about the Bush family and their Saudi friends was old news. It was the other stuff that had an impact- seeing the reactions of Americans to the war, seeing the troops in Iraq being interviewed, seeing that American mother before and after she lost her son in Iraq.

Ah, that mother. How she made me angry in the beginning. I couldn’t stand to see her on screen- convincing the world that joining the army was the ideal thing to do- perfectly happy that her daughter and son were ‘serving’ America- nay, serving, in fact, the world by joining up. I hated her even more as they showed the Iraqi victims- the burning buildings, the explosions, the corpses- the dead and the dying. I wanted to hate her throughout the whole film because she embodied the arrogance and ignorance of the people who supported the war.

I can’t explain the feelings I had towards her. I pitied her because, apparently, she knew very little about what she was sending her kids into. I was angry with her because she really didn’t want to know what she was sending her children to do. In the end, all of those feelings crumbled away as she read the last letter from her deceased son. I began feeling a sympathy I really didn’t want to feel, and as she was walking in the streets of Washington, looking at the protestors and crying, it struck me that the Americans around her would never understand her anguish. The irony of the situation is that the one place in the world she would ever find empathy was Iraq. We understand. We know what it’s like to lose family and friends to war- to know that their final moments weren’t peaceful ones… that they probably died thirsty and in pain… that they weren’t surrounded by loved ones while taking their final breath.

When she asked why her son had been taken and that he had been a good person… why did this have to happen to him? I kept wondering if she ever gave a second thought to the Iraqi victims and whether it ever occurred to her that Iraqi parents perhaps have the same thoughts as the try to dig their children out from under the rubble of fallen homes in Falloojeh, or as they attempt to stop the blood flowing out of a gaping hole in the chest of a child in Karbala.

The flashes of the bombing of Iraq and the victims were more painful than I thought they would be. We lived through it, but seeing it on a screen is still a torment. I thought that this last year and a half had somehow made me a little bit tougher when it came to seeing Iraq being torn apart by bombs and watching foreign troops destroy the country- but the wound is still as raw as ever. Watching those scenes was like poking at a gash with sharp stick- it hurt.

All in all, the film was… what is the right word for it? Great? Amazing? Fantastic? No. It made me furious, it made me sad and I cried more than I’d like to admit… but it was brilliant. The words he used to narrate were simple and to the point. I wish everyone could see the film. I know I'll be getting dozens of emails from enraged Americans telling me that so-and-so statement was exaggerated, etc. But it really doesn't matter to me. What matters is the underlying message of the film- things aren't better for Americans now than they were in 2001, and they certainly aren't better for Iraqis.

Three years ago, Iraq wasn't a threat to America. Today it is. Since March 2003, over 1000 Americans have died inside of Iraq... and the number is rising. In twenty years time, upon looking back, how do Americans think Iraqis are going to remember this occupation?

I constantly wonder, three years after 9/11, do Americans feel safer? When it first happened, there was a sort of collective shock in Iraq. In 2002, there was a sort of pity and understanding- we’ve been through the same. Americans could hardly believe what had happened, but the American government brings this sort of grief upon nations annually… suddenly the war wasn’t thousands of kilometers away, it was home.

How do we feel about it this year? A little bit tired.

We have 9/11’s on a monthly basis. Each and every Iraqi person who dies with a bullet, a missile, a grenade, under torture, accidentally- they all have families and friends and people who care. The number of Iraqis dead since March 2003 is by now at least eight times the number of people who died in the World Trade Center. They had their last words, and their last thoughts as their worlds came down around them, too. I’ve attended more wakes and funerals this last year, than I’ve attended my whole life. The process of mourning and the hollow words of comfort have become much too familiar and automatic.

September 11… he sat there, reading the paper. As he reached out for the cup in front of him for a sip of tea, he could vaguely hear the sound of an airplane overhead. It was a bright, fresh day and there was much he had to do… but the world suddenly went black- a colossal explosion and then crushed bones under the weight of concrete and iron… screams rose up around him… men, women and children… shards of glass sought out tender, unprotected skin … he thought of his family and tried to rise, but something inside of him was broken… there was a rising heat and the pungent smell of burning flesh mingled sickeningly with the smoke and the dust… and suddenly it was blackness.

9/11/01? New York? World Trade Center?

No.

9/11/04. Falloojeh. An Iraqi home.

16 September 2004

The National Guard story of President Shrub gets stranger and stranger. The NYT reported yesterday that the lady who was the stenographer in the office where the memos were typed and who says she actually typed memos doesn’t think that the memos CBS showed are real but that the content of those memos is the gist of the way Bush’s superior officer felt about Bush’s conduct. What it seems is that those original documents were destroyed back in the 1990s after Bush became Governor and that someone involved or with knowledge of the destruction has recreated them. This lady is given credibility by Killian’s son in the NYT article and only the cads in the RNC office will call an 85 year old woman a liar. As Drudge likes to say, “Developing”.

More than 200 U.S. troops were wounded in Iraq in the past week, the Pentagon said Tuesday, and the total since the invasion was launched in March 2003 is now 7,245.

The WPO reports that Texans for Truth are offering a $50,000 reward to anyone who can prove that Bush fulfilled his guard duty between April of 1972 and May of 1973. "If the president won't come clean that he dodged his military responsibilities in Alabama during the height of the Vietnam War, we'll continue our search for the whole story," said Glenn Smith, head of the group.

John Kerry personally called the lady we wrote about yesterday and offered her a job in his campaign. She accepted. The fellow who fired her had offered to hire her back when the publicity became widespread but she refused.

Digsby at www.hullabloo.com best echoes our sentiments:

I just wish that Dems could put on their game faces and try to sell the guy a little bit instead of constantly writing his epitaph. He's really a good man, you know. He's spent his life in public service, trying to do the right thing, working hard and carrying our agenda. He's our most liberal nominee in decades. He's smart and energetic and he's never been tainted by corruption or scandal. Is it so hard for Democrats to get behind a man like this or are we just as shallow as everybody else? Would we too be happier with a brand name in a suit?

Kerry finally got it right: the excuse presidency.

At that convention in New York the other week, President Bush talked about his ownership society. Well Mr. President, when it comes to your record, we agree – you own it.

Of course, the President would have us believe that his record is the result of bad luck, not bad decisions. That he’s faced the wrong circumstances, not made the wrong choices. In fact, this President has created more excuses than jobs. His is the Excuse Presidency: Never wrong, Never Responsible, Never to Blame. President Bush’s desk isn’t where the buck stops – it’s where the blame begins. He’s blamed just about everyone but himself and his administration for America’s economic problems. And if he’s missed you, don’t worry – he’s still got 48 days left until the election.

He sure has a lot of excuses, but you know what? Of the last eleven presidents – many who faced war and recession – George Bush is the only one to actually lose jobs on his watch.

15 September 2004

The NYT has an article about studies that show that Zoloft and Prozac increase the risk of suicide in children and young adults. The FDA had the studies over a year ago but refused to release them because the FDA said the studies were unreliable. When the studies the FDA commissioned came to the same conclusion as the FDA disparaged studies the FDA released the information to the public to well deserved criticism for the delay from the parents whose children had taken their own lives while on the drugs and during the blackout period.

In the article the NYT had the following statement by the author of the piece Gardiner Harris: The risk of suicide among patients given the pills is very small. If 100 children and teenagers are given antidepressants, 2 or 3 will become suicidal who otherwise would not have had they been given placebos, agency officials said. None of the children in the trials committed suicide, but some thought about or attempted suicide, researchers found.

If 2% of airline passengers failed to make it to their destination would that be very small? If 2% of Congress failed to survive their term in office would that be small? If 2% of the soldiers serving in Iraq were killed each year (3000) would that be small?

There are 11 million children and young adults taking these pills. 2% is 22,000 children. The rewards may outweigh the risks but 22,000 children, if one of them is your own, is too much a price too pay for quiet. And as the NYT states in its article: Most studies of the drugs have failed to show that they have any effect on depression in children and teenagers. So there most probably is no reward.

The drug companies had an obligation to make the risks known so that the parents could make informed decisions. Thank the lord for tort lawyers. Open your pocketbooks drug companies; here come John Edwards’s friends.

The Bushies plans to create private investment accounts to replace social security is a sham. If the Bushies think the stock markets are for everyone then it would be simple to invest a portion of the Social Security receipts in stocks at the government level. The only problem with that is that then the government wouldn’t have the funds available to borrow to fund the deficit and so would have to go into the debt market and increase borrowing which would have the effect of increasing interest rates and the stated deficit.

In a corollary to the raid on Social Security, US AIR is now trying to renege on its pension obligations for 20,000 folks. If they are successful, which they will be, the U.S. Pension Guaranty Board a/k/a as you and we will be responsible for making reduced payments to these folks.

In America via The Decatur Daily from Salon:

Lynne Gobbell never imagined the cost of a John Kerry-John Edwards bumper sticker could run so high.

Gobbell of Moulton didn't pay a cent for the sticker that she proudly displays on the rear windshield of her Chevrolet Lumina, but said it cost her job at a local factory after it angered her boss, Phil Gaddis.

Gaddis, a Decatur bankruptcy attorney, owns Enviromate, a cellulose insulation company in Moulton.

Gaddis did not return phone calls from THE DAILY about the alleged Thursday firing.

Gobbell said she consulted a lawyer, but then changed her mind about going to see him. She said she has cried about the incident and must do without income for three weeks while the state unemployment commission decides if she is eligible for compensation.

Gobbell said she was averaging 50 to 60 hours a week on the plant's bagging machine.

"The lady there (at the unemployment commission) said that she has never heard of a firing like this before," Gobbell said.

Gobbell gave this account:

"We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' "

She went to Gaddis' office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.

"Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for."

Gobbell said Gaddis told her to "get out of here."

"I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it," she said. "I said, 'Well, am I fired?' He hollered and said, 'Get out of here and shut the door.' "

She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, “‘I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,'” Gobbell said.

"I took off my gloves and threw them in the garbage and left," Gobbell said.

Though she is unemployed and uncertain if she will get her job back, Gobbell said, she doesn't regret her decision to keep the sticker on her windshield.

"I would like to find another job, but I would take that job back because I need to work," she said. "It upset me and made me mad that he could put a letter in my check expressing his (political) opinion, but I can't put something on my car expressing mine."

She was referring to a flier that she said Gaddis placed in employee envelopes to remind them of the positive impact that President Bush's policies have had on them. An employee at the plant who would not identify himself confirmed the contents of the letter.

Gobbell provided a copy of the flier. It says:

"Just so you will know, because of the Bush tax (cut):

I was able to buy the new Hammer Mill
I was able to finance our receivables
I was able to get the new CAT skid steer
I was able to get the wire cutter
I was able to give you a job"
It further says:

"You got the benefit of the Bush tax cut. Everyone did.”

Thanks to http://americablog.blogspot.com/  for the above.

And there is no law that prevents a private employer from firing someone for their political views: from www.hulllabaloo.com. It seems reasonable to ask what business Michael Italie's political convictions were to his employer. But when the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union looked into Italie's case, it discovered, as Pastrana evidently had, that Goodwill was on strong legal footing. "There is no legal case to be brought," explains Miami chapter president Lida Rodriguez-Taseff. "The law is pretty clear that a private employer can fire someone based on their political speech even when that political speech does not affect the terms and conditions of employment." A public employer would be prevented from firing someone based on political speech (because that would constitute the government itself suppressing free speech).

How can these Bush guys not be responsible? It’s everyone else’s fault but theirs. The Boston globe reports that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that at the time he made the case to the United Nations for the invasion of Iraq some US intelligence officials already knew many of the claims about weapons and terrorist ties were suspect, but they had not informed him or other senior policy makers about their doubts.

They had their doubts but Georgie wanted to go to war and so we did.

Bush’s comment on Kerry’s health care plan: ''I'm running against a fellow who has got a massive, complicated blueprint to have our government take over the decision making in health care,'' the president said. ''Not only is his plan going to increase the power of bureaucrats in your life, but he can't pay for it unless he raises your taxes.''

Our Comment: only a privileged person who has never filed a claim or paid a premium would assert that the current health care system is not bureaucratic. In fact, in our and most normal folks experiences, only Medicare claims are handled efficiently and without complication. Any private pay plan involves pre approvals, arguments over treatments, denial of services, narrowing of doctors who can treat and constantly rising premiums.

Al Franken on a sound bite for Kerry: "Mr. President, Colin Powell told you about this war that 'if you break it, you own it.' And now you're going around talking about an 'ownership society.' Well, Mr. President, let me tell you what you own. A million jobs lost. You own that. A thousand soldiers lost. You own that. 1.4 million new people living below the poverty line. You own that. 1.2 million fewer folks covered by health insurance, You own that. A seventeen percent Medicare increase. You own that. Health care costs skyrocketing. You own that. The tax burden increasing amongst the middle class. You own that. Mr. President, if you want to talk about an ownership society, let's talk about what you own."

Richard Perle said the following at an American Enterprise Institute conference on September 22, 2003:

"A year from now I'd be surprised if there's not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush."

14 September 2004

I think it's unlikely that we will find any stockpiles"- Colin Powell, 9/13/04

White House spokesman Dan Bartlett declined to offer an opinion (on the new documents regarding Bush’s service records) Sunday and said, "We have not conducted an independent analysis of the documents." He said he showed Bush copies of the memos and the president "had no specific recollection of any of the documents I showed him."

We told you so although we didn’t think it would happen so quickly. President Vladimir Putin outlined plans Monday to "radically" change the Russian political system in a way that would increase his own power, portraying the moves as a means of combating terrorism in the aftermath of this month's deadly school seizure.

Putin's plan would eliminate the popular election of governors and individual members of parliament. The president would appoint governors, subject to the confirmation of regional legislatures. All members of the lower house of parliament, known as the State Duma, would be drawn from party lists rather than elected in individual districts.

13 September 2004

One of the arguments the Bushies are making for reelection is that the U.S. hasn’t been attacked for three years while they were in charge. So we guess if we are only attacked once every four years that is a reason to be for George. Go Figure. And they make these claims with a straight face but always a smirk.

If the Presidential debates occur this is the schedule: The commission's first debate is set for Sept. 30 at the University of Miami, with the PBS anchor Jim Lehrer as moderator; it is to focus primarily on domestic policy. Two more presidential debates are to follow soon after: a town-hall-style meeting in St. Louis with the ABC News anchor Charles Gibson as moderator and a traditional debate in Arizona focusing primarily on foreign policy, with the CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer as moderator. A vice-presidential debate is scheduled for October in Cleveland, with Gwen Ifill of PBS as host.

Bob Hebert has a poignant column in the NYT today. As we said yesterday one of the reasons that we think the Vietnam experiences of Bush and Cheney and Kerry are fair game is that Iraq is a so far smaller in terms of casualties but much more expensive replay of that folly and years from now the folks who planned this misadventure will have the reputations of Johnson and all the government leaders who lied to Americans back then.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp

CNN had a story last night about the State of Utah whose legislators are going to court to force the University of Utah to allow students to carry concealed weapons on campus. It seems that Utah passed a law allowing folks to carry weapons either concealed or open and the University has the temerity to suggest that allowing that on campus might not be such a good idea. The legislators argue that the professors that are worried about students carrying guns should carry guns to protect themselves. Strange but true.

The Coalition of the Willing shrinks as Costa Rica asks that its name be removed from the list because its courts have decided that inclusion on the list violates Costa Rica’s pacifist principles.

Colin Powell, From his 1995 autobiography ‘My American Journey: “I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed and many professional athletes (who were probably healthier than any of us) managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to our country.”

Cheney showing the compassionate side of his conservatism said recently: “That’s a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," he said. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay." Cheney should know about people who profit from selling things dear to them. Earlier this year he sold his lesbian daughter for votes. From http://americablog.blogspot.com/

Over the week end, US News & World Report which is a conservative leaning magazine released a report which showed that Bush Boy missed more duty than he could have to have been honorable discharged. In fact he should have been called to active duty.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040920/usnews/20guard.htm

The assault weapons law is going to expire on Monday and that small effort to control mayhem will become history. And all the upper class folks who are more interested in their tax rates than killing by machine gun will trot to the polls and vote for their man Bush. Other folks will vote for Bush because he is “born again”, and because he doesn’t believe in abortion or allowing contraception. Maybe that’s why he stayed drunk all those years. Speechless.

From Professor Harold Cole at http://www.juancole.com/

… At noon, October 18, 2003, President George W. Bush landed in Manila as part of a six-nation Asian tour. … In his speech, Bush took credit for America transforming the Philippines into "the first democratic nation in Asia." … As many Philippine commentators remarked afterward, Bush's rendition of Philippine-American history bore very little relation to fact. True, the United States Navy under Admiral George Dewey had ousted Spain from the Philippines in the Spanish-American War of 1898. But instead of creating a Philippine democracy, President William McKinley annexed the country and installed a colonial administrator. The United States then fought a brutal war against the same Philippine independence movement it had encouraged to fight Spain. The war dragged on for fourteen years. Before it was over, about 120,000 American troops were deployed and more than 4,000 died; more than 200,000 Filipino civilians and soldiers were killed. And the resentment against American policy was still evident a century later during George W. Bush's visit.

Politicians often rewrite history to their own purposes, but, as Bush's analogy to Iraq suggested, there was more than passing significance to his revision of the history of the Spanish-American War. It reflected not just a distorted picture of a critical episode in American foreign policy but a seeming ignorance of the important lessons that Americans drew from this brief and unhappy experiment in creating an overseas empire. If Bush had applied these lessons to the American plans for invading Iraq and transforming the Middle East, he might have proceeded far more cautiously. But as his rendition of history showed, he was either unaware of them or had chosen to ignore them.

Judis goes on to talk about how our policy during the Spanish American War represented a fundamental shift away from our prior policy of anti-Imperialism, and towards a pro-Imperialism policy. He states that many of the supports of the policy, including Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, came to see a policy that they had initially supported as a huge mistake. This too has a striking parallel with our radical policy shift towards preemptive war based on our high quality intelligence information and the policy becoming discredited with its first major implementation in the Iraq war.

North Korea exploded a bomb on Sunday that made a mushroom cloud. At this time the U.S. is saying that it wasn’t nuclear. Since it was exploded above ground; monitors will eventually be able to determine whether it was a nuclear device. More importantly, this kind of guess work wouldn’t be occurring if the Bushies had carried on the Clinton disarmament work that went on for six years. Secretary Powell was ready to continue until the Bushies’ Braintrust said no back on 2001. Now in 2004 the same brain trust is trying to revive the Clinton plan although they certainly don’t call it that.

10 September 2004

We wonder if this will happen before the election. "There is no room for Arafat among us, and the time will come when we will remove him... and that day is closer than ever," Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said. Remove is a euphemism for kill.

In a flip/flop President Shrub said that the new Intelligence Chief proposed by the 9/11Commission should have “new budgetary powers”. We think that that comment which was different from Bush’s position of just last week will only be operative until after the election.

If you missed 60 Minutes last night the NYT has an article at and Maureen Dowd is especially pithy: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/09guard.html?hp , http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/opinion/09dowd.html?hp .

One problem with the National Guard thing is that you have to be male and over 55 to understand that only folks with clout got into the National Guard back after 1966 during the Vietnam War. This is especially germane since Bush is using the National Guard in Iraq and younger folks probably think it always as been that way. One final point is that the folks we knew in the National Guard during that time were religious in their attendance because the penalty for goofing off was Vietnam. We don’t understand the media references to lackadaisical attitudes toward attendance and we presume that the media doesn’t understand because the folks writing the articles or telling the stories on TV are too young to know about the National Guard the draft and deferments during that time period.  

We aren’t certain whether you can see this website: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/09/bush_guard_duty/index.html  since it is a pay for but if you can’t try here: http://www.glcq.com/me.htm

Scroll down on Washington Monthly to the last September 8 post where Drum writes:

This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy. Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but the documentary evidence in the two cases is like night and day. In the Swift Boat case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying. Conversely, in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true. In fact, these four memos are pretty close to a smoking gun, since it's now clear that (a) Bush was directly ordered to take a physical in 1972 and refused, and (b) he plainly failed to perform up to National Guard standards, but that (c) he was nonetheless saved from a failing evaluation thanks to high-level pressure.

So why did Bush refuse to take a physical that year? And why did he blow off drills for at least the next five months and possibly for a lot longer than that? And finally, why did he get an honorable discharge anyway?

From http://americablog.blogspot.com/ : The cumulative effect of rising health care costs is taking a toll on workers: There are at least 5 million fewer jobs providing health insurance in 2004 than there were in 2001, according to the survey of 3,017 companies by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.

This year, 63 percent of firms offered health benefits to workers, down from 68 percent in 2001. The change is primarily driven by a decrease in the number of small firms, those with 3 to 199 workers that offer coverage.

The average premium for a family of four grew to $9,950 annually. The family premium for a preferred provider organization, the most common type of insurance, hit $10,217 — the first time it broke the $10,000 barrier

The hike in health premiums outpaced both the 2.2 percent growth in wages and 2.3 percent growth in inflation by five times.

Since 2001, employee contributions increased 57 percent for single coverage and 49 percent for family coverage.

The screws turn: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/9/15832/63371  On July 30, 1973, shortly before he moved from Houston to Cambridge, Bush signed a document that declared, ''It is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months... " Under Guard regulations, Bush had 60 days to locate a new unit.

But Bush never signed up with a Boston-area unit. In 1999, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Bush finished his six-year commitment at a Boston area Air Force Reserve unit after he left Houston. Not so, Bartlett now concedes. ''I must have misspoke," Bartlett, who is now the White House communications director, said in a recent interview [...]

Go You Girl: Teresa Heinz Kerry says ''only an idiot'' would fail to support the health care plan proposed by her husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry's proposal includes health care subsidies for children, the unemployed, small companies and others as well as government assistance to insurers and employers that hold down premiums for workers.

''Only an idiot wouldn't like this,'' Heinz Kerry told the Intelligencer Journal of Lancaster for a story in its Thursday editions. ''Of course, there are idiots.''

If Kerry is elected, Heinz Kerry predicted, opponents of his health care plan will be voted out of office. Still, the multimillionaire and philanthropist balked at the idea that she was selling her husband's plan.

''I don't have to sell it the people want it,'' she said. ''The common man doesn't look at me as some rich witch. I talk about what I see. It has always been so. You judge people not by their pocketbook but by their actions. Walk the walk.''

Cheney proposed the same defense cuts he is now accusing Kerry of being soft on defense and worse for proposing. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8481

The Bushies try to get Kitty Kelley and her book banned from NBC. The Swift boat Liars were OK. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/politics/campaign/09book.html

Interesting facts: George Washington was the first President to write to a synagogue. ....His letters were an expression and hope for religious harmony.

Thomas Jefferson was the first President to appoint a Jew to a Federal post. In 1801 he named Reuben Etting of Baltimore as U.S. Marshall for Maryland.

....Bill Clinton appointed more Jews to his cabinet than all of the previous Presidents put together.

George W. Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover who has no Jews in his cabinet at all.

9 September 2004

Cheney has begun the real smear campaign. On Monday he suggested that if Kerry is elected more 9/11s will occur and there will be no proper response. Given that 9/11 occurred on the Bush/Cheney watch that statement is the ultimate chutzpah. The republicans and Rove think that they are home free on the 9/11 occurrence but this kind of talk opens them up to attack and we surely hope the Dems aren’t pussy cats on this one.

''It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States,'' Cheney told supporters at a town-hall meeting Tuesday.

The Washington Post is reporting that Bush may only agree to two debates instead of the usual three. He’s too busy running around the country campaigning before set up groups with easy questions. The real purpose here is to spend a month debating whether there should be debates rather than have the press concentrate on the Iraq and economic mess the Bushies have created.

The NYT has and interesting article on insurance companies scamming young soldiers on their way to Iraq by selling them expensive insurance policies with bells and whistles and spangles when all they really need is plain vanilla coverage.
Go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/business/08military.html

Zogby tells why Bush is ahead by 3 points not 11 points at http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews859.html

The Boston Globe has a story on Bush’s National Guard Service: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/08/bush_fell_short_on_duty_at_guard/

There was talk on CNN last night that if the Sunni triangle can’t be pacified by the end of the year (and after the election) the scheduled elections may have to be delayed. Are we surprised? As we have said before, the Buhsies are happy with their CIA trained Prime Minister and wouldn’t mind if there were no elections. The U.S. has always gotten along better with dictators or royalty in that part of the world.

Alan Greenspan testified that the U.S. may have promised more to retirees than it can deliver. That will only be true because Greenspan in cahoots with the Bushies spent the surplus on tax cuts for Alan’s rich golfing buddies.

If you have the time, Elizabeth Drew has written a scathing indictment of the way the Bush administration handled the attacks on 9/11. It is the story of My Pet Goat in spades.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17390

We were wrong in our comparison of the deaths in Iraq (for a strange reason we keep writing Vietnam first) versus auto or smoking deaths in the U.S.  This blog site discusses the statistical stuff: http://www.sadlyno.com/

The Onion ran this edition in January 2001. The Onion is a humor magazine but take time to read the article. It is eerie in its forecast of what Bush has done.

http://chak.org/pages/onion/bush_nightmare.html

Kitty Kelley is coming out with a book called The Family in the next few weeks about Bush. It isn’t flattering and suggests drug usage and abortion in his past. She is not a Democrat plant; she is just trying to make a buck. Some libs are squeamish about her accusations. We say one good lie deserves another. and maybe these aren’t lies which is more than the Swift Boat Liars can say..

A fun link http://www.linkydinky.com/MrPresident.shtml

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” George W. Bush August 5, 2004

8 September 2004

The situation in Russia where Putin has become in effect a dictator is receiving scant attention in the U.S. media. The Chechen imbroglio creates a sympathy factor for the Russians of which Putin takes advantage. Over the week-end the editor of Ivestia was required to step down for publishing pictures of the tragedy in Bressan. Putin does not like the Russian people to know how little he seems able to do to control the Chechen rebellion.

Over the weekend there were over 12 U.S. soldiers killed and yet in the NYT there was no mention on Monday other than a box listing dead soldiers from s few days earlier. The disappearance of Iraq from the front pages is one of the great flim flams of this political year. Bush runs around saying he is in charge and busy protecting all of us while his policies in Iraq fail. We were listening to a general the other day saying that the U.S. had not lost any battles in Iraq. How true. And yet as in Vietnam where we lost very few battles, we are losing the war for the hearts and minds of the people. And that is why Vietnam is so germane to this year’s political discussion. But in America one can never question a war without being branded a traitor. So sad.

The Pentagon is going to open up the $13 billion supply contract in Iraq to competitive bidding. It must be election season. Halliburton will win the contract. The question is not only Halliburton getting the contract but the overcharges by all the folks who win the bids. The large multinationals who are capable of this work are all in cahoots.

Go to Hullabaloo at http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/ for an interesting picture and comments on the September 6 post at 10/23pm.

The Great Orator on Doctors and Love:

But let me tell you what else we need to do. We need to do something about these frivolous lawsuits that are running up the cost of your health care and running good docs out of business. (Applause.) We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country. See, I don't think you can be pro-doctor and pro-patient and pro-hospital and pro-trial lawyer at the same time. (Applause.) I think you've got to make a choice. My opponent made his choice, and he put him on the ticket. (Applause.) I made my choice. I'm for medical liability reform now. (Applause.) In all we do to improve health care, we will make sure that health decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

7 September 2004

We present today a week’s worth of readings from the web.

9 Americans killed on Sunday and Monday. For what?

From http://americablog.blogspot.com/

By now, everyone has heard Bush's awkward, politically stupid comment that you can't win the war on terror. Does anyone doubt that if Kerry had said this that Bush would have ripped him for it and there'd be an ad on the air in every battleground state within hours? Of course not. The White House has been desperately backpedaling and coming up with all sorts of excuses. (Our favorite was on 'Nightline" where a Bush spokesperson started off by saying well, hey, he was being interviewed on a moving bus!)

'I don't think you can win it,' Mr. Bush replied. 'But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.'

"As recently as July 14, Mr. Bush had drawn a far sunnier picture. 'I have a clear vision and a strategy to win the war on terror,' he said.

"At a prime-time news conference in the East Room of the White House on April 13, Mr. Bush said: 'One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we are asking questions, is, 'Can you ever win the war on terror?' Of course you can.'

"It was unclear if Mr. Bush had meant to make the remark to Mr. Lauer, or if he misspoke. But White House officials said the president was not signaling a change in policy, and they sought to explain his statement by saying he was emphasizing the long-term nature of the struggle. Taken at face value, however, Mr. Bush's words would put him closer to the positions of the United States' European allies, who have considered Mr. Bush's talk of victory simplistic and unhelpful."

Congressman Ed Schrock of Virginia is quitting his race reelection be cause it turns out he is gay and as we all know Republicans don’t like gay folks. The worm turns for Schrock who said back in 2000:

In 2000, the Virginian-Pilot said of Schrock that he favored ending the Clinton administration's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. He supported asking enlistees whether they have had homosexual experiences in an effort to try to keep gays from serving.

"You're in the showers with them, you're in the bunk room with them, you're in staterooms with them," Schrock told the Virginian-Pilot. "You just hope no harm would come by folks who are of that persuasion. It's a discipline thing."

Rep. Ed Schrock is a two-term Republican congressman from Virginia's Second District.  The National Journal ties him as the second most conservative person in all of Congress in 2003, behind only Dennis Hastert.  This isn't necessarily a turn-off in his district, which includes Virginia Beach, home of Pat Robertson, as well as Hampton Roads, home of 300,000 active-duty military and veterans.  A strong family man with a wife and kids, Schrock was a co-sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment and opposes any possible rights for gay people, including non-discrimination in employment.

The problem is, his constituents may soon discriminate against his employment, as Schrock also seeks out gay sex on telephone dating services, and gay activists are about to release the tapes.

Congressman Ed Schrock (R-VA, District 2) is the kind of Good Christian man we need today. Not only did he score 100% on the Christian Coalition's 2002 scoreboard, the evil secular liberal Human Rights Campaign gives him a zero! I'm sure he wore their scorn as a badge of honor.

This is a huge success for bloggers, and the outing campaign in general. For those who criticized John when he started talking about this, think about it this way. This was a LEADER in the House, a LEADER in the fight to discriminate against gays and lesbians, and complete hypocrite. Without blogging, and the outing campaign, this guy would still be sitting in office.

Why are we not surprised by the hypocrisy? David Brooks in his column about true bravery in the NYT last week said that Giuliani, Schwarzenegger and Mc Cain were the real brave men and implied that  “you know who” left a lot to be desire.

The irony of those comments is that the thrice married Giuliani who cheated on both of his wives and was headed to the trash heap of history until he happened to be in the right place at a very bad time. And Arnold, whose manliness comes from steroids and making movies about being a hero all the while groping women who he didn’t mean to offend but just get a little thrill from as a hero is laughable. But then the media have always liked to make movie actors who never saw real war heroes witness John Wayne and Ronald Reagan.

Delegates on the convention floor are wearing bandages with purple hearts to mock Senator Kerry. The fact that Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam, served his tour and upped for more, was wounded  action and then came back and protested the war after he learned it wasn’t what the administration said it was is a demonstration of courage that very few leaders can claim. The folks making fun of Kerry’s war record are the same folks who mocked Clinton’s non war record. And they laud Bush for doing what he was elected to do, although he is doing it badly.

Kos’s view of the first day of the convention at http://www.dailykos.com/

I think I figured out the formula:

9-11
9-11
9-11
9-11
John Kerry sucks
John Kerry is a flip-flopper
Terrorism
Amen

No talk about domestic issues. No talk about jobs. Nothing on the economy.

Interesting, that. The war party peddles in fear, because that's all they have left to sell.

And the Secret Service prevented anyone from interviewing Michael Moore. What was that about? Jesus’ General has the answer:

Monday, August 30, 2004

SS stops NPR reporter from interviewing Michael Moore  

W. Ralph Basham
Director, United States Secret Service

Dear Director Basham,

It's not often that the public gets a chance to hear the Secret Service in action. I was blessed with such an opportunity tonight while listening to Republican National Convention coverage on National Public Radio. They did a masterful job.

It all started when the demonic filmmaker, Michael Moore, arrived at the convention and made his way to his seat. NPR reporter Andrea Seabrook intercepted him to get his opinion of the unfolding events. Just as the interview began, courageous agents of the US Secret Service, without regard to the possibility that they might be hit in a crossfire of questions and answers, bravely threw their bodies in between Seabrook and Moore. Once they had secured that small corner of the marketplace of ideas, the agents instructed Seabrook to vacate the immediate area and NPR moved on to other commentary.

Thirty minutes later, the NPR anchor reconnected with Seabrook and asked her if she was ready to interview Moore. She replied that the agents were aggressively defending the area around the dark lord of celluloid against all attempts by the media to penetrate it. Indeed, even as she spoke, an agent commanded her to move a little farther away from her target. With a voice weary with resignation, she noted that it was the first time she had ever seen Secret Service agents act in such an obviously political manner.

Of course, it's easy to blame the agent's actions on politics, but it's more likely they were acting on security concerns. There is no telling what might have occurred had Moore and Seabrook been able to continue their interview. Perhaps the treacherous man from Flint would have grabbed Seabrook's microphone and drawn all of the electrical energy out of her recording equipment, using it to fuel powerful lasers implanted in his eyes. With a glance he could have turned the convention into a fiery hell of burning flesh and smoldering polyester.

Your agents are to be congratulated. They saved America tonight.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, Patriot

We agree with this analysis of Bush’s heroism: from William Saletan as Slate:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2105914/

When Bush was riding the wave of record ratings, I was wondering why. I saw cowardice on 9/11 by Bush and then plenty of fear mongering followed by scapegoating in Iraq. Since Bush wants to make 9/11 such a central theme of his campaign, he is now opening up that period for debate. Perhaps because I live abroad and was not saturated by the full propaganda machine I didn't buy into the hero myth. It's great to see that his record on 9/11 and afterwards is now being reviewed seriously . It's time to pick apart this silly myth and bring him back to the stubborn, arrogant, little man that he is. He was not a leader on 9/11 and never will be. My Pet Goat.

As John McCain put it last night: "I knew my confidence was well placed when I watched him stand on the rubble of the World Trade Center with his arm around a hero of September 11 and, in our moment of mourning and anger, strengthen our
unity and our resolve by promising to right this terrible wrong and to stand up and fight for the values we hold dear."

Pardon me for asking, but where exactly is the heroism in this story? Where, indeed, is the heroism in anything Bush has done before 9/11 or since?

As Giuliani explained to the convention audience:

When President Bush came here on September 14, 2001, the Secret Service was not really happy about his remaining in the area so long. With buildings still unstable, with fires raging below ground of 2,000 degrees or more, there was good reason for their concern. Well, the president remained there. And talked to everyone. ... [A construction worker] grabbed the president of the United States in this massive bear hug, and he started squeezing him. And the Secret Service agent standing next to me, who wasn't happy about any of this, instead of running over and getting the president out of this grip, puts his finger in my face and he says to me, "If this guy hurts the president, Giuliani, you're finished."

This is Bush's heroism? Showing up three days later, "remaining in the
area," and enduring a hug?

The only moment of physical bravery any of last night's speakers could find in Bush's life was his secret trip to Iraq. "As I think about his leadership, "Kerik recalled, "I think of the courage it took for our commander in chief to land on an airstrip in the dark of night, a world away, to be with our troops on Thanksgiving."

Thanksgiving? You mean, six months after we captured the airport and Bush declared victory? And isn't "the dark of night" normally a term we use to describe the preferred arrival and departure time of people who aren't exactly overflowing with courage?

Arnold used the girlie men phrase again to describe those who complain about the economy. Like the 300,000 folks who lose jobs every week?

This is what a Yale education will do for you.

Text of a speech by Jenna and Barbara Bush delivered Tuesday at the Republican National Convention, as transcribed by e-Media Inc.:

Diaries :: Hudson's diary ::

JENNA BUSH: It's great to be here. We love Arnold. Isn't he awesome?

Thanks to him, if one of us ever decides to marry a Democrat, nobody can complain, except maybe our grandmother, Barbara. And if she doesn't like it, we would definitely hear about it.

We already know she doesn't like some of our clothes, our music, or most of the TV shows we watch.

Gammie, we love you dearly, but you're just not very hip.

She thinks "Sex and the City" is something married people do, but never talk about.

We spent the last four years trying to stay out of the spotlight. Sometimes, we did a little better job than others.

We kept trying to explain to my dad that when we are young and irresponsible, well, we're young and irresponsible.

BARBARA BUSH: Jenna and I are really not very political, but we love our dad too much to stand back and watch from the sidelines.

We realized that this would be his last campaign, and we wanted to be a part of it.

Besides, since we've graduated from college, we're looking around for something to do for the next few years.

Kind of like dad.

JENNA: Our parents have always encouraged us to be independent and dream big. We've spent a lot of time at the White House, so when we showed up the first day, we thought we had it all figured out. But apparently my dad already has a chief of staff, named Andy.

BARBARA: When your dad's a Republican and you go to Yale, you learn to stand up for yourself.

I knew I wasn't quite ready to be president, but number two sounded pretty good.

Who is this man they call Dick Cheney?

JENNA: I think I know a lot about campaigns. After all, my grandfather and my dad have both run for president, so I put myself in charge of strategy. Then I got an angry call from some guy named Karl.

BARBARA: We knew we had something to offer. I mean, we've traveled the world; we've studied abroad. But when we started coming home with foreign policy advise, dad made us call Condi.

JENNA: Not to be deterred, we thought surely there's a place for strong willed, opinionated women in communications. And next thing we know, Karen's back.

BARBARA: So we decided the best thing we could do here tonight would be to introduce somebody we know and love.

JENNA: You know all those times when you're growing up and your parents embarrass you? Well, this is payback time on live TV.

BARBARA: Take this. I know it's hard to believe, but our parents' favorite term of endearment for each other is actually Bushy.

And we had a hamster, too. Let's just say ours didn't make it.

JENNA: But, contrary to what you might read in the papers, our parents are actually kind of cool. They do know the difference between mono and Bono. When we tell them we're going to see Outkast, they know it's a band and not a bunch of misfits. And if we really beg them, they'll even shake it like a Polaroid picture.

BARBARA: So, OK, maybe they have learned a little pop culture from us, but we've learned a lot more from them about what matters in life, about unconditional love, about focus and discipline.

They taught us the importance of a good sense of humor, of being open-minded and treating everyone with respect.

And we learned the true value of honesty and integrity.

JENNA: When you grow up as the daughters of George and Laura Bush, you develop a special appreciation for how blessed we are to live in this great country.

We are so proud to be here tonight to introduce someone who read us bedtime stories, picked up car pool, made us our favorite peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cheered for us when we scored a goal, even when it was for the wrong team.

BARBARA: Someone who told us we actually looked cute in braces, always welcomed our friends and was there waiting when we came home at curfew.

JENNA: Ladies and gentlemen, one of the two most loving, thoughtful people we know.

BARBARA: Your president and our dad, George W. Bush.

George the first had this nice comment to make on Wednesday last: “ I still have great difficulty with his (Kerry) coming back and making those statements before the Congress and throwing medals away," the president's father told Don Imus yesterday.

There is no record that Imus asked him to comment about his son George the second who was AWOL from the Nat’l Guard at the same time Kerry was testifying.

The Federal Reserve Board lays it out in its quarterly Flow of Funds report . (See tables D.1-3, on Pages 6-8 for the relevant data.) Total U.S. nonfinancial debt—which is all the debt held by governments, households, and companies not in the financial sector—has risen from $18.1 trillion in 2000 to $22.8 trillion in the first quarter of 2004. As a result, after holding steady for much of the 1990s, the ratio of nonfinancial debt to GDP has risen in each of the last few years and has topped 2 to 1 for the first time. Every component of that debt has been rising in alarming ways. Federal debt rose from about $3.4 trillion at the end of 2000 to $4.15 trillion in the first quarter of 2004—up more than 22 percent. Total household debt has soared from $7 trillion at the end of 2000 to $9.5 trillion in the first quarter of 2004, up 36 percent. The amount of outstanding mortgage debt has risen 43 percent in Bush's first term, while consumer credit is up 20 percent. State and local government debt has risen sharply, too, up 33 percent since the end of 2000. And with investment banks and hedge funds taking full advantage of Alan Greenspan's near-free-money policy, financial debt, too, has risen 35 percent since the end of 2000.

JUST DEMOCRACY Garrison Keillor's take on things...

Published on Thursday, August 26, 2004
by In These Times

We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore
How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the Party of Newt Gingrich's Evil Spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch President, a Dull and Rigid Man, whose Philosophy is a Jumble of badly sutured Body Parts trying to Walk?
by Garrison Keillor

Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned—and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today’s. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.

In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. “Bipartisanship is another term of date rape,” says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.

Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good.

Our beloved land has been fogged with fear—fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.

There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn’t the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it’s 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn’t the “end of innocence,” or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn’t prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time.

Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term.

This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm.

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.

This is a great country, and it wasn’t made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we’re not getting any younger.

Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It’s a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning.

Of course Krugman on Friday after the convention was worth the read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03krugman.html?hp

In the “will try it and if it doesn’t work he’s history” category:

After gauging the harsh reaction from Democrats and Republicans alike to Sen. Zell Miller’s keynote address at the Republican National Convention, the Bush campaign — led by the first lady — backed away Thursday from Miller’s savage attack on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, insisting that the estranged Democrat was speaking only for himself.

Late Thursday, Miller’s name was removed from the list of dignitaries who would be sitting in the first family’s box during the president’s acceptance speech later in the evening. No explanation was immediately offered, but the change was made only a few hours after Laura Bush, asked about Miller’s deeply personal denunciation of his own party’s nominee, said in an interview with NBC News that “I don’t know that we share that point of view.”

Rush Limbaugh on Zell Miller’s speech before he got the word from the White House to cool it on Zell:

I tell you who else going to be on fire last night -- American women. Because American women did not see a girly man, did not see some guy out there trying to finesse things.

They saw a guy. They saw a man be a man, talking about manly things, defending the country, defending family. You heard him talk about his family. This is -- this -- this is -- this is -- this is going to, I think, generate a lot of support from -- this is going to surprise a lot of people where the support comes from.

Limbaugh has had three wives (Family values?) and is now dating his fourth prospect, a CNN reporter, so we probably should take his great knowledge of what women want with several thousand grains of salt.

Conservative radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh, 53, who announced his separation from his third wife, Marta, in early June, is dating CNN anchor Daryn Kagan , 41, a spokesman for Limbaugh has confirmed to us. The two were spotted at a party Limbaugh co-hosted at a New York restaurant, where guests included Vice President Cheney, New York Gov. George Pataki and Sen. Bill Frist . The coupling came as a surprise to some friends who consider the Atlanta-based Kagan part of the liberal media axis and a feminist -- but, then again, opposites attract. Kagan, who has been with CNN for 10 years, hosts "CNN Live Today," which airs from 10 a.m. to noon, ending just in time to catch her sweetie's three-hour radio show.

Just like clock work the employment numbers begin to improve the night after Bush gives his acceptance speech. And the unemployment rate drops at 160,000 folks quit looking for work.

From Slate:

Here, one more time, is the truth of the matter: Kerry did not vote to kill these weapons, in part because none of these weapons ever came up for a vote, either on the Senate floor or in any of Kerry's committees.

This myth took hold last February in a press release put out by the RNC. Those who bothered to look up the fine-print footnotes discovered that they referred to votes on two defense appropriations bills, one in 1990, the other in 1995. Kerry voted against both bills, as did 15 other senators, including five Republicans. The RNC took those bills, cherry-picked some of the weapons systems contained therein, and implied that Kerry voted against those weapons. By the same logic, they could have claimed that Kerry voted to disband the entire U.S. armed forces; but that would have raised suspicions and thus compelled more reporters to read the document more closely.

What makes this dishonesty not merely a lie, but a damned lie, is that back when Kerry cast these votes, Dick Cheney—who was the secretary of defense for George W. Bush's father—was truly slashing the military budget.

Many folks seem to forget how Cheney became Vice president. Again from Slate

Cheney followed Zell, and couldn't help but begin with … not a lie, but certainly a howler: "People tell me Sen. Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal, his charm, and his great hair. [Pause] I said, 'How do you think I got the job?' "

Funny, apparently self-deprecating line, but does anybody remember how he did get the job? Bush had asked Cheney to conduct the search for a vice presidential candidate, and he came up with himself. He got the job because he picked himself.

Michael Moore has it just right again:

Why Democrats shouldn't be scared

By Michael Moore

NEW YORK — If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times from discouraged Democrats and liberals as the Republican convention here wrapped up this week. Their shoulders hunched, their eyes at a droop, they lower their voice to a whisper hoping that if they don't say it too loud it may not come true: "I...I...I think Bush is going to win."

Clearly, they're watching too much TV. Too much of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Zell Miller, Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani. Too much of swift boat veterans and Fox News commentators.

Action heroes always look good on TV. On Wednesday night, the GOP even made an action-hero video and showed it at the convention. There was White House political czar Karl Rove and other administration officials dressed up for "war" and going through boot camp on the National Mall in Washington.

I could only sit there in the convention hall and wish this were the real thing: Rove, national security adviser Condi Rice and Co. being sent to Iraq, and our boys and girls being brought home. But then the lights came up, and everyone sitting in the Bush family box was having a grand ol' hoot and a holler at the video they just saw.

For some reason, all of this has scared the bejabbers out of the Democrats. I can hear the wailing and moaning from Berkeley, Calif., to Cambridge, Mass. The frightening scenes from the convention have sent John Kerry's supporters looking for the shovels so they can dig their underground bunkers in preparation for another four years of the Dark Force.

I can't believe all of this whimpering and whining. Kerry has been ahead in many polls all summer long, but the Republicans come to New York for one week off-Broadway and suddenly everyone is dressed in mourning black and sitting shivah?

Exactly what moment was it during the convention that convinced them that the Republicans had now "connected" with the majority of Americans and that it was all over? Arnold praising Richard Nixon? Ooooh, that's a real crowd-pleaser. Elizabeth Dole decrying the removal of the Ten Commandments from a courthouse wall in Alabama? Yes, that's a big topic of conversation in the unemployment line in Akron, Ohio. Georgia Sen. Miller, a Democratic turncoat, looking like Freddy Krueger at an all-girls camp? His speech — and the look on what you could see of his strangely lit face — was enough for parents to send small children to their bedrooms.

My friends — and I include all Democrats, independents and recovering Republicans in this salutation — do not be afraid. Yes, the Bush Republicans huff and they puff, but they blow their own house down.

As many polls confirm, a majority of your fellow Americans believe in your agenda. They want stronger environmental laws, are strong supporters of women's rights, favor gun control and want the war in Iraq to end.

Rejoice. You're already more than halfway there when you have the public on board. Just imagine if you had to go out and do the work to convince the majority of Americans that women shouldn't be paid the same as men. All they ask is that you put up a candidate for president who believes in something and fights for those beliefs.

Is that too much to ask?

The Republicans have no idea how much harm they have done to themselves. They used to have a folk-hero mayor of New York named Rudy Giuliani. On 9/11, he went charging right into Ground Zero to see whom he could help save. Everyone loved Rudy because he seemed as though he was there to comfort all Americans, not just members of his own party.

But in his speech to the convention this week, he revised the history of that tragic day for partisan gain:

As chaos ensued, "spontaneously, I grabbed the arm of then-police commissioner Bernard Kerik and said to Bernie, 'Thank God George Bush is our president.' And I say it again tonight, 'Thank God George Bush is our president.' "

Please.

There were the sub-par entertainers nobody knew. There was the show of "Black Republicans," "Arab-American Republicans" and other minorities they trot out to show how much they are loved by groups their policies abuse.

And there were the Band-Aids. The worst display of how out of touch the Republicans are was those Purple Heart Band-Aids the delegates wore to mock Kerry over his war wounds, which, for them, did not spill the required amount of blood.

What they didn't seem to get is that watching at home might have been millions of war veterans feeling that they were being ridiculed by a bunch of rich Republicans who would never send their own offspring to die in Fallujah or Danang.

Kerry supporters and Bush-bashers should not despair. These Republicans have not made a permanent dent in Kerry's armor. The only person who can do that is John Kerry. And by coming out swinging as he did just minutes after Bush finished his speech Thursday night, Kerry proved he knows that the only way to win this fight is to fight — and fight hard.

He must realize that he faces Al Gore's fate only if he fails to stand up like the hero he is, only if he sits on the fence and keeps justifying his vote for the Iraq war instead of just saying, "Look, I was for it just like 70% of America until we learned the truth, and now I'm against it, like the majority of Americans are now."

Kerry needs to trust that his victory is only going to happen by inspiring the natural base of the Democratic Party — blacks, working people, women, the poor and young people. Women and people of color make up 62% of this country. That's a big majority. Give them a reason to come out on Nov. 2.

From the Daily Howler:

The time has come when our uncaring Democrats have to start telling the truth to the people. But what meta-narrative should the Dems tell? They need to tell an accurate narrative: Every four years, Republican hacks make a joke of our lives, inventing strange stories about the Dem candidate. They distract; they deceive; they direct us to trivia; they make a joke of our public discussion. It’s perfectly clear that our Big Major Dems don’t really care if this costs them elections. But will these lazy, feckless pols ever defend the rights of the public? Will they ever show that they actually care when a joke is made of our White House elections? On Wednesday night, the Bush camp was lying in voters’ faces in those speeches by Miller and Cheney. And the DNC plainly doesn’t care—doesn’t bother debunking the charges, doesn’t bother explaining the process. As long as they get to sell us their cook books, the whole thing is just fine by them.

The DNC needs a meta-story—the Republicans keep making a joke of your discourse. But to tell a story, again and again, DNC honchos have to believe it—and care. We see no sign that they really do care, and that explains our quadrennial clowning. Clearly, the Washington press doesn’t care. Does the DNC care? Let them prove it.

If you are worried about the Time Poll read the following. By the way we think it is great that Time has Bush way ahead because when the numbers begin to come together the story line should but probably won’t but could change to Kerry gathering momentum.

Please Note that this polling company did something unheard of during a convention they pushed the undecided likely voters to make a choice. Also again I want to point out that this poll was done during the RNC while the Time poll for the DNC was done 5-7 days later, not at the height of the convention.

Why is this bad? Because this far out you don't push leaners. Because you don't push undecideds during a convention. The reason is obvious from they are caught in the moment to they have no contradictory information yet and they are involved and not distracted.

Note the dates of 8/24-26 in which Kerry and Bush are tied 46-46 just prior to the Republican convention.  In the LV section this date has an asterisk next to it. The asterisk says  that in that poll they didn't push the leaners. BUT in the convention poll they did push the leaners. This act alone, just changing from not pushing the leaners to pushing the leaners surely accounts for much of the seemingly large difference.  This change in methodology raises questions.  And why are they not aware of the methodological problems and why don't they tell us.

This indicates even more so that this poll should be or played down.

ANOTHER EMAIL

Dear Mr. Leibovich:

I saw you on Hardball and I was astonished by your credulity toward this poll.  This Time poll for reasons that professionally are hard to fathom was conducted during the Republican convention.  Please note below that the Time poll also showed the greatest lead for Kerry after the convention.  But it was not conducted during the convention, but 5-7 days after.

 The DNC Time poll was conducted 5 days after the convention ended.  5 days afterward, not during and after the terrorism alert, Kerry lead Bush by 51-44 among RV's and 51-44 amongst LV's. This was also outside the margin of error.  I don't recall you or anyone else in the press using that earlier poll to say that Kerry was beating Bush. You all kept to the CW tht the race was a statistical tie.  For the entire spring Kerry was ahead of Bush in 90% of the polls within and without the margin of error and you all stuck to the "it's tied" CW.  When it really wasn't.

This present poll inexplicably was conducted during the height of the convention when Repubs were likely home watching and Dems weren't.  The only poll I know of during the Democratic convention was an overnight Newsweek poll which showed Kerry 54-Bush 41.  If Time or others polled during the convention then Kerry also would have had higher numbers. So it brings up a question of why are they polling during the RNC convention, the most labile time frame, but not during the DNC?  Who and why do they make such a decision? Even if there is no "manipulative" reason it is still comparing apples to grapefruit and so should be played down not played up.

Why are you so ready to credit Bush and the RNC with brilliance when even now there are other polls like Zogby which shows a small Bush lead, 48-46 and ARG which shows a tie. Why are you highlighting this poll which has timing and methodological problems.  Why is the press so ready to roll over when Republicans call the shots.  What is it, Pavlovian conditioning.?  Well it could be?

There is an interesting possible methodological problem, which is ,for some reason, they first ask to speak to a male ,and if the male is not there they then ask to speak to  a woman.  This could skew the poll Republican as women skew Democratic.

All in all you are making too much at this point of very little.  But the fat that this poll and the RN C's efficacy does create a story line that biases a future outcome.

Hullablaoo had the following thought:

Picture If You Will

It's September of the year 2000. The election is heating up. And it is revealed:

FBI counterintelligence investigators have in recent weeks questioned current and former U.S. officials about whether a small group of Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in the Vice President's office may have been involved in passing classified information to an Iraqi politician or a U.S. lobbying group allied with Israel, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case.

Does the Malebranche in The Inferno come to mind? Yeah, me too.

From http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/                   ;

This morning Atrios posted a link to a really, fine, angry visual rebuttal to the veteran-dishonoring RNC Republicans. If you liked that, you might also appreciate this story (spotted by Barbara O'Brien at the Mahablog):

NEW YORK - Young Republicans gathered here for their party's national convention are united in applauding the war in Iraq, supporting the U.S. troops there and calling the U.S. mission a noble cause.

But there's no such unanimity when they're asked a more personal question: Would you be willing to put on the uniform and go to fight in Iraq?...

"Frankly, I want to be a politician. I'd like to survive to see that," said Vivian Lee, 17, a war supporter visiting the convention from Los Angeles,

Lee said she supports the war but would volunteer only if the United States faced a dire troop shortage or "if there's another Sept. 11."

"As long as there's a steady stream of volunteers, I don't see why I necessarily should volunteer," said Lee, who has a cousin deployed in the Middle East....

"If there was a need presented, I would go," said Chris Cusmano, a 21-year-old member of the College Republicans organization from Rocky Point, N.Y. But he said he hasn't really considered volunteering....

"I physically probably couldn't do a whole lot" in Iraq, said Tiffanee Hokel, 18, of Webster City, Iowa, who called the war a moral imperative. She knows people posted in Iraq, but she didn't flinch when asked why she wouldn't go.

"I think I could do more here," Hokel said, adding that she's focusing on political action that supports the war and the troops.

"We don't have to be there physically to fight it," she said....

Emulating the president, clearly.