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29 October 2004
We find it hard to
believe that a born again saved Christian would do this, but then we remember
Big Dick Cheney’s words to Senator Leahy on the floor of the Senate and wonder
where the civility these folks promised is.
Bush's "one finger victory salute"
by kos
Wed Oct 27th, 2004
at 20:59:10 GMT
From Texans for Truth:

-------
WWJD?
And no, that's not a photoshopped image. It's real. Check out the video.
And remember, this asshole is our president.
By the way the Texans
for Truth website has been crashed by Drudge followers.
*****
From http://www.juancole.com/
Brown: 2004 Bremer Report on al-Qaqaa Looting
Professor Nathan Brown of George
Washington University
writes:
In the dispute between the Kerry campaign and the Bush administration over the
disappearance of explosives at al-Qaqaa, the core of
the Bush defense is that we don’t know when the explosives disappeared; it
could have happened before American troops arrived. President Bush stated
today: “Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios,
including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even
arrived at the site. This investigation is important and it’s ongoing, and a
political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a
person you want as your commander in chief.”
I have to admit that I am unsure why this is a defense. If the investigation is
so important, why is it still ongoing? One CPA document (discussed below) makes
clear that the extent of looting has been known—not merely suspected but
documented and evaluated—for some time. The reason we don’t know when the
explosives disappeared is that we were not securing or monitoring the site. In
other words, our lack of knowledge about the date of the disappearance is
itself an indication that nobody was watching one of the most important
military production sites in the country. Thus, to proclaim now that we don’t
know what happened is not evidence of an open mind; it is evidence of an open
barn door. Why did Bush wait until October 2004 to look into the matter? The 18
½-month gap is no more to Bush’s credit than the 18
½-minute gap was to Nixon’s. It is the absence of evidence that is the problem.
But the absence of evidence is not evidence of absent-mindedness. There were
people who said a year and a half ago that this needed attention. In
particular, the IAEA was trying to examine the site from the very end of the
war. We barred them. In other words, the failure to monitor was not an oversight
but a policy decision. It may have been partly based on the size of the
American force, but it was also based on an ideological hostility to the United
Nations.
Actually, we do know a little bit more than has been reported. But the little
evidence we do have hardly supports the Bush case. What has been widely
reported is that during and immediately after the war, some American military
units and journalists briefly visited the site. What has not been reported is
that on 15 April 2004—a
year after the war—CPA head Paul Bremer issued a regulation transferring the
employees of some military industries to various parts of the Iraqi government.
I assume the point was to ensure that these critical people would get paid and
not defect to the insurgents. That regulation can be viewed here.
Annex A to the regulation mentions al-Qaqaa (see p. 3
of the annex) and the extent of damage and looting there. 37% of the buildings
were destroyed and fully 85% of its machines were destroyed or looted.
In other words, the place was very utterly trashed as of this past April, a
year into the Iraqi occupation.
What does this have to do with the flap between Bush and Kerry? Well, it seems
to me that if damage to equipment was so remarkably extensive—with the vast
majority of the equipment ripped out or destroyed—any of the military units or
journalists visiting in April 2003 should have noticed it even in a cursory
examination. One of the accounts (by Fred Wellman, a former spokesman for the
101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade) does indeed mention that looting was
underway on April 9. This was roughly when the Iraqi regime disintegrated and
the looting began, so the observation makes sense. Looting was not mentioned in
the accounts of the first American visit to the site, the previous week. I do
not know how long it takes to loot such a site so thoroughly (according the
original NY Times story, the looting was still going on quite recently), but it
seems that almost all of it occurred during the period of the American
occupation. When the explosives were taken cannot be ascertained from this. But
we seem to have evidence that virtually everything at the site—even the stuff
that was nailed down—was taken while it was under our nominal control.
- Nathan Brown
A Minneapolis TV station was at the ammo dump and took
pictures of the munitions that were there. Click on the LINK below to read the article. If the bloggers have any power it
will be all over the news by the time you read this.
KSTP Exclusive: A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew in Iraq
shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of
explosives disappeared.
Link:
28 October 2004
And so you would like to know why we think Kristof is a non starter as a columnist for the NYT. We know you didn’t ask but this line from today’s column will give a good idea.
“One example is Mr. Bush's determination since 9/11 to add to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, even though this pushes up gasoline prices. Mr. Bush's approach is foolish economically, and it is crazy politically. Yet his grim willingness to raise gas prices during his re-election campaign underscores a solidity of character and convictions.”
And so we are to think that Bush is steadfast and true because he does nothing to lower oil prices that are a huge profit center for his most loyal contributors and supporters. That is a true profile in courage for Bush according to Kristof
In the same article Kristof suggest that Kerry is a panderer for:
In fact, I'm convinced that Mr. Bush is not only smarter, but also a better man than his critics believes. Most important, he's not a panderer. While Mr. Kerry zigs and zags on trade and Middle East policy, Mr. Bush has a core of values and provides genuine leadership (typically, I believe, in the wrong direction, by trying to reshape America and the world according to a far-right agenda).
Kerry over the years has changed his mind on certain issues. That is now known as zigging and zagging in the intellectual writings of NYT columnists. Bush has core values? Bush’s core value is to get re-elected and he will say anything to get there, just like Kerry and every presidential candidate since George Washington. We know that since yesterday Bush said he was in favor of “civil unions’ and letting the states decide the issue when all summer and at the convention he said the opposite. But according to Kristof that isn’t pandering. So even though Kristof thinks Bush is wrong in his ideas Kristof believes Bush provides leadership. Stalin or Mussolini or Hitler all had real leadership under the Kristof standard.
*****
On Civil Unions A/K/A Gay Marriage the following from
http://americablog.blogspot.com/
John writes:
- I'm growing increasingly fascinated by Bush's embrace today of gay civil unions. This is big. It shows that Bush now feels he needs to embrace his inner homo in order to win this election. It shows that at the same time it's the middle and not the base that they now believe they need. It shows that the Mary Cheney brouhaha of 2 weeks was planned - meaning, it was part of this larger "Bush loves the homos, he really is compassionate" message they seem to think will woo the middle.
It finally shows that perhaps now we know why Pat Robertson lost it last week and fired a shot across the bow of the White House over Bush having told him there would be on casualties in Iraq. I wonder if Robertson didn't get wind that Bush was going to embrace gay rights this week, and decided to warn them in advance that they'd better not mess with the far-right bigots.
Ok, this is turning into NOT an open thread. My main point is that we just won on marriage. Sure, we don't have gay marriage yet, but now Bush is saying he supports civil unions, so the argument is over. Now we're just haggling over a word. I word I want, but a word nonetheless. You can't say you support gay couples having equal benefits rights, and then not say they deserve equal employment protection, equal social security, etc. etc. Bush just gave us a win on everything. The religious right ought to be pissed as shit.
Will Bush screw us again? Of course he will. But that's not the point. We have one of the most conservative presidents of all time endorsing our equal rights, and we'll be able to quote it back every single time we have a future battle on any gay rights issue. Culturally, this is HUGE what Bush has done in his desperation to win re-election. He just fucked the religious right. Talk about October Surprise.
*****
The General was on a roll today and we don’t want you to miss it.
From http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
All Ca-Ca
posted by Jezebel's Generous |
3:50 AM
Rush to War
posted by Gen. JC Christian, Patriot |
2:45 AM
Congressman upholds traditional values
posted by Gen. JC Christian, Patriot |
2:28 AM
27 October 2004
The missing 380 tons
of explosives is going to be the turning point of the last week of the
campaign.
*****
The October 25
Talking Points Memo has an exhaustive discussion of the subject including why
the Bushies lame denial doesn’t compute at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
*****
Prime Minister Allawi of Iraq has blamed the U.S. Coalition for ‘great
negligence’ in the killing of the Iraqi soldiers yesterday. We wonder if Bush
will attack him now.
*****
The New Yorker, the
best general interest magazine in the country has endorsed Kerry for President.
This is the first endorsement in its history. It’s long but worth the read. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?041101ta_talk_editors
26 October 2004
Bush doesn’t want to scare you but: "I
am worried about it (terrorist attack on Election Day) and we should be worried
about it. On the other hand, I don't want people to say, that he knows
something I don't know and therefore, something is imminent," Bush told
ABC News' Charles Gibson on "Good Morning America."
*****
Rehnquist turned 80 earlier this month, a milestone reached by only one other
chief justice of the United States. The only older chief justice was Roger
Taney, who presided over the high court in the mid-1800s until his death at 87.
Taney was the jurist who wrote the Dredd Scott decision. Two of a kind.
*****
A
SIX-YEAR-OLD boy MAY HAVE been cured of a rare blood disorder after
receiving blood cells from a baby brother born to save him, it was revealed
last night.
Doctors believe the recovery of Charlie Whitaker from the
condition known as Diamond Blackfan anaemia is a major step forward in
stem-cell treatment and gives families new hope of saving their sick children.
He is believed to be the first child in Britain, and among only five in the world, to receive a successful
transplant from a sibling born to help cure an illness. His parents received
initial treatment, including IVF, from the Assisted Reproduction and Gynecology
Centre, in London.
But a ruling by Britain’s Human Fertilization and
Embryology Authority (HFEA) meant the couple was forced to turn to a clinic
in Chicago to complete the procedure. In 2002, two embryos were implanted
in Mrs. Whitaker. In June last year, she gave birth to Jamie, a genetic match
for his brother. It meant stem cells from his umbilical cord could be used to
treat Charlie. Three months on from the transplant at Sheffield Children’s
Hospital, tests on his bone marrow have produced promising results.
"All the indications now are that he is almost
cured," said Mohamed Taranissi of the Assisted Reproduction and Gynecology
Centre. "It’s very positive news."
*****
We aren’t surprised
that the top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of
Engineers, charging that the Army granted the Halliburton Company large
contracts for work in Iraq and the Balkans without following rules designed to
ensure competition and fair prices to the government, has called for a
high-level investigation of what she described as threats to the
"integrity of the federal contracting program." Calling Dick Cheney.
*****
350 tons of explosives are missing in Iraq
on Bush’s watch.
John Kerry’s comment:
""Now we know that our country and our troops are
less safe because this president failed to do the basics," Kerry said,
according to the LA Times. “This is one of the great blunders of Iraq,
and one of the great blunders of this administration. And the incredible
incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at
risk, and put this country at greater risk than we ought to be."
Unnamed senior official of the Bushies says:
"In the grand scheme -- and on a grand scale -- there
are hundreds of tons of weapons, munitions, artillery, explosives that are
unaccounted for in Iraq,"
the official said. "And like the Pentagon has said, there is really no way
the U.S.
military could safeguard all of these weapons depots or find all of these
missing materials." So why try?
Joe Lockhardt’s (Kerry’s press spokesperson) comment:
“Today, the Bush
administration must answer for what may be the most grave and catastrophic
mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq.
How did they fail to secure nearly 380 tons of known, deadly explosives despite
clear warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency to do so? And why
was this information unearthed by reporters -- and was it covered up by our
national security officials?
“These explosives can be used to blow up airplanes, level buildings, attack our
troops and detonate nuclear weapons. The Bush administration knew where this
stockpile was, but took no action to secure the site. They were urgently and
specifically informed that terrorists could be helping themselves to the most
dangerous explosives bonanza in history, but nothing was done to prevent it
from happening.
“This material was monitored and controlled by UN inspectors before the
invasion of Iraq.
Thanks to the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration, we now have no
idea where it is.
“We need to know what the administration knew about this and when. We need to
know why they failed to safeguard these explosives and keep them out of the
hands of our enemies. The National Security Advisor should be at her desk in Washington
tomorrow to work this problem and answer these questions, instead of giving
speeches in battleground states.”
*****
Keep
the faith, we are going to win. Back in 2000 Zogby showed Bush
gaining while Gore was dropping and the polls were wrong. From http://americablog.blogspot.com/
Here's what Zogby showed at this time in 2000 - Bush going
up, Gore going down, and Bush getting further ahead. Oops.
Permanent Link
It is obvious
to us at least that the way the Iraq troops are being gathered to train to
take over from U.S. soldiers is an open invitation for insurgents to join and
screw up things. The 50 Iraqi soldiers were probably spotted or killed by infiltrators
according to press reports by the AP.
*****
Psalm
2004
Bush is my shepherd, I shall be in want.
He maketh me to lie down on park benches;
He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth my doubts about the Republican Party.
He leadeth me onto the paths of unemployment for His cronies' sake.
Yea, though no weapons of mass destruction have been found,
He makest me continue to fear Evil.
His tax cuts for the rich and His deficit spending discomfort me.
He anointest me with never-ending debt:
Verily my days of savings and assets are kaput.
Surely poverty and hard living shall follow me all the days of His
administration,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever
Charm and beauty are worthless if your heart is cold and your head empty.
*****
25 October 2004
The Bushies have a
new commercial where they use wolves to supposed scare folks about John Kerry.
We guess it works for them? Last night on CNN Candy Crowley and John King made
a big deal about how the commercial was made five months ago but that it tested
so well in focus groups that the Repubs saved it for a special now. Well we
haven’t seen it but with all the terror and atrocities in the world including
that poor Care Worker in Iraq
we doubt that five wolves are going to scare us. Besides we have already voted.
Anyway the wolves want to have their say and you can go to
their website and find out that they thought they were making a Greenpeace
Commercial. It figures coming from the Bushies.
Irony is not dead.
Here is the website http://www.wolfpacksfortruth.org/
*****
Q. What's the
difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?
A. George W. Bush had a plan to get out
of the Vietnam War.
*****
Bush supporters are wildly misinformed.
–
75% believe Iraq
was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.
–
74% believe Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in
agreements on trade.
–
72% believe Iraq
had WMD or a program to develop them.
–
72% believe Bush supports the treaty banning landmines.
–
69% believe Bush supports the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
–
61% believe if Bush knew there were no WMD he would not have gone to war.
–
60% believe most experts believe Iraq
was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.
–
58% believe the Duelfer report concluded that Iraq
had either WMD or a major program to develop them.
–
57% believe that the majority of people in the world would prefer to see Bush
reelected.
–
56% believe most experts think Iraq
had WMD.
–
55% believe the 9/11 report concluded Iraq
was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.
–
51% believe Bush supports the Kyoto
treaty.
–
20% believe Iraq
was directly involved in 9/11.
(Program
on International Policy Attitudes)
*****
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
and Josh Marshall has an October 22 post that explains that the Bushies are
revising history when they deny that the Pentagon and CIA thought Osama was at
Tora Bora when they hired locals to try and get him. It made no sense then not to
have the 10th Mountain Division go after them as John Kerry has said
repeatedly, and the Bushies revisionism of those events is part of the very
dangerous pattern of never admitting a mistake.
*****
We thought this
comment from the great electoral vote count website that you should
bookmark was cute: http://www.electoral-vote.com/
If you ever write
some document and can arrange for 600,000 proofreaders, I highly recommend it.
You catch all the errors that way.
*****
22 October 2004
Oh the humanity
by John in DC - 10/21/2004 11:23:53 AM
| Permanent Link |
The big story of our
day is the Reverend Pat Robertson saying that before the War in Iraq Bush
told him there would be no casualties. The White House of course went ballistic
and denied the story without calling Robertson a liar.
We don’t know the truth or falseness of Robertson’s
statement but with friends like him the Bushies are in big trouble.
By the by www.talkingpoints.com
has this tidbit describing another time Robertson said close to the same thing:
As Andrew Sullivan notes
this evening, back in June on Hardball Robertson said...
I felt very uneasy
about [the war] from the very get-go. Whenever I heard about it, I knew it was
going to be trouble. I warned the president. I only met with him once. I said, you better prepare the American people for some serious
casualties. And he said, oh, no, our troops are, you know, so well protected,
we don't have to worry about
*****
From Tom Friedman:
In British politics there used to be a standard test for
candidates for prime minister: Would you want to go on a tiger hunt with this
person? That is, would this candidate kill the tiger or try to reason with the
tiger? Graham Allison, the Harvard international relations professor who just
published a book called "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable
Catastrophe," said to me the other day that the tiger hunt is even more
relevant in America
today.
"The big question about Kerry is, Will he pull the trigger?" Mr.
Allison said. "And the big question about Bush is, Can he aim? With Bush,
we know he can pull the trigger, but it's like he shot himself in the foot -
and the tiger is still out there. It's the tiger who needs to be shot, not
us."
Well Kerry pulled the trigger when is counted in Vietnam,
while Bush pulled stateside duty in the National Guard. Then Kerry had the guts
to protest the war while Bush descended into the gutter for 15 years.
*****
From Maureen Dowd:
What does it tell you about a president that his grounds for war are so weak
that the only way he can justify it is by believing God wants it? Or that his
only Iraq policy
now - as our troops fight a vicious insurgency and the dream of a stable
democracy falls apart - is a belief in miracles?
Miracles make the incurious even more incurious. People who live by
religious certainties don't have to waste time with recalcitrant facts or moral
doubts. They do not need to torture themselves, for example, about dispatching
American kids into a sand trap with ghostly enemies and without the proper
backup, armor, expectations or cultural training.
Any president relying more on facts than faith could have seen that his
troops would be sitting ducks: Donald Rumsfeld's experiment - sending in a
light, agile force (more a Vin Diesel vehicle than a
smart plan for Iraq)
- was in direct conflict with the overwhelming force needed to attempt the
neocons' grandiose scheme to turn Iraq
into a model democracy.
*****
We didn’t run this
picture yesterday but after reading about Bush’s conversation with
Robertson we think it has value. Visit the website too.
Say hello to Enjoy the Draft, by Blogpac. You can
take the graphics and put them on your own site. E-mail the page to your
friends.


Love this picture
of GW with Jenna and Barbara...
*****
Muscatine,
Iowa – Today,
Senator John Edwards issued the following statement about all of the Bush
Administration’s political activity this campaign season:
“There’s a problem when our troops are in harm’s way, fighting for a secure Iraq
and our national security adviser is out on the stump campaigning instead of
working.
“There’s a problem when the Vice President is warning of a nuclear attack and
the Homeland Security Secretary who has declared that he is separate from
politics spends the bulk of his time traveling battleground states.
“There’s a problem when there is a flu shot shortage and the Secretary of
Health and Human Services is too busy advocating for George Bush instead of
those who most need these shots.
“There’s a problem when the economy has lost 800,000 jobs and the Treasury
Secretary is out on the stump calling these losses a myth instead of focusing
on bringing them back.
“There’s a problem when the Chinese are playing fast and loose with our trade
agreements and the Commerce Secretary is acting like it’s having no impact on
our manufacturing companies here at home.
“But I know how to fix this problem – it’s called Election Day. On November 2,
we’re going to cast the votes to put John Kerry into the White House and we’re
going to nip this problem in the bud.”
*****
This is from http://americablog.blogspot.com/
Why is our National Security Advisor out campaigning?
by David - 10/21/2004 08:15:00
AM
Missed this in all the hubbub yesterday...
Condi Rice is uncharacteristically giving
speeches in battleground states like Ohio,
Florida, Pennsylvania
and Michigan. Interesting that it
coincides with Cheney’s return to mushroom-cloud talk.
Before anyone gives me any crap about the need for her to go outside the
beltway, the Post article above has a picture of her at the CLEVELAND BROWNS
PRACTICE FIELD in Berea, Ohio.
What, does Jeff Garcia need a briefing on the threats to the West Coast
Offense?
These are the same people who criticize John
Edwards for being "senator gone?" Our National FREAKIN' Security
Advisor is out campaigning!!! How many briefings is she missing? How many
reports is she not reading?
And most importantly, does she have a copy of "my pet goat" handy if
anything happens while she's out?
Comments (19) | Permanent Link |
*****
This Frank Rich article is a must
read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/arts/24rich.html
21 October 2004
We were amused
yesterday by the charge by Tommy Thompson, the know nothing former governor
of Wisconsin who blamed the flu
crisis on guess who? Yes you are correct if you guessed Bill Clinton. Tommy also
wants to help Chiron, the biotech company that screwed up, to raise capital so
that next year’s flu vaccine will be available.
*****
The final irony is
that all the flu vaccine available in the U.S.
this year is being made by a French company Adventis Pasteur. Don’t see folks
raising the nothing French cry now.
*****
Bill Frist the Senate Majority Leader thinks that all
members of Congress should get flu shots because they mingle with a lot of
people. Who doesn’t? Joe Lieberman, who
is 62, plans to get the shot so that he doesn’t spread the disease to
constituents. Lieberman sounds more like a Republican prevaricator every day.
*****
During the debates
Bush made a comment that one reason for the lack of flu vaccine was
lawsuits by trial lawyers. But, the NYT about a week too late comments on that
and on similar charges by Tommy Thompson and Dick Cheney:
Mr. Thompson said that more had been done to fight
the flu by this administration than by any previous one. Echoing comments made
in recent days by Vice President Dick Cheney, he said that tort reforms
proposed by the administration were needed to help vaccine manufacturers even
more.
But Congress in 1986 passed the National Childhood
Vaccine Injury Act that largely shields vaccine manufacturers from serious
legal liability. Congress voted this year to add flu vaccines to the program, a
bill that only awaits President Bush's signature, according to a spokesman for
the program.
*****
Nader has fallen to 1% in most polls. It is
our contention that those folks who are going to vote for Nader this year
probably wouldn’t vote if he weren’t on the ballot.
*****
Listening to CNBC
this morning the talking heads were commenting on the poll by the WSJ that
had Kerry and Bush tied among Likely Voters. Only they didn’t mention that part
of the poll, they were content to talk about the poll that had Bush up by 2
among registered voters. For the last month the talking heads have been content
to talk about the polls of Likely voters because they showed Bush with the
largest lead.
*****
Cheney charged yesterday that Kerry
didn’t have the strength to lead the country in a time of terrorism. Cheney was
in Carroll, Ohio,
when he raised the specter of terrorists with biological, chemical or even
nuclear weapons attacking U.S.
cities.
Cheney said Kerry is trying to persuade voters he would be the same type of
"tough, aggressive" leader as Bush in the fight against terrorism and
the vice president said. "I don't believe it."
This charge against Kerry is being leveled by a fellow who spent 7 years avoiding
being drafted to fight in a war he believed in because he “has better things to
do.”
*****
The chutzpah of the
Republicans is a wonder. Cheney did all he could to avoid the draft and
Bush ran election campaigns while in the national Guard and yet the two of them
have spent the last week questioning Kerry’s bravery and commitment to the
United States. There are special places in the afterlife reserved for folks
like these.
*****
When Allan Murray, a
political guru of the WSJ, appears on CNBC he often refers to some internet
trading exchange where bets on who will win the presidency are traded. The unit
of trading is $100 and it has consistently shown Bush leading Kerry by a 60/40
margin or larger. Referring to this betting as any indication of true voter sentiment
is a symptom of the lack of sophistication of the press corps or of their
contempt for the intelligence of folks who are viewers/readers of their
comments.
*****
Notice how Bush says
he will preserve Social Security for Seniors. That is the only promise he makes. If the Bushies
truly believe that Social Security will be insolvent unless folks are allowed
to invest in the stock market then why doesn’t the Social Security
Administration earmark a percentage of funds to a broad participation in the stock
market? To complete the rearrangement make Congressional pensions contingent on
the returns and solvency of the Social Security Fund and not on a percentage of
the salaries the Congressmen pay to themselves. We know that is too simple a
concept.
*****
Pat Robertson was
interviewed on the Paula Zahn show on CNN and since he is a preacher you
know he would never lie. In that interview he said:
Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he
had that conversation with the president in Nashville,
Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion.
He described Bush in the meeting as "the most self-assured man I've ever
met in my life."
"You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looks like
a contented Christian with four aces.' I mean he was just sitting there like,
'I'm on top of the world,' “Robertson said on the CNN show, "Paula Zahn
Now."
"And I warned him about this war. I had deep
misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr.
President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "
Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any
casualties."
*****
One final Bush quote: George W.
Bush on sacrifice:
"I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I
had a choice, I'd rather go to war."
Houston Chronicle, January 2002
*****
We wonder how this clown missed
contraception. Before “Choice” was recognized by the Supremes as residing
in the Constitution, “contraception” was the ‘biggy’ that got you
excommunicated. Before that it was that the “world was round”.
There is no element of the common good, no morally
good practice, that a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be
dedicated, which could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses and
supports the deliberate killing of the innocent, abortion, embryonic stem-cell
research, euthanasia, human cloning or the recognition of a same-sex
relationship as legal marriage," Raymond
Burke, archbishop of St. Louis, Mo., said in a pastoral letter.
But then Burke thinks contraception is abortion so it is included but he
doesn’t want to say contraception because then 50% of those who still go to
church would stop. That litany of proscribed stuff reminds us of the TV ad the
Repubs were running about
“Latte drinking, sushi eating, NYT reading,
Garrison Keilor listening, Volvo driving Liberals.”
Both descriptions fit us to a tee.
*****
20 October 2004
This blogspot gives
the breakdown of the latest Gallup
poll that showed Bush leading by 8 points. It is worth reading if you are
worried about Kerry not being in the lead.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/003054.html
We’ve been watching
CNN at night and Candy Crowley is the reporter covering the Kerry Campaign.
She seldom has a nice word for the Kerry folks. The CNN/Gallup poll is called
an outlier in that it is so far out of synch with other polls being taken at
the same time. But that doesn’t stop the reporters and talking heads from
announcing that Bush is building a lead over Kerry.
At least it isn’t as bad as the 2000 race and the way the media
skewered Gore. It did have an effect and still Gore won the election. Our take
is that Kerry and his folks are much better prepared to fight any vote count
shenanigans. But Bush controls the While House and the judicial machinery in
this country and so we hope that Kerry can make it too much to steal.
We are tired of presenting polls et al. we believe that
Kerry is doing great and running the type of campaign in the last two weeks
that should be run. The long lines for flu shots and the Bush foisting of
responsibility for the fiasco on the company that screwed up rather than on the
Tommy Thompson and the Bush health folks that have let this problem fester for years
is typical Bush stuff.
Today we present some Cheney comments from two days ago as
well as from several years ago to show how the Bushies prevaricate.
From comments made by
Cheney on 0ctober 18, 2004
Vice President Dick Cheney on
Monday blamed the threat of lawsuits, the yearlong efficacy of flu vaccines and
limited company profits for the shortage of the medication.
The Republican also argued that the presidential ticket of Sens.
John Kerry and John Edwards -- two Democratic lawyers -- would thwart medical
liability reform.
"Given John Edwards' background and John Kerry's voting record, there is
not going to be serious medical liability reform as long as the two of them are
in business," Cheney said at a campaign stop at a West
Virginia restaurant.
During a discussion with local residents, Cheney was questioned by a physician
about the limited supply of the flu vaccine. Nationwide, people have lined up
at pharmacies and supermarkets for the vaccine since Chiron Corp., which
usually provides half the nation's supply, announced it will not supply any
this season because of problems at its plant in Britain.
"It's a combination of the economics of the business. They produced
millions of doses, but if people don't take it, they have to throw it
out," Cheney said. "The other problem is liability concerns."
The vice president also pointed out that manufacturing the flu vaccine has not
been a money-maker for drug companies. "The problem we have run into,
producing vaccine is not a very profitable business," he said.
Amy Shuler Goodwin, a Kerry-Edwards spokeswoman, said Bush has ignored warnings
dating to 2001 from the FDA, the General Accounting Office and others of a
possible shortage. "Because the Bush administration failed to develop an
effective plan, millions of Americans at risk from influenza must go without a
flu vaccine," Goodwin said.
From http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
Inoculation Priorities
This shortage of flu vaccine is ironic in light of the
fact that the vice president himself spearheaded a (luckily) failed effort to force
every American to get vaccinated against smallpox which would have cost
billions upon billions and killed at least a thousand people. He was said to
have been messianic in his zeal to make vaccinations mandatory because of
Saddam's alleged stockpile of smallpox that, needless to say,
never turned up.
And, he didn't care any more about the potential deaths from the vaccine that
he cares about all the deaths that have taken place in Iraq.
MR.
RUSSERT: One of your many tasks in the administration, the point person on
bioterrorism; you’ve been spending some time at the Center for Disease Control.
Do you believe that all Americans should eventually be vaccinated against
smallpox?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We’re in the middle of improving our capability to do that.
A year ago, we had enough vaccine for maybe 15 million people. We’re now well
on the way to producing enough vaccine for 350 million people. There is serious
consideration now being given to what kind of vaccination program we want. You
go to first responders, people who have to deal with this when it first arises.
Do you do a broader group than that? Do you do it on a voluntary basis for
anybody who would like to have it? These are issues under active discussion,
deliberation. Tommy Thompson over at HHS has been actively involved in it as
well, too. It’s not a zero sum kind of proposition; that is, it’s not a
cost-free operation. There are side effects and consequences for most vaccines.
And you have to weigh those against the benefits that would be derived by
protecting the population.
MR. RUSSERT: If you vaccinated 300 million Americans, a thousand would die from
side effects.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t remember the exact numbers, but clearly there would
be some people who would be harmed as a result of the vaccination.
MR. RUSSERT: But the risk may be such we may come to that.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: That’s entirely possible.
It was only because the
medical community put it's collective foot down
that Cheney was stopped from forcing everybody to get inoculated against a
disease that's been wiped out and to which Saddam had absolutely no access.
More than 80 hospitals from every region in the USA,
including leading teaching hospitals and large, urban public hospitals, are
forgoing the vaccinations. The dissenters are a tiny fraction of the 3,000
hospitals recruited by state health officials to vaccinate doctors, nurses and
other hospital staff members who are most likely to care for smallpox patients.
But their numbers are growing as doctors and administrators at hospitals around
the USA are
concluding that the known health risks from the vaccine, which can cause illness and even
death, outweigh the unquantifiable risks of smallpox being used as a
terrorist weapon.
The refusal to vaccinate raises new questions about the president's plan just
as the first phase is expected to begin this week. And some health care experts
and government officials fear that any reluctance to participate in the first
phase could lessen the willingness of others to participate in the second phase
-- and undermine the administration's goal of eliminating smallpox as a viable
option for terrorists.
Richard Wenzel, chairman of internal medicine at Medical College of Virginia
Hospitals of Virginia Commonwealth University, finds the resistance neither
surprising nor unwarranted.
"This is not an issue that should be framed in terms of patriotism,"
he says. "This is an issue that's medical risk-benefit. We haven't seen
this disease for more than 25 years. We are reacting to a perceived threat
that's not well defined."
The hospitals are reaching their decisions individually after their own
in-house infectious diseases specialists study the Bush plan.
Almost as a rule, hospital administrators say they are reluctant to make some
of their employees sick to protect them from a disease that no longer exists
and would reappear only in the chance of a terrorist act.
The administration did all of this at the very same time that the public health
officials were warning of a shortage
of the flu vaccine.
"The thing that stops you from doing this is the
complexity of the smallpox vaccine, which is not a safe vaccine," says
William Schaffner, head of the preventive medicine
department at Vanderbilt University
Medical Center
in Nashville, one of the hospitals
that is opting out. "There's a real disease that kills people
unnecessarily: the flu. Mr. President, I would love to see you endorse a
national flu vaccine campaign with the same vigor."
Cheney never did learn his lesson from that. They spent millions and millions
to get a stockpile of vaccine for which there is absolutely no use and ignored
the professionals who warned that the flu vaccine was in short supply. And, a pouting
Dick Cheney obviously still harbors resentment about that:
Q: Are there any lessons for you in the way the smallpox
vaccine program sort of ran into public opposition? Is that an example of where
the public is less aware of the dangers than they ought to be?
CHENEY: Well, we — I'm trying to be careful here so I don't start another wave
of concern out there about smallpox. People clearly were concerned about the
side effects of the vaccine. I think there was a certain amount of complacency
in terms of people not being willing to take it as seriously as we thought it
should be taken. And so far we've been fortunate. Hopefully we will continue to
be fortunate. It's to some extent the responsibility, though, of those of us in
government to think about the what-ifs, to worry about the worst case, to look
at the evidence that's out there and connect the dots.
And we were criticized, the government was criticized generally prior to 9/11
for, "you didn't connect the dots." I think we did, but that charge
is made. Here you're in a situation where you clearly want to make certain that
you take all the intelligence available, you look at the capabilities of your
adversaries, you draw reasonable conclusions, and you act on those conclusions.
And that's what we did with respect to smallpox.
And the main effort there, the focus was to try to get enough people in the
medical community, first responders, inoculated, so that if we did get hit, we
could move aggressively to implement a national immunization program. We're
better off now than we were before we started, but clearly we fell short of
what we had originally anticipated, in terms of the numbers of people we would
like to have seen inoculated.
Yes. And luckily they fell short of killing about a thousand people that
wouldn't have had to die because of a threat that didn't exist. Smallpox is a
disease that has been eradicated. There is a very remote possibility that a
small amount could escape from the controlled storage facility, but we have
absolutely no evidence that it has happened. Dick Cheney tried to strong-arm
the CDC into demanding that every person in American be vaccinated because he
was trying to scare the country into supporting a war with Iraq
and as with everything else in that run-up he was willing to say anything to
make that happen. It is unconscionable that he actively fought against the
prevailing medical opinions that this country could deal with a real smallpox
outbreak without a full scale inoculation scheme in order to advance his
paranoid vision. (That it might have benefited a certain vaccine manufacturer
is something we might also ponder...)
After 9/11, the administration, Dick Cheney among the most hysterical, with
their friends the lapdog media were in the throes of a delusional fit busily
chasing phantom threats and science fiction scenarios instead of showing adult
leadership. The disaster in Iraq
and the shortage of flu vaccine of a piece. They are the result of the
leadership of this country falling to pieces after 9/11 and losing sight of the
nation's priorities. They have proved that they cannot be depended upon to keep
their heads when all around them are losing theirs.
digby 2:01
PM
19 October 2004
As of yesterday
according to Zogby, who had the best track record in the 2000 election, the
race is tied at 45/45.
The latest three-day tracking poll showed Kerry and Bush deadlocked at 45
percent apiece barely two weeks before the Nov. 2 election. The president had a
46-44 percent lead over the Massachusetts
senator the previous day, and a four-point lead the day before that.
About 7 percent of likely voters say they are still undecided between the
two White House rivals.
"This is, as I have said before, the same kind of roller coaster ride
we saw in 2000 with the lead changing back and forth and neither candidate able
to open up any kind of lead," pollster John Zogby said.
Kerry campaigned Sunday in Ohio
and Florida while Bush took a day
off in Washington. Ohio
and Florida top a list of about
10 tightly fought swing states where the race for the 270 electoral votes
needed to claim the White House will be decided.
With both candidates battling for every last vote, Bush holds a four-point
edge in the suburbs and the two candidates are tied in small cities, the poll
found. Kerry comfortably leads Bush among urban voters and Bush holds a strong
lead among rural voters.
Kerry, who is Catholic but has sparked opposition among some Catholic bishops
by supporting abortion rights, now leads among Catholic voters by 4 percentage
points.
The poll of 1,211 likely voters was taken Friday through Sunday and has a
margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. The rolling poll will
continue through Nov. 1 -- the day before the election.
A tracking poll combines the results of three consecutive nights of polling,
then drops the first night's results each time a new
night is added. It allows pollsters to record shifts in voter sentiment as they
happen.
Go to
this website for a complete rundown as of yesterday: http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/
If Halliburton made
flu shots there would be more flu shots than oranges. That’s a Kerry quote.
We do think as we said last week that Kerry missed a good chance at the last
debate to skewer Bush over the flu shot crisis. We do like the fact that Kerry
is going after Bush on Social Security, he should be on that subject every day
between now and election day.
Reuters is reporting that a
contingent of 95 riot police from China arrived in Haiti on Sunday to help
restore order in the Caribbean nation plagued with gang and political violence
that has killed more than 50 people over the past two weeks. The police joined
a small advance team of Chinese who arrived last month. They will become part
of a Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping mission to stabilize the country.
We can’t send troops or police to Haiti
but the Chinese can???
The Iraqi government continues to
buy arms from the insurgents and local folks in Iraq.
Then the folks go and join the army and police force and get new arms and then
eventually they will desert or refuse to fight and take their new guns home
with them. Well at least it gets some money to the non working population which
is probably the whole point of the exercise.
Lockhart Statement on
"Major Speech"
Washington, DC – Kerry-Edwards campaign Senior Advisor Joe Lockhart released
the following statement today on the president’s speech in New Jersey, which
the Bush campaign has billed as a “major address:”
“What the Bush campaign considers to be a major address provides a telling
window into this President and his priorities: He considers a nasty, vitriolic
attack line to constitute a significant address. What might have been new and
significant would have been the President addressing a health care crisis that
has forced New Jersey to hold a
lottery to decide who should get flu shots. But no, that would involve being
straight with the American public and taking responsibility for his
Administration’s inaction.”
18 October 2004
From
http://americablog.blogspot.com/
Thanks, Maureen
by David - 10/17/2004
09:51:31 AM
I'll confess: Maureen Dowd is not my favorite columnist at the NY Times. (Thomas
Freidman is. Yes, I'm a globalization geek, I know.)
But I was raised as a Catholic. That's why this
morning's column by Dowd is so important to me. I've been so absolutely
disgusted with the so-called leadership at my church I don't go anymore. Those
who were raised as I was understand how personally difficult it is to challenge
your church leaders. I've long wanted a spiritual outlet, and I've often wanted
it to be the church in which I grew up. Now of course, for reasons that make no
moral sense to me, I feel excluded.
Catholic leaders tell me that if I support, as Dowd puts it, "the Catholic
candidate and one-time Boston altar
boy who carries a rosary and a Bible with him on the trail" I'm not a
Catholic. If I support the war-mongering liar who supports executing
mentally-ill 16-year-olds and guts funding for things like domestic violence
prevention and welfare, I'm suddenly a good Catholic again.
It's no secret that the leadership of the Catholic church is still suffering
from a credibility gap with many of its followers. I'm sure that some leaders
in that church believe they still have an obligation to provide moral and
spiritual guidance to their followers, regardless of current events. But when
that guidance is so twisted, so obviously hypocritical as it is today, I'm even
more convinced that the same arrogance and flawed judgment that allowed them to
shield pedophiles and shame victims into silence is at work today, supporting
the incumbent.
They've learned nothing.
This is from http://www.dailykos.com/
Another Misfired
Election...Only Reversed?!
by Tom Schaller
Sun Oct 17th, 2004 at 22:10:30 GMT
Building upon DemFromCT's super post below , which points out the disparity between the
national race and the battleground state polls, I raise anew a question I posed
in a Washington Post op-ed last April: Could Kerry
actually lose the popular vote yet win the Electoral College?
With each passing day I'm more convinced that this scenario is at least
possible. Not probable, nor even likely
- because such "misfired" elections are rare. (Although
we had two of them within three cycles, in 1876 and again in 1888.) But
it's possible, especially given that the battleground v. non-battleground poll
discrepancies ratify the fact that the economies
of the swing states are performing worse than national averages.
How might Kerry win by losing, just as Bush did four years ago?
Well, for starters, in the nine states that gave Al Gore his widest total
vote margins - which, by definition, are either large states or overwhelmingly
Democratic ones (or both) - Kerry is currently leading Bush, but by smaller
margins. In terms of net popular votes, those nine (California
through Pennsylvania) alone gave
Gore a 5.8 million-vote lead over Bush in 2000. Here they are, listed in order
of Gore's 2000 "surplus" votes (it is a winner-take-all, so we
can call them surpluses), followed by Kerry's current polling lead (according
to electoral-vote.org,
as of Oct 17), and Gore's winning margin from 2000:
- New York: 1,704,442 surplus Democratic votes; 23 percent Kerry lead [25 percent Gore margin]
- California: 1,293,774; 8 [12]
- Massachusetts: 737,985; 14 [27]
- Illinois: 569,605; 16 [12]
- New Jersey: 504,677; 2 [16]
- Maryland: 331,985; 15 [16]
- Connecticut: 254,921; 9 [17]
- Michigan: 217,279; 8 [5]
- Pennsylvania: 204,840; 3 [4]
Notice that in seven states (Illinois
and Michigan excepted), Kerry's lead at the moment is less than Gore's final
margin. If the numbers hold, Kerry will not lose any of these nine
states - aside from the post-reapportionment net loss of six Democratic
electoral votes. Notice, too, that the difference between Gore's margin and
Kerry's poll numbers are dramatic in Massachusetts, New Jersey and, though
smaller by percentage, still significant in California and New York because
just a few percentage points in the two biggest Democratic states translates
into hundreds of thousands fewer Democratic votes.
You may be inclined to say, "So what? That's just the nine biggest
Democratic margin states." Ok, so let's multiply the current poll numbers
for Kerry-Bush in all 50 states+DC against either the
total votes cast in each state in 2000, or even the two-party subset of Gore+Bush (minus Nader, et al.)
net votes cast. Well, guess what: Bush would win the popular vote by 712K votes
in the first case, and 761K in the second. That wouldn't mean much, but for
this fact: Based on those very percentages, as electoral-vote.com has
them for today, Kerry is ahead of Bush in the Electoral College, 253-247, with
Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire tied.
If Bush closes in Florida,
he'll almost certainly win the electoral vote as well as the popular vote. But
if Kerry ekes out a win either in Ohio or Florida, both of which are tight
races, and carries those big nine states by narrower net margins that Gore did
at the same time Bush is holding or even improving his margins in his own
2000-victory states, the president could find himself leaving office the same
way he arrived: With a surplus of votes in the wrong states.
Wouldn't that be a hoot?
General 2004 :: Link & Discuss
(43 comments)
15 October 2004
Bill O’Reilly is
being sued for sexual harassment and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving
pompous jerk. From the complaint it is obvious that the woman who was his
producer has his harassing comments on tape. O’Reilly and Fox are countersuing
for extortion. O’Reilly had fun with Martha Stewart and her lies. So did
Limbaugh. The screw turns slowly but it may provide some amusement.
The O’Reilly folks defense is that the woman came back to
work at Fox after leaving so the harassment couldn’t have been that bad. We
don’t know whether Fox is aware that harassment is wrong the first time and the
last time and all the times in between and it is their responsibility to
provide a harassment free workplace.
The Washington Post reports that vaccine suppliers
are marking up doses of the flu vaccine to as much as $90 per dose for
hospitals and nursing homes. Where is the Bush administration on this? By the
way Kerry flubbed the answer to the vaccine question at last night’s debate. It
shows the cocoon these guys live in. When Bush said that flu manufacturers
could be sued he showed his lack of knowledge that a law has been passed by
Congress preventing lawsuits. And Kerry missed that point early in the debate
to place Bush on the defensive. Moreover, the fact that the flu vaccine is not
ordered and distributed by the Federal government is a scandal and a sop to
private enterprise that won’t do the job properly.
Lynne Cheney is all out of joint because Kerry referred to
Mary her daughter who is a lesbian when the question of whether homosexuality
comes from choice (or from genes) was asked last night. The Repubs are such hypocrites
on this issue that it is unnecessary to reply. But anyway that is their attack
on Kerry point today. So sad.
The following from http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
“He was, I think, on the side, maybe with his
pompoms?”
No, he had a great big megaphone:
And cheerleading was serious business for Junior. It's the
one thing he is trained for and the only thing he's ever been good at:
digby 5:24
PM Comments (22) | Trackback (0)
Today’s men cheerleaders are all weightlifters or gymnasts
because of the strength they need to perform the routines of modern
cheerleading.
More good stuff from
Digby:
Paging William Bennett. Outrage Is Dyin' Over Here
We stand for a culture of responsibility in America.
This culture of our country is changing from one that has said, if it feels
good do it, and if you've got a problem blame somebody else, to a culture in
which each of understands we're responsible for the decisions we make in life. George
W. Bush August 10, 2004
A middle aged Democrat had a consensual affair with a young female employee.
A middle aged Republican crudely groped and humiliated numerous women for over
twenty years on movie sets.
A middle aged radio superstar Republican bought hard drugs on the black market
and threatened his housekeeper if she fails to help him score.
A middle aged TV
gasbag Republican grossly sexually harrassed an employee and threatened her
with terrible retaliation if she spoke up.
Which of these middle aged men was vilified, derided and degraded as an immoral
misogynist who had soiled the very fabric of America?
Man, is this a great country to be a Republican or what? Par-tay down, Dough
Boyz! Anything Goes!!! IOKYAR, baby!!!
digby 4:56
PM Comments (11) | Trackback (1)
William Saletan has
an excellent discussion of the last debate at http://slate.msn.com/id/2108121/
14 October 2004
Three for three is as good as one can do
CNBC is running film
footage of the new CTX International Harvester Pickup Truck that looks like
a miniature over the road Cab Truck. $54 per barrel oil, a supposed war brought
on by the necessity to secure our oil supplies, and American business
introduces another behemoth. They want to attach an emotion to a commercial
application. The retail price of $95,000.
This is the headline
in the October 13 Online WSJ regarding the latest Furious George tax cut
for business:
BIG COMPANIES WILL USE much of their windfall from tax
legislation passed this week to reduce debt, buy back shares or make acquisitions,
although they lobbied Congress for the measure on the grounds that it would
spur job growth. Lawmakers also tucked big tax breaks for
energy-related industries into the legislation.
The headline says it
all.
From The Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1326037,00.html
Bush special envoy embroiled in controversy
over Iraq debt
Consortium plans to cash in as Baker asks countries to end £200bn burden
Read the
documents
Naomi Klein
Wednesday October 13, 2004
The Guardian
President Bush's special envoy, James Baker, who has been trying to persuade
the world to forgive Iraq's crushing debts, is simultaneously working for a
commercial concern that is trying to recover money from Iraq, according to
confidential documents.
Mr Baker's Carlyle Group is in a consortium secretly proposing to try to
collect $27bn (£15bn) on behalf of Kuwait,
one of Iraq's
biggest creditors, by using high-level political influence. It claims Mr Baker
will not benefit personally, but the consortium could make millions in fees,
retainers and commission as a result.
Other countries, including Britain,
have been urged by Mr Baker to relieve the new Iraq
regime of its $200bn debt burden. Iraq
owes Britain
approximately $1bn.
One international lawyer described the consortium's scheme as
"influence peddling of the crassest kind".
13 October 2004
Last debate Tonight
at 8pm.
Let’s all look for the black box on
Ferocious George’s back. By the way Bush’s tailor is named ? Mr. Bush’s tailor, George de Paris, was even called on to dismiss the rumors. He said
that the bulge was nothing more than a pucker along the jacket’s back seam.
Bush has a Frenchman for a tailor?
From http://corrente.blogspot.com/
Time to Render Unto Caesar, Boys
Tax 'em, dammit. Tax every last one of 'em, the dress-wearing,
child-molesting, woman-hating, collar-wearing, donation-hustling,
selective-scripture-reading, power-lusting lot of 'em.
(via NYT)
DENVER, Oct. 9 - For Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the
highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate in Colorado, a swing state, there is
only one way for a faithful Catholic to vote in this presidential election, for
President Bush and against Senator John Kerry.
"The church says abortion is a foundational issue,'' the archbishop
explained to a group of Catholic college students gathered in a sports bar here
on Friday night. He stopped short of telling them whom to vote for, but he
reminded them of Mr. Kerry's support for abortion rights. He did not explicitly
endorse Mr. Bush, but pointed out the potential impact his re-election could
have on Roe v. Wade.
To the dismay of liberal Catholics and some other bishops, traditional church
concerns about the death penalty or war are often not mentioned.
Archbishop Chaput said a vote for a candidate like Mr. Kerry who supports
abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research would be a sin that must be
confessed before receiving Communion.
"If you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" he asked.
"And if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession?
The answer is yes."
Archbishop Chaput says he has had no contact with either campaign or political
party. He says his sole contact with the White House has been his appointment
to the President's Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Oh yeah. No conflict there, no sirr-ree bob.
I know, I know. We're supposed to make nice with the Invisible Cloud Being's
earthbound buddies, and if we say anything mean about them their feelings will
get an ouchie and they'll pout and go vote for their Jesus-talk-spouting
Preznitwit.
My apologies to anybody who thinks the only reason peace, freedom and justice
are Good Things is because Jehovah said so. I prefer the "we hold these truths
to be self-evident" angle myself. But I'm just a little bit steamed right
now.
# posted by Xan : 10:57 PM | Comments (20) | Trackback (0)
By now we presume folks know that Sinclair
Broadcasting which owns 62 television stations has ordered its
general managers to replace prime time programming with a pseudo-documentary
negative to Sen. Kerry. The stations are to run this 45 minute documentary in
the final weeks of the campaign.
From http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON POST MISSES SWIFTEE-DOCUMENTARY LINK
This is from yesterday's
Washington Post story about Sinclair's decision to air the
anti-Kerry documentary Stolen Honor:
The documentary's producer -- a small production company in Harrisburg, Pa.,
headed by a former journalist, Carlton Sherwood -- has no official connection
to the Swift boat group.
Apologies for repeating myself, but let me give you this
link again -- it's to a September 29 press release that acknowledges a
direct connection between the Swift boat liars and this film:
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a non-partisan, non-profit group representing
more than 250 Swift Boat veterans who served with Senator John Kerry in Vietnam,
announced today they are joining forces with a group of American prisoners of
war who were held captive by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The
merger coincides with a new $1.4 million television ad campaign released by the
new group Swift Vets and POWs For Truth...
The POWs also released a new 40 minute documentary titled Stolen Honor:
Wounds That Never Heal, produced by Pulitzer Prize and Peabody Award winning
journalist Carlton
Sherwood (www.stolenhonor.com)....
So what's going on here? It seems to me that the mechanism for attacking
Kerry's war record may well have been designed months ago: The Swift boat guys
organize themselves as a 527, do a book, and run ads, and at roughly the same
time Sherwood does a documentary "independently" (while arrangements
are made with GOP-friendly Sinclair to show the film on TV in the fall). Then,
in the closing weeks of the campaign, the Swiftees' 527 join forces with a
heretofore distinct group to release Sherwood's "independent" film.
If the documentary had been made under the aegis of the Swift boat guys' 527,
it would be seen as a political ad and couldn't be shown on TV as
"news" during the campaign. Conversely, if the Swiftees hadn't
organized as a 527, they couldn't have run ads.
And yes, I think Karl Rove called this elaborate square dance.
posted by Steve M. | 10:04
AM
COUNTERSPIN
ACTIVISM: One of Sinclair's affiliates in Minneapolis
is asking people to vote on whether they should
air the anti-Kerry "documentary."
You know what to do.
[Don't forget to post this information in the comment sections of your favorite
blogs and message boards either].
ADDENDUM: If folks want to check the station websites for other Sinclair
affiliates in swing states for similar polls, please do so and post links to
them in the Kvetch section.
Go here to find them.
UPDATE: Their stations in Flint
(scroll down), Milwaukee, Cincinnatti,
Columbus, and
almost every other station have the same poll:
Reply To The Pro-Coat Hanger Crowd
Dr. Alison Murdoch, who directs a fertility center in England
is the mother of 4 children. In the
Times today:
"To those people who say a life is a life is a life,
ask them this question," she said. "There is a house, and their
2-year-old child is asleep in bed upstairs, and in their basement they have 10
embryos that are cryo-stored. The house catches fire, and they can go and save
either their child upstairs or their embryos in the basement, but not both.
Which would they go to?
"I can pretty well guarantee, certainly in the U.K.
audience, that 100 percent would say, 'I'll save my child.' They'll not let
their child burn to death in order to save 10 embryos that are
cryo-stored."
posted by
tristero permanent
link to this entry 10:46 AM
The
collapse of the flu vaccine this year is a true indictment of planners not
seeing the forest for the trees. Chiron is being thanked for working with HHS. Say what? They screwed
up and we thank them. The lack of the flu vaccine is going to kill and injure
many more additional folks than were killed on 9/11.
According to reports, influenza kills
36,000 Americans in an average year and
makes 200,000 sick enough to go to the
hospital.
12 October 2004
A new Zogby poll for Reuters has Kerry up by 3 Points over
Bush 47/44.
From: http://community.democrats.com/forums/discussions.cfm?forumid=170&topicid=139646
Here's a
side-by-side look at Bush's back in the two debates so far:
Here is the AP
original, at least until they scrub it.
On Friday, the NY Times,
the Washington Post, and Knight-Ridder tried to get an explanation for the
"T" - but none did very well (see below). If the White House couldn't
explain the "T", how will they explain the "hump"?
Many people believe it's a
communications device to feed answers to Bush (see http://isbushwired.com/).
But it could also be a
medical device, which might explain why
Bush refused to take his physical this year, just like he did in 1972 when
he deserted the National Guard.
Stay tuned...
The new name for Bush has changed from Dubya to Furious George.
And AMERICAblog visitor Andrew
sent me this version he created:
Another Furious George Resume
This
individual seeks an executive position.
>
He will be available next January, and is
>
willing to relocate.
>
>
>
RESUME
>
>
GEORGE W. BUSH
>
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
>
Washington, DC 20520
>
>
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
>
>
Law Enforcement:
>
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine,
>
in 1976 for driving under the influence of
>
alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my
>
driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving
>
record has been "lost" and is not available.
>
>
Military:
>
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and
>
went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or
>
answer any questions about my drug use. By
>
joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid
>
combat duty in Vietnam.
>
>
High School:
>
Never once made Honor Roll, but gained
>
admission to Yale.
>
>
College:
>
I graduated from Yale University with a
>
low C average. I was a cheerleader.
>
>
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:
>
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began
>
my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas,
>
in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't
>
find any oil in Texas. The company went
bankrupt
>
shortly after I sold all my stock. I bought the
>
Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal
>
that took land using taxpayer money. With the
>
help of my father and our friends in the oil industry
>
(including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected
>
governor of Texas.
>
>
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:
>
>
- I changed Texas pollution laws to favor
>
power and oil companies, making Texas the most
>
polluted state in the Union. During my tenure,
>
Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most
>
smog-ridden city in America.
>
>
- I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas
> treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed
>
money.
>
>
- I set the record for the most executions by
>
any governor in American history.
>
> -
With the help of my brother, the governor of
>
Florida, and my father's appointments to the
>
Supreme Court, I became President after losing
>
by over 500,000 votes.
>
>
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
>
>
- I am the first President in U.S. history to enter
>
office with a criminal record.
>
>
- I invaded and occupied two countries at
>
a continuing cost of over one billion dollars
>
per week.
>
>
- I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively
>
bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
>
>
- I shattered the record for the largest
>
annual deficit in U.S. history.
>
>
- I set an economic record for most
>
private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month
>
period.
>
>
- I set the all-time record for most foreclosures
>
in a 12-month period.
>
>
- I set the all-time record for the biggest drop
>
in the history of the U.S. stock market.
>
>
- In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans
>
lost their jobs and that trend ontinues every month.
>
>
- I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the
>
richest of any administration in U.S. history. My
>
"poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has
a Chevron
>
oil tanker named after her.
>
>
- I set the record for most campaign fundraising trips
>
by a U.S. President.
>
>
- I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder
for
>
receiving the most corporate campaign donations.
>
>
- My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and
>
one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided
>
over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S.
>
History, Enron.
>
>
- My political party used Enron private jets and
>
corporate attorneys to assure my success with the
>
U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.
>
>
- I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton
>
against investigation or prosecution. More time and
>
money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky
>
affair than has been spent investigating one of the
>
biggest corporate rip-offs in history.
>
>
- I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S.
>
history and refused to intervene when corruption
>
involving the oil industry was revealed.
>
>
- I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
>
>
- I changed the U.S. policy to allow
convicted criminals
>
to be awarded government contracts.
>
>
- I appointed more convicted criminals to administration
>
than any President in U.S. history.
>
>
- I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest
>
bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.
>
>
- I've broken more international treaties than any
>
President in U.S. history.
>
>
- I am the first President in U.S. history to have the
United
>
Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights
Commission.
>
>
- I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of
Law.
>
>
- I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners
>
of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by
>
the Geneva Convention.
>
>
- I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations
>
election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
>
>
- I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences
>
of any President since the advent of television.
>
>
- I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any
>
one-year period. After taking off the entire month of
August,
>
I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
>
>
- I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. after the
>
World Trade Center attacks and less than a
year later made
>
the U.S. the most hated country
in the world, the largest failure
>
of diplomacy in world history.
>
>
- I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to
>
simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million
people),
>
shattering the record for protests against any person in the
>
history of mankind.
>
>
- I am the first President in U.S. history to order an
>
unprovoked, preemptive attack and the military
occupation
>
of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of
the United
>
Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world
community.
>
>
- I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and
>
support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops
>
and their families in wartime.
>
> -
In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our
>
reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the
lies on
>
our British friends.
>
>
- I am the first President in history to have a majority
>
of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest
>
threat to world peace and security.
>
>
- I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical
> Bunker Buster," a WMD.
>
>
- I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring
>
Osama Bin Laden to justice.
>
>
RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
>
>
-All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now
>
in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for
public view.
>
>
- All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading
>
and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and
>
unavailable for public view.
>
>
- All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my
>
Vice-president, attended regarding public energy policy
>
are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.
>
>
PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN
>
2004!
>
>
PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERY VOTER YOU KNOW!
 
8 October 2004
Town Meeting tonight
at 8pm
CDT.
From http://americablog.blogspot.com/
No comment necessary
by John in DC - 10/7/2004 04:09:05 PM

Comments (8) | Permanent Link
As in this
release by the Department of Education:
The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for
people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of
terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia.
7 October 2004
Cheney sent listeners
to www.factcheck.com telling
listeners that is where they could they could find the truth about what
Edwards was saying about Halliburton. At www.factcheck.com
there is a message from George Soros asking folks to elect John Kerry
President. Cheney meant to send folks to www.factcheck.org.
And factcheck.org has a message saying that what Edwards said about Cheney is
basically correct. Oops!
In order to get in a
zinger, Cheney claimed he never met Edwards: from http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/10/cheney-lied.html
Cheney Lied
Claimed he'd never met Edwards. LIIIIAAAAAAARRRRRR.
February,
2001:
Congressman Wamp, Senator Edwards, friends from across America,
and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world: Lynne and I
are honored to be with you all this morning.

-Atrios 11:21 PM
Comments (254) | Trackbacks (12)
And another time from
www.dailykos.com:
Senator Edwards Escorted Elizabeth Dole When She Was Sworn
In As North Carolina's Other
Senator. Elizabeth Dole was sworn in as North
Carolina's other senator on January 8, 2003. Gannet News Service
wrote: "As per Senate tradition, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., escorted
her."
Dole Took The Senate Oath Administered By Vice President Dick Cheney.
According to Gannet News Service: "[Dole] raised her right hand and took
the oath administered by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Senate
president." [Gannet News Service, 1/8/03]
GOP goes after Moore over underwear
October 6, 2004
LANSING, Mich. -- Republicans say filmmaker Michael Moore should be
prosecuted for offering underwear, potato chips and noodles to college students
in exchange for their promise to vote.
The Michigan Republican Party has asked four county prosecutors to file
charges against Moore, charging
that his stunt amounts to bribery.
''We want everyone to participate in this year's election, but not because
they were bribed or coerced by the likes of Michael Moore,'' said Greg
McNeilly, executive director of the state Republican Party.
Moore, a Michigan native, is
touring the country and imploring ''slackers'' who usually don't vote to head
to the polls this year.
During each program, habitual nonvoters are invited on stage to pledge to
vote. First-time student voters are offered gag prizes such as clean underwear.
The GOP said Moore also offered
students a clean dorm room, a year's supply of Tostitos and a package of Ramen
noodles.
At this website is an example of how
bad the voting shenanigans are going to be this year. Follow the arrows. If
you vote for the Kerry/Edwards arrow you will be voting for Bush/Cheney.
Atrocious! http://www.livejournal.com/community/2004_elections/306938.html#cutid1
Cheney acted as President of the
Senate on Tuesdays two times in the last four years. That’s as many times
as Edwards was President Pro Tem. During the debate Cheney said he was at the
Senate most Tuesdays. The interesting thing is that Cheney lied about never
meeting Edwards since research shows he has met him at least three times and he
lied about being presiding over the Senate on Tuesdays when he said he was up
there most Tuesdays. He lied, just as he has lied about so many things in the
last four years. So strange!
From: http://www.aolwatch.org/backup/densityland.shtml
From Air America Radio is the news Dick Cheney made a
bizarre misstatement in Wednesday's
debate.
Cheney was repeating one of his campaign's standard attacks against John
Kerry....
And
with respect to this particular operation, we've seen a situation in which,
first, they voted to commit the troops, to send them to war, John Edwards and
John Kerry, then they came back and when the question was whether or not you
provide them with the resources they needed -- body armor, spare parts,
ammunition -- they voted against it.
But this time, Cheney added a bizarre theory.
I
couldn't figure out why that happened initially. And then I looked and figured
out that what was happening was Howard Dean was making major progress in the
Democratic primaries, running away with the primaries based on an anti-war
record. So they, in effect, decided they would cast an anti-war vote and they
voted against the troops.
Now if they
couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we
expect them to stand up to Al Qaida?
Air America Radio pointed out that Howard
Dean wasn't "running away" with any primaries. As the contests
were held, he placed 3rd, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 5th, 5th...
Eventually racking up a whopping 170 delegates (out of 2162 needed.) Kerry
placed first in the first nine
primaries.
But there's another more important fact. This all-crucial vote that Dick
Cheney focused on, that he "looked" at to "figure out why that
happened." The vote was held four
months before the primaries even started.
FactCheck.org identifies
that vote as occurring in October of 2003.
Air America theorized that the conservatives love making crazy
connections between their opponents and Howard Dean.
6 October 2004
Tie goes to the mean
old man!
The shortage of flu
vaccine is atrocious and a true blot on Health & Human Services. The Republican
Congress only gave 50% of HHS request for flu vaccine needs which was a measly
$50 million.
Paul Bremer, former
chief honcho of Iraq, made John Kerry’s day yesterday when he confirmed
Kerry’s assertion that too few troops were committed to securing the peace in
Iraq. To quote Bremer, "We never had enough troops on the ground."
It seems that some folks in the Republican camp are going off the reservation.
As of this time the White House hasn’t commented on Bremer’s statement. Bremer
says he didn’t know he would be quoted. He was speaking, we presume for a nice
fat fee, to some insurance executives Monday night.
This is a roundabout
report that we recently received. The source of the report is given as: From
my friend at the LA Times who received this from his friend at the WSJ:
[Wall Street Journal reporter] Farnaz.
We just read WSJ
won't have Farnaz Fassihi reporting on Iraq until
after the elections since they have suspended him. So the email really is
from Farnaz.
Subject: From Baghdad
Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad
these days is like being under
virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job:
a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away
lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.
Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq
has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good
reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid
going to people's homes and never walk in the
streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants,
can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't
drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news
stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't
take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't
be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't
and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so
near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most
pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay
alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad
I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.
It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April
when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S.
military? Was it when
Sadr City,
home to ten percent of Iraq's
population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the
insurgency began
spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq?
Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq
remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the
Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a
foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United
States for decades to come.
Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are thing?'
they reply: 'the situation is very bad."
What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control
most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the
country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's
roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and
explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are
assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically,
means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over
300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry
of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by
releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.
Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City
yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive
devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the
explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old
tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped.
He said on the main roads of Sadr
City, there
were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car
snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an
angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets
near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America
for liberating Iraq.
For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction
and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around
Baghdad
because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between
towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight.
Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this
week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential
neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock
electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of
them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was
thrown back near the neighborhoods./CONTINUED BELOW
WSJ reporter Fassahi's e-mail to friends /2
9/29/2004 2:47:12 PM
The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If
any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every
day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al
Qaeda- are cooperating and coordinating.
I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military
and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate
would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was
determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab
you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to
Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to
the Baathisst to the criminals. My
friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf has
been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still
alive.
America's last
hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard
units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being
murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents
are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S.
military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just
trained to get rid of them quietly.
As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that
almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18
billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1
billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for
improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.
Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a
result of sabotage
and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly
benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al
Qaeda is running around in Iraq?
Iraqis say that thanks to America
they got freedom in exchange for
insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom
any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.
I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to
run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.
Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about
elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance
of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into
a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East.
Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have
to salvage Iraq
before all is lost."
One could argue that Iraq
is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to
imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward
spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this
country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a
bottle.
The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months
while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of the
government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other
half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling
stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving
the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will
not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in
the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some
degree
elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk
being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for
cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"
-Farnaz
Just in time for
Friday’s debate the White House is going to adjust upwards by 300,000 the
number of jobs it says the economy created in March 2003- March 2004 period.
This is not the Labor Department’s number it will be the White House number
which has been carefully arrived at through much soul searching and the need to
say that Bush did not lose jobs on his watch.
A nice story about
John Kerry:
Former U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht of Nevada
is a staunch Republican, but he thanks his lucky stars for Democratic
presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
On July 12, 1988, Hecht was
attending a weekly Republican luncheon when a piece of apple lodged firmly in
his throat.
Hecht stumbled out of the room, thinking he might vomit but not wanting to do
it in front of his colleagues. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., thumped his back, but
Hecht quickly passed out in the hallway.
Just then, Kerry stepped off an elevator, rushed to Hecht's side and gave him
the Heimlich maneuver -- four times.
The lifesaving incident made international news, and Dr. Henry Heimlich, who
invented the maneuver in 1974, called Hecht to say that had Kerry intervened
just 30 seconds later Hecht might have been in a vegetative state for life.
"This man gave me my life," the 75-year-old Hecht said Thursday.
Hecht said he was amazed that Kerry acted so quickly -- some people were
assuming that he was having a heart attack.
"He knew exactly what to do," he said. "But a lot of people know
what to do. They just don't size up the situation immediately."
The story has a twist of irony: Hecht was up for re-election that year, and
Kerry, who was serving as the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee, had pegged Hecht as one of the most vulnerable Republican seats.
Indeed, the Democratic nominee for Hecht's seat, then-Gov. Richard Bryan,
beat Hecht, who served just one term in office.
"Only in America
can this happen, where he's working against me to get me defeated and then
saves my life," Hecht said.
Hecht, who prides himself on having one of the most conservative records on the
books during his six years in the Senate, said he and his wife, Gail, see
politics as "a secondary issue" when it comes to Kerry.
"We've had a wonderful life, and it would have all been down the
tubes," said Hecht, who is about to celebrate his 45th wedding anniversary
with his wife.
Every year the Hechts call Kerry's longtime personal
secretary, who tracks down Kerry wherever he is.
Then they recount some of their experiences in the last year. Hecht and his
wife thank Kerry for thinking so quickly in the Senate halls that day. And
Kerry tells them that their phone call is one of his favorites of the year.
"He's so nice and appreciative," Hecht said.
5 October 2004
Debate tonight: Darth Vader versus Luke Skywalker
 
4 October 2004
From http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/ :
Friday, October 01, 2004
CNN's "undecided" voter is actually a patriot
Eye On
Politics
"Perhaps,"
I thought, "There are two Edward Martoses attending UM," but then I
learned that the College Republican Edward Martos promoted Council for Democracy
events at College Republican meetings. Certainly, it's the same guy.
From http://jackpinesavage.blogspot.com/2004/10/post-debate.html
I'm not going to say a whole lot about this, but one of
those candidates looked like a President. I'm going to let you figure out which
one.
A humorous side note, the GOP held a "conference call" with Ken
Mehlman in which campaign "Team Leaders" call in to be told what to
think and get their talking points for the debate. Atrios , bless
his heart, posted the number and the password to be accepted to the conference
call. I got in without a problem and, after enduring ten minutes of painful
smooth jazz, got to hear firsthand how the Bush campaign was going to spin
this.
Mehlman said Kerry started with a credibility gap and ended with a credibility
canyon, and babbled in and around this point for five minutes or so. Then they
announced that they were going to take three questions. The first was from a
"young Republican in Washington."
She proceeded to say that Kerry was very credible and that she had decided to
vote for him. The second caller said she thought Kerry would make a credible
Commander in Chief and the third call took Bush to task for not mentioning the
al Quida members not captured.
Mehlman apologized to the Bush supporters listening and acknowledge that the
call had obviously attracted some Democrats. We had, essentially, hijacked
their own spin distribution and thrown it in the GOP's face. A small, yet
hilarious victory for the blogosphere.
An interesting tidbit
is that on all the polling websites like CNN and the LA Times Kerry is
winning the unscientific polls by a large margin. That means that the Democrat
Kerry supporters are energized by last night and the Bushies are not. It may
mean nothing but our feeling is that Bush support is lukewarm and that if he
doesn’t do well in the next debates that his support may erode by Election Day.
We aren’t counting our chickens just observing. We are amazed that folks
actually thought Bush would do well. He hasn’t had to defend a position ever in
a debate and all his appearances this year are totally scripted. Even his press
conferences are scripted. The debate last night put the White House Correspondents
to shame and maybe now Candy Crowley of CNN will be kinder to Kerry since she
gets to go to the White House if he wins.
From www.salon.com
"Boondocks"
cartoonist rates Bush
While pundits on the left, right, and center agreed that
John Kerry beat George Bush in the opening debate, none was more emphatic than
“Boondocks” cartoonist Aaron McGruder. “Bush got his
ass whupped,” McGruder told
CNN’s Aaron Brown.
But the outspoken McGruder, who was relegated to
“The Contrarian” segment of Brown’s news show, was not finished. “The elephant
in the room” that no TV pontificators will dare acknowledge, he observed, is
that Bush “is incredibly dumb...he can’t articulate, he can’t complete a full
sentence, and he’s our president.”
Brown, being a member in good standing of the pontificator class, rushed to
challenge McGruder, asserting that Bush was a man of
strong beliefs, blah, blah, blah. But McGruder was
unimpressed. Convictions don’t mean a thing if you’re just plain stupid, he
pointed out.
And with that, Brown bade The Contrarian farewell.
-- David Talbot
1 October 2004
Kerry Won!!!
Bush is still looking for mixed messages, mixed marriages, mixed drinks and is mixed up.
But fear not-or fear a lot -‘cause he is workin hard for all of us.
 
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