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---> EXCLUSIVE: Bush's Tactical Lying

10.31.04 (10:46 am) [edit]

No one has investigated Bush more thoroughly than Jim Moore, author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, and Bush's War for Re-election: Iraq, the White House, and the People. Jim Moore writes that Bush's original biographer Mickey "Herskowitz has verified what a number of sources told me off the record in Alabama: Bush never talked about the guard and brought neither uniforms nor equipment of any kind with him for his time in Montgomery. The guard was no longer a part of his life... In both of my books, I used all available evidence to make the case that the Bush administration, indeed, the Bush campaign, had been thinking about Iraq long before 9/11... Herskowitz told Baker that Bush was interested in a war [in 1999] because it would help him politically and that he would use that political capital to win passage of his legislative agenda. "

[b]More[/b] ... http://blog.democrats.com/nod...

---> Bush/Cheney Rig Florida With Help From Embezzler Jebby-boy Bush!!!

10.31.04 (6:35 am) [edit]

[b]Missing Ballots in West Palm Beach[/b]

Sun-Sentinel: "Amid a throng of complaints about an absence of absentee ballots, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore agreed Thursday to rush them to some voters by overnight mail. LePore said she would expedite absentee ballots, on a 'case by case' basis, to local voters who are out of the county... LePore says her office already has mailed almost 115,000, compared to about 55,500 four years ago. But an untold number still haven't gotten those ballots, with little time left for mailing back and forth by the 7 p.m. Tuesday deadline to return completed ballots." Ain't this grand, has 'Lame Duck Lepore' engineered another debacle in S. Florida?

[b]More[/b] ... http://sun-sentinel.com/news/...,0,7263407.story?coll=sfla-home-head lines

---> Eminem, Anti-Hero

10.31.04 (6:28 am) [edit]

[b]With a new video proudly declaring war on Bush, Eminem steps into the political fray, perhaps the least likely – and most effective – generational leader imaginable. [/b]

There was merely a ripple in the cultural zeitgeist when Bruce Springsteen put aside his genial nonpartisan everyman stance and headlined the Vote for Change concerts, benefiting America Coming Together (ACT), and ultimately, John Kerry. No one blinked when Ani diFranco set off on her own tour, boldly titled Vote Dammit. Same with Moby, who has worn his politics on his sleeve from day one. And no eyebrows were raised when P. Diddy, in typical Diddy style, came out big and loud with his Vote or Die campaign – which as usual seemed to be more about Diddy than anything else.

But Eminem – the man who George Bush once called "the most dangerous threat to American children since polio" – could be the true October surprise.

Eminem is one of the least likely artists to come out with an overtly political message and a rallying call to youth, yet eight days before the election Eminem released "Mosh," the second single from his forthcoming album "Encore," scheduled for release on Nov. 6. Solidly established as an anti-hero, reveling in the fact that his words and actions – pulling a gun on his ex-wife's boyfriend, rapping about "fags" and then making nice with Elton John or mooning fans at the MTV Video Music Awards – were not to be followed, analyzed, or mimicked, Eminem seemed content to remain the angry young man with a wicked flow, biting lyrics and astronomical record sales.

Instead, he releases a rousing call to arms for the hip hop generation to take back the government that seeks to represent them. He even proclaims himself their leader. Surprise indeed.

With "Mosh," Eminem – the most polarizing musician of our times – takes on the most polarizing election of our times.

In the video, Eminem leads a mob fired up and politicized by four years of outrage and anger at the Bush administration. Clad in black hoodies, fists raised, the angry young men and women descend on a state building ... to vote.

Chunky black-and-white illustrated figures on a moody, sepia-toned landscape play out the frustration and angst of a generation. One young Iraq veteran returns home, to be met by his wife and children and a notice of reassignment; "Fuck Bush" is the accompanying lyric he spits out. Then he dons a black hoodie and joins the mob. A single mother comes home, groceries in hand, and opens an eviction notice while news of a tax cut for the rich plays on the television ... she dons a black hoodie and joins the mob.

Eminem leads the crowd, providing "spark" to the chorus http://www.azlyrics.com/lyric... :

"Come along follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength
Come with me and I won't steer you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
To the light at the end of the tunnel
We gonna fight, we gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march
Through the swamp, we gonna mosh through the marsh
Take us right through the doors (c'mon)"

The video was produced, directed and edited by Ian Inaba of the Guerilla News Network, who didn't necessarily have Eminem in mind when he came up with the concept. Inaba, also a contributor to GNN's new book "True Lies" http://www.guerrillanews.com/... (The Penguin Group, 2004), concurs that the song and the video have altered the left's perception of one of its favorite whipping boys: "People who have been critical are now saying positive things about him," Inaba tells AlterNet. "I think he's matured a lot as an artist and he's a very hard working and intelligent artist. And I think this song and his effort is showing people that."

This sea change in public perception occurred in less than five days. The video was finished on Monday, Oct. 25, and posted at gnn.tv on the same day. After rumors that MTV would refuse to air it, the video appeared on Total Request Live on Tuesday; it's currently No. 1 on the charts.

So Inaba and Eminem were a fortuitous pairing. The video was first a concept in search of a song, but when Inaba, who had worked with Eminem on his last album, heard the song, he felt it was the perfect fit. "I wanted to do a voting video," he says. "[We were] trying to come out with it right before the election – hopefully a little earlier than we ultimately did." Inaba shopped it around to record labels, landing at Interscope, looking to see who among the label's artists would be releasing an album near the election. "The video's content was pretty well established in my head when I went to his management so we were both kind of surprised when I heard the song. You know it couldn't have been a better song," says Inaba.

"Mosh" couldn't have fit better with the concept, and Inaba considers Eminem's nation of listeners a powerful bloc who otherwise wouldn't have heard the message: "We heard the song, we knew it was gonna have the reach, you know we could have gone with other artists, but he's got reach into swing states, into middle America, and that's, you know, a powerful thing." Think of it as the Michael Moore effect on an Xbox.

Indeed, in a nation where undecided-voter frenzy has reached a fever pitch, the hip hop generation has been a favorite target. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 26.7 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 24, and only 8.6 million of them – about 32 percent – voted in the 2000 presidential elections, meaning two of every three did not vote.

Reactions to the video have been dramatic. Moby, whose history with Eminem is stained with vitriol, has been effusive: http://www.nme.com/news/11035... "Wow, you know that Eminem and I have had our differences in the past, but this video is the best thing that I've seen all year. It's an amazing song and an even more amazing video. Please go watch." The "differences" that Moby blithely refers to include a call-out in Eminem's 2002 release "Without Me": "You 36-year-old boy fag, blow me/ You don't know me, you're too old, let go/ It's over, nobody listens to techno."

Inaba thinks the response has been amazing – and if the goal is getting out the vote, he believes that the video is a success: "We've gotten a lot of responses on message boards, on blog sites, things like that; kids saying, 'I wasn't gonna vote and I saw this video and it's really transformative and I'm now gonna go out and vote.'"

Naturally, the hip hop generation is watching, and talking. On MTV.com's "You Tell Us" http://www.mtv.com/news/youte... feature, reactions are strong. Kyle, a 22-year-old from Ithaca, N.Y. says: "Not since Chuck D has a hip hop artist spoken so eloquently of the power in numbers. If we stand up as a bloc and vote, both the president and the senator will have no choice but to listen."

Nineteen-year-old Kelley from Apple Valley, Minn. has a different take: "I am completely appalled by Eminem's 'Mosh' video. He may have his own opinions about our president, but there should be no reason that he has to come out with this Bush-bashing video a week before the election. I am a huge Eminem fan, but this is extremely upsetting. I am also afraid that people will watch this video and be corrupted by what he is portraying, and that is a false image of President Bush."

Eminem, not surprisingly, disagrees. In an advance report of a poorly timed interview in Rolling Stone (appearing in the Nov. 5 issue), he is quoted as saying http://www.rollingstone.com/n... rtistcage&pageregion=trip le3 :

"[Bush] has been painted to be this hero, and he's got our troops over there dying for no reason ... I think he started a mess ... He jumped the gun, and he fucked up so bad he doesn't know what to do right now ... We got young people over there dyin', kids in their teens, early 20s that should have futures ahead of them. And for what? It seems like a Vietnam 2. bin Laden attacked us, and we attacked Saddam. Explain why that is. Give us some answers."

According to the article, Eminem won't endorse a candidate: "'Whatever my decision is, I would like to see Bush out of office,' Eminem says. 'I don't wanna see my little brother get drafted – he just turned eighteen. People think their votes don't count, but people need to get out and vote. Every motherfuckin' vote counts.'"

If the video augurs anything, those votes will be legion. Eminem ends the song as a line of voters stretches out into the distance:

"As we set aside our differences
And assemble our own army
To disarm this weapon of mass destruction
That we call our president, for the present
And mosh for the future of our next generation
To speak and be heard
Mr. President, Mr. Senator
Do you guys hear us?"

Well, do you?

[b]Davina Baum is Managing Editor of AlterNet. Evan Derkacz, a writer based in New York, contributed information for this story[/b]. - http://www.alternet.org/wiret...

---> Right-Wing Neo-Fascist Clap-Trap

10.31.04 (6:21 am) [edit]

"The Bush gang has managed to keep much under wraps. They clearly do not believe in democracy as an activity predicated upon informed consent. This is a need-to-know crowd, and, from its perspective, there's plenty the public does not need to know--especially on Election Day." - Questions About Bush, David Corn, http://www.thenation.com/capi...

[b]Abetted by the news media, the Republican spin machine has succeeded in painting John Kerry as inconsistent. Meanwhile, Bush's far greater flip-flopping has become the biggest secret in American politics.

Bush is a power-drunk, money-grubbing opportunist, lacking in [i]any real [/i]conviction ... "We the People" must force ourselves to see through his phony facade and look into this shallow, mediocre man who has reeked chaos, havoc and misery during his insane neo-con tenure ... Please vote for John Kerry in order that we can restore sanity, integrity and dignity to the White House ...[/b]

Read "[b]The Flip-Flop Flim-Flam[/b]" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ...

---> James Roosevelt Jr.: 'What is a war president?'

10.31.04 (6:07 am) [edit]

[b]Franklin D. Roosevelt's grandson assesses George W. Bush's performance[/b]

Last May, I walked through the magnificent new World War II Memorial that was soon to be dedicated on the National Mall in Washington. The architecture, sculpture and carved quotations were impressive. But it was the faces of the retired veterans and the depth of feeling in the eyes of their wives and widows that was most moving. As I watched them read the words of inspiration from the war's leaders etched into the stone walls, I thought of my father, who served during the war as a Marine in Carlson's Raiders. His father, my grandfather, was making his own contribution: as president of the United States.

Today, I remember the words etched into that memorial while I read the news from Iraq. The contrast is stark. This summer, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's name and legacy were invoked by almost a dozen speakers at the Republican National Convention. But George W. Bush is not, and never will be, a president like FDR.

In the White House today is a man who for the first time in our nation's history invaded another country without our first being attacked and without the support of a global alliance. The real leadership of FDR, by contrast, was the skill with which he solidified our alliances and made winning the war a truly global effort.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> James Roosevelt Jr.: 'What is a war president?'

10.31.04 (6:07 am) [edit]

---> FOX Faux "NEWS" Fascist Channel Doctors Photos of Osama bin Laden to Smear Kerry!!!

10.31.04 (6:04 am) [edit]

[b]Kerry camp vs. Fox News: Angry over on-air remark, adviser threatens a ban[/b]

DES MOINES -- John Sasso, a senior adviser to John F. Kerry's presidential campaign, threatened to ban Fox News staff from the candidate's plane Friday night when Fox initially refused to apologize for a talk show host's comment that a new videotape showed Osama bin Laden with a Kerry button.

Kerry advisers quickly backtracked, however, concluding that an escalating conflict with a major cable channel just days before the election would do nothing to help the Democratic nominee. Kerry senior adviser Mike McCurry spoke to Fox executives Friday and yesterday and was told that the Fox News host, Neil Cavuto, may address the remark on Monday's show, officials from Fox and the Kerry campaign said.

The furor was a rare moment of visible frustration inside the Kerry camp: Kicking a major cable outlet off of the candidate's plane would almost certainly spark a run of negative stories in the media about Kerry lieutenants lashing out and their preelection confidence vanishing.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> FOX Faux "NEWS" Fascist Channel Doctors Photos of Osama bin Laden to Smear Kerry!!!

10.31.04 (6:04 am) [edit]

---> Bush Ghost Writer Shows Truth About Father and Son

10.31.04 (5:58 am) [edit]

Mickey Herskowitz - a ghost writer for both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush - has revealed startling information about both men, which he learned from extensive candid conversations with the 41st and the 43rd presidents. Herskowitz revealed the information in a series of interviews with investigative reporter Russ Baker, which Baker tape recorded.1

Baker's article reveals that "in 2003, Bush's father indicated to [Herskowitz] that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq."2

George W. Bush was reluctant to talk to Herskowitz about his National Guard service. But Bush did tell him "that after transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds through his six-year military obligation to work on an Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he was 'excused.'"3 Bush's comments to Herskowitz "directly contradicts his public statements that he participated in obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard."4

According to Herskowitz, "two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq."5 In 1999, Bush said to Herskowitz, "My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade…. if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."6

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000," Russ Baker, 10/27/04.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

---> Tucker Carlson Calling It For John Kerry?

10.30.04 (3:04 pm) [edit]

[b]In this WaPo Sunday Outlook piece, Tucker Carlson suggests the following (on the record):[/b]

[u]Popular Vote[/u]
Bush 48
Kerry 51.5

[u]EV[/u]
Bush 260
Kerry 278

[u]FL[/u]
Bush 49
Kerry 51

[u][b]Outlook 2004 Crystal Ball
Hot Button Choices[/b][/u]: http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Perhaps Jon Stewart slapped some sense into him after all. If you prefer Wonkette, she calls it for Kerry, too. The usual partisans call it as expected. But we've got over 1000 calls of our own to sort through here http://www.dailykos.com/story... .

Even if Tucker gets it right, he and the pundits will have plenty to answer to after the election. It's their fault we never had a substantive debate about Bush's policies, including and especially Iraq.

---> Eminent Psychoanalyst Describes Deranged Bush as "Paranoid Meglomaniac"

10.30.04 (12:48 pm) [edit]

[b]Eminent Psychoanalyst Describes Mentally Unstable Bush as "Paranoid Meglomaniac, etc." ...

""Our sole treatment option -- for his benefit and for ours -- is to remove President Bush from office ... before it is too late." - Dr. Justin Frank, http://www.unknownnews.net/in...

Psychoanalyst describes Bush as "paranoid meglomaniac," "untreated alcoholic" (In other words, Dubya is a Dry-Drunk!)[/b]

A new book by a prominent Washington psychoanalyst says President George W. Bush is a "paranoid meglomaniac" as well as a sadist and "untreated alcoholic." The doctor's analysis appears to confirm earlier reports the President may be emotionally unstable.

Dr. Justin Frank, writing in [i]Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President[/i], http://www.harpercollins.com/... also says the President has a "lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs http://www.all-creatures.org/... ) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... and pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad." http://www.unknownnews.net/in...

Even worse, Dr. Frank concludes, the President's years of heavy drinking "may have affected his brain function -- and his decision to quit drinking without the help of a 12-step program [puts] him at far higher risk of relapse."

Dr. Frank's revelations comes on the heels of last week's [i]Capitol Hill Blue [/i]exclusive that revealed increasing concern by White House aides over Bush's emotional stability http://www.unknownnews.net/in... .

Aides, who spoke only on condition that their names be withheld, told stories of wide mood swings by the President who would go from quoting the Bible one minute to obscenity-filled outbursts the next.

Bush shows an inability to grieve -- dating back to age 7, when his sister died. "The family's reaction -- no funeral and no mourning -- set in motion his life-long pattern of turning away from pain [and hiding] behind antic behavior," says Frank, who says Bush may suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Other findings by Dr. Frank:

. His mother, Barbara Bush -- tabbed by some family friends as "the one who instills fear" -- had trouble connecting emotionally with her son, Frank argues.

. George H.W. Bush's "emotional and physical absence during his son's youth triggered feelings of both adoration and revenge in George W."

. The President suffers from "character pathology," including "grandiosity" and "megalomania" -- viewing himself, America and God as interchangeable.

Dr. Frank has been a psychiatrist for 35 years and is director of psychiatry at George Washington University. A Democrat, he once headed the Washington Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

In an interview with The Washington Post's Richard Leiby, Dr. Frank said he began to be concerned about Bush's behavior in 2002.

"I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote, and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed," Dr. Frank told Leiby. Bush, he said, "fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated."

Dr. Frank's expert recommendation? "Our sole treatment option -- for his benefit and for ours -- is to remove President Bush from office ... before it is too late."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to comment on the specifics of Dr. Frank's book or the earlier story by Capitol Hill Blue.

"I don't do book reviews," McClellan said, even though he last week recommended the latest book by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward to reporters at the daily press briefing. - http://www.unknownnews.net/in...

---> Bush, the War Criminal, Defying The Geneva Convention

10.30.04 (12:41 pm) [edit]

If, as Senator John McCain says, http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/s... "the thing that separates [the U.S.] from our enemy is our respect for human rights," than that separation is a very thin line. A new report shows that the CIA violated the Geneva Convention by transferring detainees out of Iraq. The transferring itself is prohibited under the Convention, as is the fact that neither the Red Cross, the UN, or any other group was notified.

Given the direct disregard for international law and the continuing torture scandal of Abu Ghraib, it's hard to believe that in June a top Pentagon lawyer assured reporters that the treatment of Iraqi prisoners would be "all Geneva, all the time." Oh yes, and the War in Iraq is going fabulously.

---> Bush, Kerry Statistically Tied in Daily Reuters/Zogby Poll ...

10.30.04 (11:40 am) [edit]

President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry remain statistically tied in a daily poll by Reuters/Zogby.

Bush was supported by 48 percent of 1,206 likely voters surveyed Oct. 25-27 and Kerry, the four-term Massachusetts senator, drew 46 percent. Four percent of voters are undecided. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points. Bush led by 1 point in yesterday's results.

A Zogby tracking poll at this time in the 2000 election showed Bush led former Vice President Al Gore by 1 point.

The tracking poll by Reuters/Zogby is conducted daily and its result is a rolling average of three days' worth of polls. A portion of the total sample is interviewed each day. The earliest results are dropped when a new day is added.

[b]Zogby International is based in Utica, New York. Reuters Group Plc, the world's largest publicly traded provider of financial information, is based in London[/b]. - http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap...

---> Al Qaeda Endorsed Bush in March

10.30.04 (11:36 am) [edit]

Amidst all the discussion of who Al Qaeda wants to win, the media has totally ignored "an al Qaeda declaration following the Madrid bombing and published in full on 17 March in the Arabic-language dailies al-Quds al-Arabi and al-Hayat in the UK... 'A word for the foolish Bush. We are very keen that you do not lose in the forthcoming elections as we know very well that any big attack can bring down your government and this is what we do not want. We cannot get anyone who is more foolish than you, who deals with matters with force instead of wisdom and diplomacy. Your stupidity and religious extremism is what we want as our people will not awaken from their deep sleep except when there is an enemy. Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilisation. Because of this we desire you [Bush] to be elected.'"

[b]More[/b] ... http://english.aljazeera.net/...

---> Which Of These Two Statements Sounds Like It Comes From The Stronger Leader???

10.30.04 (10:47 am) [edit]

[b]John Kerry:[/b] In response to this tape from Osama bin Laden, let me make it clear, crystal clear. As Americans, we are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. They are barbarians. And I will stop at absolutely nothing to hunt down, capture or kill the terrorists wherever they are, whatever it takes. Period.

[b]George W. Bush:[/b] Earlier today I was informed of the tape that is now being analyzed by America's intelligence community. Let me make this very clear: Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country. I'm sure Senator Kerry agrees with this. I also want to say to the American people that we're at war with these terrorists and I am confident that we will prevail.

[b]You decide ...[/b]

-- Josh Marshall, http://www.talkingpointsmemo....

---> Former HBS Prof Warns America About "Shallow", "Mediocre" Bush!

10.30.04 (10:42 am) [edit]

[b]Former HBS Prof Blasts Bush

Business scholar says president was 'shallow,' 'flippant' in 1970s class[/b]

As the race for the White House heats up and the nation’s left-leaning heads come together to unearth potential skeletons in President Bush’s closet, one line in his resume has avoided major scrutiny: the time Bush spent just across the Charles River, earning an MBA at the Harvard Business School (HBS) in the 1970s. Now, as some fervently question the commander-in-chief’s performance in the Texas National Guard decades ago and more current-minded politicos take aim at the events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001 and the invasion of Iraq, one former HBS professor is doing his best to publicize his recollections of what he calls a sarcastic, mediocre student who went on to lead the United States.

Yoshihiro Tsurumi, an avowed opponent of Bush’s current views and policies who was a visiting associate professor of international business at HBS between 1972 and 1976, said Bush was among 85 students he taught one year in a required first-year course. In the class on “Environment Analysis for Management,” incorporating elements of macroeconomics, industrial policy and international business, Tsurumi said students discussed and debated case studies for 90 minutes several times a week.

Tsurumi—now a professor of international business at Baruch College in the City University of New York—said he remembers the future president as scoring in the bottom 10 percent of students in the class.

Thirty years after teaching the class, Tsurumi said the twenty-something Bush’s statements and behavior—“always very shallow”—still stand out in his mind.

“Whenever [Bush] just bumped into me, he had some flippant statement to make,” said Tsurumi when reached at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y. “The comments he made were revealing of his prejudice.”

The White House did not reply to requests for comment on Bush’s time at HBS.

Tsurumi said he particularly recalls Bush’s right-wing extremism at the time, which he said was reflected in off-hand comments equating the New Deal of the 1930s with socialism and the corporation-regulating Securities and Exchange Commission with “an enemy of capitalism.”

“I vividly remember that he made a comment saying that people are poor because they’re lazy,” Tsurumi said.

Tsurumi also said Bush displayed a sense of arrogance about his prominent family, including his father, former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

“[George W. Bush] didn’t stand out as the most promising student, but...he made it sure we understood how well he was connected,” Tsurumi said. “He wasn’t bashful about how he was being pushed upward by Dad’s connections.”

Tsurumi said that the younger Bush boasted that his father’s political string-pulling had gotten him to the top of the waiting list for the Texas National Guard instead of serving in Vietnam. When other students were frantically scrambling for summer jobs, Tsurumi said, Bush explained that he was planning instead for a visit to his father in Beijing, where the senior Bush was serving at the time as the special U.S. envoy to China.

In addition, Tsurumi is still sore about what he recalls as Bush’s slight to his cinematic taste. When he arranged for students to view the film of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath during their study of the Great Depression, Tsurumi said, Bush derided the film as “corny.”

At the time, Tsurumi said his worries about his student extended no further than the boardroom.

“All Harvard Business School students want to become president of a company one day,” Tsurumi said. “I remember saying, if you become president of a company some day, may God help your customers and employees.”

When he discovered that his former pupil was vying for the presidency in 2000, Tsurumi said he tried to inform the public about his experience with the then-Texas governor at HBS—but got few results beyond hate mail.

“Last election time, if you recall, the American mass media did a shameful job of vetting [the presidential candidates],” Tsurumi said.

As another November approaches, Tsurumi is trying again to air his criticisms of the man he once taught and his actions as president.

“This time it seems to be getting around a bit more widely,” he said. “After three years of dismal record, people seem more inclined to believe that all his failed leadership was apparent during the Harvard Business School years.”

In a July 2 speech to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo, Tsurumi repeated the broadside he has launched repeatedly in the past.

“I always remember two groups of students,” Tsurumi said then, according to published reports. “One is the really good students, not only intelligent, but with leadership qualities, courage. The other is the total opposite, unfortunately to which George belonged.” - http://www.thecrimson.com/art...

---> Endorsing Neo-Craziness???

10.30.04 (3:17 am) [edit]

On the eve of the election, our media elite are belatedly deluging us with important information. However, much of it is being delivered with neo-crazy 'spin'.

For example, the [i]Washington Post [/i]tells us http://www.washingtonpost.com... :

"[i]In the tumultuous first year after Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush confronted a deluge of classified threat [b]reports[/b] about the spread of [b]nuclear weapons technology[/b] to unfriendly hands.

"An atomic black market, operating on three continents, was funneling [b]bomb-making equipment [/b]to Libya – and to customers unknown. [b]Iran had made unexpected strides toward a weapon [/b]along a route concealed for more than a decade. North Korea, judged in June 2002 to be years away from domestic [b]uranium enrichment[/b], was discovered a month later to be [b]on the brink [/b]of it. The National Intelligence Council assessed that there was '[b]undetected[/b] smuggling' of [b]'weapons-grade [/b]and weapons-usable nuclear materials' known to have been stolen in Russia on four occasions between 1992 and 1999[/i].

"[i]The profusion of threats laid competing demands for Bush's attention in a climate of uncertainty and rapid change.

"Like the 'war on terrorism,' which it often intersected, Bush's efforts against nuclear proliferation followed many paths[/i]."

(Emphasis mine.)

But as the Post surely knows, those "classified threat reports" turned out to wrong. There is no evidence that anyone has funneled "bomb-making equipment" to Libya or anyone else. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. No convincing evidence that North Korea has a uranium enrichment program. And if the "smuggling" of fissile materials out of Russia was "undetected," how did the NIC "assess" that it had occurred?

Consequently, the "many paths" Bush followed to prevent nuke proliferation were nearly all wrong. Many counterproductive. Some even crazy?

Soon after Bush took office, three dozen analysts gathered for a full-day, top-secret conference to address the question "how and where could al-Qaeda get a nuke?"

"[i]'We thought the highest probability of their getting anything would be to buy a weapon "full up" from corrupt or ideologically allied insiders in the chain of custody in a nuclear weapons state,' said Richard A. Clarke, who organized the intelligence summit as Bush's national coordinator for counter-terrorism. 'We assumed the place most likely to supply that would be the former Soviet Union[/i].'"

So, Bush should have immediately joined President Putin in fully supporting the Non-Proliferation Treaty proliferation prevention regime administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in general, and in ensuring that all Russian-deployed nukes – as well as the excess Soviet nukes Russia was in the process of dismantling with U.S. assistance – were safeguarded and secure.

"[i]Bush took a different view. In the State of the Union address of Jan. 29, 2002, the president declared he would keep 'the world's most destructive weapons' from al-Qaeda and its allies by keeping those weapons from evil governments. Much later – after applying that doctrine in Iraq – he told a campaign audience in Pennsylvania, 'We had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons and one regime stood out: the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein[/i].'"

Now, that's crazy.

In order to obtain a Gulf War cease-fire, Saddam had unconditionally accepted UN Security Council Resolution 707, which required Iraq's full cooperation in the "destruction, removal or rendering harmless" – under IAEA supervision – of "all nuclear-weapons-usable materials, all potentially related subsystems or components, and all potentially related research, development, support, and manufacturing facilities."

By 1996 the IAEA could report that "nothing remained" of Saddam's stillborn nuke program.

Nevertheless, in March 2003, Bush told Congress he had intelligence that Saddam would soon have nukes to give to al-Qaeda. But IAEA Director General ElBaradei contrarily reported to the Security Council that, "As of 17 March 2003, the IAEA had found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq."

To the dismay of our former European allies, Russia, and the whole Islamic world, Bush applied the Bush Doctrine to Iraq, anyway.

Now the whole world is watching, waiting to see whether we give Bush a chance to launch a preemptive attack against Iran, yet another country the IAEA has declared to be nuke-free.

As investigative reporter Sy Hersh put it http://www.alternet.org/media... in a recent interview:

[i]"The Europeans so far give us a pass on the grounds that, well, you've got these crazy leaders and they do crazy things. But if we reelect them, then it's not just the president they're mad at. They're going to be mad at all of us[/i]."

[b]Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico[/b]. - http://www.antiwar.com/prathe...

---> Saudi Royal Puppet-boy Bush Has Lied About His Good Buddy: Escapee Osama bin Laden ...

10.30.04 (3:10 am) [edit]

"PRESIDENT Bush said yesterday that he wanted Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile, "dead or alive" in some of the most bellicose language used by a White House occupant in recent years. ... "I want justice," [Bush] said after a meeting at the Pentagon, where 188 people were killed last Tuesday when an airliner crashed into the building. "And there's an old poster out West that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.' "" - Bin Laden is Wanted:: Dead or Alive Says Bush, September 18 2001, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...

[b]Bush Misleads on Osama Bin Laden[/b]

During the presidental debates President Bush claimed that, contrary to Sen. John Kerry's assertion, he never said he was "not that concerned" about Osama Bin Laden. Bush chastised Kerry saying, "Gosh, I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. That's kind of one of those exaggerations."1 Bush was completely wrong.

At March 13, 2002 press conference, Bush said "So I don't know where he [Osama Bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him...I truly am not that concerned about him."2 Watch the video http://mywebpages.comcast.net... of Bush's remarks .

[b]Sources: [/b]

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
2. "President Bush Holds Press Conference," The White House, 3/13/02.

[b]REFER TO "HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD" ON http://www.houseofbush.com/ ...[/b]

---> Bush Ghost Writer Shows Truth About Father and Son

10.30.04 (3:06 am) [edit]

Mickey Herskowitz - a ghost writer for both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush - has revealed startling information about both men, which he learned from extensive candid conversations with the 41st and the 43rd presidents. Herskowitz revealed the information in a series of interviews with investigative reporter Russ Baker, which Baker tape recorded.1

Baker's article reveals that "in 2003, Bush's father indicated to [Herskowitz] that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq."2

George W. Bush was reluctant to talk to Herskowitz about his National Guard service. But Bush did tell him "that after transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds through his six-year military obligation to work on an Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he was 'excused.'"3 Bush's comments to Herskowitz "directly contradicts his public statements that he participated in obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard."4

According to Herskowitz, "two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq."5 In 1999, Bush said to Herskowitz, "My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade…. if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."6

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000," http://russbaker.com/Guerrill...%20News%20Network%20-%20B ush.htm Russ Baker, 10/27/04.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

---> Osama is Laughing at George "My Pet Goat" Bush -- Are You??? ...

10.29.04 (3:07 pm) [edit]

[b]Even OSAMA thinks Bush's so-called "leadership" is a farce. How can Bush lead a 'war on terror' when the world's leading terrorist is laughing at him??? More [/b]... http://blog.democrats.com/nod...

---> Bush Has Failed America's Test ...

10.29.04 (2:59 pm) [edit]

[b]TO BEGIN WITH, THE PRESIDENT IS A FOOL[/b]

NEW YORK -- John Kerry is winning the presidential election -- as far as I can tell. I have already voted absentee and I voted for the Democrat. I voted for him because I have children and grandchildren, too, and I love my country too much to watch George W. Bush try to figure it out for four more years.

Biased? Of course. That's why I write this column: to share my bias. I am always amazed when I get letters, many of them, accusing me of being a "liberal" or, a lot worse, an "elitist." Yes, I am. Hello!

I also think that being president of the United States is an elite job. Don't you? What are we talking about here?

Yes, I am disappointed with the way Sen. Kerry has presented himself and his bias. But I am frightened by the thought of a Bush second term. I'll stick with my analysis of the man from Massachusetts as a rather humorless straight-A student. If you teach (and I do), Kerry is of a type, a smart guy who gets it all down, synthesizes it beautifully, and then tries to give you back what he thinks you want. The defining moment of his campaign, I thought, was his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. It was an A paper without a single original thought. I counted 15 lifts from archived presidential speeches, most of them by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

My gripe with President Bush, who has risen above his Yale, Harvard and oil resume to become a man of the people, is that he is an incompetent man of the people. He's smart enough for an elite job, but he has lousy judgment, no sense of history and the dogmatic ways of the insecure. He is a fool, quoting Webster's first definition: "A person lacking judgment and prudence."

I find myself in absolute agreement with Kimberly Parmer, a lady from western Michigan presented in The New York Times last week as the last undecided voter, who said it was hard to make up her mind because "One is too polished; the other one, I think to be honest, I don't know how he ever got to be president."

Well, the Supreme Court picked him. Maybe they thought he was his father.

Kimberly Parmer then went on to say something both silly and profound: "If you actually look at him, and he stands next to Kerry, you kind of just feel sorry for him."

I can see that, though I tend to feel sorry for the rest of us. There are two Americas facing off against each other in this election, not rich and poor, but past and future.

A lot of Americans, mostly white males of a certain age, look to this George Bush and see themselves. This campaign, I would argue, is one of the last convulsions of angry, real American men, who fear losing the country they know (or imagine), fighting to hold back the time and tide of the new, the un-white and un-Christian, and those girlie men, too, who sooner or later will make a different America. Bush has the "Father Knows Best" vote, from men who have lost their personal power and hate what they see happening all around them. Kerry, often blowing in the wind, is "the times they are a-changin'" candidate.

Which one will prevail? I think Kerry will hold the one-vote lead I gave him. But this is a wild-card election. For the first time in a while no one is quite sure who will actually come out and vote this Tuesday. It would do wonders for the tired blood of American politics if there was a big turnout, but that could help or destroy either side. It could also shake up the Congress, which could use some shaking. The narrowly partisan and ideological meanness some Republican leaders have brought to the debate in Washington -- I'm really thinking of that other angry Texan, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- is about the worst I've ever seen.

So the last question is, "Who votes?" I already have. You should too. Perhaps you will feel driven to neutralize my vote. Good luck. I certainly hope the best man wins. - http://www.uexpress.com/richa...

---> Surely America Deserves Better than a Brainless Butcher like G.W. Bush

10.29.04 (12:20 pm) [edit]

New Zealander John Roughan writes: "Like most guests of the US Government, I have attended those security seminars in Washington where there were always one or two nuts who imagined military force could work miracles in places they didn't know much about and didn't care to know much about. But I never imagined they would get the chance to mobilise unprovoked and march into a country where, predictably, they would not be welcome and their occupation would strengthen the hand of the militant strand of Islamic nationalism. I suppose it was always on the cards that one day America would elect a substandard President, but somehow I'd imagined the system would prevent it. Previous occupants of the White House had their faults but there were always compensating strengths. This one is a blowhard when there is an army behind him but as weak as dishwater on every issue requiring political strength. "

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sto...

---> Saudi Royal Slut BUSH Was "Gonna' Get OSAMA 'Dead or Alive'", Remember???

10.29.04 (12:10 pm) [edit]

"PRESIDENT Bush said yesterday that he wanted Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile, "dead or alive" in some of the most bellicose language used by a White House occupant in recent years. ... "I want justice," [Bush] said after a meeting at the Pentagon, where 188 people were killed last Tuesday when an airliner crashed into the building. "And there's an old poster out West that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.' "" - Bin Laden is Wanted:: Dead or Alive Says Bush, September 18 2001, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne...

[b]Bush Misleads on Osama Bin Laden[/b]

During the presidental debates President Bush claimed that, contrary to Sen. John Kerry's assertion, he never said he was "not that concerned" about Osama Bin Laden. Bush chastised Kerry saying, "Gosh, I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. That's kind of one of those exaggerations."1 Bush was completely wrong.

At March 13, 2002 press conference, Bush said "So I don't know where he [Osama Bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him...I truly am not that concerned about him."2 Watch the video http://mywebpages.comcast.net... of Bush's remarks.

[b]Sources: [/b]

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
2. "President Bush Holds Press Conference," The White House, 3/13/02.

[b]REFER TO "HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD" ON http://www.houseofbush.com/ ...[/b]

---> Bush Ghost Writer Shows Truth About Father and Son!!!

10.29.04 (10:31 am) [edit]

Mickey Herskowitz - a ghost writer for both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush - has revealed startling information about both men, which he learned from extensive candid conversations with the 41st and the 43rd presidents. Herskowitz revealed the information in a series of interviews with investigative reporter Russ Baker, which Baker tape recorded.1

Baker's article reveals that "in 2003, Bush's father indicated to [Herskowitz] that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq."2

George W. Bush was reluctant to talk to Herskowitz about his National Guard service. But Bush did tell him "that after transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds through his six-year military obligation to work on an Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he was 'excused.'"3 Bush's comments to Herskowitz "directly contradicts his public statements that he participated in obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard."4

According to Herskowitz, "two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq."5 In 1999, Bush said to Herstkowitz, "My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade…. if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."6

[b]Sources: [/b]

1. "Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000," Russ Baker, http://russbaker.com/Guerrill...%20News%20Network%20-%20B ush.htm 10/27/04.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

---> Hold Bush Accountable

10.29.04 (10:23 am) [edit]

[b]I do not write the headlines for my columns. Someone else does. But if I were to write the headline for this one, it would be "Impeach George Bush." [/b]

Of course, I realize there's no chance Congress would impeach the president at this point or under almost any circumstance. It somehow reserves its outrage for lying about sex under oath and not, as now seems clear, the making of war under false pretenses. Say what you will about Bill Clinton, no one died in the White House pantry.

The same cannot be said in the larger sense about George Bush. Well over 1,000 Americans and countless more Iraqis have died because the president insisted on going to war. I know I should grieve for the Iraqi dead as much as I do the Americans, but I simply don't. It is the Americans -- those names I read almost every day, the hometowns, the lives I conjure up for them, the hideous moments of death -- who would make up every one of my articles of impeachment. I would read every name from the well of the House.

I do not hold George Bush accountable for believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. I have talked with senior administration officials who opposed the war and they, too, thought Hussein had chemical and biological weapons -- but not nuclear ones. By the time Bush had firmly decided to go to war, all in Washington knew Hussein's nuclear weapons program consisted of a wish. Even Vice President Cheney had to know that, but the truth does not matter to him. In a long career as a Cold Warrior, he morphed into the enemy: The end justifies the means.

In his forthcoming book on the Crusades, "Fighting for Christendom," Christopher Tyerman of Oxford University argues, "There existed no strategic or material interest for the knights of the west" to invade the Muslim east and try to wrest Jerusalem from Islam. "Consequently, the Christian wars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Near East provide startling testimony to the power of ideas."

I cite this book for a reason. You will remember that early on Bush referred to the war against terrorism as a "crusade." The word, though, was too freighted with Christian-Muslim conflict, and Bush quickly backed down. But, really, he was speaking the truth. Just as the original Crusades were a form of mass madness, so was this one when it was extended to Iraq. It came, as did the original one, out of the bonnet of a leader: Bush this time, Pope Urban II in 1095 -- and it swept everything before it. Congress lent its approval and so, significantly, did the media (myself included). The failure of leadership was across the board. The events of Sept. 11 were as emotionally wrenching to us as the Muslim capture of Jerusalem was to medieval Christians.

My peripatetic colleague Dana Milbank recently reported on a poll showing that 72 percent of Bush's supporters believe Iraq did in fact possess weapons of mass destruction and that 75 percent believed Hussein gave al Qaeda "substantial support." These beliefs are false, in contradiction of the facts, and even Bush, when pressed, has admitted that. But these beliefs did not arise out of nowhere. They are a direct consequence of the administration's repeated lies -- lies of commission, such as Cheney's statements, and lies of omission, the appalling failure to correct wrongly held views.

Not since the Spanish-American War has the United States gone off to war so casually, so half-cocked and so ineptly. The sinking of the Maine, the [i]casus belli [/i]for that dustup, has been replaced by missing weapons of mass destruction, and the Hearst and Pulitzer presses are now talk radio and Fox News Channel. Everything has changed. Nothing has changed. Still, though, we mourn the dead, look away from the wounded and maimed, and wonder what it was all about. We embarked, truly and regrettably, on a crusade.

Yet from Bush comes not a bleep of regret, not to mention apology. It is all "steady as she goes" -- although we have lost our bearings and we no longer know our destination. (Don't tell me it's a democratic Middle East.) If the man were commanding a ship, he would be relieved of command. If he were the CEO of some big company, the board would offer him a golden parachute -- and force him to jump. But in government, it's the people who make those decisions. We get our chance on Tuesday. - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

---> HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: White House of Horrors ... Warning: Scccaaarrry!!!

10.29.04 (10:16 am) [edit]

[b]Dick Cheney peaked too soon. We've still got a few days left until Halloween.[/b]

It was scary enough when we thought the vice president had created his own reality for spin purposes. But if he actually believes that Iraq is "a remarkable success story,'' it's downright spooky. He's already got his persona for Sunday: he's the mad scientist in the haunted mansion, fiddling with test tubes to force the world to conform to his twisted vision.

After 9/11, Mr. Cheney swirled his big black cape and hunkered down in his undisclosed dungeon, reading books about smallpox and plague and worst-case terrorist scenarios. His ghoulish imagination ran wild, and he dragged the untested president and jittery country into his house of horrors, painting a gory picture of how Iraq could let fearsome munitions fall into the hands of evildoers.

He yanked America into war to preclude that chilling bloodbath. But in a spine-tingling switch, the administration's misbegotten invasion of Iraq has let fearsome munitions fall into the hands of evildoers. It's also forged the links between Al Qaeda and the Sunni Baathists that Mr. Cheney and his crazy-eyed Igors at the Pentagon had fantasized about to justify their hunger to remake the Middle East.

It's often seen in scary movies: you play God to create something in your own image, and the monster you make ends up coming after you.

Determined to throw a good scare into the Arab world, the vice president ended up scaring up the swarm of jihadist evil spirits he had conjured, like the overreaching sorcerer in "Fantasia." The Pentagon bungled the occupation so badly, it caused the insurgency to grow like the Blob.

Just as Catherine Deneuve had bizarre hallucinations in the horror classic "Repulsion,'' Mr. Cheney and the neocons were in a deranged ideological psychosis, obsessing about imaginary weapons while allowing enemies to spirit the real ones away.

The officials charged with protecting us set off so many false alarms that they ignored all the real ones.

President Bush is like one of the blissfully ignorant teenagers in "Friday the 13th'' movies, spouting slogans like "Freedom is on the march'' while Freddy Krueger is in the closet, ready to claw his skin off.

Mr. Bush ignored his own experts' warnings that Osama bin Laden planned to attack inside the U.S., that an invasion of Iraq could create a toxic partnership between outside terrorists and Baathists and create sympathy for them across the Islamic world, that Donald Rumsfeld was planning a war and occupation without enough troops, that Saddam's aluminum tubes were not for nuclear purposes, that U.S. troops should safeguard 380 tons of sealed explosives that could bring down planes and buildings, and that, after the invasion, Iraq could erupt into civil war.

And, of course, the president ignored Colin Powell's Pottery Barn warning: if you break it, you own it.

Their Iraqi puppet, Ayad Allawi, turned on Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush this week, in a scene right out of "Chucky.'' Mr. Allawi accused coalition forces of "major negligence'' for not protecting the unarmed Iraqi National Guard trainees who were slaughtered by insurgents wearing Iraqi police uniforms. Iraqi recruits are getting killed so fast we can't even pretend that we're going to turn the country over to them.

If you really want to be chilled to the bone this Halloween, listen to what Peter W. Galbraith, a former diplomat who helped advance the case for an Iraq invasion at the request of Paul Wolfowitz, said in a column yesterday in The Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/gl... .

He said he'd told Mr. Wolfowitz about "the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion, the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.'' He told Mr. Wolfowitz that mobs were looting Iraqi labs of live H.I.V. and black fever viruses and making off with barrels of yellowcake.

"Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites,'' he said.

In his column, Mr. Galbraith said weapons looted from the arms site called Al Qaqaa might have wound up in Iran, which could obviously use them to pursue nuclear weapons.

In April 2003 in Baghdad, he said, he told a young U.S. lieutenant stationed across the street that H.I.V. and black fever viruses had just been looted. The soldier had been devastated and said, "I hope I'm not responsible for Armageddon.''

Too bad that never occurred to Dr. Cheneystein.

[b]By Maureen Dowd, NY Times[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

---> BULGE-GATE: (Photo) Picture of the Phoney-Baloney, Brain-Dead Buffoon!!!

10.29.04 (9:57 am) [edit]

[b]BULGE-GATE: A Top NASA Scientist ... A Spy-Store Owner ... An Audio Expert ... ALL Strongly Suspect Bush was WIRED during Debates ... Cheater-Bush, the Phoney-Baloney, Brain-Dead Buffoon Isn't Fit To Be President!!![/b]

[b]More[/b] ... http://blog.democrats.com/

---> BULGE-GATE: (Photo) Picture of the Phoney-Baloney, Brain-Dead Buffoon!!!

10.29.04 (9:53 am) [edit]

---> Bush Administration Misleads (Lies) on Missing Explosives

10.29.04 (5:40 am) [edit]

The Bush administration is pushing the theory that the 380 tons of explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa storage facility before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Administration spokesman Dan Senor said on CNN that "there's a very high probability that those weapons weren't even there before the war."1

For days, this theory has been in direct conflict with a Pentagon official, who told the [i]Associate Press [/i]on Monday, "US-led coalition troops had searched Al Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact."2

Now, video shot in Iraq by a Minneapolis news team provides further proof that the administration's theory is bogus. After the invasion - on April 18, 2003 - the Minneapolis ABC news crew was stationed just south of the Al Qaqaa facility.3 That day, they drove 2 to 3 miles north with the 101st Airborne Division. There, "members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labeled 'explosives.'"4 Some of the boxes were marked "Al Qaqaa."5 One soldier told the crew: "we can stick [detonation cords] in those and make some good bombs."6 Watch the video http://kstp.dayport.com/viewe... .

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Paula Zahn Now," CNN, 10/26/04.
2. "380 tons of explosives missing in Iraq," Associated Press, 10/25/04.
3. "5 EYEWITNESS NEWS video may be linked to missing explosives in Iraq," KSTP.com, 10/28/04.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

---> Bush Administration Misleads (Lies) on Missing Explosives

10.29.04 (5:40 am) [edit]

---> BUSH/CHENEY LIED: Video, Photos Show Explosives at Site AFTER US Invasion!!!

10.29.04 (5:36 am) [edit]

[b]Video suggests explosives at site after invasion

U.S. TV crew saw troops opening bunkers at Al-Qaqaa base[/b]

Videotape shot by a Minnesota television crew traveling with U.S. troops in Iraq when they first opened the bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa munitions base nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing the markings of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

[b]More (See Photo)[/b] ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6...

---> BUSH/CHENEY LIED: Video, Photos Show Explosives at Site AFTER US Invasion!!!

10.29.04 (5:35 am) [edit]

---> NASA Photo Expert Says Bush Was Wired

10.29.04 (5:31 am) [edit]

Salon's Kevin Berger writes, "Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis... A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. 'I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate,' he says. 'This is not about a bad suit'... Nelson stresses that he's not certain what lies beneath the president's jacket. He offers, though, 'that it could be some type of electronic device -- it's consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner.' The image of lines coursing up and down the president's back, Nelson adds, is 'consistent with a wire or a tube.'" Bush Cheated!

[b]More[/b] ... http://salon.com/news/feature...

---> BUSH-THE-BUTCHER: 100,000 Died from A'W'OL's Blood-thirsty Iraq Invasion!!!

10.29.04 (5:30 am) [edit]

LONDON -- Researchers have estimated that as many as 100,000 more Iraqis -- many of them women and children -- died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would have been expected otherwise, based on the death rate before the war.

Writing in the British-based medical journal The Lancet, the American and Iraqi researchers concluded that violence accounted for most of the extra deaths and that airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition were a major factor.

There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. As of Thursday, 1,106 U.S. servicemen had been killed, according to the U.S. Defense Department.

The scientists who wrote the report concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision," because the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqi, most of them doctors.

Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the study was published Thursday on The Lancet's Web site.

The survey attributed most of the extra deaths to violence and said airstrikes by coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths.

"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," the researchers wrote.

The report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way. The Lancet routinely publishes papers on the Web before they appear in print, particularly if it considers the findings of urgent public health interest.

Those reports then appear later in the print issue of the journal. The journal's spokesmen said they were uncertain which print issue the Iraqi report would appear in and said it was too late to make Friday's issue, and possibly too late for the Nov. 5 edition.

Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him.

"I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Associated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.

"I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said. "As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this."

Richard Peto, an expert on study methods who was not involved with the research, said the approach the scientists took is a reasonable one to investigate the Iraq death toll.

However, it's possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq, said Peto, a professor of medical statistics at Oxford University in England.

Lancet editor Richard Horton wrote in an editorial accompanying the survey that more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report, "but at an enormous and unacceptable risk to the team of interviewers."

"This remarkable piece of work represents the efforts of a courageous team of scientists," he wrote.

To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7,868 people, agreed to participate. Each household was asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002.

The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.

Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.

The investigators worked in teams of three. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers were doctors and all six were fluent in English and Arabic.

In the households reporting deaths, the person who died had to be living there at the time of the death and for more than two months before to be counted. In an attempt at firmer confirmation, the interviewers asked for death certificates in 78 households and were provided them 63 times.

There were 46 deaths in the surveyed households before the war. After the invasion, there were 142 deaths. That is an increase from 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 12.3 per 1,000 people per year -- more than double.

However, more than a third of the post-invasion deaths were reported in one cluster of households in the city Fallujah, where fighting has been most intense recently. Because the fighting was so severe there, the numbers from that location may have exaggerated the overall picture.

When the researchers recalculated the effect of the war without the statistics from Fallujah, the deaths end up at 7.9 per 1,000 people per year -- still 1.5 times higher than before the war.

Even with Fallujah factored out, the survey "indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher," the report said.

The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases. However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces -- with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships.

Violent deaths -- defined as those brought about by the intentional act of others -- were reported in 15 of the 33 clusters. The chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it, the researchers said.

Twelve of the 73 violent deaths were not attributed to coalition forces. The researchers said 28 children were killed by coalition forces in the survey households. Infant mortality rose from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births before the war to 57 deaths per 1,000 afterward.

The researchers estimated the nationwide death toll due to the conflict by subtracting the preinvasion death rate from the post-invasion death rate and multiplying that number by the estimated population of Iraq -- 24.4 million at the start of the war. Then that number was converted to a total number of deaths by dividing by 1,000 and adjusting for the 18 months since the invasion.

"We estimate that there were 98,000 extra deaths during the postwar period in the 97 percent of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Fallujah," the researchers said in the journal.

"This isn't about individual soldiers doing bad things. This appears to be a problem with the approach to occupation in Iraq," Roberts said.

The researchers called for further confirmation by an independent body such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the World Health Organization.

The study was funded by the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins University and by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland, a research project based at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. - http://www.newsday.com/news/n...,0,7799287.story?coll=sns-ap-world-h eadlines

---> BUSH-THE-BUTCHER: 100,000 Died from A'W'OL's Blood-thirsty Iraq Invasion!!!

10.29.04 (5:20 am) [edit]

---> BUSH-THE-BUTCHER: 100,000 Died from A'W'OL's Blood-thirsty Iraq Invasion!!!

10.29.04 (5:20 am) [edit]

---> BUSH-THE-BUTCHER: 100,000 Died from A'W'OL's Blood-thirsty Iraq Invasion!!!

10.29.04 (5:20 am) [edit]

---> Rumsfeld on 'Russian Troops' Bushit: 'Can't Validate That Even Slightly'

10.29.04 (5:13 am) [edit]

MSNBC: "Rumsfeld, in one radio interview, also cast doubt on the suggestion of one of his subordinates that Russian forces assisted the Iraqis in removing them. John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for international technology security, suggested to The Washington Times in an interview that the Russians may have been involved, prompting an angry denial from Moscow. Rumsfeld said, 'I have no information on that at all, and cannot validate that even slightly.' " When it's too wacky for even Rumsfeld, you know it's a bunch of bushit. By the way, let's not forget about the OTHER looting scandal -- at Tuwaitha -- also thanks to Bush's failure to secure THAT site. "[Melissa] Fleming said the IAEA -- which had put storage bunkers at the site under seal two months before the war -- alerted the United States about the Al-Qaqaa site after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted. The IAEA said it informed U.S. officials separately of the Tuwaitha looting on April 10."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6...

---> Rumsfeld on 'Russian Troops' Bushit: 'Can't Validate That Even Slightly'

10.29.04 (5:13 am) [edit]

---> Bush Sells Us Out to Blood-Sucking War-Profiteers!!!

10.28.04 (5:36 pm) [edit]

[b]"We the People" should be outraged by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]shameless pandering to rapacious corporations and hyper-rich plutocrats who are ruthless war-profiteers, having heinously abused our troops considered by these neo-cons as "expendable" cannon-fodder [i]as well as [/i]America's working people considered by these neo-fascists as "slave labor" serfs ...

Refer to [u]"Dog Days Of Employment[/u]" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ...[/b]

[u][b]Billionaires for Bush[/b][/u]

President George W. Bush received donations from 79 percent of the U.S. billionaires who contributed to a presidential campaign this year, while Democrat John Kerry was backed by 21 percent, a study says.

Bush received contributions from 116 billionaires, including Bill Gates, chairman of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp., who was listed by Forbes magazine as the world's richest person, and Frederick Smith, chief executive of FedEx Corp., according to PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks campaign donations.

Kerry got donations from 31 billionaires, including Warren Buffett, chairman of Omaha- based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and the world's second- richest person; Eli Broad, chairman of AIG SunAmerica Inc., a subsidiary of New York-based American International Group Inc.; and David Geffen, co-founder of Glendale, Calif.-based DreamWorks SKG, a movie studio.

Republicans often outscore Democrats in fund raising among corporate executives.

The 58-year-old Bush has 280 CEOs from Russell 1000 index companies, to 52 for the 60-year-old Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan group based in Washington.

Kerry, who accepted the Democratic presidential nomination last week, released a list of 204 executives who endorse his economic policies.

Of the 277 U.S. billionaires identified by Forbes magazine, 153 gave to a candidate, including six who gave to both Bush and Kerry.

Those giving to both candidates included Charles Dolan, chairman of Bethpage, N.Y.- based Cablevision Systems Corp.; and Donald Trump, chief executive officer of Atlantic City, N.J.-based Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts.

Another 124 billionaires, or 45 percent of the total, gave to neither candidate, including Ted Turner, the founder of Cable News Network and a former vice chairman of New York-based Time Warner Inc.; Roy Disney, chairman of Shamrock Holdings Inc. and a former director of the Walt Disney Co., founded by his uncle; and Forrest Mars Jr., chairman of Mars Inc.

"I'm always surprised at the separation of the business world from politics in a number of wealthy people," said Kent Cooper, co- founder of PoliticalMoneyLine. "To them, politics is a different world, and the business mind has a hard time understanding how politics works."

Kerry has the support of two billionaires who did not give to either presidential campaign: Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Computer Inc., and Barry Diller, chairman of New York-based IAC/InterActiveCorp, an Internet commerce and television shopping company.

A Kerry campaign spokesman declined to comment.

Calls to the Bush campaign were not returned.

[b]Wealthy donors [/b]

116 Number of billionaires who made donations this year to President Bush.

31 Number of billionaires who made donations this year to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

6 Number of billionaires who made donations this year to both Bush and Kerry. - http://www.rockymountainnews....,1299,DRMN_4_3094590,00.html

[b]Courtesy of WinstonSmith http://winstonsmith.tblog.com... [/b]

[b]ALSO REFER TO HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD [/b]... http://www.houseofbush.com/

---> Catholic Group Condemns Bush's 'Failure of Moral Leadership'

10.28.04 (5:32 pm) [edit]

US Newswire: "Catholics for Political Responsibility has launched a stinging criticism of Bush's "failure of moral leadership," citing mounting casualties in Iraq, the torture and rendition of detainees, the growing number of families in poverty and rising abortion rates. The rise in poverty and abortion rates reverse significant progress made on these "life issues" during the 1990's. CPR is airing these critiques in two radio spots on 45 stations in OH, WI, CO, W. VA and NH. Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at College of the Holy Cross David O'Brien adds, "For all of Bush's talk about the Catholic vote, we find out from our Bishops this week that the President refused to complete the Catholic's Election Survey, the first major candidate to refuse their survey since it began in 1988. That is not surprising since Bush is on the wrong side of most Catholic teaching."

[b]More[/b] ... http://releases.usnewswire.co...

---> UNPRECEDENTED! New Yorker Magazine First Ever Endorsement for KERRY

10.28.04 (8:59 am) [edit]

The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/prin... "This Presidential campaign has been as ugly and as bitter as any in American memory ... reaching its apotheosis in the effort, undertaken by a supposedly independent group financed by friends of the incumbent, to portray the challenger - who in his mid-twenties was an exemplary combatant in both the Vietnam War and the movement to end that war - as a coward and a traitor.... On Tuesday, November 7, 2000, more than a hundred and five million Americans went to the polls and, by a small but indisputable plurality, voted to make Al Gore President of the United States [but] the outcome in the electoral college turned on the outcome in Florida [where] Bush held a lead [because] irregularities, and there were many, all had the effect of taking votes away from Gore; and the state's electoral machinery was in the hands of Bush's brother, who was the governor, and one of Bush's state campaign co-chairs, who was the Florida secretary of state."

"Bush sued to stop any recounting of the votes, and ... the United States Supreme Court gave him what he wanted. Bush v. Gore was so shoddily reasoned and transparently partisan that the five justices who endorsed the decision declined to put their names on it.... By ignoring [rules for settling electoral disputes] cutting off the process and installing Bush by fiat - the Court made a mockery not only of popular democracy but also of constitutional republicanism. [T]he damage would have been far less severe if the new President had made some effort to take account of the special circumstances [but Bush] made no such effort.... Dick Cheney put it this way: 'From the very day we walked in the building, a notion of sort of a restrained presidency because it was such a close election, that lasted maybe thirty seconds. It was not contemplated for any length of time. We had an agenda, we ran on that agenda, we won the election - full speed ahead.'"

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.newyorker.com/prin...

---> The Bush Regime Lies About The Missing Explosives in Iraq

10.28.04 (7:39 am) [edit]

---> The Bush Regime Lies About The Missing Explosives in Iraq

10.28.04 (7:39 am) [edit]

---> George W. Bush's Endorsements

10.28.04 (7:34 am) [edit]

---> CAROLINE KENNEDY TO BUSH: STOP INVOKING MY FATHER

10.28.04 (7:33 am) [edit]

[b]DRUDGE REPORT:[/b]

[b]CAROLINE KENNEDY TO BUSH: STOP INVOKING MY FATHER

Wed Oct 27 2004 15:19:01 ET

WASHINGTON, DC[/b] *In response to George W. Bush's invocation of prominent Democrats including President John F. Kennedy, Kennedy's daughter Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg issued this statement. "It's hard for me to listen to President Bush invoking my father's memory to attack John Kerry. Senator Kerry has demonstrated his courage and commitment to a stronger America throughout his entire career. President Kennedy inspired and united the country and so will John Kerry. President Bush is doing just the opposite. All of us who revere the strength and resolve of President Kennedy will be supporting John Kerry on Election Day."

Developing... http://www.drudgereport.com/f...

---> Will Their Children Forgive Them?

10.27.04 (4:07 pm) [edit]

Natasha (age 13) writes, "I suspect that, when they learn what the current adult generation is not telling them, most will have a lot of difficulty forgiving any parents who support or vote for the Bush administration. It will be a lot easier for these children to forgive if they do not have to suffer through another four years. Those four years will further endanger every life on Earth. A great many children are awake now. Kerry is winning polls among children, such as the one held by Nickelodeon. Children cut classes to protest in the street against the Iraq war. Most 18-year-old-voters will be voting for Kerry. It took a superior power to bring down Germany. Let's hope that the voters on November 2nd can save America and the planet by electing John Kerry. If Kerry is elected, children will be able to grow up and have the opportunity to forgive. If not, it may be up to God to forgive those who failed to oppose the Bush regime in the 2004 election."

[b]More[/b] ... http://debateusa.com/featured...

---> Bush's ''Tragic Series of Blunders'' got American Troops Killed in Iraq

10.27.04 (4:06 pm) [edit]

AP: "A U.S. military unit that reached a munitions storage installation after the invasion of Iraq had no orders to search or secure the site, where officials say nearly 400 tons of explosives have vanished [including] key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb attacks.... The disappearance of the explosives - first reported in Monday's New York Times - has raised questions about why the United States didn't do more to secure the facility and failed to allow full international inspections to resume after the invasion. It has also become a heated issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. The Kerry campaign called the disappearance the latest in a 'tragic series of blunders' by the Bush administration in Iraq." The UN knew where explosives were, but Bush ignored them, threw out inspectors, then rushed to war with no plan. Bush's 'blunders' got American troops killed. No sane, honest person can contradict Kerry on that, although Bush and Cheney try to.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.zwire.com/site/new...

---> Bush LIES Web-Sites ...

10.27.04 (2:51 pm) [edit]

BUSH WATCH Bush Lies http://www.bushwatch.com/bush... ...

"The Lies of George W. Bush" http://www.bushlies.com/ ...

Caught on Film http://www.house.gov/appropri... ...

WHO DIES FOR BUSH'S LIES http://www.whodies.com/ ...

Bush Lies, Media Swallows http://www.thenation.com/doc.... ...

---> Bush/Cheney Inc. Lies to Us About Costs of War in Iraq

10.27.04 (1:56 pm) [edit]

Before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration told the American people that it could be fought on the cheap. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."1 Budget Director Mitch Daniels said Iraq will be "an affordable endeavor,"2 "that will not require sustained aid"3 and cost "in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion."4 Defense Policy Board Member Richard Perle said, "Iraq is a very wealthy country...They can finance, largely finance, the reconstruction of their own country."5 They were all wrong.

[i]The Washington Post [/i]reports "the Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year."6

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Dems charge 'bait and switch' on Iraq," UPI, 10/03/03.
2. Ibid.
3. "U.S. says oil in Iraq to pay for rebuilding," Washington Post, 3/28/04.
4. "Estimated cost of Iraq war reduced," New York Times, 12/31/02.
5. "Saddam's Ultimate Solution," PBS, 07/11/02.
6. "Increase in War Funding Sought," Washington Post, 10/26/04.

---> The Real Dick Cheney (To the tune of Eminem's 'The Real Slim Shady')

10.27.04 (1:53 pm) [edit]

"See y'all are suckers
I send your kids to fight and die in war so I can get rich while you stay poor
Yeah I skipped 'nam, keep my ass alive
I got deferments countin' one two three four five
And you know all I'm taken from Halliburton's got you hurtin'
Cause its comin' out of your pocket and into my wad
I don't give a damn if you got a job or a
home or a family or a son or a daughter
I certainly don't care if you got clean water
And my voting machines - they're made to order!"

[b]More [/b]... http://therealdickcheney.com/...

---> Bush/Cheney Guilty of Rigging Presidential Election!!!

10.27.04 (8:30 am) [edit]

[b]Pentagon Suppressing the Overseas Civilian Vote[/b]

UK Guardian: "the panicked emails start flooding in, untold thousands of overseas voters still have not received their ballots - and clearly won't be able to get them back in time... Activists now fear that huge numbers of Americans overseas - both military and civilian - may be as disenfranchised as they were in 2000, when (many) ballots just plain never showed up... far from helping civilians, the Federal Voting Assistance Program has dragged its feet... The GAO excoriated the agency for losing thousands of overseas votes in 2000, but the FVAP insists it has corrected its problems this year. Frustrated civilian advocates, however, say the FVAP remains biased and ineffective. Despite reforms... it still has not shaken its Pentagon roots: It spends the bulk of its energy getting out a heavily Republican vote among half a million service people - but has failed the far greater numbers of civilians who tend to vote a different way."

[b]More[/b] ... http://guardian.co.uk/uselect...,,1335573,00.html

[b]EXPOSED! Bush Campaign Document Reveals Plans to Target African-American Voting Districts in Florida for 'Intimidation' [/b]
BBC: "A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts. [An] elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list [of targeted voters said], 'The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day.' Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations [but] not one challenge has been made to a voter 'in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections [and this] can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day; and discourage voters....' Sancho calls it 'intimidation.' And [C]ivil rights attorney, Ralph Neas, noted that US federal law prohibits targeting challenges to voters ... if race is a factor...." Watch the report tonight starting 5.30pm EST, and available for 24 hours at the link below:

[b]More[/b] ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/pr...

[b]Federal Judge Rules Against 10,000 Floridians Barred From Voting[/b]

NYT: "A federal district judge here dismissed a lawsuit Tuesday that was filed on behalf of more than 10,000 new voters whose registration forms had been rejected as incomplete... "No federal or state statute,'' he wrote, "prescribes a time period within which a supervisor must notify an applicant that her application is incomplete."... The suit, brought against elections supervisors in Broward, Miami-Dade and several other counties, charged that the rejected registration forms had come disproportionately from blacks and Hispanics. In some cases, the applicants did not check a box indicating that they were American citizens, though they signed an oath on the form affirming that they were."

[b]More [/b]... http://nytimes.com/2004/10/27...

---> Nobel Economists Endorse Kerry: Bush's Reckless Malfeasance of US Economy Must End!!!

10.27.04 (8:26 am) [edit]

[b]10 Nobel economists endorse Kerry

Experts criticize Bush's 'reckless and extreme course'[/b]

John Kerry won the endorsement of 10 Nobel Prize-winning economists Wednesday as he attacked President Bush for policies that he said have led to the creation of only low-paying jobs.

The Democratic presidential nominee released a letter from the economists saying the Bush administration had “embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation.”

They cited “poorly designed” tax cuts that instead of creating jobs have turned budget surpluses into enormous budget deficits, a “fiscal irresponsibility threatens the long-term economic security and prosperity of our nation.”

The endorsement, in the form of an open letter American voters, was signed by George Akerlof and Daniel McFadden of the University of California at Berkeley, Kenneth Arrow and William Sharpe of Stanford University, Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University, Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, Douglass North of Washington University, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow of MIT and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University.

Kerry, in remarks prepared for an appearance in Philadelphia, called for “jobs that don’t just let you survive but let you get ahead. Jobs that let you pay your bills, send your kids to college, buy a house, save a little for retirement and go out to dinner or a movie every once in a while.”

Now, he said, good jobs are being replaced “with ones that just don’t pay the bills,” — 1.8 million private sector jobs lost replaced by ones that pay $9,000 less and are more likely to be temporary less likely to offer health insurance.

Kerry hammered on the jobs issue in his neck-and-neck race for the Nov. 2 election with Bush after days of focus on criticism about his Vietnam war record.

In an appearance in Philadelphia Tuesday night the decorated veteran who became one of the conflict’s leading critics firmly defended his opposition to the war.

Voters “can judge my character” by his Vietnam record, the Massachusetts senator said, “Because when the times of moral crisis existed in this country, I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was taking care of public policy. I was taking care of things that made a difference to the life of this nation.”

He said he served in Vietnam for two tours — longer than opponents allege — and the Navy “thought enough of my service that they made me an aide to an admiral.”

Aides said his total service was about six months, including four months and 10 days in country and several weeks on a ship off the coast.

He was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.

“The Navy 35 years ago made the awards that it made through the normal process. I’m proud of them and I’m of my service and I’m proud that I stood up against the war when I got home because it was the right thing to do,” he added.

The controversy over how Kerry won his medals in that war 35 years ago has recently stolen the spotlight in the race for the White House as both candidates try to portray themselves as best able to lead the United States in its global anti-terror war.

Some veterans, some with ties to the Republican Party and Bush allies, have called Kerry’s courage into question and disputed the circumstances under which he received his medals.

But other veterans — with direct knowledge of events — have backed him up.

Bush’s record during the Vietnam war has also drawn criticism from some Democrats who accuse him of going absent without leave from the Texas Air National Guard, citing gaps in his service record. Bush did not serve in Vietnam. - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5...

---> Even Bush's Cousins Can't Stand A'W'OL-Dubya And Support Kerry for President!!!

10.27.04 (8:22 am) [edit]

[b]Family Feud

What do you do if you’re the president’s cousins—and you don’t like the way he’s running the country? Answer: You set up a Web site http://www.bushrelativesforke... in support of John Kerry[/b]

George W. Bush should not be re-elected because he lied to the American people, has presided over record deficits, has removed scores of environmental regulations and is incapable of rethinking his positions even when confronted by new information.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.boston.com/news/po...

---> Incompetent & Corrupt Bush's Non-stop Blunders in Iraq ...

10.27.04 (8:20 am) [edit]

WHEN President Bush declined to answer a debate question about mistakes he made in his first term, it indicated more than a personal idiosyncracy. His unwillingness to confront past errors reflected a penchant for self-deception that has been characteristic of his administration, particularly in regard to its lethal blunders in Iraq.

A frightening example of those unacknowledged errors is the failure to prevent the theft of nearly 380 tons of powerful explosives from a well-known site in Iraq. Such blunders must be acknowledged so that similar mistakes will not be made in the future.

The three-part series published in The New York Times last week, which explored failures of planning and foresight that have led to the current plight in Iraq, performed that useful cauterizing function.

Retired military and civilian officials who served in Iraq or took part in policy making for the war and postwar period left no doubt that the administration should never have tried to secure postwar Iraq with so few troops. This was a crucial error. Senior Army generals had warned against it. They said that if the ratio of peacekeepers to populace in Kosovo were taken as a measure, more than 400,000 troops would be needed to stabilize Iraq.

The official most responsible for the refusal to commit the troops needed for postwar security in Iraq was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who kept troop levels low to demonstrate in practice his theories about streamlining the military and transforming it to fight what the Pentagon calls the network-centric warfare of the future.

Military officers who spoke to the Times made it plain there were not enough troops to police Iraq's borders or to pacify Baghdad and cities of the Sunni triangle where Ba'athists, Islamists, and criminals were able to mount what has become the current insurgency. The related failures to stop postwar looting, protect crucial infrastructure, and guard arms depots -- all these fatal mistakes may be traced back to Rumsfeld's fallacy.

Perhaps the most telling criticism came from a now-retired Army major general who was chief intelligence officer for the land-war command in 2003. James (Spider) Marks told the Times, "the insurgency was not inevitable." That insurgency was stoked by civilian administrator Paul Bremer's disastrous decision to dissolve the 350,000-man Iraqi army. The insurgents were able to coalesce and flourish because coalition forces lacked the needed human intelligence on the ground.

These failures were possible because Bush did not encourage a clash of ideas within his inner circle. Even now he refuses to acknowledge the mistakes that were made and to hold Rumsfeld and others responsible. A president who does not demand accountability discards a great advantage of democratic government. - http://www.boston.com/news/gl...

---> Why Would Anyone Vote for Bush and Cheney?

10.27.04 (8:17 am) [edit]

Mike Hersh: "Bush and Cheney base their campaign on hypocritical accusations that Kerry cannot protect American lives and trivializing or ignoring important issues. No wonder they try to claim they're the only ones who can keep us safe - even though they let terrorists operate in the US after ignoring specific warnings bin Laden was intent on striking. Bush and Cheney hope we forget that it wasn't Kerry who didn't keep us safe, Bush and Cheney failed on that paramount responsibility - and then failed to make needed changes to fix the problems. Either Bush can't do the job for America, or he refuses to do the job. Either way, it's time for serious leadership. It's time to end the blame games, the trivialization, the excuses, and the lies. We cannot afford four more years of more of the same. Bush is unfit to serve four more minutes. Bush whines that the job of president is 'hard.' Let's do him a big favor and fire him next week so he can find a job he can do."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.mikehersh.com/Why_...

---> Pentagon Suppressing the Overseas Civilian Vote

10.27.04 (8:16 am) [edit]

UK Guardian: "the panicked emails start flooding in, untold thousands of overseas voters still have not received their ballots - and clearly won't be able to get them back in time... Activists now fear that huge numbers of Americans overseas - both military and civilian - may be as disenfranchised as they were in 2000, when (many) ballots just plain never showed up... far from helping civilians, the Federal Voting Assistance Program has dragged its feet... The GAO excoriated the agency for losing thousands of overseas votes in 2000, but the FVAP insists it has corrected its problems this year. Frustrated civilian advocates, however, say the FVAP remains biased and ineffective. Despite reforms... it still has not shaken its Pentagon roots: It spends the bulk of its energy getting out a heavily Republican vote among half a million service people - but has failed the far greater numbers of civilians who tend to vote a different way."

[b]More[/b] ... http://guardian.co.uk/uselect...,,1335573,00.html

---> Lunatic Bush Sure As Hell Ain't No Christ!!!

10.27.04 (7:14 am) [edit]

[b]'The religion of George W. Bush'[/b]

"WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?" ASSIGNMENT:

If you support the "war" in Iraq:

(a) excepting yourself, choose five people from your immediate family and/or from among your best friends whom you would be willing to "sacrifice" (i.e., kill) in order to depose Saddam Hussein;

(b) tell them personally of your decision.

It is extremely difficult to challenge someone regarding the sincerity of his or her religious beliefs. How does one presume to "know the contents of another's heart," let alone one's own?

In the case of President George W. Bush, the mainstream press has deliberately avoided an in-depth discussion of whether the "religion" of President Bush is sincere, the general assumption being that it is sincere. Both Bob Woodward and Ron Suskind, in their various discussions, seem convinced that the Religious Mr. Bush is truly a religious man, that his "born again" status is legitimate, that when he speaks of his faith, he speaks from his heart.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Studies Show It's The Clueless Who 'Luv' Bush ...

10.27.04 (7:10 am) [edit]

[b]Studies show Bush supporters are misled on Bush policies and the news[/b]

Oh, you sweet, innocent, carefree citizens in non-swing states. You have no idea how much fun and slime you are missing.

In the swingers, wolves stalk us mercilessly (as the pro-wolf lobby points out indignantly, no one has ever been killed by wolves on U.S. soil, but try arguing that in the face of the relentless new TV ad campaign). Breaking news everywhere -- 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq left unattended, stock market down to year's low, leading economic indicators down, more tragedy in Iraq, the Swift Boat Liars are back, more Halliburton scandal, George Tenet says the war in Iraq is "wrong" -- it feels like you're dodging meteorites here in the Final Days.

Actually, the best evidence suggests we need to slow way down and go way back, because far from being able to take in anything new, it turns out many of our fellow citizens, especially Bush supporters, are stuck like bugs in amber in some early misperceptions that have never been cleared up.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Corrupt & Incompetent Bush Administration Misleads USA on Cost of War

10.27.04 (7:08 am) [edit]

---> Corrupt & Incompetent Bush Administration Misleads USA on Cost of War

10.27.04 (7:08 am) [edit]

---> Jon Stewart v. 'Perception Management'

10.27.04 (7:04 am) [edit]

Election 2004 is turning out to be a surprising test for the old Reagan-Bush concept of "perception management," as more and more Americans question the official story on Iraq and seek alternative views, sometimes from satirical programs like Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show."

Indeed, the election's outcome may turn on whether George W. Bush's administration can sustain the perception of success in Iraq among enough Americans during the campaign's final week to hold off John Kerry's challenge. But Bush's electoral cause is not likely to be helped by the unrelenting bad news from Iraq. Only his most loyal followers can be expected not to notice the unfolding disaster.

One of the latest catastrophes was the disclosure that the administration failed to secure high-powered conventional explosives at an Iraqi nuclear site and that almost 380 tons of the bomb-making material has disappeared. The New York Times reported that the explosives could be "used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Unquestionable Lunatics!?! ...

10.26.04 (2:03 pm) [edit]

[b]ANYBODY STUPID ENOUGH TO VOTE REPUBLICAN!!![/b]

---> MEDIA FRAUD: NBC/MSNBC Tries to Spin Missing Explosives Story to Aid Bush

10.26.04 (1:52 pm) [edit]

Why doesn't it surprise us that the network that is directly benefiting from Bush Pentagon largesse - as in a $444.9 million contract to GE, the network's parent co, which owns 80% of the NBC "empire" - is the network leading the charge to try to help the Bush Pentagon try to spin off the disastrous disappearance of 380 tons of explosives in Iraq? NBC has also been feeding propaganda to rightwing pundits: on Oct. 26, Pat Robertson (for ex.) claimed that an "NBC embedded reporter" says the weapons were "always missing", so their absence could be blamed on Clinton! Call NBC and demand they stop this conflict-of-interest-moti vated perversion of the truth. Also, check your stock portfolio for GE and NBC Universal stock. For now, contact NBC/MSNBC's news: http://www.msnbc.com/news/435...

[b]More[/b] ... http://msnbc.msn.com/id/63239...

---> Neo-Cons Want You To Shoot the Messenger & Let the Real Crooks 'Off-the-Hook'!!!

10.26.04 (1:50 pm) [edit]

[b]Instead of Focusing on the Crooks Bush/Cheney who have Put Weapons into the Hands of Terrorists because of their Corruption & Incompetence; the Neo-Cons Want You to Focus on the Media Reporting of This Story ... Hmmm ... Are You Really THAT Stupid??? ...

Kerry Demands Answers About Missing Explosives; Derides Bush for 'Up in the Air' Remark[/b]

AFP: "Democrat challenger John Kerry's campaign demanded answers from President George W. Bush about the disappearance of nearly 400 tonnes of conventional explosives in Iraq... In a campaign underpinned by the basic question of who will make Americans safer, the Kerry camp pounced on revelations of the missing explosives, on a day when it also expects a boost from the return of former president Bill Clinton to the campaign trail. 'Today, the Bush administration must answer for what may be the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq,' senior Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart said in a statement dispatched before sunrise... Kerry meanwhile seized on Bush's comment in an interview to be broadcast Monday that whether Americans will ever be safe from extremists was 'up in the air'... 'You make me president of the United States, we are going to win the war on terror, it's not going to be up in the air whether or not we make America safe,' Kerry countered."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.turkishpress.com/n...

---> Bush's Flip-Flop: Now He's Pro-Gay! HA HA HA!

10.26.04 (1:35 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush Flipflop: Hoping to Dupe Undecided Dems (all three of them), Bush Now he Says he's Pro-Gay![/b]

Political Gateway:"George W. Bush stressed Tuesday that he supports states' rights to allow civil unions for same-sex couples, contrary to his Republican Party's official stance, although he still opposes gay marriage. "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what the state chooses to do," Bush said in an interview with ABC television aired Tuesday." LOL! This is coming from the man who wanted to change to constitution to send a message to gays! He apparently thinks liberals are as stupid as rightwingers - willing to believe any fairytale told them - like the ones about how he's a "moderate," a "uniter," "for patients' rights," and "pro-Kyoto protocol," just to name a few last minute campaign promises from 2000!

[b]More [/b]... http://www.politicalgateway.c...

---> Lifelong Colorado Republicans Endorse Kerry

10.26.04 (9:15 am) [edit]

Rocky Mountain News: "A number of lifelong Republicans gathered at Kerry-Edwards headquarters in Denver on Monday to endorse Democrats this year. Jon DeStefano, a Republican and former president of the Jefferson County Public Schools board, said, "Bush promised leadership and unifying America, but Americans are not working together."I am aware of the tragedy in Iraq. I don't believe there ever has been a president (who) has caused such a tragedy."Harold Anderson, co-owner of a small medical equipment company who actively supported Republican presidential candidates all his life, said, "This president is forgetting the middle class."We don't need a super leader, but a man who can admit when he makes mistakes."

[b]More [/b]... http://rockymountainnews.com/...,1299,DRMN_36_3281373,00.html

---> FLOP: Sinclair's Anti-Kerry Show Didn't Net More Viewers, Earned Negative Debt Rating! LOL!

10.26.04 (9:11 am) [edit]

Reuters: "Sinclair Broadcast Group's controversial news special "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media" did only so-so Nielsen numbers in some of the TV station owner's larger markets Friday despite an avalanche of media attention to the politically charged special." In some key areas - including most of its Ohio affiliates, viewers actually tuned out, with stations losing up to 50% of viewers. "[Sinclair's]stock fell nine cents to $7.08 on the Nasdaq Monday, the same day that Moody's Investors Service revised the outlook on its debt rating to negative from stable in part because of revenue forecast concerns." Guess the moral to the story is: Crime against the American public does not pay.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...

---> Carter is Right: "Bush Exploits Suffering of 9/11" ...

10.26.04 (9:08 am) [edit]

UK Guardian: "George Bush has exploited the suffering of September 11 and turned back decades of efforts to make the world a safer place, the former president Jimmy Carter says in an interview with the Guardian published today. Attacking Mr Bush and Tony Blair over Iraq, Mr Carter calls the war 'a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements'... The US 'suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack ... and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander-in-chief, fighting a global threat against America,' Mr Carter says. 'He's repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated. I don't know if it's dissipating fast enough to affect the election. We'll soon know.' "

[b]More [/b]... http://www.guardian.co.uk/int...,,1335313,00.html

---> The Colossal Hypocrisy of Bill O'Reilly - IN HIS OWN WORDS

10.26.04 (9:05 am) [edit]

The most disgusting thing about O'Reilly is his colossal hypocrisy - here's a man who has for years self-righteously slimed other men (Bill Clinton esp.) for their sexual peccadillos, yet suggests sexual harassment is just a tool used by women to "get ahead." "I think that the sexual harassment thing is used as a club, as I said, by many women, all right. It's something they have against men, a threat to keep men at bay in a very competitive marketplace." And, while O'Reilly refuses to resign, "When Ohio TV anchor Catherine Bosley resigned after photos of her participating in a wet t-shirt contest were posted on the internet," [without her knowledge], O'Reilly thought she should be let go: "The station has an obligation to put on people who are going to bolster their news image. This woman, in a community like that particularly, but in -- I think in any city in the USA, becomes a joke.."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.commondreams.org/n...

---> MEDIA FRAUD: NBC/MSNBC Gets $444.9-MILLION Pentagon Payoff for Pro-War, Pro-Bush Propaganda

10.26.04 (8:19 am) [edit]

Jan. 2003 through October 2004: NBC/MSNBC promote the war in Iraq and the Bush campaign through continuous news spin, while undermining or suppressing John Kerry. October 21, 2004: Pentagon awards GE (which owns an 80% interest in NBC Universal, the parent co. of NBC and MSNBC) a $444.9 million defense contract. October 21 2004 to present: NBC/MSNBC pro-Bush spin intensifies. DON'T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH PROFITING OFF WAR AND MANIPULATING NEWS. Call and demand that NBC stops colluding with the Pentagon and GE. This amounts to a criminal conflict of interest. If you get no response, maybe it's time to check your stock portfolio and do a little "weeding." Contact info: http://www.msnbc.com/news/435...

[b]More [/b]... http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/04102...

---> Who Killed Paul Wellstone?

10.26.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

"American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone" is a powerful new book by Four Arrows and Jim Fetzer. "Understanding the crash, they believe, requires establishing why the King Air suddenly stopped communicating. Another man on his way to the funeral, driving within a couple blocks of the airport at the time of the crash experienced otherworldly cell-phone interference. He reported hearing a sound 'between a roar and loud humming voice...oscillating...screeching and humming noise.' Most responsible for narrowing the authors' search for a cause was the blue smoke typical of electrical fires that streamed out of the King Air's sheared fuselage for hours after the crash. In an arresting passage, the authors cite a Time magazine article describing microwave weapons the US is developing to knock out enemy electronics. Supposedly they're capable of unleashing in an instant as much power as the Hoover Dam cranks out in a day."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.freezerbox.com/arc...

---> Corrupt-n-Incompetent Bush (Not Saddam) Has Put Weapons Into The Hands Of Terrorists

10.26.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

[b]Making Things Worse[/b]

President Bush's misbegotten invasion of Iraq appears to have achieved what Saddam Hussein did not: putting dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists and creating an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The murder of dozens of Iraqi Army recruits over the weekend is being attributed to the forces of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been identified by the Bush administration as a leading terrorist and a supposed link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That was not true before the war - as multiple investigations have shown. But the breakdown of order since the invasion has changed all that. This terrorist, who has claimed many attacks on occupation forces and the barbaric murder of hostages, recently swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed his group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The hideous murder of the recruits was a reminder of the Bush administration's dangerously inflated claims about training an Iraqi security force. The officials responsible for these inexperienced young men sent them home for leave without weapons or guards, at a time when police and army recruits are constantly attacked. The men who killed them wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms.

A particularly horrific case of irony involves weapons of mass destruction. It's been obvious for months that American forces were not going to find the chemical or biological armaments that Mr. Bush said were stockpiled in Iraq. What we didn't know is that while they were looking for weapons that did not exist, they lost weapons that did.

James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger reported in The Times yesterday that some 380 tons of the kinds of powerful explosives used to destroy airplanes, demolish buildings, make missile warheads and trigger nuclear weapons have disappeared from one of the many places in Iraq that the United States failed to secure. The United Nations inspectors disdained by the Bush administration had managed to monitor the explosives for years. But they vanished soon after the United States took over the job. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was so bent on proving his theory of lightning warfare that he ignored the generals who said an understaffed and underarmed invasion force could rush to Baghdad, but couldn't hold the rest of the country, much less guard things like the ammunition dump.

Iraqi and American officials cannot explain how some 760,000 pounds of explosives were spirited away from a well-known site just 30 miles from Baghdad. But they were warned. Within weeks of the invasion, international weapons inspectors told Washington that the explosives depot was in danger and that terrorists could help themselves "to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

The disastrous theft was revealed in a recent letter to an international agency in Vienna. It was signed by the general director of Iraq's Planning and Following Up Directorate. It's too bad the Bush administration doesn't have one of those. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

---> Corrupt-n-Incompetent Bush (Not Saddam) Has Put Weapons Into The Hands Of Terrorists

10.26.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

---> 'President's Fake Religion Finally Being Questioned' ...

10.26.04 (6:38 am) [edit]

"If we had faith in injustice, we would only believe in ourselves and act with injustice." -- Attorney Frank Galvin in the film "The Verdict."

DETROIT -- No president in modern times has had more faith in himself and wrought more injustice than George W. Bush. With his military madness and the violence in Iraq, reckless fiscal policies, tax structures that most benefit the rich and shift more of the obligations of government to the middle class and harm the poor, and positions on the environment that desecrate the earth and damage human health, this president acts as if injustice were a virtue.

But God is on Bush's side, we're told, and he's here doing the Lord's work on earth.

We know the certainty of this great truth because Bush tells us it's so. His mission from God and faith in his own leadership make the president omnipotent, omniscient and infallible. Even popes don't get all those traits.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> 'President's Fake Religion Finally Being Questioned' ...

10.26.04 (6:38 am) [edit]

---> Bush Lies to America About Intelligence Funding

10.26.04 (6:35 am) [edit]

In a new campaign advertisement, President Bush accuses Sen. John Kerry, "after the first terrorist attack on America," of voting to "slash America's intelligence operations" with cuts "so deep they would have weakened America's defenses."1 The accusations made in the ad are false and misleading.

First, the vote in question did not occur, as the ad suggests, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The vote took place in 1994, a year after a truck bomb went off in a parking garage beneath one of the World Trade Center towers.2 For several years prior to 9/11, John Kerry supported increases in intelligence funding.3

Also, Kerry never supported "slashing" the intelligence budget. In 1994, as part of an effort to balance the budget, he supported a provision that would have cut the intelligence budget by $5 billion over five years.4 This amounts to about a 3.7 percent reduction.

Moreover, the implication that Kerry's vote disqualifies him from being in charge of intelligence operations is disingenuous. Porter Goss - who Bush appointed to lead the Central Intelligence Agency - supported far more significant reductions in intelligence resources. In 1995, Goss sponsored a bill that would have cut the staff at the CIA by 20 percent over five years.5

[b]Sources: [/b]

1. "Bush-Cheney '04 Launches New Television Advertisement, 'Wolves'," GeorgeWBush.com, 10/22/04.
2. "Would Kerry Throw Us To The Wolves?," FactCheck.org, 10/23/04.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. "Goss Backed '95 Bill to Slash Intelligence," Washington Post, 08/24/04.

---> The Education Gap: Stupid Voters for Stupid Bush

10.26.04 (6:33 am) [edit]

"In their latest strategy memo, James Carville and Stan Greenberg say 'the big story in this election is the Education Gap, which is greatly impacting who are the targets in the coming week, and will impact and be the story of the election afterwards. While the Gender Gap has diminished since 2000, the Education Gap has expanded significantly, and is now slightly larger than the division along gender lines.' 'In 2000, there was only a 2-point education gap, with Gore and Bush running dead even among college graduates and Bush winning by just 2 points among the non-college educated voters. The result was a 2-point education gap. But not so in 2004. Today, there is now a 12-point education gap. Kerry is winning college educated voters by 10 points but losing the non-college graduates by 2 points.'" ([b]Note:[/b] PDF file: http://www.democracycorps.com... )

---> IMPEACH BUSH: Explosives Went Missing AFTER U.S. Invasion of Iraq ...

10.25.04 (11:43 pm) [edit]

[b]The Iraqi interim government says that the explosives at al Qa Qaa went missing AFTER Bush's illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq ... Read more ... http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ...[/b]

---> Kerry Ahead even on ABC Bush-Skewed Poll ...

10.25.04 (11:12 pm) [edit]

"Whoops!" We bet that's what the Bushies at ABC said when they let this one slip under the radar! ABC has in the past weeks gone so far to the right it is scary - with news spin that would make Rupert Murdoch blush. But even their best poll-padding efforts couldn't make their latest poll show Bush ahead or even in a dead heat with Kerry! Notice how they "qualify" this result - as if they were apologizing to the White House for failing to get the "right" results: After reporting the results - " The telephone survey of likely voters from Oct. 21 to Oct. 24 showed 49 percent would vote for Kerry and 48 percent for Bush" - they immediately add: "Similar polls released by ABC during the previous three days showed Bush with 49 percent and Kerry with 48 percent. "

[b]More[/b] ... http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm...

---> NewsMax Says Bush is Losing ...

10.25.04 (11:10 pm) [edit]

Here's the lead item from ultraright NewsMax's Campaign Buzz: Early Voting Results. "Polling of early convenience voting in states like Florida are not going well for Bush. Republicans expected this, with the enormous resources pumped into the voter efforts of Democrats." Gee, why doesn't NewsMax put this bad (for Bush) news on its web site?

[b]More[/b] ... http://newsmax.com/

---> Kerry Is Right, Bush Lies: US Let Bin Laden Escape, Hunt Was 'Outsourced'

10.25.04 (11:08 pm) [edit]

Josh Marshall: "Though we cannot in the nature of things have absolute certainty about bin Laden's whereabouts, there is little doubt that bin Laden was there. We had a 'reasonable certainty' he was there when the critical decisions were being made. And subsequent intelligence has only tended to confirm that belief. As to the issue of 'outsourcing,' the claim is unquestionably true. And it is widely believed that this was a key reason for the failure to capture bin Laden... What you simply cannot say is that the whole thing never happened. And yet that is precisely what the president and the vice president are now doing: Simply denying everything. Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes? They are, in old fashioned English, lying. And the major news outlets covering the campaign -- as nearly as I've seen so far -- are just treating the disagreement as a he said/(s)he said in which both sides' arguments have equal merit. Sums up the whole campaign."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.talkingpointsmemo....

---> Former President Jimmy Carter: Bush Exploits Suffering of 9/11

10.25.04 (11:06 pm) [edit]

UK Guardian: "George Bush has exploited the suffering of September 11 and turned back decades of efforts to make the world a safer place, the former president Jimmy Carter says in an interview with the Guardian published today. Attacking Mr Bush and Tony Blair over Iraq, Mr Carter calls the war 'a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements'... The US 'suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack ... and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander-in-chief, fighting a global threat against America,' Mr Carter says. 'He's repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated. I don't know if it's dissipating fast enough to affect the election. We'll soon know.' "

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/int...,,1335313,00.html

---> Bush Covered-Up HUGE Cache of Explosives That Vanished From US-Controlled Site in Iraq

10.25.04 (11:04 pm) [edit]

"The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations. The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives VANISHED after the American invasion last year." VANISHED - from Bush's CENTRAL FRONT in the WAR ON TERROR????? Impeach Bush NOW!

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

---> Sick of Having to Explain the Bush Campaign's Lies to the Clueless?

10.25.04 (10:42 pm) [edit]

[b]Here's a COMPLETE GUIDE TO JOHN KERRY'S RECORD[/b]

Tired to the endless Bush campaign lies about Kerry and having to waste valuable time trying to refute them to the clueless? Here's a FANTASTIC site drily called "Compassiongate" that neatly exposes and elucidates just about every Bush campaign lie about Kerry yet spewed. PASS THIS LINK ALONG FAR AND WIDE! Among the Repug myths exploded at Compassiongate is Kerry's "poor" voting record - here's the REAL record laid out in detail. Also covered: Kerry's Vietnam record, Kerry as highly effective prosecutor, Kerry as senator, Kerry on lobbyists and porkers, Kerry on national security. What's pathetic is that we here at the progressive media - many of us unpaid and burning midnight oil, must do this job because the sell-out mainstream media REFUSES to.

[b]More[/b] ... http://bush-v-kerry.compassio...

---> IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY: HUGE Cache of Explosives Vanished From US-Controlled Site in Iraq

10.25.04 (10:33 pm) [edit]

---> New Voters Favor Kerry Over Bush by 60%-35%

10.25.04 (10:30 pm) [edit]

Ruy Teixeira blogs, "A new Ipsos-AP analysis of their poll data shows new voters leaning very heavily toward Kerry. Among LVs who are new voters, Kerry is favored over Bush by a smashing 25 points, 60-35. Moreover, these new voters were twice as likely to say they'd been contacted by the Kerry campaign (38%) than by the Bush campaign (16%). The Ipsos-AP analysis provides this sketch of new voters' demographics and political attitudes: New voters tend to be young (64% are under 35), unmarried (54%), with some college experience (36%) and holding down a full-time job (63%), often in the service sector or skilled trades. They say the country is heading in the wrong direction (68%) and disapprove of Bush's performance as President (63%) and his handling of Iraq (65%), in particular. Obviously, the more of these voters that show up at the polls on November 2, the better for John Kerry."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.emergingdemocratic...

---> October Surprise Red Alert: WILL BUSH ATTACK IRAN?

10.25.04 (10:28 pm) [edit]

Wayne Madsen: "The Bush administration, worried that it could lose the presidential election to John Kerry, has initiated plans to launch a military strike on Iran's top Islamic leadership, its nuclear reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, and key nuclear targets throughout the country, including the main underground research site at Natanz in central Iran and another in Isfahan. Targets of the planned U.S. attack reportedly include mosques in Tehran, Qom, and Isfahan known by the U.S. to headquarter Iran's top mullahs. The Iran attack plan was reportedly drawn up after internal polling indicated that if the Bush administration launched a so-called anti-terrorist attack on Iran some two weeks before the election, Bush would be assured of a landslide win against Kerry. Reports of a pre-emptive strike on Iran come amid concerns by a number of political observers that the Bush administration would concoct an 'October Surprise' to influence the outcome of the presidential election. "

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.informationclearin...

---> Corporate Media Ran Previously Discredited Bush Claims 9,118 times in 42 Cities

10.25.04 (10:26 pm) [edit]

Here's the pathetic state of the US media today: The networks rejects ads for the release of the DVD of a popular, award-winning movie (Fahrenheit 9/11), yet then run an ad stuffed with lies - lies previously completely discredited - not once, but over 9,000 TIMES! Annenberg FactCheck reports: "Two misleading Bush ads accusing Kerry of supporting tax increases on gasoline and middle-class parents were running heavily last week. Both ads repeat claims we've repeatedly disputed here. Both ads repeat claims we've repeatedly disputed here. They both attempt to portray Kerry as eager to raise taxes on middle-income taxpayers, which Kerry has said consistently he won't do. One ad characterizes Kerry's votes against proposed tax cuts as votes to "raise taxes," an outright falsehood.... Together the two ads aired 9,118 times on stations monitored by TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.factcheck.org/arti...

---> Rove's Comical, Unending Efforts to Turn Wimpy, Whiny - Clumsy- Bush into a '1950s He Man'

10.25.04 (10:23 pm) [edit]

Carol Pogash writes: "Presidential candidates usually strive to be role models. But Karl Rove has another agenda: He wants to convince Americans that Bush, the son of a president and grandson of a senator, a man who "bravely" refuses to scale back tax cuts to the very rich, is an ordinary American. In the [sick, pathetic] Rovian universe, it's Bush who is the regular jock and Kerry who's the sports wimp. The fact that Kerry is a superb athlete who skis, snowboards, plays hockey and wind surfs while Bush, once a high school cheerleader [LOL- we'd love to see him with his pompoms!], clears brush for the TV cameras and tumbles off a mountain bike and a Segway scooter..." and whose greatest "sports" achievement is throwing out a baseball for the cameras without actually hitting anyone for the World Series" We wonder how long Bush would be able to wind surf before he drowned?

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...

---> Republican Women Rebel Against the Bush Regime: 'We Want Our Party Back!'

10.25.04 (10:21 pm) [edit]

The Guardian: "George Bush's crackdown on abortion has inflamed women in his own party to the point where they are openly turning against [him]. Fuelled by a fear that a Bush victory in next month's election could lead to many states overturning 30 yrs of legal terminations in the US, several moderate Repub women are rebelling against the crusade against sex education and unmarried women's access to contraception. AZ State Sen. Linda Binder says she has rejected Bush his 'wacky, far right' position on women's rights. 'We don't want to go back to coathanger abortions... As legislators, my fellow moderates are feeling the push for more faith-based programmes on sex education and contraception coming from the Bush admin.' Binder is one of [many GOP] women renegades infuriated by Bush's slogan that the W in his name 'stands for women'. Mary Lou Halliburton, a Colorado Republican...helped create a group called Republicans Who Want Their Party Back."

[b]More [/b]... http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,13918,1334762,00.html

---> Liar-Laura Bush, Like Hubby-A'W'OL Thinks They Are Above The Law, Above Americans!!!

10.25.04 (6:51 pm) [edit]

[b]Whopper: Laura Bush

The first lady lies in order to make the president look ... stupid? No character, no integrity-- Liar-Laura Bush is a Stepford Slut to her Dry-Drunkard hubby, A'W'OL, both of whom think they are above the law, above Americans!!![/b]

[b]More[/b] ... http://slate.msn.com/id/20934...

---> The Education Gap: Stupid Voters for Stupid Bush

10.25.04 (4:25 pm) [edit]

"In their latest strategy memo, James Carville and Stan Greenberg say 'the big story in this election is the Education Gap, which is greatly impacting who are the targets in the coming week, and will impact and be the story of the election afterwards. While the Gender Gap has diminished since 2000, the Education Gap has expanded significantly, and is now slightly larger than the division along gender lines.' 'In 2000, there was only a 2-point education gap, with Gore and Bush running dead even among college graduates and Bush winning by just 2 points among the non-college educated voters. The result was a 2-point education gap. But not so in 2004. Today, there is now a 12-point education gap. Kerry is winning college educated voters by 10 points but losing the non-college graduates by 2 points.'" (Note: PDF file)

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.democracycorps.com...

---> The Education Gap: Stupid Voters for Stupid Bush

10.25.04 (4:24 pm) [edit]

"In their latest strategy memo, James Carville and Stan Greenberg say 'the big story in this election is the Education Gap, which is greatly impacting who are the targets in the coming week, and will impact and be the story of the election afterwards. While the Gender Gap has diminished since 2000, the Education Gap has expanded significantly, and is now slightly larger than the division along gender lines.' 'In 2000, there was only a 2-point education gap, with Gore and Bush running dead even among college graduates and Bush winning by just 2 points among the non-college educated voters. The result was a 2-point education gap. But not so in 2004. Today, there is now a 12-point education gap. Kerry is winning college educated voters by 10 points but losing the non-college graduates by 2 points.'" (Note: PDF file)

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.democracycorps.com...

---> The Education Gap: Stupid Voters for Stupid Bush

10.25.04 (4:20 pm) [edit]

"In their latest strategy memo, James Carville and Stan Greenberg say 'the big story in this election is the Education Gap, which is greatly impacting who are the targets in the coming week, and will impact and be the story of the election afterwards. While the Gender Gap has diminished since 2000, the Education Gap has expanded significantly, and is now slightly larger than the division along gender lines.' 'In 2000, there was only a 2-point education gap, with Gore and Bush running dead even among college graduates and Bush winning by just 2 points among the non-college educated voters. The result was a 2-point education gap. But not so in 2004. Today, there is now a 12-point education gap. Kerry is winning college educated voters by 10 points but losing the non-college graduates by 2 points.'" (Note: PDF file)

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.democracycorps.com...

---> The Education Gap: Stupid Voters for Stupid Bush

10.25.04 (4:16 pm) [edit]

"In their latest strategy memo, James Carville and Stan Greenberg say 'the big story in this election is the Education Gap, which is greatly impacting who are the targets in the coming week, and will impact and be the story of the election afterwards. While the Gender Gap has diminished since 2000, the Education Gap has expanded significantly, and is now slightly larger than the division along gender lines.' 'In 2000, there was only a 2-point education gap, with Gore and Bush running dead even among college graduates and Bush winning by just 2 points among the non-college educated voters. The result was a 2-point education gap. But not so in 2004. Today, there is now a 12-point education gap. Kerry is winning college educated voters by 10 points but losing the non-college graduates by 2 points.'" (Note: PDF file)

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.democracycorps.com...

---> Bush's Bloodthirsty Failure in Iraq: Coalition of the Increasingly Unwilling

10.25.04 (4:07 pm) [edit]

[b]The Creaky Coalition[/b]

[b]Allies are getting balky about following America's lead[/b]

America's 138,000 troops in Iraq were asking for a little help from their British friends. Could an 850-strong armored battalion of Scotland's Black Watch Regiment please be redeployed from Basra, in southern Iraq, to the outskirts of Baghdad? The request seemed straightforward enough. Yet it triggered another political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. As British commanders weighed the American request, London editors wrote scaremongering headlines about the Black Watch's walking into a "Triangle of Death." Blair's critics charged that acceding to the U.S. request would amount to an election-eve boost to Bush's presidential campaign. Is it not time "to say 'no' to the Americans?" one Labour Party M.P. demanded of Blair.

[b]More[/b] ... http://msnbc.msn.com/id/63153...

---> Does the Pathological Liar/Insane Asshole Bush Think He's Channeling God???

10.25.04 (4:04 pm) [edit]

As I read Ron Suskind's dismaying cover story on President Bush's religiously inspired certainty in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, "Without a Doubt," I kept experiencing déjà vu.

I've seen this storyline somewhere before: A president who had been a feckless, party-loving, hard-drinking man, is visited by a messenger of God and suddenly changes his ways. Thereafter, he knows what is right and will listen to no one who suggests otherwise. This president, convinced that he is doing God's work--that he is God’s spokesman on earth--suspends civil liberties to fight crime. He repudiates international treaties and announces that the United States will build new weapons to put itself in a position of world dominance. He orders other nations to follow American dictates, or else. That the "or else" means using American military might for preemptive war is made clear to world leaders when they are assembled and shown a demonstration of American military power. They all immediately agree to do what the United States (and God) demands.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Does the Pathological Liar/Insane Asshole Bush Think He's Channeling God???

10.25.04 (4:03 pm) [edit]

---> Terrorists, Saudi Tyrants, War-Profiteers Funding Herr Fuhrer Bush's Insane Reign!!!

10.25.04 (3:53 pm) [edit]

---> Nazi Pig-Face Karl (Joseph Goebbels) Rove's 'Dreams' Became Our Nightmares ...

10.25.04 (3:45 pm) [edit]

The year was 1968. The Vietnam War and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were shaping history. Little did I know that walking next to me in the halls of Olympus High School that year was a friend who would shape history in 2004 as profoundly as these events did in 1968, the year Karl Rove and I were 17.

Karl started out with every social disadvantage. He was the new kid, physically still pre-pubescent, the classic nerd, with Coke-bottle glasses, pants too short, belt too tight and, to make it even worse, he was non-Mormon.

Yet at a very clique-ish high school, he managed to break into the social elite by understanding who was in charge and how to appeal to them. He had an energetic but not a charismatic personality. He was intelligent, but not a genius; he was well-read, but tried a little too hard to let you know that.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Nazi Pig-Face Karl (Joseph Goebbels) Rove's 'Dreams' Became Our Nightmares ...

10.25.04 (3:45 pm) [edit]

---> The Media's Civic Obligation; The CIA 9/11 Report Cover-Up

10.25.04 (3:41 pm) [edit]

The Gene Kelly character in the classic movie "Inherit the Wind" said the role of the reporter is "to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable." The role of the free press in a democracy is to mediate between government and the people, especially during an election season. When political corruption exists, the media should expose it, so the people can base their choices of candidates on knowledge of all the available information. Thomas Jefferson said that the only way for democracy to survive is for the public to remain fully informed.

Media shouldn't be neutral but should serve as advocates for the people. Too often today the press serves to protect powerful political figures and keep their secrets. For example, the press has allowed George W. Bush to get away with a large number of false assertions and cover-ups.

The issue isn't whether the media should take the side of Democrats against Republicans or vice versa. Instead, this is a question of the media's taking the side of the people versus the powerful any time anyone in power commits serious misdeeds.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> The Media's Civic Obligation; The CIA 9/11 Report Cover-Up

10.25.04 (3:41 pm) [edit]

---> The 'Morally Treasonable' Bush/Cheney Administration

10.25.04 (3:27 pm) [edit]

On a blatant campaign of exploiting 9/11, and a subversive campaign to undermine the nation's civil liberties, George W. Bush expects to win a second term. Jingoism is encouraged; dissent is not tolerated.

As Texas governor, Bush established "protest zones" far removed from where he spoke. He continues that practice as President. Anyone with a message not in agreement with the administration's beliefs is isolated, some as much as a half-mile away, during presidential and vice-presidential public appearances. However, according to a ruling by the federal district court in Philadelphia, all persons, no matter what their personal or political views, must have equal access under the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and the right of assembly. That part of the Constitution has often been overlooked by the Republican administration and by local police.

In Columbia, S.C., a fifty-four-year-old man was arrested at a campaign rally for carrying a sign, "No More War for Oil." In Evansville, Ind., a photographer who had won the Pulitzer Prize, was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest for holding a 30-inch by 40-inch sign, "Cheney--19th Century Energy Man." In Tampa, Fla., two grandmothers and a gay rights activist were arrested for peacefully holding protest signs. Near Pittsburgh, Pa., a sixty-five-year-old retired steel worker was arrested when he refused to go to a protest zone.

[b]More [/b]... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> The 'Morally Treasonable' Bush/Cheney Administration

10.25.04 (3:27 pm) [edit]

---> The Long War to Reclaim American Democracy ...

10.25.04 (3:22 pm) [edit]

The defeat of George Bush is just the beginning of restoring American democracy. There are serious economic and political issues that must be resolved. The Republican leadership is corrupt and destructive. The Democratic leadership is tentative and directionless. John Kerry has chosen to run without defining clear themes. In victory or defeat, Democrats will lack a mandate for a specific agenda.

Therefore, it is up to the Democratic grassroots to lay out an agenda to which they will hold their leaders and to bring up a new generation of leaders. A list of popular, achievable, and constitutional goals, designed strengthen control in 2006, is presented.

[b]After Florida 2000, we are all Black now.[/b] Win or lose- or win and be denied the fruits of victory- on November 2nd, John Kerry and the Democrats face an extended struggle. If 1992 is the guide, the Republicans will reject the legitimacy of any Democratic president and will strike back within weeks of the election to hamstring the new Administration. Should the Republicans win the presidency, or steal it again, it is certain that outright repression will follow just as swiftly. They cannot govern constructively, since their policies are responsible for a sustained national decline. An extension of their time in power will only accelerate that decline. In opposition, they can prevent Kerry from taking the steps needed to prevent disaster. Therefore it pays to consider all possible contingencies to design strategies to contain and ultimately quench the extremism that will otherwise destroy this nation.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Stunning Bush Incompetence: Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq!!!

10.25.04 (3:18 pm) [edit]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

[b]More [/b]... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Stunning Bush Incompetence: Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq!!!

10.25.04 (3:18 pm) [edit]

---> Bush Misleads on Intelligence Funding ...

10.25.04 (3:05 pm) [edit]

---> Bush Misleads on Intelligence Funding ...

10.25.04 (3:05 pm) [edit]

---> Bush/Cheney Inc.: US Economy Heads Steadily Downward, with No end in Sight

10.22.04 (3:34 pm) [edit]

[b]CNN Money:[/b] "A leading index of the U.S. economy dipped in the latest week, and a continued lack of growth in the data shows no end in sight to the current slowdown, a report showed on Friday. The weekly leading index of independent forecasting group The Economic Cycle Research Institute index slipped to 131.4 in the week to Sept. 17 from a downwardly revised 131.6 the prior week, ECRI said in a press release. ECRI said higher jobless claims and slightly slower growth in industrial commodity prices were offset in part by marginally higher mortgage applications. The index's annualized growth rate, which smoothes out weekly fluctuations, was unchanged at -0.3 percent. "The index and its growth rate have been essentially flat for a couple of months, after falling sharply starting in the spring," said Anirvan Banerji, ECRI's director of research. "That suggests that the economic slowdown we are now seeing is real and there is no end in sight," Banerji told Reuters. "

[b]More[/b] ... http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/...

---> Bush Signs Bill that Hands $136 Billion of YOUR MONEY to his Corporate Cronies ...

10.22.04 (3:32 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush Signs Bill that Hands $136 Billion of YOUR MONEY to Corporations and Special Interests

AP:[/b] "With no fanfare, President Bush on Friday signed the most sweeping rewrite of corporate tax law in nearly two decades, showering $136 billion in new tax breaks on businesses, farmers and other groups. Intended to end a bitter trade war with Europe, the election-year measure was described by supporters as critically necessary to aid beleaguered manufacturers who have suffered 2.7 million lost jobs over the past four years. What kind of bizarro world spin is this?! the "manufacturers" have "suffered" job losses? HUH? Try the AMERICAN WORKERS have suffered job losses, while the "manufacturers have cut or shipped overseas 2.7 million jobs."The centerpiece [of the bill] is $76.5 billion in new tax relief for the battered manufacturing sector, but manufacturing is broadly defined to include not just factories but also oil and gas producers, engineering, construction and architectural firms and large farming operations."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/...

---> Ann Coulter Gets 'Pied' During Hatespeech

10.22.04 (3:30 pm) [edit]

[b]kron4:[/b] "It appears they didn't like what conservative columnist Ann Coulter had to say. Two men ran on stage and threw custard pies at Coulter as she was giving a speech at the University of Arizona last night. Coulter was hit in the shoulder. The men were arrested by university police. In her speech, Coulter trashed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, liberals and Democrats, while praising conservative students who attended her speech." What a sociopathical egotist! It would take a lot more than one cream pie to sweeten this miserable sourpuss up! We hear she kills rats with her teeth and eats broken bottles for breakfast!

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.kron4.com/Global/s...

---> If Unrigged Iraqi Elections were Held Today, Bush Puppet Government Would be Voted Out

10.22.04 (3:29 pm) [edit]

[b]Washington Post:[/b] "Leaders of Iraq's religious parties have emerged as the country's most popular politicians and would win the largest share of votes if an election were held today, while the U.S.-backed government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is losing serious ground, according to a U.S.-financed poll by the International Republican Institute. More than 45 percent of Iraqis also believe that their country is heading in the wrong direction, and 41 percent say it is moving in the right direction. "The picture it paints is that, after all the blood and treasure we've spent and despite the [U.S.-led] occupation's democracy efforts, we're in a position now that the moderates would not win if an election were held today," said a U.S. official who requested anonymity."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.washingtonpost.com...

---> Ridge and Rice Politicize Security

10.22.04 (3:26 pm) [edit]

Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge told reporters, "we don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security."1 But a new analysis by the [i]Associated Press [/i]reveals that the travel schedule of Ridge and other top DHS officials are influenced by political considerations.

According to the report, in the past seven months nearly three-fifths of Ridge's travel has been to "the 17 states considered the most hotly contested in the presidential election."2 In the same time period, 22 senior officials "did nearly half their public events in those 17 states."3 Sue Mencer, who heads the Office of Domestic Preparedness for DHS, recently traveled to Ohio - a key battleground state - "to deliver a grant that had been awarded weeks earlier."4

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has also "traveled across the country making speeches in key battleground states, including Oregon, Washington, North Carolina and Ohio."5 In the next few days "she also plans speeches in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida."6 White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denied the appearances were politically motivated.7

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge," Department of Homeland Security, 8/03/04.
2. "Homeland Security officials heading to the political battleground states," Associated Press, 10/20/04.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. "Rice Hitting the Road to Speak," Washington Post, 10/20/04.
6. Ibid.
7. "Press Gaggle by Scott McClellan," The White House, 10/20/04.

---> Ridge and Rice Politicize Security

10.22.04 (3:26 pm) [edit]

---> MOST CURRENT ELECTORAL VOTE PREDICTOR SHOWS KERRY LEADS BUSH!!!

10.21.04 (10:00 pm) [edit]

[b]Refer to "Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 271 vs. Bush 257 ... [Map of the USA]" :[/b] http://www.tblog.com/template...

---> Neo-Cons=Hypocrites:-- Cheney's Daughter is a "Homo Activist"

10.21.04 (9:54 pm) [edit]

[b]Who's Insensitive to Gays? Start with the Cheneys [/b]

Let me see if I have this right. The Republicans are now accusing the Democrats of being insensitive to gay Americans? Or to one gay American at least?

After John Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney in the third debate, talk radio hosts finally found a lesbian they wanted to protect. Even the homophobic wing of cable TV rallied to the support of a family with a gay offspring.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney described himself as "a pretty angry father." And Lynne Cheney said of the senator: "This is not a good man."

What's wrong with this picture?

Remember way back in the 1980s, when Dick Cheney racked up one of the most antigay voting records in the House of Representatives? In 1988, he was one of 13 members who even voted against funding for AIDS testing and research when it was still called a "gay plague." Well, Cheney's come as far as many other Americans, and for the same essential reason. The more people in our families, workplaces, and communities come out of the closet, the harder it is to regard them as deviants who need to be cured or converted or jailed.

Mary was by no means outed on national television. She was already out. She lives with a longtime partner, wears a ring, and has worked professionally marketing Coors beer to the gay community.

She and Heather Poe sat at the convention under the camera lights with the rest of the family. She is not a "child" but the director of vicepresidential campaign operations and her father's chief confidante.

Dick Cheney has talked openly about his "gay daughter" in one of the rare moments that warm his icy persona. He even opposes the constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage that the president supports so ardently.

If Cheney has an argument with anybody it's with his running mate, George Bush. But the "pretty angry father" hasn't directed any of that anger at the Republican platform he's running on.

As for Lynne Cheney, who called Kerry's comments "a cheap and tawdry political trick," what does she call the RNC mailing that warned evangelicals that if Kerry is elected, the Bible will be banned and gay marriage will be the law of the land? High-minded?

At the Republican convention, Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Illinois senator, said homosexuality "is based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism." When asked if Mary Cheney was a selfish hedonist, he answered "of course she is." Did Lynne call Alan Keyes a bad man?

Cheney, for his part, said that this incident proves Kerry "will say and do anything in order to get elected." What about the anti-gay marriage amendments gracing the ballots of 11 states, including swing states like Ohio? Did he criticize the campaign's use of the gay issue to get evangelicals to the polls? Who will say and do anything to get elected?

And two days after the debate there was a rally in Washington dubbed "Mayday for Marriage." The "nonpartisan" crowd full of Bush-Cheney buttons was as antigay as it gets. Did I miss it when the candidates distanced themselves from Mayday?

Mary Cheney is an endangered species, a gay Republican in a campaign so hostile that even the Log Cabin Republicans refused to endorse Bush this year. She is loyal to her father, who is loyal to the president.

Is it any wonder that many people in the gay community think she is working for the enemy? There is even a milk carton posted on the Internet that asks the question: Have you seen her?

Yes, I am sure that Mary doesn't want to be seen as the Gay Daughter. Yes, Kerry could have made his point -- that homosexuality is not a choice -- without her help. And yes, the impulse to give a candidate's families some space and privacy is the right one.

But what Mary presumably wants in terms of privacy and acceptance is at heart of the gay community's pursuit of full and equal rights, which her party opposes. It's the people who still regard "lesbian" as a dirty word who most criticized the senator for using it.

So here we have it. The Republicans are using gay-bashing on a culture warpath back to the White House while they spin this story so masterfully that they look like the sensitive protectors of a family with a gay daughter. They have actually won political points suggesting that Kerry is picking on a gay woman while they, on the other hand, have compassion for the conservative Cheneys.

Hot damn, they're good at this. The next thing you know Karl Rove and & Co. will figure out a way for the candidate who (sort of) served in the Air National Guard to win political points over the decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. They might even try to tarnish his purple hearts.

Aw, no, they wouldn't go that far. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> To Be Silenced, Or Not to Be: That is the Question

10.21.04 (9:20 pm) [edit]

"[i]Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us[/i]."
--Justice William O.Douglas

Last week, both vice presidential nominee John Edwards and President George W. Bush visited Southern Oregon. Considering the area is relatively rural, sparsely populated, and Oregon is a state that usually gets little attention in a presidential election, it was an unprecedented and rather exciting occasion. I decided to try and get tickets to both events for my kids and myself.

Getting tickets from the Jackson County Democratic Party Headquarters for the Edwards event was pleasant and easy. They didn’t ask me to declare a party, didn’t ask who I was voting for, didn’t ask me to provide personal information or a DNA sample.

Not so at the Jackson County GOP headquarters. First they wanted to know my name, address, phone number, email, and my driver’s license number. "Do they really have the time, funds, and need to run all this data through some security check? What are they afraid of?" I asked myself. But hey, if it’ll get me some tickets, I’ll grudgingly fill out the application.

It didn’t get me the tickets. "Are you a Bush supporter?" I was asked. I explained that I was a registered Independent and not necessarily a Bush supporter. "Are you going to vote for Bush?" I was asked. "No," I honestly, and out of curiosity to see what would happen, replied. I was summarily told that if I wasn’t planning on voting for Bush, I wasn’t welcome. "John" came over to make sure I got the message. I told him I’d taken my kids to similar events (we saw Clinton and Gore in 1996) and didn’t he think it was good to get my kids involved in the democratic process early? To take them to events such as these and let them make up their own minds? I guess not. He just kept repeating, in a rather intimidating way, that if I wasn’t a supporter, I wasn’t welcome. (Funny how he wasn’t worried about how this sort of attitude might affect the future of the Republican Party. Hmm.)

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> Even Bush's Relatives Can See A'W'OL Ain't Fit to be President!!!

10.21.04 (7:43 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush's Cousins Support John Kerry for President[/b]

The web site Bush Relatives for Kerry is not a satire: they're really Dubya's cousins, and they include their family tree in the site as proof. As they explain on the home page: "As the election approaches, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out about why we are voting for John Kerry, and to do our small part to help America heal from the sickness it has suffered since George Bush was appointed President in 2000." Blood is thinner than oil!

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.bushrelativesforke...

---> Christopher Reeves' Widow Endorses Kerry (We Need to Rid Our Nation of Ignoramus-Bush)

10.21.04 (7:40 pm) [edit]

[b]AP:[/b] "Sen. John Kerry on Thursday accused President Bush of slowing scientific advancement after earning a special endorsement from the widow of actor Christopher Reeve, a proponent of the embryonic stem cell research on which the president has placed limits. The American people deserve a president who understands that when America invests in science and technology, we can build a stronger economy and create jobs for the 21st century," Kerry said during a campaign rally. "But George Bush has literally ... turned his back on the spirit of exploration and discovery." Reeve's widow, Dana, said her family has been grieving privately since her husband died Oct. 10. "My inclination would be to remain private for a good long while," she said. "But I came here today in support of John Kerry because this is so important. This is what Chris wanted."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/...

---> Bush Doesn't Go A Huntin' - A'W'OL Prefers Torturing Innocent People in Iraq!!!

10.21.04 (7:34 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush/Cheney are responsible for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity because their administration creates the climate to permit these heinous atrocities:

Journalist Says US Troops Tortured 12-Year-Old Girl in Front of Her Brother [/b]

[b]ITV: [/b]"Suhaib al-Baz, a journalist for the al-Jazeera television network, claims to have been tortured at [Abu Ghraib while held there for 54 days. He said: "They brought a 12-year-old girl into our cellblock late at night. Her brother was a prisoner in the other cells. "She was naked and screaming and calling out to him as they beat her. Her brother was helpless and could only hear her cries. This affected all of us because she was just a child. "He also claims that a father and his 15-year-old son were tortured in front of his cell. He said: "They brought a man who was wearing a hood. They pulled it off. The son was shocked to see it was his father and collapsed. "When he recovered, he now saw his father dressed in women's underwear and the Americans laughing at him. Mr al-Baz claims the guards at the prison were keen to take photographs of the abuse and turned it into a competition."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.itv.com/news/62333...

---> Party Of Bush/Cheney Inc. (Sure As Hell NOT The Common People)!!!

10.21.04 (1:48 pm) [edit]

---> NEW WEBSITE: Bush Relatives for Kerry!!! ......

10.21.04 (11:27 am) [edit]

"Bush Relatives for Kerry" grew out of a series of conversations that took place between a group of people that have two things in common: they are all related to George Walker Bush, and they are all voting for John Kerry. As the election approaches, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out about why we are voting for John Kerry, and to do our small part to help America heal from the sickness it has suffered since George Bush was appointed President in 2000. We invite you to read our stories, and please, don't vote for our cousin! You can view the family tree to see how they are related to GWB.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.bushrelativesforke...

---> Police Call on Bush's Texas Rangers for Tax Evasion & Other Crimes ...

10.21.04 (11:25 am) [edit]

[b]'Bush's Texas Rangers' plot thickens into tax evasion and more'[/b]

As if Bush's sale of his $606,000 share of Texas Rangers stock to owner Tom Hicks for $15 million wasn't enough, there's more from deep in the heart of Texas to nail the good old boy, namely the possibility of tax evasion. That is, Bush declared the proceeds as a long-term capital gain, which it wasn't, as opposed to ordinary income, which it was. This means Bush paid at the capital gains' rate of 20 percent as opposed to the ordinary income rate of 39.6 percent. Beating the IRS out of nearly 20 percent in additional taxes. But the fun doesn't stop there.

As reported by MakeThemAccountable.com, http://www.makethemaccountabl... Bush had had prior business with Tom Hicks, who also was cofounder, with his brother R. Steven Hicks, of a radio company that merged in 1999 into AMFM, Inc. It was soon engulfed and devoured by Clear Channel Communications, of which old Tom became vice chair (I think the title is appropriate, don't you?).

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> George, John, Abe & Co. through the ages ...

10.21.04 (11:22 am) [edit]

Comparative biographies of George W. Bush and John Kerry, with milestones from other political biographies:

[b]Birth[/b]

George W. Bush is born July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Conn., where his father is attending Yale.

John Kerry is born on Dec. 11, 1943, in a military hospital in Denver, where his serviceman father is hospitalized.

[b]Age 2[/b]

George W. Bush moves with his family to the oil town of Midland, Texas. George Bush Sr. is a well-connected and wealthy oil man. Midland is an oil-executive enclave, where streets are named for Ivy League schools.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Bush (Christian? Nope) Bears False Witness Against Kerry ...

10.21.04 (11:19 am) [edit]

In a speech yesterday, President Bush made statements that "ignored elements of Mr. Kerry's record and stated positions in a way that paints an incomplete or distorted portrait of his approach."1 Here are two examples:

Yesterday, Bush said, "Senator Kerry's approach would permit a response only after America is hit."2 In fact, Kerry has explicitly said that he would use preemptive force when necessary. During the first presidential debate Kerry said, "The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike...No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America."3

Bush also said Kerry was "against vital weapon systems during his entire career."4 According to the non-partisan Factcheck.org, the Bush campaign "bases its claim mainly on Kerry's votes against overall Pentagon money bills in 1990, 1995 and 1996, but these were not votes against specific weapons."5 Nonetheless, since Kerry has been in Congress he has voted for 16 of the 19 overall Pentagon funding bills. Therefore, "even by the Bush campaign's twisted logic, Kerry should - on balance - be called a supporter of the 'vital' weapons."6

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Bush Adds Teeth to His Attacks on Kerry," New York Times, 10/19/04.
2. "Transcript: Bush Attacks Kerry's Security Proposals," Washinton Post, 10/18/04.
3. "Debate Transcript: The First Bush-Kerry Presidential Debate," Commission on Presidential Debates, 9/30/04.
4. "Transcript: Bush Attacks Kerry's Security Proposals," Washinton Post, 10/18/04.
5. "More Bush Distortions of Kerry Defense Record," FactCheck.org, 4/30/04.
6. Ibid.

---> Bush Misleads on Casualties in Iraq ...

10.21.04 (11:18 am) [edit]

The president has told the American people that he expected persistent violence in Iraq. On Feb. 8th, 2004, Tim Russert asked President Bush: "Are you surprised by the level and intensity of resistance?" Bush replied, "No. I'm not."1 According to Pat Robertson, there is no way that could be true.

Appearing yesterday on CNN, Robertson said that just before the war he "warned him about this war...I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.'"2 Bush then told Robertson, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."3 More than 1,100 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and another 8,000 troops have been wounded.4

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Transcript for February 8th 'Meet the Press'," MSNBC, 2/13/04.
2. "Robertson: I warned Bush on Iraq casualties," CNN, 10/20/04.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

---> Bush, The Biggest Liar-and-Thief in Our Nation's History

10.21.04 (11:15 am) [edit]

[b]The Daily Mislead Archives [/b]

. Bush Misleads on Kerry (10/19/2004) http://www.misleader.org/dail...
. Bush Misleads on Flu Vaccine (10/18/2004) http://www.misleader.org/dail...
. Bush Misleads on Tax Cuts (10/15/2004) http://www.misleader.org/dail...
. Bush Misleads on Osama Bin Laden (10/14/2004) http://www.misleader.org/dail...
. Bush Misleads on Fiscal Responsibilities (10/13/2004) http://www.misleader.org/dail...

More Mislead Archives ... http://www.misleader.org/dail...

---> Bush, The Biggest Liar-and-Thief in Our Nation's History

10.20.04 (11:39 pm) [edit]

---> Bush Misleads on Casualties in Iraq

10.20.04 (9:16 pm) [edit]

---> Treasury Secretary Uses Taxpayer Dollars to Campaign for Bush in Florida

10.20.04 (9:07 pm) [edit]

[b]Reuters:[/b] "Treasury Secretary John Snow, in Florida for the fifth time this year, rebuffed suggestions on Wednesday he was using taxpayer dollars to fund trips to hotly contested electoral states. Less than two weeks away from the Nov. 2 presidential election, in which Florida could play a make-or-break role for Bush Snow visited a jobs training program at a Tampa high school. Speaking to reporters after the tour, Snow said: "This is clearly not a political event."" Nah, of course not! It's just an amazingly timed coincidence that during the FLA early election, the Treasury of the Sec. (and, we might add, during a week when the dollar dropped to an 8-month low and he should be in DC doing his job) suddenly feels compelled to toot off to a Tampa highschool!

[b]More [/b]... http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

---> Kerry and Bush Tied in Florida According to Bush-Skewed Poll

10.20.04 (5:35 pm) [edit]

[b]Bloomberg:[/b] "Bush and Kerry are in a statistical tie in Florida, the state that decided the outcome of the 2000 race, a Mason-Dixon poll shows. Bush is supported by 48 percent of 625 likely voters interviewed by telephone Oct. 14-16, while Kerry, the four-term Massachusetts senator, is backed by 45 percent. The results are within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points." However, as Mason-Dixon is always heavily Bush-skewed, with its "likely voters" over-weighted with Republicans, we bet that, stripping away the weighting, you will find that Kerry is now ahead by a comfortable margin.

[b]More[/b] ... http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap...

---> Bush Lies About Osama Bin Laden

10.20.04 (12:24 pm) [edit]

At last night's debate President Bush claimed that, contrary to Sen. John Kerry's assertion, he never said he was "not that concerned" about Osama Bin Laden. Bush chastised Kerry saying, "Gosh, I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. That's kind of one of those exaggerations."1 Bush was completely wrong.

At March 13, 2002 press conference, Bush said "So I don't know where he [Osama Bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him...I truly am not that concerned about him."2 Watch the video of Bush's remarks.

[b]Sources: [/b]

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
2. "President Bush Holds Press Conference," The White House, 3/13/02.

---> Bush Lies About Tax Cuts

10.20.04 (12:23 pm) [edit]

At Wednesday's debate President Bush said most of his tax cuts "went to low- and middle-income Americans."1 That statement is flatly false.

An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that, in 2004, the top 20 percent of earners received 69.8% of the tax cuts enacted by President Bush.2 While the middle 20 percent of earners received an average tax cut of $647, the top 20 percent received an average tax cut of $5,055.3 As a result, those in the middle class are paying a greater share of the federal taxes today than they were four years ago.4

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
2. "Tax Returns: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration Tax Cuts," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 04/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Tax Cuts Go Mostly to the Rich," OMB Watch, 2004.

---> Bush Lies About the Flu Vaccine

10.20.04 (12:21 pm) [edit]

President Bush has tried to avoid any responsibility for the flu vaccine shortage by making misleading statements. During the presidential debate last Wednesday, President Bush said the problem was that "we relied upon a company out of England."1 That isn't true. Chiron Corp., the company whose vaccine plant was contaminated, is a California company - subject to regulation by the U.S. government - that operates a factory in England.2

During the debate, President Bush also said, "we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country."3 That isn't true either. It was the British authorities who, after inspecting the plant, revoked the factory's license on October 5th.4

In June 2003, the United States Food and Drug Administration inspected the Chiron plant.5 Initially, the FDA found that the plant was contaminated with bacteria but later announced, "the problems were corrected to their satisfaction," and allowed the plant to continue to operate.6

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
2. "Both candidates stretched facts on key issues," Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/14/04.
3. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
4."With Few Suppliers of Flu Shots, Shortage Was Long in Making," New York Times, 10/17/04.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

---> Bush Bears False Witness Against Kerry

10.20.04 (12:19 pm) [edit]

---> Bush Bears False Witness Against Kerry

10.19.04 (10:26 pm) [edit]

---> A'W'OL Bush Has Karl Rove To 'Misplace' His 'Flip-Flops' Along With Corporate-Owned Media!!!

10.19.04 (6:44 pm) [edit]

[b]The next time someone criticizes John Kerry for being a flip-flopper remind them:[/b]

Bush was against campaign finance reform; now he's for it.

Bush was against a Homeland Security Department; now he's for it.

Bush was against a 9/11 commission; now he's for it.

Bush was against an Iraq WMD investigation; now he's for it.

Bush was against nation building; now he's for it.

Bush was against deficits; now he's for them.

Bush was for free trade; then he was for tariffs on steel, and now he's against them again.

Bush was against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; now he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State.

Bush was for states' rights to decide on gay marriage; now he is for changing the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage.

Bush said he would provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency); then he doesn't.

Bush said that "help is on the way" to the military; then he cuts their benefits and health care.

Bush claimed to be in favor of environmental protection; then he secretly approved oil drilling on Padre Island in Texas and other places and took many more anti-environmental actions.

Bush said he is the "education president;" then he refused to fully fund key education programs and rarely does his homework, such as read position papers so he will be more knowledgeable on issues.

Bush said that him being governor of Texas for six years was enough political experience to be president of the U.S.; then he criticized Sen. John Edwards for not having enough experience after Edwards had served six years in the U.S. Senate.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush said there were too many lawsuits being filed; then during the Florida recount, he was the first to file a lawsuit to stop the legal counting of votes after Gore took advantage of Florida law to ask for a recount.

On Nov. 7, 2000, the Bush campaign supported Florida county officials drawing up new copies of some 10,000 spoiled absentee votes in 26 Republican-leaning counties that the machines did not read and marking them for the candidates when they showed "clear intent;" they opposed doing the same thing after Nov. 7 when Gore asked for such recounts. Bush dominated absentee balloting in Florida by a two-to-one margin.

Bush said during the 2000 campaign that he did not have a "litmus test" for judges he appointed to be against abortion; then he mostly appointed judges who were against abortion.

In the early 1990s, Bush led a campaign to raise taxes in Arlington, Texas, to build a new baseball stadium for the team he partly owned; he later criticized politicians for supporting tax increases ñ after he got rich by selling the team with the new stadium to a wealthy campaign contributor.

Bush opposed the U.S. negotiating with North Korea; now he supports it.

Bush went to the racist and segregationist Bob Jones University in South Carolina; then he said he shouldn't have.

Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq; later Bush announced he would not call for a vote.

Bush first said the "mission accomplished" Iraqi banner was put up by the sailors; he later admitted it was done by his advance team.

Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the U.S.; after meeting with Mexican President Fox, he decided against it.

Bush was opposed to Rice testifying in front of the 9/11 commission citing "separation of powers;" then he was for it.

Bush was against Ba'ath party members holding office or government jobs in Iraq; now he's for it.

Bush said we must not appease terrorists; then he lifted trade sanctions on admitted terrorist Mohammar Quaddafi and Pakistan, which pardoned its official who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

Bush said he would wait until after the Nov. election to ask for more money for the war effort; then he decided he needed it before the election, after all.

Bush said, "Leaving Iraq prematurely would only embolden the terrorists and increase the danger to America." His administration now says that U.S. troops will pull out of Iraq when the new provisional authority asks. Then he said they'll stay "as long as needed" again. Now he's

saying that the Iraqis can ask the troops to leave, and they will. Or is he?

The Bush administration officials said that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to "enemy combatants." Now they claims they do.

Bush officials said before the Iraq invasion that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to U.S. security and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and even nuclear weapons; after the invasion, they denied saying the word "imminent" and saying that Iraq had WMDs and nuclear weapons, even though they were caught on tape making such statements.

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama Bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." - George W. Bush, Sept. 13, 2001

"I don't know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - George W. Bush, March 13, 2002

Are you getting tired of this? Well, some in the American military are getting tired of this, too: "The (Bush) administration has an overly simplistic view of how and when to use our military. By not bringing in our friends and allies, they have created a mess in Iraq and are crippling our forces around the world." -Retired Admiral William Crowe, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Ronald Reagan. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Washington Insiders, Even A Senior Republican - Believe Bush is Mentally Unfit to Command

10.19.04 (6:37 pm) [edit]

[b]Andrew Stephen:[/b] "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Bush's cognitive functioning is not what it once was. It would not be surprising if he was under enormous stress, particularly after [9/11] and I gather this could explain much, if not everything. It does not help that Bush now lives in a positively Nixonian cocoon. He does not read newspapers; he sees television only to watch football; he makes election speeches exclusively at ticket-only events, and his courtiers consciously avoid giving him bad news. When he met John Kerry for their first bout on the debating platform, it was almost a new experience for the President to hear the voice of dissent. A senior Republican, experienced and wise in the ways of Washington, told me that he does not necessarily accept that Bush is unstable, but what is clear, he added, is that he is now manifestly unfit to be President. "

[b]More[/b] ... http://observer.guardian.co.u...,6903,1329254,00.html

---> George W. Bush: "Man of the People"? LOL! (W.="Whore to Corporate Pimps") ...

10.19.04 (1:47 pm) [edit]

---> Has Bush Lost his Sanity?

10.19.04 (12:22 pm) [edit]

[i][b]The President's apparent mental fragility should give US voters pause for thought at the ballot box [/b][/i]

It will, we are confidently told, be the most important American election for generations. In the words last week of Dick Cheney, the voice of what passes for gravitas in the Bush Administration, Americans will have to make 'about as serious a decision as anybody is ever asked to make' when they go to the polls in 17 days' time.

The prophets of doom, whom Cheney exemplifies, are precisely right about the importance of this election. But the momentous decision awaiting Americans is not whether they return to power a President who is uniquely qualified to protect the US against terrorism, as Cheney et al would have us believe. It is whether they re-elect a man who, it is now clear, has become palpably unstable.

The evidence has been before our eyes for some time, but only during the course of this election campaign has it crystallised - just in time, possibly, for the 2 November election. The 43rd US President has always had a much-publicised knack for mangled syntax, but now George Bush often searches an agonisingly long time, sometimes in vain, for the right words. His mind simply blanks out at crucial times. He is prone, I am told, to foul-mouthed temper tantrums in the White House. His handlers now rarely allow him to speak an unscripted word in public.

[b]More [/b]... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> A'W'OL Bush the Dry-Drunk, Now Drunk With Power ...

10.19.04 (12:16 pm) [edit]

President Bush governs from a "love of power" and right-wing ideology rather than religious beliefs, and he has yet to hold anyone in his administration accountable for mistakes, former Vice President Al Gore said on Monday.

As the campaign by Bush and Democrat John Kerry for president headed into the last stretch before the Nov. 2 election, Gore criticized his rival for the White House four years ago on Iraq and other issues.

"I'm convinced that most of the president's frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible," Gore said in a speech at Georgetown University.

"It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency," he said.

He painted the Bush administration and its "right-wing" supporters as pursuing policies for the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the rest of the country.

"The essential cruelty of Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans ... who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world," Gore said.

"And in the process, he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities," he said.

"Truly, President Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the American people and give as much of it as possible to the already wealthy and privileged," he said.

Gore also criticized Bush for not holding anyone in his administration accountable for problems.

He said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had not been held accountable for "the most shameful and humiliating violation of American principles in recent memory" in the interrogations of prisoners in Iraq. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

---> Bush Tells Outright Lies About Kerry

10.19.04 (12:12 pm) [edit]

---> Courageous Journalist Fired for Speaking Out against Sinclair

10.19.04 (12:04 pm) [edit]

[b]Boston Globe:[/b] "The Washington bureau chief of Sinclair Broadcast Group was fired yesterday after accusing the media company of ''indefensible" conduct for planning to air a movie attacking Senator John F. Kerry's Vietnam record in the coming days. Jon Lieberman, who also was the lead political reporter for the 62-station chain, told CNN last night that he was terminated for his criticism, quoted in yesterday's Baltimore Sun.He spoke out, he said, because ''I feel so strongly that our credibility is at issue here. . . . I feel our company is trying to sway this election." We encourage Leiberman to file a lawsuit against Sinclair - if he won't, we suspect others will as a Class Action Suit. These people don't deserve to be in business! Btw - speaking of Sinclair sleaze, a Sinclair affiliate in Baltimore (FOX 45) was running daily ads for Florida real estate right after the hurricanes hit - misleading ads depicting lots the way they were BEFORE being trashed by the storms.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.boston.com/news/na...

---> Slut-Bush/Cheney's Pimps: Drug Barons Protected from Liability even for Childhood Vaccine

10.19.04 (12:02 pm) [edit]

Cheney and Bush claim that few drug barons make vaccine because of "lawsuit fears." But this is just plain FALSE. They don't make vaccine because they cannot overcharge for vaccine they way they can for other treatments. As to liability, drug barons are even protected from liability for childhood vaccines, which because of the sheer numbers used, incur the highest number of side effect cases. Scroll down to "Vaccine Injury Compensation Program."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsaf...

President Bush has tried to avoid any responsibility for the flu vaccine shortage by making misleading statements. During the presidential debate last Wednesday, President Bush said the problem was that "we relied upon a company out of England."1 That isn't true. Chiron Corp., the company whose vaccine plant was contaminated, is a California company - subject to regulation by the U.S. government - that operates a factory in England.2

During the debate, President Bush also said, "we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country."3 That isn't true either. It was the British authorities who, after inspecting the plant, revoked the factory's license on October 5th.4

In June 2003, the United States Food and Drug Administration inspected the Chiron plant.5 Initially, the FDA found that the plant was contaminated with bacteria but later announced, "the problems were corrected to their satisfaction," and allowed the plant to continue to operate.6

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
2. "Both candidates stretched facts on key issues," Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/14/04.
3. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
4. "With Few Suppliers of Flu Shots, Shortage Was Long in Making," New York Times, 10/17/04.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

---> W. Stands for Wrong Choices, Time for a Fresh Start, Time for John Kerry!

10.18.04 (1:33 pm) [edit]

· After four years of wrong choices by George W. Bush, it’s time for a fresh start in America.

· Nowhere is that more true than health care, where Bush’s wrong choices have led to skyrocketing costs, more uninsured and the flu vaccine crisis we are seeing now.

. We can have a fresh start on health care, and when John Kerry is president we will, because unlike Bush, he has a plan to cut costs, expand access to quality coverage and prevent problems like we are seeing now with flu vaccine.

· Today, millions of middle-class families are working hard and trying to get ahead, but they just can’t keep up with health care costs that are out of control.

. Health care costs up 64%. Prescription drug co-pays up 50%. Medicare up 56%. Average family premiums are up over $3,500 a year. 5 million more Americans have no health care, bringing the total to 45 million with no coverage at all.

· Unfortunately, President Bush is so out of touch with the middle class that he has no plan to help. As he said in the last debate, he thinks all these problems are just a “litany of complaints.”

· To him, higher premium costs, more uninsured and skyrocketing drug costs are not real problems – just complaints.

· Maybe Bush doesn’t see the problems in health care because his choices have worked for some – the powerful and well connected.

· Drug companies, HMOs and insurance companies have all benefited from the choices he has made.

· The current flu crisis is a perfect example of the president’s handling of health care.

· Instead of listening to warnings, he pretended like there wasn’t a problem. Now, when we need presidential leadership, all he can say is “don’t get a flu shot.”

· That’s not a plan, but that’s typical of this president who is out of touch with the middle class.

· John Kerry offers a fresh start on health care.

· His plan will bring down costs, including allowing reimportation of safe prescription drugs from Canada and $1,000 in premium relief for most families.

· It will also allow families and businesses access to the same quality coverage that members of Congress get, and assure every child in America has health care coverage.

· For the flu, John Kerry will provide the presidential leadership we need.

· He will crack down on price gouging and provide incentives to manufacturers to ensure that we have enough suppliers and enough vaccines to protect the American public.

· And don’t listen to the distortions – the Kerry plan is NOT a government plan. It is based on incentives and the marketplace. It offers more choice, and guarantees that you can pick your own doctor.

· America needs a fresh start after the wrong choices of George W. Bush. We can have a strong middle class, quality, affordable health care and a president who fights a more effective war on terror and makes us safe in the world. But to get these things, everyone needs to vote.

· Early vote begins today in Florida, and everyone should consider voting early for John Kerry.

---> State by State Results Show Kerry Leading Bush 53-43% in 13 Swing States

10.18.04 (1:28 pm) [edit]

Despite the ongoing assault on America's credibility by corporate media polls designed to keep advertising (the endless Bush infomercial of network news) and campaign dollars pouring in, the state by state figures show a very different story indeed. "A Washington Post poll shows Kerry with a significant lead in important states that could decide the outcome of the election. The poll found Kerry held a 53% to 43% lead among likely voters in 13 such states." In fact, the state by state polls show Kerry with a steadily increasing lead and it is hard to find evidence of any "dead heat", let alone a Bush lead.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.cbc.ca/story/world...

---> Bush Not Only Failed Our Troops - He Lied to America About their Plight!

10.18.04 (1:27 pm) [edit]

Kerry campaign: "On Dec. 4, 2003, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez wrote in a letter "to the number two officer in the Army, with copies to other senior officials, that his soldiers still needed protective inserts to upgrade 36,000 sets of body armor, but that their delivery twice had been postponed in the month before he was writing." (Washington Post, 10/17/04) The NEXT DAY, Dec. 5, 2003, Bush told Americans the troops had everything they needed: "Three years ago, our military was not receiving the resources it needed and morale was beginning to suffer. So we increased the defense budgets to prepare for the threats of a new era. And today, no one in the world can question the skill and the strength and the spirit of the United States military." More horrible still, the Bush "campaign machine" has produced phony polls showing that "most" soldiers in Iraq think Bush is handling things just peachy keen - putting an even bigger wedge between our troops and reality.

[b]More[/b] ... http://releases.usnewswire.co...

---> MSNBC Online Poll Highlights its Own Poll Fraud

10.18.04 (1:25 pm) [edit]

Check out the difference between this online MSNBC poll, which shows Kerry pummeling Bush on every question, and the results the network (owned 80% by Pentagon-pork-recipient GE) obtained using its systematic "numbers fudging" scheme (MSNBC/Newsweek). Of course it's euphemism for "phony poll" is "scientific poll," while its euphemism for "unmanipulated poll" is "unscientific poll." Its scientific poll results are cherry picked and weighted until they can show Bush either ahead or in a dead heat. But c'mon! How can you possibly explain a gap of over 50 points on some questions? Who do they think they're kdding? But not to worry - an after-election investigation is likely to reveal the whole ugly iceberg.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6...

---> Bush and Kerry Tied According to New Reuters/Zogby Poll

10.18.04 (10:25 am) [edit]

Democratic Senator John Kerry has pulled into a statistical dead heat with President George W. Bush in a seesawing battle for the White House, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll.

The latest three-day tracking poll on Monday showed Kerry and Bush deadlocked at 45 percent apiece barely two weeks before the November 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 on 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 November 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.

The poll showed independent candidate Ralph Nader, blamed by some Democrats for drawing enough votes from Al Gore to cost him the election in 2000, with the support of 1 percent of likely voters. - http://www.reuters.co.uk/news...

---> Has Bush Lost his Sanity?

10.18.04 (10:22 am) [edit]

---> The Appeal of Fascism ...

10.18.04 (10:19 am) [edit]

What afflicts the people of the United States in these days, that they have developed the capacity not only to tolerate, but even to cherish, the blatant lies and hypocrisies, the injustices, the evasions, and of course the invasions perpetrated by George W Bush and his neo-conservative cabal? How can even conservatives themselves stomach this internationalist, interventionist, activist-court-packing, states'-rights-suppressin g cat's-paw of the transnational culture of control that is the only heartfelt homeland of the corporate elite?

Yes, there is opposition, an opposition that comprises most likely a small majority of the country's people - but the supposedly "liberal" media do their best to ignore and even marginalize it, and besides, that yet leaves hundreds of millions here who work themselves into ecstasies of adulation at the words, however fumbling, of this jug-eared cipher, and into equal ecstasies of joyous indignation at the sound of any word that controverts the image his handlers project to the loving masses huddled underneath the balcony ...

Let us not put too fine a point upon it: we are in danger of reverting to fascism.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> A Republican Businessman Vilifies George W. Bush ...

10.18.04 (10:18 am) [edit]

[b]Mr. Karl Schwarz -- Conservative and Devoutly Christian -- and His Wild Book of Outrage[/b]

George Bush is not a Christian, Karl Schwarz tells you. He is a liar, and Christians don't lie.

Schwarz is telling this to anyone who might listen, including President Bush, to whom he fired off a smoking email entitled "An American Demands the Truth From You."

Other listeners are adding up quickly. First he sent to his stockholders--300,000 people or so--a PowerPoint presentation daylighting the greed, deception, and stupefying corruption of the Bush Administration. Lately he is making the rounds of the talk show circuit, and the wild book of outrage will soon be on the streets.

It is a formidable read. 810 pages. And a comprehensive title to match: One Way Ticket to Crawford, Texas: A Conservative Republican Speaks Out on September 11, 2001; Afghanistan; Iraq; Bush-Cheney 2004; Imperial Oil "Strategeries".

[b]More [/b]... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> Liar-Bush=Incompetent: Documents Show Planning for Post-War Operations in Iraq Non-Existent

10.18.04 (10:10 am) [edit]

In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.

The slide said: "To Be Provided."

A Knight Ridder review of the administration's Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> This Republican Admits: 'Bush goes against values I treasure' ...

10.18.04 (10:08 am) [edit]

For nearly 50 years, I considered myself a Republican. I usually voted for Republicans, and I voted for George W. Bush in 2000. I have deep family roots in the Republican Party. My father, Thruston Morton, served as a Republican U. S. senator from Kentucky and also served as national chairman of the Republican Party. My uncle, Rogers Morton, also served as national chairman of the Republican Party, served as a Republican in the U. S. House of Representatives, and served in the cabinet under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

I cannot in good conscience vote for President Bush in this election. What he has done since his election in 2000 goes against the values I treasure both in terms of leadership and in our nation. He has not done what he said he would do. He has lost my trust and my respect.

He is not a strong leader. He is a creature of the neoconservative ideologues who surround him. He chose to go to war in Iraq under false pretenses, turning responsibility over to the military with no plan to win the peace. He refuses to admit mistakes, let alone learn from them. His campaign is based on fear.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> BUSH LIES ABOUT TAX CUTS

10.18.04 (10:05 am) [edit]

---> Civil Liberties? Bush has Never Heard of Them ...

10.17.04 (5:58 pm) [edit]

An excellent article http://www.boston.com/news/po... in the Boston Globe looks at why, despite three years of a Bush administration attack on the Constitution, civil liberties issues are virtually nonexistant in the Presidential election.

From the Globe:

Former congressman Bob Barr (R-Georgia) said in a recent interview that civil libertarians must keep trying to raise voter concern about the Bush administration's "very troubling record" on these issues.

Keith Appell, a Republican strategist, said the civil-liberties issue has not gotten traction because the Kerry campaign has chosen not to raise it as a major campaign theme. The anti-Ashcroft applause line, he said, is as much about painting the Republicans as "right-wing kooks" on such issues as abortion and gay marriage as it is about civil liberties.

"The Democrats may have had some internal discussions and decided that the payoff wasn't worth the risk of losing a broad cross section of the country that might feel that rolling back some of these initiatives would make us too vulnerable to terrorism," Appell said. "If they made that calculation, I think they were right."

---> BUSH'S ECONOMIC BETRAYAL: Financial Ruin on the Horizon

10.17.04 (4:59 pm) [edit]

It's not true that people in Washington can't agree about anything. Across the policy spectrum, there's a clear recognition that the present path of budget-making is unsustainable -- in fact, ruinous.

The Concord Coalition, whose leadership includes prominent Republicans, says that with realistic assumptions but no change in policy, the federal debt will swell by a staggering $5 trillion in the next 10 years. The liberal Economic Policy Institute says that a "budget train wreck" lies ahead. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warns that it looks as if "substantial reductions in the projected growth of spending or a sizable increase in taxes -- or both -- will probably be necessary" to avoid fiscal disaster.

The agreement extends everywhere except where it is most important -- to the rivals for the White House and to the members of Congress.

President Bush and his opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry, blithely assert that they will cut the budget deficit (a record $413 billion in the current year) in half within four or five years, but they are purposely vague on how they will do it.

Meanwhile, Congress has retreated further and further from any pretense of fiscal responsibility. When they went home to campaign last week, the lawmakers executed what Stan Collender, a prominent budget expert, called a "triple dive." They recessed "having failed to pass the fiscal 2005 budget resolution, all but four of the 13 regular 2005 appropriations and a needed increase in the limit on the national debt," so the Treasury can sell bonds to our creditors.

"This three-part failure," Collender said, "is the best evidence yet that Congress has become either unwilling or unable to deal with the federal budget. It has abrogated its fiscal responsibilities at every step in this year's debate except when the decisions -- like a tax cut -- were politically easy."

Tax cuts they can do. With bipartisan majorities, they passed a $143 billion bonanza for corporations of every sort, shortly after extending what the lawmakers were pleased to call a "middle-class" tax cut of $146 billion. You might be surprised to learn, as I was, where that "middle class" tax relief actually goes.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, households in the middle 20 percent of the income scale -- the "middle class" -- receive only 9 percent of the benefits. Their average saving will be $162. Those in households with incomes from $200,000 to $500,00 will be $2,390 better off.

It is important to remember that these latest tax cuts are all being financed with borrowed money -- money that at some point will have to be paid back. That was the point made by Pete Peterson, the former Nixon administration secretary of commerce, in a terrific piece that business reporter Paul Solman did for PBS's "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" the other night.

Noting that today's deficits will burden future generations, Peterson said, "The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. And as I think about the concept that we're slipping our own kids and grandkids a check for our free lunch, I say we're failing the moral test."

Morality aside, there's the little matter of piling up even more IOUs instead of the savings that will be needed to finance the retirement and health care costs of the 77 million baby boomers now approaching retirement. That responsibility ought to weigh heavily on everyone running for federal office, but it is hard to find a campaign where it is being discussed with any degree of candor and realism.

It would be nice to pretend that once next month's election is out of the way, the winners will buckle down and address this crisis. But both Collender and Philip Joyce, a George Washington University professor, suggest that the whole budget-making process in Congress may be on the verge of breakdown.

As Joyce put it in an article for a forthcoming scholarly journal, "The failure of the Congress to agree on a budget resolution for three recent fiscal years -- 1999, 2003 and 2005 -- suggests that the budget process may be at a crisis point, and this crisis may be exacerbated by the uncertainty associated with the cost and the duration of the war on terrorism. If a consensus is not reached on a goal for fiscal policy, the budget committees and the budget resolution are in danger of becoming irrelevant."

This would be a dangerous time to lose the best tool for dealing with our fiscal mess. - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

---> NY Times Says Kerry Has the Qualities to be a GREAT President - We Agree!!!

10.17.04 (2:54 pm) [edit]

[b]NY Times opines[/b], "Senator John Kerry goes toward the election with a base that is built more on opposition to George W. Bush than loyalty to his own candidacy. But over the last year we have come to know Mr. Kerry as more than just an alternative to the status quo. We like what we've seen. He has qualities that could be the basis for a great chief executive, not just a modest improvement on the incumbent. We have been impressed with Mr. Kerry's wide knowledge and clear thinking - something that became more apparent once he was reined in by that two-minute debate light. He is blessedly willing to re-evaluate decisions when conditions change. And while Mr. Kerry's service in Vietnam was first over-promoted and then over-pilloried, his entire life has been devoted to public service, from the war to a series of elected offices. He strikes us, above all, as a man with a strong moral core." Read this enthusiastic endorsement, and send it to all your friends!

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

---> Boston Globe Says Kerry Will Restore 'Unity and Strength'

10.17.04 (2:52 pm) [edit]

[b]Boston Globe opines[/b], "Iraq, simply put, is out of control. Kerry is best qualified bring it under control, not least by reassuring the Iraqis themselves that the United States does not have permanent designs on their strategic bases or oil. On terrorism, Kerry understands that intelligence, police work, diplomacy, and economic development are the the principal weapons against a diffuse but knowable enemy. At home, Kerry is a strong supporter of civil rights and women's rights. His nominees to the Supreme Court would not be likely to roll back decades of important gains for women and minorities. He would rein in the Bush deficit by restoring 1990s-era tax rates to the top brackets. Although we fear that rolling back the tax cuts will not produce enough revenue to halve the deficit and implement Kerry's ambitious healthcare plan, his priorities are right: to restore fiscal sanity and to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance -- at 45 million, a national scandal."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.boston.com/news/gl...

---> Bush Is Plunging Us Into Neo-Hitlerian Fascism ...

10.17.04 (2:44 pm) [edit]

[b]WAKE UP AND SMELL THE FASCISM ...

GEORGE W. BUSH IS PLUNDING AMERICA INTO A NEO-HITLERIAN FASCIST STATE!

In "Fascism Anyone?," Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism."[/b]

[b]More [/b]... http://www.oldamericancentury...

---> Bushy-boy: All American A'W'OL Coward, Deserter & Drunken Asshole!!!

10.17.04 (2:35 pm) [edit]

[b]G. W. BUSH WENT AWOL...[/b]

The asshole [i]doesn't deserve the power [/i]to send boys and girls to die in illegal and immoral neo-con wars based upon heinous LIES for OIL. Halliburton may approve but we should NOT!

[b]Check-out AWOL BUSH web-site on ... http://www.awolbush.com/ ...[/b]

[b]PLAY FLASH-VIDEO "IDIOT SON OF AN ASSHOLE" ... http://www.tblog.com/template... ...[/b]

---> Bushy-boy for President of Iraq (But Do the Iraqis Deserve Another Asshole?) ...

10.17.04 (2:31 pm) [edit]

[b]Record shows Bush shifting on Iraq war

President's rationale for the invasion continues to evolve (devolve into a bloody fiasc) ...[/b]

Washington -- President Bush portrays his position on Iraq as steady and unwavering as he represents Sen. John Kerry's stance as ambiguous and vacillating.

"Mixed signals are the wrong signals,'' Bush said last week during a campaign stop in Bangor, Maine. "I will continue to lead with clarity, and when I say something, I'll mean what I say.''

Yet, heading into the first presidential debate Thursday, which will focus on foreign affairs, there is much in the public record to suggest that Bush's words on Iraq have evolved -- or, in the parlance his campaign often uses to describe Kerry, flip-flopped.

An examination of more than 150 of Bush's speeches, radio addresses and responses to reporters' questions reveal a steady progression of language, mostly to reflect changing circumstances such as the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction, the lack of ties between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and the growing violence of Iraqi insurgents.

A war that was waged principally to overthrow a dictator who possessed "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised'' has evolved into a mission to rid Iraq of its "weapons-making capabilities'' and to offer democracy and freedom to its 25 million residents.

The president no longer expounds upon deposed Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's connections with al Qaeda, rarely mentions the rape and torture rooms or the illicit weapons factories that he once warned posed a direct threat to the United States.

In the fall of 2002, as Bush sought congressional support for the use of force, he described the vote as a sign of solidarity that would strengthen his ability to keep the peace. Today, his aides describe it unambiguously as a vote to go to war.

Whether such shifts constitute a reasonable evolution of language to reflect the progression of war, or an about-face to justify unmet expectations, is a subjective judgment tinged by partisan prejudice.

Yet a close look at the record makes it difficult to support Bush campaign chairman Ken Mehlman's description of the upcoming debate as a "square-off between resolve and optimism versus vacillation and defeatism.''

A careful reading of Bush's statements on Iraq reveals many instances of consistency, just as The Chronicle's examination of Kerry's words found consistency in the Democratic challenger's statements. Over and over, Bush stated that the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the way Americans -- including the commander in chief -- viewed the threat of terrorism and lowered the threshold of risk Americans were willing to accept.

"Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take,'' Bush said in a well-received speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Sept 12, 2002.

Bush echoed those words earlier this month as he accepted his party's nomination for president a few miles away, at Madison Square Garden in New York:

"Do I forget the lessons of September the 11th and take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our country? Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time.''

Yet the more specific explanation of a mission that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, thousands of Iraqi lives and well over $100 billion has undergone a transformation.

Prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush focused on weapons of mass destruction and stated the U.S. goal in straightforward terms.

"Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. And in order to disarm, it would mean regime change,'' Bush said at a news conference two weeks before he took the nation to war.

"And our mission won't change,'' Bush continued. "Our mission is precisely what I just stated.''

Six weeks later, speaking to workers at an Army tank plant in Ohio, the goal seemed to expand.

"Our mission -- besides removing the regime that threatened us, besides ending a place where the terrorists could find a friend, besides getting rid of weapons of mass destruction -- our mission has been to bring humanitarian aid and restore basic services and put this country, Iraq, on the road to self-government.''

Last month, speaking to supporters at a campaign event in Wisconsin, Bush put it more plainly: "The goal in Iraq and Afghanistan is for there to be democratic and free countries who are allies in the war on terror. That's the goal.''

In the course of the campaign, such shifts have been characterized by Bush's opponents as lies.

"He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war,'' Kerry said during a speech at New York University last week in which he said Bush has offered 23 different rationales for going to war. "If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.''

The count comes from a study conducted by an honors thesis written by a University of Illinois student, which actually attributed 19 rationales -- none mutually exclusive -- to Bush and four others to members of his administration.

Most of the rationales were on the table from the beginning. What changed was the emphasis.

Bush voiced no doubt from the beginning that Hussein possessed chemical, biological and potentially nuclear weapons.

"Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks, to build and keep weapons of mass destruction,'' Bush said in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

By the following year, after no such weapons had been discovered and evidence suggested that much of the intelligence was wrong, Bush had toned down such talk and begun to speak of the "threat'' of Hussein developing such weapons.

In his State of the Union address last January, Bush spoke of Hussein's "mass destruction-related program activities."

"Look, there is no doubt that Saddam Husein was a dangerous person,'' the president told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an interview several weeks before that speech. "And there's no doubt we had a body of evidence providing that. And there is no doubt that the president must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.''

Sawyer asked the president about the distinction between the "hard fact that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons.''

"So what's the difference?'' Bush responded. "The possibility that he could acquire weapons, if he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.''

"What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction,'' Sawyer persisted.

"Saddam Hussein was a threat,'' Bush responded. "And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.''

In the months since, Bush has changed his standard speech to reflect that failure to discover the weapons.

"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq,'' Bush said in July in Tennessee. "We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.''

There are a few instances where the president's words contradict developments or his previous statements.

On March 6, 2003, for example, Bush insisted during a prime-time news conference that he would offer a resolution before the United Nations calling for the use of force against Iraq even if other nations threatened to veto it.

"No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote,'' Bush said.

A few days later, after it became apparent that the measure would not only be vetoed but might fail to win a majority of the Security Council, the Bush administration dropped its demand for a vote.

The president also said last month on NBC's "Today Show'' that "I don't think you can win'' the war on terrorism, explaining instead that the nation could greatly minimize the likelihood of terrorist attacks. The comment came after months of asserting the United States was winning, and would ultimately triumph, in its war on terror. The statement appeared to be little more than an inelegant way of adding nuance to his explanation, and the president quickly retreated from the words the following day.

Some statements now look off-base after developments in Iraq, such as Bush's response in the first days of the war after learning that Iraqis may have captured some Americans.

"I do know that we expect them to be treated humanely, just like we'll treat any prisoners of theirs that we capture humanely,'' Bush said, many months before American soldiers committed the atrocities at the Abu Ghraib prison. - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...

---> Bush/Cheney=Corporate-Fascists Sucking the Cocks of War-Profiteers & Saudi Royal Terrorists!

10.17.04 (2:27 pm) [edit]

---> NEW POLL Shows the World Hates Herr Fuhrer Bush, Neo-Nazi War Criminal

10.17.04 (2:24 pm) [edit]

George Bush has squandered a wealth of sympathy around the world towards America since September 11 with public opinion in 10 leading countries - including some of its closest allies - growing more hostile to the United States while he has been in office.

According to a survey, voters in eight out of the 10 countries, including Britain, want to see the Democrat challenger, John Kerry, defeat President Bush in next month's US presidential election.

The poll, conducted by 10 of the world's leading newspapers, including France's Le Monde, Japan's Asahi Shimbun, Canada's La Presse, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian, also shows that on balance world opinion does not believe that the war in Iraq has made a positive contribution to the fight against terror.

The results show that in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, Spain and South Korea a majority of voters share a rejection of the Iraq invasion, contempt for the Bush administration, a growing hostility to the US and a not-too-strong endorsement of Mr Kerry. But they all make a clear distinction between this kind of anti-Americanism and expressing a dislike of American people. On average 68% of those polled say they have a favourable opinion of Americans.

The 10-country poll suggests that rarely has an American administration faced such isolation and lack of public support amongst its closest allies.

The only exceptions to this trend are the Israelis - who back Bush 2-1 over Kerry and see the US as their security umbrella - and the Russians who, despite their traditional anti-Americanism, recorded unexpectedly favourable attitudes towards the US in the survey conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Beslan tragedy.

The UK results of the poll conducted by ICM research for the Guardian reveal a growing disillusionment with the US amongst the British public, fuelled by a strong personal antipathy towards Mr Bush.

The ICM survey shows that if the British had a vote in the US presidential elections on November 2 they would vote 50% for Kerry and only 22% for Bush.

Sixty per cent of British voters say they don't like Bush, rising to a startling 77% among those under 25.

The rejection of Mr Bush is strongest in France where 72% say they would back Mr Kerry but it is also very strong in traditionally very pro-American South Korea, where fears of a pre-emptive US strike against North Korea have translated into 68% support for Mr Kerry.

In Britain the growth in anti-Americanism is not so marked as in France, Japan, Canada, South Korea or Spain where more than 60% say their view of the United States has deteriorated since September 11. But a sizeable and emerging minority - 45% - of British voters say their image of the US has got worse in the past three years and only 15% say it has improved.

There is a widespread agreement that America will remain the world's largest economic power.

This is underlined by the 73% of British voters who say that the US now wields an excessive influence on international affairs, a situation that 67% see as continuing for the foreseeable future.

A majority in Britain also believe that US democracy is no longer a model for others.

But perhaps a more startling finding from the Guardian/ICM poll is that a majority of British voters - 51% - say that they believe that American culture is threatening our own culture.

This is a fear shared by the Canadians, Mexicans and South Koreans, but it is more usually associated with the French than the British. Perhaps the endless television reruns of Friends and the Simpsons are beginning to take their toll.

·[b] ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,008 adults aged 18 and over by telephone between September 22-23 2004. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults[/b]. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,15221,1327568,00.html

---> Ah, The Joys of Getting Rich Off War-Profiteering With Bushy-boy!!!

10.17.04 (12:11 pm) [edit]

---> Psychotic Cowboy 'Manly-Man' Bush Prepares to Slaughter Thousands to Prove His 'Machismo'

10.17.04 (12:09 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush's wild west fantasy [/b]has taken a deadly psychotic turn. He has launched a full-scale bombing/invasion of the city of Fallujah in order to prove his machismo to one man: Al-Zarqawi. In Bush's 10-year-old mentality, one "villain" is always responsible for everything. First it was Osama, then Saddam, then Al Sadr, now al-Zarqawi. Osama was: Wanted Dead or Alive. Until Bush was bored with that. Now it's "Turn over Al-Zarqawi or we're comin' in after him" - as if Fallujah were the OK Corral instead of a city of THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND SOULS. This is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions under way to gratify one psychotic little man's perverted fantasies of dominance.

[b]More[/b] ... http://atimes.com/atimes/Midd...

---> George W. Bush is Impotent ... Where It Really Counts ...

10.17.04 (12:06 pm) [edit]

[b]GEORGE W. BUSH IS IMPOTENT [i]Where It Really Counts [/i](The asshole has[i] [i]No Brains[/i] so has to be WIRED to get his [/i]weasel words) ... I don't give a rat's ass about "below the waist" although I do feel very, very sorry for poor Laura and lap-dog Condi Rice ...[/b]

[b]There it is: right between Cheater-Bush's shoulder blades. My fellow Americans, George W. Bush was wired for all 3 debates! Tell the media to tell the truth about Cheater-Bush!!! http://community.democrats.co... [/b]

[b]Technical Expert Says Bush Was Wired[/b]

"Now a technical expert who designs and makes such devices for the U.S. military and private industry tells Salon http://www.salon.com/news/fea... that he believes the bulge is indeed a transceiver designed to receive electronic signals and transmit them to a hidden earpiece lodged in Bush's ear canal. 'There's no question about it. It's a pretty obvious one -- larger than most because it probably has descrambling capability,' said Alex Darbut, technical and business development vice president for Resistance Technology in Arden Hills, Minn... On Tuesday, in response to repeated questions from Salon, the Bush camp finally issued a flat denial. Campaign spokesman Reed Dickens denied that Bush has ever used an electronic device to aid his public speaking, insisting the president was wearing 'nothing during the debates.'" LoL! Just like we thought - the Emperor was Buck Naked, but no one dared say he "had no clothes"!

[b]THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!!! DON'T LET THE MEDIA COVER-UP BUSH'S CHEATING!!! BUSH IS TOO STUPID (AS WELL AS A LIAR) TO BE PRESIDENT!!![/b]

---> Bush Tells Impeachable Lies About Tax Cuts!!!

10.17.04 (12:01 pm) [edit]

---> Bush Failes To Protect Americans' Health ... (But Takes Care of Himself!)

10.17.04 (11:58 am) [edit]

[b]GEORGE BUSH: FAILING TO PROTECT AMERICANS’ HEALTH [/b]

Failed to Take Action to Prevent Flu Crisis

For the second year in a row, Americans are facing a critical shortage of flu vaccine, with this year’s crisis the worst ever. Experts now predict that this year we have only half of the necessary supply of vaccines to protect people from a major flu outbreak. With the flu season around the corner, George Bush has again failed to plan for a vaccine shortage, leaving millions at risk. The flu causes approximately 36,000 deaths and more than 100,000 hospitalizations ever year.

Ohioans Brace for Shortage, with Seniors Forgoing Vaccinations. The sudden shortage in flu vaccines has forced Ohio clinics to cancel programs to give seniors vaccinations. ‘”It's another one of those years,” Pat Burg, director of the Butler County Health Department, said. ‘It's one of the bigger glitches we've had. It caught us by quite a surprise.’” [The News-Messenger, 10/9/04; Fairfield Echo, 10/7/04]

Ignored Warnings of Flu Crisis. The Bush administration was warned time and again of the need to take action to avert a disastrous vaccine shortage. The General Accounting Office, the government watchdog agency, raised the alarm in 2001: “a production delay or shortfall experienced by even one of the three remaining manufacturers can significantly impact overall vaccine availability.” The GAO stated just last month that “the absence of more detail in HHS’s draft plan creates uncertainty for the states regarding how to plan for the use of limited supplies of vaccine.” [GAO Report: Flu Vaccine: Supply Problems Heighten Need to Ensure Access for High-Risk People; May 15, 2001; GAO testimony to Senate Committee on Aging; September 28, 2004]

Health Experts Agreed Shortage Was Preventable. Because the Bush administration failed to develop an effective plan, millions of Americans at risk from influenza must go without a flu vaccine. Dr. Irwin E. Redlener, associate dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, called the shortage “utterly predictable,” arguing “[y]ou cannot have a vital function like vaccine production limited to the manufacturing capacity of two companies. It leaves no room for failure.” In addition, “Top flu researcher W. Paul Glezen of Baylor Medical Center said the administration should be faulted for allowing just two companies to be the supplier of all of the nation's flu shot vaccine. They "didn't display any comprehension of what the problem was and what should be done about it," he said.” [Knight Ridder, 10/15/04; Washington Post, 10/9/04; New York Times, 10/7/04]
Ignored Signs of Problems with Vaccine Manufacturers and Relied Solely on Information from the Drug Company. The Food and Drug Administration, America's health watchdog, knew over a year ago of safety problems at the facility that produces half the US flu vaccine supply, but the administration failed to direct FDA to take aggressive action to require the company to correct the problems -- or even to conduct a follow-up inspection. Indeed, the Bush administration recently admitted that they relied solely on information from the vaccine manufacturer to determine the status and safety of the vaccine supply. “U.S. health regulators say they found quality-control problems at a flu vaccine factory in Liverpool, England, in June 2003 but did not begin a full inspection of the plant again until Sunday, five days after British authorities yanked the company’s license because of tainted vaccines.” According to the New York Times, “British health officials said…that their United States counterparts were aware of problems at the Liverpool plan long before the British government revoked its license to make flu vaccines. [USA Today October 11, 2004; USA Today October 10, 2004; New York Times, October 7, 2004]
Bush Now Wants to Reimport Vaccines From Canada – Despite the Fact He’s Blocked Reimportation of Prescription Drugs. George Bush said in the debate that the country should try to get flu vaccines from Canada. Bush “referred obliquely to that when he said the government was ‘working with Canada’ to ‘help us realize the vaccine necessary to make sure our citizens have got flu vaccinations during this upcoming season.’ If the Bush administration imports vaccine based just on Canadian approval, that would depart from its opposition to importing drugs from Canada.” Even last year during the Medicare drug debate, Bush refused to allow Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada and other countries. [New York Times, 10/15/2004; Bush remarks, Third Presidential Debate (Tempe, Arizona), 10/13/04; Office of Management and Budget, SAP on HR 2472, 7/23/03, www.whitehouse.gov/omb]
Bush Administration Left to Ration Flu Vaccine. Because of lack of poor planning, flu shots will be rationed this year. George Bush joined administration officials in calling for what the Wall Street Journal described as “a rationing of flu shots for the season.” “My call to our fellow Americans is if you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot this year,” Bush said. “Help us prioritize those who need to get the flu shot, the elderly and the young.” The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “issued guidelines giving certain groups priority to receive flu vaccines: infants, people over 65, people with chronic medical conditions, pregnant women, and health care workers with direct contact with patients.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/11/04; Bush remarks, Third Presidential Debate (Tempe, Arizona), 10/13/04; New York Times, 10/14/04]

Bush Administration Backed Up Its Vaccine Oversight Neglect with Budget Cut Proposals. Even as concerns about vaccine safety, supply, and inadequate financing were being raised, George Bush proposed cutting $110 million from 317 state vaccine purchase grants in both FY 04 and FY 05. While fortunately rejected by the Congress, the Administration’s actions clearly illustrate their priorities: tax cuts and corporate welfare for the top 1 percent; cuts for everyone else. [Monthly Newsletter, Every Child By Two, February 20, 2004]

[b]Oh, and you know Dubya condemns "Government-controlled Health Care"? But Bush and his family get "Government" Health Care themselves!!![/b]

---> TWILIGHT ZONE REDUX: Bush's Falsifications Regarding Tax Cuts

10.16.04 (2:22 pm) [edit]

At Wednesday's debate President Bush said most of his tax cuts "went to low- and middle-income Americans."1 That statement is flatly false.

An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that, in 2004, the top 20 percent of earners received 69.8% of the tax cuts enacted by President Bush.2 While the middle 20 percent of earners received an average tax cut of $647, the top 20 percent received an average tax cut of $5,055.3 As a result, those in the middle class are paying a greater share of the federal taxes today than they were four years ago.4

[b]Sources: [/b]

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
2. "Tax Returns: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration Tax Cuts," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 04/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Tax Cuts Go Mostly to the Rich," OMB Watch, 2004.

---> True Patriots Believe in Constitutional Values (But Not A'W'OL Bush) ...

10.16.04 (2:19 pm) [edit]

Communication is imprecise at best. At its worst, it is totally misleading even when the attempt is honest and direct.

Politicians drop key words, symbols, and phrases into their banter in ways that are designed to bring you in like bait for the hook -- like a lure, even. It looks like food, but it's a shimmery, rubbery piece of junk that has no value beyond the illusion.

At this point some of their lures ring alarm bells in my mind. Just the words "Americans want" make me wonder what interpretation of what poll of what group this guy is talking about. If they want to represent me, I'm looking for fewer assumptions about what I think.

"I'm for family values." (As if anyone isn't.) I want to know what values a politician has that we can believe. "Do unto others," "Waste not, want not," "Love thy neighbor," living within your means, etc.?

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> U.S. Civil Rights Commission Slams Racist Bush's Miserable Record

10.16.04 (2:17 pm) [edit]

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reports, "Civil rights problems remain entrenched in American society, the stubborn result of unequal treatment over time. Discrimination in housing, employment, and the voting booth, unequal educational opportunity, and other problems still stand between some Americans and true equality. Presidential leadership is necessary to break down obstacles and realize the promise of civil rights. What follows are the results of the Commissionâ??s examination, expressed in terms of: (1) whether civil rights enforcement is a presidential priority; (2) federal efforts to eradicate entrenched discrimination; (3) expanding and protecting rights for disadvantaged groups; and (4) promoting access to federal programs and services for traditionally underserved populations. This report finds that President Bush has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/bus...

---> Republic of God (Under Ayatollah Bush) ...

10.16.04 (2:15 pm) [edit]

[b]A guide to the "secular purpose" of the Ten Commandments[/b]

This week the Supreme Court announced that it would hear two cases concerning the placement of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. To some, this issue seems like a no-brainer: it would be hard to find a clearer violation of the First Amendment's prohibition of government sponsorship of religion. But polls show that a majority of Americans like the idea of putting up the Ten Commandments in government buildings. Chief among them is George W. Bush, who when running for president in 2000 said, "I have no problem with the Ten Commandments posted on the wall of every public place." Asked which version of the Commandments should be on the millions and millions of walls in every public place in America, he replied, "The standard version." Of course, there is no standard version, but for our purposes here I've used the King James version.

If we're going to be putting these up in courthouses, city halls, and public schools all over America, we'd better think through the public policy implications.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> BUSH LIE EXPOSED: Survey of 'Military & Families' Clearly Bogus - Designed to Hide the Truth

10.16.04 (2:10 pm) [edit]

[b]One look at this survey and you just KNOW the results have been fudged.[/b] First, you find a whopping 62% of respondants say that Bush has failed to send enough troops to Iraq - the number one factor that has led to the present crisis. The poll also found that 42% said the National Guard and Reserve troops were not properly trained for Iraq [only 38% said they were]. 51% to 8% said they opposed the Bush administration's decision to prevent the media from photographing the flag-draped coffins of men and women killed in Iraq." Yet we are then supposed to believe that 63% these same people also "approve" of the way Bush is handling the war and 64% believe the war was worth it? C'mon! No one believes people in the military are this stupid or confused! What we hear from REAL SOLDIERS is that their NUMBER ONE frustration is that the US public is not hearing the truth. This poll adds just one more nail in truth's coffin.

[b]More[/b] ... http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap...

---> Ah, The Joys of War-Profiteering With Bushy-boy!!!

10.16.04 (2:07 pm) [edit]

---> Psychotic Cowboy 'Manly-Man' Bush Prepares to Slaughter Thousands to Prove His 'Machismo'

10.16.04 (1:58 pm) [edit]

Bush's wild west fantasy has taken a deadly psychotic turn. He has launched a full-scale bombing/invasion of the city of Fallujah in order to prove his machismo to one man: Al-Zarqawi. In Bush's 10-year-old mentality, one "villain" is always responsible for everything. First it was Osama, then Saddam, then Al Sadr, now al-Zarqawi. Osama was: Wanted Dead or Alive. Until Bush was bored with that. Now it's "Turn over Al-Zarqawi or we're comin' in after him" - as if Fallujah were the OK Corral instead of a city of THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND SOULS. This is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions under way to gratify one psychotic little man's perverted fantasies of dominance.

[b]More[/b] ... http://atimes.com/atimes/Midd...

---> Is THIS Supposed to be Mr. Macho 'Manly-Man'??? LOL!!! LOL!!! LOL!!!

10.16.04 (1:52 pm) [edit]

---> Psychotic Cowboy Bush Prepares to Slaughter Thousands of Civilians to Prove His 'Machismo'

10.16.04 (10:27 am) [edit]

---> The World Backs Kerry

10.16.04 (10:24 am) [edit]

Millions of Americans are scratching their heads over how to vote on November 2 after the last of the three televised presidential debates left George Bush and John Kerry neck and neck over jobs, education, health care and taxes, with little mention of Iraq or 9/11. But the rest of the world, according to a poll we and several other newspapers publish today, has already made up its mind, backing the Democratic challenger by a margin of two to one.

Any sample, of course, is just a sample, but this survey of public opinion in 10 countries does include the US's two immediate neighbours, Canada and Mexico, as well as Israel and Russia, Washington's close allies in the "war on terror", and Britain, still its most loyal transatlantic friend, despite widespread criticism of Tony Blair. Unfortunately, Muslim countries are absent, though their inclusion would have made even gloomier reading for the White House. A recent Pew Research Centre poll, for example, showed just 7% of Pakistanis approve of Mr Bush, while 65% have a favourable opinion of Osama bin Laden.

These findings - likely to achieve a high degree of exposure because they are media-driven - confirm previous polls in underlining the degree of global hostility to President Bush and the Iraq war. Some 74% of Germans, according to GlobeScan, want to see Mr Kerry win the election. A June poll conducted by the German Marshall Fund found that 76% of respondents in nine European countries disapproved of Mr Bush's handling of international affairs, up significantly from a survey in 2002. It also found that 80% of Europeans polled - compared with half of Americans - said Iraq was not worth the human and financial cost. In Europe, only Poles would rather see Mr Bush back in the Oval office. Elsewhere in "new Europe" there is a distinctly "old European" wish to see the Massachusetts senator win. Further afield, Israelis are the only people to back the incumbent and to see American democracy as a model for other countries. Similarly positive views in Russia appear to reflect the hardline US view on Chechen terrorism: the survey was carried out in the aftermath of the Beslan school massacre.

Against this bleak background, the good news is that there is a clear distinction between anti-Americanism and criticism of US policies. No less than 68% of all those polled - with the French, Mr Kerry's most fervent backers, scoring a surprising above-average 72% - have a favourable view of Americans but are implacably opposed to the US government. Opinions of the US have worsened for 57% over the past three years.

Strikingly, though, political differences may now be casting shadows in other areas. Young Britons, avid consumers of Big Macs, Starbucks and Friends, are now hostile to American culture on a scale traditionally associated with the French. Canada, Mexico and South Korea feel even more threatened. It is common ground that Iraq and the Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib scandals have eroded the sympathy generated by the 2001 terrorist attacks. Encouragingly for whoever does win, 90% believe it is important to maintain good relations with the US. The danger is, perhaps, of expecting too much from a Kerry victory.

Mr Bush may well wish to exploit this hostility, against a rival he has portrayed as caring too much for allies and not enough for America. Clearly, if the world had a vote, the result on November 2 would not be in doubt. The president is unlikely to be surprised that the Guardian, Asahi Shimbun, Le Monde or El Pais believe that Iraq is a "deadly and highly questionable war". That though, is the view of the Lone Star Iconoclast, published in his home town of Crawford, Texas. It matters a lot what others think about the US. But it is only Americans who can choose their own leader. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,15221,1327971,00.html

---> SLUT DUBYA'S PIMPS: Saudi Royal Family, Terrorists & Corporate Rapists!!!

10.16.04 (10:20 am) [edit]

---> Brits Condemn Appeasement of Herr Fuhrer Bush, Neo-Con War Criminal

10.16.04 (10:18 am) [edit]

[b]Most Brits Can't Stand Bush, Want Kerry to Win[/b]

[b]Yahoo: [/b]"An opinion poll for the Guardian newspaper showed that Kerry would be backed by 50 percent of Britons, against just 22 percent for Bush. Despite the so-called "special relationship" between London and Washington, and Prime Minister Tony Blair's strong backing for Bush, the US leader is a deeply unpopular figure in Britain, the survey said. Of the 1,008 people polled, 60 percent said they did not like the president, a figure that rose to a massive 77 percent for Britons under the age of 25. Respondents suggested that Bush's policies have damaged their opinion of the United States, with 45 percent saying their opinion of the country had worsened over the past three years, against just 15 percent who said it had improved.

[b]More[/b] ... http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

---> Communist Dictators Back Bush, People Longing for Democracy Overwhelmingly Favor Kerry

10.16.04 (10:15 am) [edit]

Here's one of the best tributes to Kerry and most revealing negative indicators about Bush we've seen! A new survey shows that while the people of China, who have been pushing for a more democratic government, favor John Kerry overwhelmingly, the repressive Communist dictators who rule China are solidly behind Bush. N'uff said!

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.politicalgateway.c...

---> How Can Warmonger Bush Lead When Puppet-boy Can't Think???

10.16.04 (10:11 am) [edit]

---> A'W'OL Bush's Rhetoric Doesn't Match His Lousy Record: He Lies About Tax Cuts!!!

10.16.04 (10:04 am) [edit]

---> Saudi Royal Family, Terrorists & War-Profiteering Traitors Luv Bushy-boy!!!

10.15.04 (8:47 pm) [edit]

---> Ventriloquist's Dumbo Bush WIRED 'Cause He's Too Stupid To Think!!! What Next???

10.15.04 (8:45 pm) [edit]

---> Yet another Global Poll Reveals: The World HATES Bush

10.15.04 (8:41 pm) [edit]

To sum up world opinion in a nutshell: 'We like Americans but we HATE G.W. Bush." The Guardian reports: "George Bush has squandered a wealth of sympathy around the world towards America since September 11 with public opinion in 10 leading countries - including some of its closest allies - growing more hostile to the United States while he has been in office. According to a survey, voters in eight out of the 10 countries, including Britain, want to see the Democrat challenger, John Kerry, defeat President Bush in next month's US presidential election. The poll, conducted by 10 of the world's leading newspapers, including France's Le Monde, Japan's Asahi Shimbun, Canada's La Presse, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian, also shows that on balance world opinion does not believe that the war in Iraq has made a positive contribution." In short - vote for Bush, and you vote for America to continue to go it alone in Iraq and everywhere else.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,15221,1327568,00.html

---> Most Brits Can't Stand Bush, Want Kerry to Win

10.15.04 (8:40 pm) [edit]

[b]Yahoo: [/b]"An opinion poll for the Guardian newspaper showed that Kerry would be backed by 50 percent of Britons, against just 22 percent for Bush. Despite the so-called "special relationship" between London and Washington, and Prime Minister Tony Blair's strong backing for Bush, the US leader is a deeply unpopular figure in Britain, the survey said. Of the 1,008 people polled, 60 percent said they did not like the president, a figure that rose to a massive 77 percent for Britons under the age of 25. Respondents suggested that Bush's policies have damaged their opinion of the United States, with 45 percent saying their opinion of the country had worsened over the past three years, against just 15 percent who said it had improved.

[b]More[/b] ... http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

---> Communist Dictators Back Bush, People Longing for Democracy Overwhelmingly Favor Kerry

10.15.04 (8:39 pm) [edit]

---> A'W'OL Bush is Deceiving America with his Brains-NONE!!!

10.15.04 (8:23 pm) [edit]

---> Return of the Frat Boy: No Defense, No Jobs, But Lots of Debts for Working Folks!!!

10.15.04 (8:15 pm) [edit]

[b]What did we learn about Bush from the last debate?[/b]

He doesn't believe terrorism can ever be reduced to a "nuisance," which means he believes the War of Terror will be a war without end.

Not only has he seemed to have forgotten Osama bin Laden, he has forgotten what he has said about the Al Qaeda leader, probably because he's not "that worried about him."

Outsourcing is okay with Bush when it comes to the flu vaccine. First he tried England (payback for Iraq?) then Canada, the same country he will not allow seniors to buy cheap prescription drugs from, saying it's too dangerous.

Bush says Kerry's empty promises are called "bait-and-switch." His are called individual retirement and health savings accounts.

The deficit was not caused by Bush's massive tax cuts and record spending. It's the fault of the Clinton recession, the stock market crash, and the attacks of 9/ 11. In the Bush administration, they pass the buck like a hot potato.

He sent his budget man up to Congress to show how he plans to reduce the deficit by half in five years. The budget man hasn't been heard from since.

He believes his tax cuts were "fair" because "most" of the money went to low- and middle-income Americans. Would he like some cheese with that Whopper?

He says the answer to unemployment and minimum wage jobs is No Child Left Behind. Apparently the poor and jobless should go back to grade school.

He believes health care costs have increased by 36 percent under his watch because the health industry is still in the "buggy and horse days." His solution: the Internets.

Bush really wanted to extend the assault-weapons ban but didn't push it because he was told it was never "going to move" in a House and Senate controlled by his party.

Actually, Bush did meet with the Congressional Black Caucus. It was the NAACP he snubbed. Clearly, he has a nuanced position on black leadership.

He doesn't know if being gay is a choice or not, which prompted Chris Matthews to wonder: when did Bush decide to be straight?

Finally, he prays a lot. And since he's become president, so do we. - http://www.thenation.com/edcu...

---> Bush's Rhetoric Doesn't Match His Lousy Record

10.15.04 (7:50 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush Misleads on Tax Cuts[/b]

At Wednesday's debate President Bush said most of his tax cuts "went to low- and middle-income Americans."1 That statement is flatly false.

An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that, in 2004, the top 20 percent of earners received 69.8% of the tax cuts enacted by President Bush.2 While the middle 20 percent of earners received an average tax cut of $647, the top 20 percent received an average tax cut of $5,055.3 As a result, those in the middle class are paying a greater share of the federal taxes today than they were four years ago.4

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Transcript of Debate Between Bush and Kerry, With Domestic Policy the Topic," New York Times, 10/13/04.
2. "Tax Returns: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration Tax Cuts," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 04/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Tax Cuts Go Mostly to the Rich," OMB Watch, 2004.

---> Yet another Global Poll Reveals: The World HATES Bush

10.15.04 (6:15 pm) [edit]

---> Bush Lied: IRAQI PRESIDENT SAYS ELECTIONS MAY NEED TO BE POSTPONED

10.15.04 (6:09 pm) [edit]

Progress Report: "President Bush and other top members of his administration have been insistent that elections in Iraq will occur as scheduled, on 1/31/05. But yesterday, 'President Ghazi Ajil Yawer was quoted in Baghdad by the newspaper Asharq al Awsat as saying that the vote could be postponed because of security threats' (http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,5368543.story?coll=la-home-world) . President Yawer said, 'If we see that elections held by that date without security or conditions favoring a fair and comprehensive vote ... will have a negative impact on our country, then we will not hesitate to change its date.' Bush 'has repeatedly pointed to the January elections as evidence that Iraq's recovery is on schedule.'" Once more, Bush is lying, delusional or both.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.americanprogressac...

---> Karl 'Joseph Goebbels' Rove is Frog-Marched before Grand Jury in Plame Investigation

10.15.04 (6:06 pm) [edit]

"Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, testified Friday before a federal grand jury trying to determine who leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer. Rove spent more than two hours testifying before the panel... Before testifying, Rove was interviewed at least once by investigators probing the leak. Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell also have been interviewed, though none has appeared before the grand jury... In a widely quoted remark, [Plame's husband Joseph] Wilson said after a speech in 2003 that it might be 'fun to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.' Wilson has accused Rove of spreading word of the Novak column to reporters... John Kerry's campaign was quick to pounce on news of Rove's appearance, with senior adviser Joe Lockhart issuing a statement calling on Rove and other aides to 'come clean about their role in this insidious act.'"

[b]More[/b] ... http://apnews.myway.com/artic...

---> Bush Exhibits All of the Primary Symptoms of Abusive Personality Disorder

10.15.04 (6:01 pm) [edit]

Reading through this check list of symptoms of abusive personality, it seemed as if we were reading a description of Bush and his most dedicated supporters - right down to the cruelty to animals (Bush admitted he used to blow up frogs for fun). Just shift the focus of the abuse from home to global situation ("past battering" could refer to invasions of poor countries) and there you have it - a president who is a perpetrator and a blindly devoted army of followers who exhibit all the signs of abuse victims (codependence, making excuses for the perp, endangering self or others to please the perp, low self-esteem, etc.).

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.healthyplace.com/C...

---> Bush Has It ALL WRONG!!!

10.15.04 (5:54 pm) [edit]

[b]An Agonizing Choice: Conservatives Have Plenty of Cause to Abandon Bush [/b]

Voting for president used to be so easy, at least for a conservative. There was the Republican candidate. You knew he generally stood for lower taxes, less government spending, giving fewer powers to the government, lower deficits and a zealous regard for individual privacy.

Then, there was the Democrat. You knew he generally stood for higher taxes, more government and deficit spending, and a zealous regard for civil liberties.

Throughout my own presidential voting history, the choices have rarely, if ever, been agonizing. Nixon vs. McGovern? Carter vs. Reagan? Reagan-Mondale? Dukakis, a Massachusetts liberal? Clinton? Al Gore? Ah, the good ol' days. Each of those races presented clear choices, easily resolved.

Now we have the election of 2004. For the first time in my voting life, the choice in the race for president isn't so clear And, among true conservatives, I'm not alone.

What's making the contest so difficult? It's certainly not that both candidates are so conservative that we have a choice of riches. It's not even that John Kerry is sort of right wing compared to George W. Bush. The incumbent clearly is the more "conservative" of the two.

But the concerns for many conservative voters - concerns that may cause them not to vote for Mr. Bush on Nov. 2 - fall generally into three categories: fiscal, physical (as in the physical security of our nation) and freedom (as in protecting our civil liberties).

When Bush became president Jan. 20, 2001, he inherited an enviable fiscal situation. Congress, then controlled by his own party, had - through discipline and tough votes - whittled down decades of deficit spending under presidents of both parties, so that annual deficits of hundreds of billions of dollars had been transformed to a series of real and projected surpluses. The heavy lifting had been done. All Bush had to do was resist the urge to spend, and he had to exert some pressure on Congress to resist its natural impulses to do the same. Had he done that, he might have gone down in history as the most fiscally conservative president in modern times.

Instead, what we got were record levels of new spending, including nearly double-digit increases in nondefense discretionary spending. We now have deficits exceeding those that the first Republican-controlled Congress in 40 years faced when it convened in January 1995.

The oft-repeated mantra that "the terrorists made us spend more" rings hollow, especially to those who actually understand that increases in nondefense discretionary spending are not the inevitable result of fighting terrorists. It also irritates many conservatives, whether or not they support the war in Iraq, that so much of defense spending is being poured into the black hole of Iraq's internal security, while the security of our own borders goes wanting.

That brings us to the second major beef conservatives have with the president. He's seen as failing to take real steps to improve our border security. In many respects, because of his apparent desire to appease his compadre to the south - Mexican President Vincente Fox - Bush has made matters worse. More people are entering our country illegally than ever before, more than 3 million this year alone - and most of them are stampeding across from Mexico.

It seems as if every time an effort is made to implement measures that would crack down on illegal immigration, Fox complains, and the White House tells our enforcement folks to back off. Perhaps that is why intelligence reports indicate al-Qaeda is actively recruiting in Central America.

At the same time, here at home, many law-abiding citizens accurately perceive that their own freedoms and civil liberties are being stripped. They are being profiled by government computers whenever they want to travel, their bank accounts are being summarily closed because they may fit some "profile," they are under surveillance by cameras paid for by that borrowed federal money, and, if the administration has its way, they will be forced to carry a national identification card. That skewed sense of priorities really rankles conservatives.

Those are but three tips of the iceberg that signal the deep dissatisfaction many conservatives harbor against the president. Thus far, however, with Bush's political gurus telling him he's ahead and to just lay low and not make any major gaffes, he seems unwilling to recognize the problems on his right flank. Or he seems to have concluded that he doesn't need to address those concerns because the ineptitude of the Kerry campaign hasn't forced him to.

But the race appears to be tightening again. It's likely to remain tight until Election Day. Those dissatisfied conservative voters will become increasingly important, but it's going to be impossible for the president to pull them back in with hollow, last-minute promises.

Bush's problem is that true conservatives remember their history. They recall that in recent years when the nation enjoyed the fruits of actual conservative fiscal and security policies, a Democrat occupied the White House and Congress was controlled by a Republican majority that actually fought for a substantive conservative agenda.

History's a troublesome thing for presidents. Even though most voters don't take much of a historical perspective into the voting booth with them, true conservatives do.

Hmmm. Who's the Libertarian candidate again?

[b]Lifelong Republican Bob Barr represented parts of Cobb County and northwest Georgia in Congress from 1995 to 2003[/b]. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

---> The World Backs Kerry

10.15.04 (11:05 am) [edit]

---> The World Backs Kerry

10.15.04 (11:04 am) [edit]

---> Billionaires for Bush:-- They've Made Out Big-Time Off "Expendable" Troops/Working People!

10.15.04 (10:34 am) [edit]

---> Bush Wants 4 More Years of War-Profiteering, Neo-Imperial Massacres, Tyrannical Rule ...

10.15.04 (10:18 am) [edit]

The most repeated observation about the outcome of the election is that the policy on the Iraq (news - web sites) war will turn out essentially the same, no matter which candidate wins.

Either George W. Bush or John Kerry (news - web sites), the reasoning goes, will be forced to work through Iraqi elections, the continued use of military force and a gradual withdrawal of American troops, probably over a period of years. The corollary argument is that because neither can afford a precipitous change in the pattern already in place, Americans can expect much of the same post-elections.

From the traditional, non-neocon conservative right, this "behavioral equivalence" presumes that the president will be forced, by events and his own realization of the disaster that Iraq has become, to return to a less radical stature. Farewell, dreams of empire!

From the left and moderate Democratic and Republican centers, the senator is seen as a man who, despite his opposition to the Iraq war and his severe differences with the neocons, will find himself obliged not to lose another American war. Farewell, dreams of peace!

The only problem is that these suppositions are simply inaccurate -- and we Americans should start thinking now about what will really happen in the crucial days after Nov. 2.

If the president wins again, he will oversee an even more radical administration than his first. With his all-or-nothing temperament, he will take re-election as carte blanche to go ahead with his program of pre-emption and imperium. Rather than pulling back from future Iraqs, he will rush ahead, feeling ordained by history.

In a second Bush administration, virtually all the moderates will disappear. Almost surely, Colin Powell (news - web sites) will leave as secretary of state; and with him, many of his allies. Donald Rumsfeld may leave as defense secretary -- and although he is no moderate, he is also not a neocon. His leaving would open the Pentagon (news - web sites) to the neocons just below him, none of whom show the slightest embarrassment or regret about the mess they've made in Iraq. All of them can be expected to push ahead with more crazy schemes after Nov. 2.

Talk around town is that National Security Council adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) would be in the secretary of state slot, thus substantially decreasing any opposition from there to Bush's expansionist dreams. Also, Pentagon deputy Paul Wolfowitz would be named secretary of defense, cementing the power of the radical neocons in the defense establishment.

No group with counter ideas has in the last four years been allowed to flourish, mainly because the president is so attuned to their pugnacious ideas and dependent upon their flattering attention. The idea that a dependent, yet stubborn president could suddenly change seems quite improbable.

In fact, as numerous indicators attest, the neocon group around the president are already readying for the next step -- to force the U.S. to take on Iran as well as Iraq, and perhaps then Syria.

The ideas being bandied around from Washington to Jerusalem involve Iran's growing nuclear capacity, which would be the target of an air attack by Israeli forces with the complicity of the United States. Indeed, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites) said publicly at this fall's General Assembly opening that the terrorist threat was not to be found in Iraq but in Iran (an old fear).

But the Iranians, hardly unaware of these public musings, have already taken their, shall we say, precautions.

Since the beginning of the American occupation of Iraq, foreign intelligence services say, between 1 million and 3 million Iranians have crossed over into Iraq (many of these are Shiites who were expelled during the 1980s wars; nevertheless, they greatly enlarge the Iraqi Shiite population).

Even more important, the Iranians say that if Israelis attack them, they are ready to send three Iranian divisions across the border into Iraq to attack American and coalition forces -- who would then be fighting wars on three fronts, if you include Afghanistan (news - web sites).

There are those in the neocon camp making policy around President Bush (news - web sites) who talk of "eternal war," supposedly as a way to transform the world. With the perceived national approval of re-election -- at the same time that the American military has said it will wage an all-out attack to reclaim the cities of Iraq -- it would be expected that an inflated President Bush would march deeper into conflicts he has identified from the beginning.

But Iran is far from the only next stop for the neocons, with their intimate relationship with the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites). Besides Iran, in a second term their intentions are to oust Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) and overthrow the Syrian Baathist regime.

If the United States is to have another four years of this kind of foreign policy, it will come to be considered an outlaw in the world, most of its historical standards and principles in tatters and its future unknown.

In a first John Kerry administration, on the other hand, there would, at least at first, be few miracles. His would be the hard business of extricating us from Iraq without leaving behind a shameful period of history. His would be the formidable job of building up American stature and values in the current absence of them in the world.

But at least we'd have a chance. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

---> Bush/Cheney's Pimps: Carlyle Group, Halliburton Getting Rich Off Iraq War

10.15.04 (10:14 am) [edit]

Since World War II, dozens of U.S. companies have made a "killing" from military conflict. President Dwight David Eisenhower was the first to refer to these companies as the "military industrial complex." The financial and political clout of these companies has risen and waned through the years, depending on who was in power and what the international climate was like.

Whatever one thinks of the morality or necessity of our war in Iraq, one thing is undeniable: certain well-placed companies are making millions of dollars off the war. Two companies with close ties to the Bush and Cheney families that are reaping huge profits are the Halliburton Company and the Carlyle Group.

The Carlyle Group is so proficient at raking in government contracts that it is often referred to as the "Ex-Presidents Club." Some of the West's biggest and most powerful political leaders are helping to guide Carlyle through the muddy waters of governmental red tape and are reaping huge benefits in the process.

Carlyle's movers and shakers include such heavyweights as Former Secretary of State James Baker, Ex-Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, Former President George H.W. Bush, and Former British Prime Minister John Major. President G.W. Bush has also held board membership. What is even more fascinating is that the bin Laden family was an investor in Carlyle.

Carlyle also has direct links to the Saudi royal family and has been directly involved in training Saudi troops to protect oil fields. It also helped build Saudi Arabia's national guard from 26,000 to over 70,000 troops. The link between Carlyle and Saudi Arabia is so strong that some have called Carlyle a "front" organization for the Saudi royal family.

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Carlyle Group has reaped millions of dollars from government contracts on things such as cleaning up anthrax-infected buildings, including the Hart Senate Office Building, making X-ray scanners, providing logistics support to the U.S. military, making metal-bond structures in fighter jets and missiles, and providing employee background checks for the government.

Another well-connected company that is greatly profiting from the Iraq War is Halliburton, a company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. A Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, just received a government contract to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq. According to Forbes Magazine, no other company was even allowed to bid on the contract. This contract alone is worth tens of millions of dollars.

Therefore, while our war in Iraq is costing billions of dollars to America's taxpayers and is also costing many American families the ultimate sacrifice of lost sons and daughters, certain well-connected companies are reaping huge profits and benefits. I sincerely hope and pray that these connections are merely circumstantial and not intentional. - http://covenantnews.com/baldw...

---> Bush is a Traitor: Slut to the Saudi Royal Family