Lies.

That last post was a lie. I am a liar.

Brace for re-entry

So, for the past few months I haven't been maintaing the blog and have been trying to avoid the internet in general as best I could. Now that summer is here and I am back home, I am going to get back to blogging. Most of my posts should be over on "tongue but no door", a group block that Anthony kindly invited me to join. This does not mean that the B of P is dead, I will still be updating this site too, possibly even cross posting from TBND.

Breaking Blog Silence

After viewing the "Fog of War" I predicted that Paul Wolfowitz would be the Robert McNamara of the Bush Administration. Bill Keller's favorable NY Timese Magazine profile of the Asst. Secretary of Defense makes Wolfowitz sound like a modern version of the Whiz Kids that managed the Vietnam War. Wolfowitz has now advanced one step further down the road to becoming Robert McNamara. President Bush has selected Paul Wolfwotiz to head up the World Bank (ABC News), a posistion that McNamara once occupied. It is only a matter of time before Wolfowitz is on film weepily recounting his awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Throwing Down

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has called Alan Greenspan out:
I'm not a big Greenspan fan -- Alan Greenspan fan. I voted against him the last two times. I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington. The fact of the matter is, he told us when we were in power and Clinton was president the biggest problem facing the American people was the deficit. And we did something about it. We, during the Clinton years, paid down the debt by about a half a trillion dollars.

Why doesn't he respond to the Republicans and tell them the big problem here is the debt that this administration is created? We had a $7 trillion surplus when Bush took office, now we have a $3 or $4 trillion deficit. That's, in fact, what Greenspan should be telling people.

In his youth Greenspan was an admirer of Ayn Rand and worked for an objectivist think tank. He has since devoted his career to advancing the objectivist agenda and has never missed an opportunity to hurt working Americans.* It is about time that someone called him out on this. Not surprisingly he is a loyal Republican, as indicated by his political donations. In addition to backing the first President Bush and Bob Dole (for senate), Greenspan has also given aid and comfort to Jesse Helms. You may remeber Helms as the most evil memeber of the US Senate untill his retirement in 2002. Helms was an unreconstructed segregationist and used race baiting advertisments to win his re-election campaign in 1992.

*Don't believe me? I have cartoons to back me up! They are available here and elsewhere.

Annoying People

"Jane Galt" identifies another irritating prostlyizer: the evangelical atheist. In a post yesterday, she wrote:

Anyone who's lived in a Blue State has probably encountered the problem of the Evangelical Atheist . . . the person who has discovered the Void and considers it their bounden duty to share their newfound joy with everyone around them, through force if necessary. Having lived in the born again Christian wing of my freshman dorm, I find that EA's, not fundamentalists, seem to be the undisputed champions of arrogant, intolerant, pig-headed religious boorishness. The fundamentalists who so earnestly tried to bring me into the fold were, after all, just trying to save me from an awful eternity in hell. The EA's are trying to save people from wasting two hours on Sunday morning. And no fundamentalist I've ever met has ever been so thoroughly oblivious to the possibility that they might be wrong.

The evangelical atheists truly are more annoying than evangelical Christians. The evangelical atheists do have one redeeming quality: they are relatively harmless. If they had their way than at worst we would have a pledge of allegiance that was shorter by a few words and a line no one ever reads removed from our currency. The same can not be said for the fundementalists, whose program is actually quite noxious, particulary with regards to non-symbolic issues like gay rights, foreign policy and book learnin'.

Low Pro

An excerpt from First Person, the "astonishingly frank self-portrait by Russia's President, Valdmir Putin", the produce of a series of interviews with the Philadelphia Inquirer:

There are reports that you took part in an operation called Lightbeam:
I don't know, exactly. I wasn't involved in it. I don't even know if it was executed or not...

Well, they wanted to portray you as a s super-spy. And you're denying everything. But then why did you get promoted?
For concrete results in my work-that's what it was called. Success was measured by the quantity of realized units of information. If you procuired information from the sources you had at your disposal, put it together, and sent it to the releveant offices, you would obtain the appropriate evaluations.

Wingnut Butter: X-tra Creamy

Via atrios:
Now we know where Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) thinks the weapons of mass destruction are buried: in Syria, which he said he’d like to nuke to smithereens.

Speaking at a veterans’ celebration at Suncreek United Methodist Church in Allen, Texas, on Feb. 19, Johnson told the crowd that he explained his theory to President Bush and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) on the porch of the White House one night.

Johnson said he told the president that night, “Syria is the problem. Syria is where those weapons of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on ‘em and I’ll make one pass. We won’t have to worry about Syria anymore.”

Awhile back the Onion ran an article accussing Syria of harboring 15 million known arabs. It is very disturbing that we are getting to a point where that is no longer satire. Since this lunatic congressmen claims to have shared his depraved views with President Bush (in addition to advocating a crimes against humanity in a church), I wonder what our how our Commander-in-Chief responded. This kind of insanity needs to be dealt a crushing blow. Johnson ought to be censured by his colleagues and the President ought to vigorously denounce this man's remarks.

Open Season

Now, I am against re-districting in theory, but I do like the sound of this:

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has spoken with several Democratic governors in recent weeks about the possibility of revisiting their states' Congressional lines in response to the ongoing Republican-led redistricting in Georgia, according to informed party sources.

Faced with the prospect of Republicans redrawing Congressional lines in a third state since the initial 2001 round of redistricting ended, a faction of national Democrats is urging an aggressive strategy aimed at striking back at Republican House Members in states like New Mexico and Illinois.

Re-disticiting is another key reason why the Democrats must consolidate their power in the Blue states. Too many Democratic states, New York and California for example, have Republican governors. We need to destroy the Republican Party in these solidly Democratic states (just as the Democrats have been ruined in the South) and use them to gain control of the federal government. With new Democratic governors in these states we could probably cancel out any redistricting by the Republicans and maybe even make a net gain in the House of Representatives.

Wild Speculation

Another smashing victory in for nuclear non-proliferation:
Russian President Vladimir Putin, rejecting U.S. concerns that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, said Friday that Russia would continue to assist the Islamic Republic with nuclear and military projects....

Putin's comments, made less than a week before he and President Bush are due to meet in Bratislava, Slovakia, threaten to complicate Bush's efforts to get an international consensus on how to deal with Iran's nuclear program, a key goal of his European trip that begins Sunday...

In Washington, Bush and his senior aides offered a muted response to Putin's assertions.


Let's hope that our chips weren't cashed for the benefit of Bush's re-election when Putin quite bizzarley announced that he had warned the US about planned Iraqi terrorist attacks or when he declared that Bush's electoral defeat would be a victory for terrorism. Then again, maybe the White House isn't all that interested in halting Iran's weapons program through preventitive diplomatic action. After all, if they did that then they wouldn't get have Super War: Iran

An "E" For Effort

Powerline's John H. Hinderaker makes a sporting effort to mislead his readers about the nature of Bush's social security proposal in this post, but makes the fateful mistake of linking to an article from the Washington Post that contains actual facts. Hinderaker writes:

I'm one of the worst investors in the history of the world, and every decision I make about stocks turns out to be wrong. But, you know what? I still do far better saving for myself than I could ever do through Social Security. But that's OK, because the one fact that the Post somehow avoids mentioning is that the Bush administration's private account plan is entirely voluntary. That's right: If you're convinced that every investment you will ever make, no matter how conservative, will somehow turn out worse than burying cash in your back yard, not to worry: you can stay with the good old, impossibly lame, Social Security program forever.

This is a complete mischaracterization of the President's Social Security plan. Hinderaker makes it seem as if private accounts are a cost-free bonus that mean-spirited Democrats and America hating liberals are opposed to. What he completely ignores is the rather important point is that these private accounts are not cost free. Since these accounts would come from payroll taxes, they would weaken the entire social security system. Furthermore, to pay for the accounts the guaranteed benefits of the "good old, impossibly lame Social Security program" would be cut. As the Post notes:

Bush envisions the personal accounts generating enough profit from investments in stocks and bonds to offset future reductions in guaranteed benefits.

So, according to George W. Bush, the way to avoid having your living standards lowered by his plan is to invest in a personal account and hope that your investments work out. Yeah, that sounds pretty voluntary to me.

Not only does Hinderaker not bother with getting the facts of Bush's Social Security proposal right, but he also did not bother reading the article he linked to carefully. In an update to his original post he says:

Several readers have pointed out that, in its next to the last paragraph, the article does quote a White House official saying that "'no one is exposed to risk that does not want any risk' because the program is voluntary." But the rest of the article is premised on the idea that workers will be forced to assume risk...

Hopefully in the near future he will add another correction that recognizes the fact that Bush's program actually basically does force workers to assume more risk. If the Fearless Leader is willing to acknowledge this, why can't Hinderaker?

Latest and Greatest

The following are the results to a gallup poll that asked respodent who they thought was the greatest American president:

1) Ronald Reagan
2) Bill Clinton
3) Abraham Lincoln
4) Franklin D. Roosevelt
5) John F. Kennedy

Reagan's rise in the rankings is a recent development. In previous polls Ronald Reagan was consistently outpolled by Abraham Lincoln. There is more unsetteling news in this poll besides Ronald Reagan's rating as the greatest president. Reagan's ascendence shows just how effective the conservative campaign to promote Reagan has been. Reagan was not all that popular while he was President of the United States and in the first few years after his presidency he was less popular than when he was President. Though he was not ranked among the top ten, George W. Bush did beat Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and George Washington.

Election Reform

Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and other Democrats have come out in favor in some major changes regarding elections in this country. In addition to creating a federal holiday for voting, the bill would:

_Require paper receipts for votes.

_Authorize $500 million to help states make the changes in voting systems and equipment.

_Allow ex-felons to vote. Currently an estimated 4.7 million Americans are barred from voting because of their criminal records.

_Require adoption of the changes in time for the 2006 election.

These measures would increase the number of people who could vote and would vote in future elections and make election results more accurate and trustworthy. In addition to this bill being good policy, it is also good politics. Elections reform is probably a winning issue and by putting forth a policy agenda during non-election years, the Democrats help to build public awareness of the party's identity and principles.

Slander!

Via atrios I have come to learn that Time Magazine's "blog of the year", Powerline has made a truly shocking discovery:

Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side.

How did the star spangled-men of Powerline learn of the treasonous tendencies of America's most active ex-president? According to Powerline it was quite elementary, he failed to praise President Bush sufficiently for the elections in Iraq and expressing concern in September about the threat the security situation in Iraq posed to the elections. If mild skepticism is enough to make someone a fifth columnist, then the Powerline Patriots must be enraged by the President's well known hostility towards elections in Iraq and his entirely unnecessary delay of the Iraqi elections. Then again, Bush's attempt to thwart democracy from coming to Iraq was literally months ago and anyway, as Commander-In-Chief he has the constitutionally granted power to define reality.

Slander!

Via atrios I have come to learn that Time Magazine's "blog of the year", Powerline has made a truly shocking discovery:

Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side.

How did the star spangled-men of Powerline learn of the treasonous tendencies of America's most active ex-president? According to Powerline it was quite elementary, he failed to praise President Bush sufficiently for the elections in Iraq and expressing concern in September about the threat the security situation in Iraq posed to the elections. If mild skepticism is enough to make someone a fifth columnist, then the Powerline Patriots must be enraged by the President's well known hostility towards elections in Iraq and his entirely unnecessary delay of the Iraqi elections. Then again Bush's attempt to thwart democracy from coming to Iraq was literally months ago and anyway, as Commander-In-Chief he has the constitutionally granted power to define reality.

Self Promotion

The radio show I share with my hallmate will premier this thursday at 3 AM. You can listen here.

So sin-surr

North Korea now claims that it is a nuclear power and has withdrawn from disarmarment negotitations. The Bush Administration has decided to continue with its policy of steely eyed moral clarity and diplomatic calamity and has refused to make any concessions to North Korea. Instead the White House believes that the DPRK can be pressured into agreeing to American demands for a return to six party talks by cracking down on illegal activities being carried out by the North Koreans. Tremendous casualties didn't break them during the Korean war and millions of famine deaths during the 1990's did nothing to dent the determination of North Korea's government, but maybe after hearing the President's strongly worded and idealistic inaguaral address the communists have gone soft. There is a chance that for some reason George W. Bush's potent combination of tough talk and dithering might not lead North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. In that case, we can count on our foolproof national missile defense system to protect us.

Deanmania

Check out Dean Friedman's latest creation, a flash cartoon set to his new song four more years". It is like a bitterly partisan jib-jab.

The West Is Red

Poll: Tap wealthy on Social Security
Most Americans are willing to endorse painful steps to ensure Social Security's long-term solvency — steps that nick the rich, that is.

Two-thirds of those surveyed by USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup last weekend say it would be a "good idea" to limit retirement benefits for the wealthy and to subject all wages to payroll taxes. Now, annual earnings above $90,000 aren't taxed.

Class warfare: It works!

NY To Join The League of Satan

Same-Sex Marriage Case Wins in New York City
Today, a New York trial judge handed down an unprecedented ruling that says the state must grant gay and lesbian couples the right to marriage. The court's decision, stemming from a case filed by Lambda Legal, a national LGBT civil rights organization, on behalf of five plaintiff couples, says that the state's constitution guarantees gay men and lesbians the same basic freedoms available to straight couples.
If these activists judges keep taking terms like "equality" so literally instead of realizing that they don't apply to unpopular minorities something will have to be done! More decisions in favor of gay marriage/civil unions at the local and state level will keep the issue alive and will likely put pressure on the Republican leadership to have another go at trying to pass the dreadful Federal Marriage Amendment. If they don't they risk alienating a significant portion of their base, but if they do they will have less political capital to expend on their favored projects. I am not sure that is a pickle they want to be in.

Anti-Western Leftism Conquers The Western World

Certain conservatives, like the infamous Instapundit have taken to claiming that there exists a faction within in the West that is opposed to Western values and cite Ted Kennedy's suggestion that the US prepare a timetable to leave Iraq and some loathsome professor as examples of this threat to our civilization. Matthew Yglesias offers an clever critique of this view that pretty much demolishes such claims.

ITEM!

The White House Maybe Being Less Than Forthright In Its Dealings With the Press
The Boston Globe reports:
The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website.

Jeff Gannon calls himself the White House correspondent for TalonNews.com, a website that says it is "committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news coverage to our readers." It is operated by a Texas-based Republican Party delegate and political activist who also runs GOPUSA.com, a website that touts itself as "bringing the conservative message to America."

...Now, the question of how Gannon gets into White House press conferences is coming under intense scrutiny from critics who contend that Gannon is not a journalist but rather a White House tool to soften media coverage of Bush. The issue was raised by a media watchdog group and picked up by Internet bloggers, who linked Gannon's presence in White House briefings to recent controversies over whether the administration manipulates the flow of information to the public.

Creating a fake publication that is nothing but a front for a Republican PR operation? How underhanded! What is next? Bribing journalists with federal funds?

A Garden With A Fertile Plot & Party That Will Never Stop

From the Sunday Times:
Far across the frozen river two figures hurried from the North Korean shore, slip-sliding on the ice as they made a break for the Chinese riverbank to escape a regime that, by many accounts, is now entering its death throes.
The article goes on the speculate that Kim may have already been secretly deposed by a military clique and that there are many other signs that the government is losing control (including the possibility that the massive railyard blast that took place last year was actually an assassination attemot). Some hardliners will press for a regime change strategy to deal with the North Koreans based on these accounts. However, that is a risky move. It could be that Kim Jong-il or at least people not a whole different from Kim will continue to rule the DPRK. Therefore we should continue to try and negotiate in order to deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons program. If the rumors are true and the government is falling apart, it should make it so that the North Koreans are more open to a deal. If the rumors are fals or if the government is able to stay in control, then at least we have not alientated them by acting too aggressively and grad bargain will still be possible.

Maniacs

The following appeared as a post on National Review's weblog, The Corner, under the title "SUDETENLAND, U.S.A.":

Several papers reported on the Mexican foreign minister’s threat that if American courts don’t overturn Arizona’s Proposition 200 (which requires proof of citizenship to vote and proof of legal status to receive public benefits) Mexico may take the issue to an international human rights tribunal. This is one more example of the Mexican government’s long-term strategy of extending its reach into the United States, not so much to control territory as to share sovereignty, and assert a veto over any federal, state, or local government policy that in any way affects people of Mexican (or any Hispanic) ancestry...

How unfair! The US ever tried to infringe upon the sovereignty of Mexico. No, Neber. Have you ever seen a more revolting bunch of Nazis? After all, only Nazis would would dare do something so dastardly as pester the United States with their trifling concerns about the welfare of their insignifcant people. Don't they know that Mexicans don't have rights?

Light at the end of the tunnel?

The removal of the United Iraq Alliance's anti-occupation plank from its platform just before the election looked as if it would mean that American military could be in Iraq indefinetly. That may not be the case, though. Falah al-Naqib, the Iraqi interior minister and member of Prime Minister Illayd Allawi's party, has told British television that he expects US troops to be out in 18 months. Of course this is more of prediction than an actual time table for withdrawl, but it the Interior Minister's statement is important since it sets up a yardstick. Whether or not the target can be reached really depends on how quickly Iraqi forces can be trained and so far the news on that front is not very encouraging.

Tax-And-Spend

Fox Reports:
Lawmakers trying to plump up the bottom line are considering a "vanity tax" (search) on cosmetic surgery and Botox injections in Washington, Illinois and other states.
As a socialist out to destroy the American way of life I support any and all progressive tax hikes, particularly when the revenues will be used to support anti-poverty programs, as is the case in Washington. This story makes me wonder if selective luxury taxes targeted at the upper brackets might be more politically viable than income or property tax hikes. It might be more effective to target the emblems of wealth and status instead of targeting the wealthy directly. By going after such purchases cultural conservatives associate with Holywood liberals we could have an opportunity to broaden our coalition. What sort of red-blooded red stater wouldn't rally to cause of taxing specialtity coffee drinks, summer homes, limousines and fashionable, small, yippy dogs?

The Big Day

The elections in Iraq are set to take place on Sunday, which has technically already begun in Baghdad. Knight Ridder provides a simple guide to the elections, complete with with information on the the different slates vying for power.

Got 'em

The payola/propaganda scandal, which started with Amstrong Williams, has grown even larger. Now it is being reported that a syndicated columinist named Michael McManus was subcontracting for the Department of Health and Human Services and never disclosed his connection to the government. McManus helped the DHHS with a marriage initiative and promoted the intitiative he had worked on his columns.

The Democrats really ought to beat this story to death. The payola scandal represents an excellent opportunity to expose wrongdoing, tie the GOP to abuse of power government corruption, discredit the conservative punditry and shut down a patronage program for Republican hacks in the media. The "Stop Government Propaganda Act" is a good start, but we are very far from total saturation.

The Press should be making a much bigger deal out of this, too. The Administration is soiling their profession and yet there is a chance that the guilty parties will get away with it. Additionally, I thought it was the job of the media to protect the public from the excesses and crimes powerful instead of rewording politicians' press releases and writing about that squirrel that can water ski.

Another Gonzales?

George W. Bush's new nominee for the Dept. of Homeland Security has been found to have been consulted the CIA on interrogation techniques:


Michael Chertoff, who has been picked by President Bush to be the homeland security secretary, advised the Central Intelligence Agency on the legality of coercive interrogation methods on terror suspects under the federal anti-torture statute, current and former administration officials said this week...

Asked about the interaction between the C.I.A. and Mr. Chertoff, now a federal appeals court judge in Newark, Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman, said, "Judge Chertoff did not approve interrogation techniques as head of the criminal division."...

One current and two former senior officials with firsthand knowledge of the interaction between the C.I.A. and the Justice Department said that while the criminal division did not explicitly approve any requests by the agency, it did discuss what conditions could protect agency personnel from prosecution....

...Mr. Chertoff opposed some aggressive procedures outright, the officials said. At one point, they said, he raised serious objections to methods that he concluded would clearly violate the torture law. While the details remain classified, one method that he opposed appeared to violate a ban in the law against using a "threat of imminent death."

The Senate better be aggressive in investigating exactly what Chertoff's currently secret recommendations are. If it turns out that he approved of methods that went too far, methods that any person with common sense would consider torture, then his nomination should be resisted with the same vigor that is being shown in resisting the nomination of Alberto Gonzales.

The F-Team

This isn't good:
The Pentagon has created a new spying agency that has already been operating secretly in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years.

The unit, called the Strategic Support Branch, has also been in operation in other places sources would not disclose, the Washington Post said, citing documents and interviews with participants...

The secret spying organization is designed to provide Rumsfeld with tools to conduct so-called human intelligence tasks, such as interrogation of prisoners and recruitment of foreign spies.

Recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose association with the US government would be embarrassing if revealed, the Post said, citing a Pentagon memo.

I have the sinking feeling that this super secret spy agency (which seems to have had no oversight from anyone outside the administration) is responsible for a lot of electrode-on-genital action. An agency that is under the control of Donald Rumsfeld, uses "notorious figures" and operates (it would seem) without congressional oversight cannot be up to anything good. Given the record of Rumsfeld's other "secret" intellignce group, the Office of Special Plans, which basically manufactured intelligence on Saddam's WMD program, it is unlikely that the this other agency has accomplished anything useful.

Correction: I have misunderestimated this Strategic Support Branch. According to an article I read after writing this post, the agency helped capture Saddam Hussein, so in fact it has accomplished something. However, having such a unaccountable, secret agency remains a bad idea. I regret the error, which has revealed how lazy and prejudiced I am.

NY Post Post

In an editorial today (via Mattew Yglesias) the New York Post expressed its deeply held belief that ignorance is strength:

Talk about adding insult to injury: Doubleday Broadway — a New York-based imprint in Bertelsmann's Random House domain — plans to promote the works of the world's most evil twosome: Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden.

No kidding: As soon as perhaps next year, a collection of the deadly duo's hate-filled writings, translated into English, will be turned into a book, tentatively called "Al Qaeda Reader," and bound for a bookstore near you...

Bertelsmann is serving al Qaeda's ends by publishing and promoting its rantings.

Sadly, the wingnut potential of this editorial was completely wasted. Here was a golden opportunity to demand that someone be sent to Guantanamo Bay for printing something the Post didn't like, since it is the logical extension of the first part of the editorial. but the cowards on the Post's editorial board decided to back down and takes a reasonable posistion:

Then why, if this is to be a public service, hasn't the company explicitly refused to take any profits from the book?

That's what Houghton Mifflin did in publishing Hitler's "Mein Kampf." Instead of pocketing profits, that company channels them to anti-hate groups.

All that huffing and puffing about aiding the enemy only to meekly suggest that Doubleday deny itself the profits from its book? Honestly, I expected more from the newspaper that brought us the "Axis of Weasel"

Billionaires for Liberalism

From The Foward:
A handful of ultra-wealthy Jewish liberals are resolving to do battle with conservatives by providing a big infusion of cash to progressive think tanks and idea mills.

New York-based financier George Soros, Cleveland insurance king Peter Lewis and Oakland, Calif., banking magnates Herb and Marian Sandler made the pledge at a meeting in San Francisco last month.

The new pledge to support liberal causes represents a potentially important infusion into the coffers of the Democratic policy establishment, which generally has failed to keep pace with the massive investments that Republicans have made during the past quarter-century into their intellectual infrastructure, including two influential Washington-based conservative think tanks: the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute.

The question of how to spend the promised funds is likely to become a part of the wider fight within the party over whether to pursue more liberal or centrist policies.

The fact that wealthy liberals are interested in helping to build a center-left counter-establishment is very encouraging. Campaign contributions are not everything and the Forces of the Right enjoy a tremendous built in advantage from the existence of propaganda outlets likes like the NY Post, Fox News and Talk Radio and the nebulea of conservative think tanks. I just hope that the money in question will not be invested primarily in developing "new ideas", at least with regards to policy, because that is not what the Democrats need. In a general sense, we already have the right ideas (tolerance, economci justice and a foreign policy based on our values, interests and an understanding of the limits of our power) and money doesn't really need to be put down in order to make them better. The past 12 years have show very clearly that progressive program works and conservative one doesn't. The real issue is selling our ideas. The folks at the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute aren't paid to come up with creative policy solutions, they are paid to promote the policy posistions (taxs cuts good, poor people lazy, free markets magical, etc.) that the the Republican party has had for decades. Any successful liberal counterweight will have to be more hackish than academic. If the billionaire liberals mentioned in this article are feeling particularly generous, they ought to make substantial investments in new media ventures as well, a move which would greatly amplify their support in other areas.

The Blogs of War Don't Capitulate!

Attention blog readers: web renound warblogger Tim Blair has struck another decisive blow against islamofacism and the MSM (Mainstream Media, for those not in the know)! In his latest daring venture, the couragaeous Mr. Blair reads an article from that anti-American organ, the Washington Post, and gives an angry muslim man the fisking of a lifetime. I am sure that irrate Iraqi is bound to log onto the internet at any moment, read that devasting blog post and realize how foolish he is being. Exposing the objectively pro-Saddam slant of the Press and defeating the Iraqi Insurgency is all in a days work for the pajama clad heroes of the blogosphere.

A Chill In The Air

Looks like there are some real genuises at work over at News Corp:
Fox says it covered up the naked rear end of a cartoon character recently because of nervousness over what the Federal Communications Commission will find objectionable.

The latest example of TV network self-censorship because of FCC concerns came a few weeks ago during a rerun of a "Family Guy" cartoon. Fox electronically blurred a character's posterior, even though the image was seen five years ago when the episode originally aired.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Cartoon nudity has been common for many years and I doubt there is a single instance of a broadcaster being fined by the FCC because of it. Furthermore, it strikes me as rather odd that someone wouldn't take offense to the substance of "Family Guy" (a show which reguarly makes fun of assorted minority groups and cracks some of the most indecent jokes on television) and yet would be so bothered by the presence of Peter Griffin's cartoon ass that they would file a complaint with the Federal Government.

Full disclosure:I think "Family Guy" is great and cannot wait untill Cartoon Network starts making new episodes in May. I just hope they don't mess it hope.

Clever

Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider

"Time" Magazine Takes A Contrarian View

In "What The President Reads" from the Jan. 17th issue of Time, the newsweekly attempts to cover for the President's famous lack of curiosity. However, they blow their attemtp to puff Bush in the very first sentence: George Bush is famously anti-intellectual. But he seeks out authors who share his views and looks for reassurance. That last clause completely validates charges of anti-intellectualism. Even the most hyperbolic Bush basher is like to admit, however grudgingly, that George Bush is capable for reading and it is likely that he has at least read a few books (or at least the blurbs of a few dustjackets). This does not make him an intellectual or a person interetested in ideas. A serious person does not read just to confrim his prejudices. Reading books simply to reassure yourself of your rightness doesn't make you deep, it just makes you a wanker.

Update:Reading the newspaper only for the sports page and demanding that you are only told the good news about your war also means that you are a wanker, The Greatest of All Time, in fact.

Yet Another Update:< What has happened to Time? Time is suppose to be the top news magazine, but Newsweek and the New Yorker (which is a monthly and not really a news magazine) are scooping them around the clock. All they seem capable of is publishing mash notes for that Long Not-So-Tall Texan they seem to fancy.

ITEM: I Still Hate David Brooks

From dabrook's latest column:
The Social Security debate has exposed interesting differences within the Democratic Party between those who are inspired by Bill Clinton and those who are inspired by - wait for it - Newt Gingrich.

Oh, how clever! What an ironic twist! Now I understand where Mr. Brooks is paid the big bugs. That kind of material doesn't just write itself. Never mind that Brook's article is completely wrong headed. In the remainder of his essay David Brooks explains why vigorously opposing the President's plan to partially privatizing, bankrupt the federal government and ream future retirees would do little to help the Democrats politically. Brook's analysis pretty well sums up his world view. The notion that the Democrats might be remotely interested in social justice and want adopt Gingrich-esque tactics to defend it for that does not seem to enter Brook's head. Politics for Brooks is not so much about the implementing a good policies (or in this case, protecting good policies), because good policy is desireable in itself, but rather about gaining and holding power for its in own sake. And to rip off an device from Brooks (the silly analogy), I would like to note that Brooks is much different from New Gingrich, since Gingrich had (unsound) principles and a lot more like Bush's doughfaced political advisor, Karl Rove.

WWJD?

According to UPI that in addition to considering employing death squads, the US is has now embraced collective punishment as tool to enrage Arab public opinion further comabt the Iraqi insrugency. Remember that "moral clarity" business? Back before certain leaders in the government decided that torture was okay? Back Before we started harming people because they were very vaguely associated an other group of people we didn't like? Yeah, I missed the Clinton era, too.

Oh, the Hilarity

To quote a great former blogger, "well sirs, it is blogging time." I would like to take today's "blogging time" to promote McSweeney's. McSweeney's is an internet humor site that is home to "Unused Audio Commentary By Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky Recorded Summer 2002, For 'The Fellowship of The Ring'".

Rice Grilla

Rice grilled on Iraq, Mideast
">Rice grilled on Iraq, Mideast
Rice faced sometimes heated questioning from Democratic lawmakers who sought her positions on the war in Iraq.

A good start, but clearly the grilling is not intense enough. It is time the Dems turn up the heat. When Rice thinks she can make state my like "I do believe that he got good military advice, and I do believe that the plan and the forces that we went in with were appropriate to the task," without being laughed or shouted out of the place, then clearly she is being treated to kindly. The Opposistion needs to take some ice grilling tips from this man:

Undertoe

Every trime I try to quit blogging, they pull me back in. By "they" of course I mean you, "Bob", the psuedononymous commenter. It isn't like an egomaniac like myself can stay away from the is webloggery business for very long anyway.

Firsting

When they say, "America First"
They mean "Americans next"

In Westchester NY, of all places.

Everyone talks about swing states, but for the most part we ignored the “swing districts” in 2004. The presidential election was just too exciting for us to take our eyes off it.

I never thought that my absentee ballot would cast a vote in one of the closest and hardest fought elections of the year. I also never would have guessed that the election for state Senate would be the closest on my ballot. I remember going to Albany for a certain LWV essay contest and being told that sitting members of the state legislature are more likely to be indicted than defeated in an election. Despite gerrymandering up the wazoo, things just seemed to fall apart for republicans in the State Senate. They lost several seats, and possibly another if Stewart-Cousins can close the 58 vote gap in court. Spano, like certain other politicians, chose to challenge every likely democratic vote he could. It’s a sad state when vote fishing involves convincing judges, not the citizens themselves.

The nature of many of the challenged votes indicates that Spano is clearly not honestly concerned with fraud. He simply is on a search for technicalities that can disqualify his opponents votes. For example, the votes of poll workers who used absentee ballots even though they were not technically out of the county are being disputed (specifically democrats in Yonkers). Workers who are assigned to a polling place other than their own have followed this practice unchallenged for many years.

At least I know I voted for the better candidate. I just hope my ballot isn’t “lost” in the mail. Maybe there were too many ‘D’s in my party registration.

For the latest news:
http://www.dscc.net/show.php?page=news

Poland Heading Off The Reservation

From the Wall St. Journal, via Brand DeLong:
Opinion polls show a big majority of Poles want their troops out of Iraq and also want Europe to have a common defense policy, something Washington views as a possible threat to the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization...

"America failed its exam as a superpower," says Lech Walesa, the former Solidarity trade-union leader who became Poland's first post-Communist president. "They are a military and economic superpower but not morally or politically anymore. This is a tragedy for us."...

"We shed our blood for them but they don't treat us well," says Mr. Walesa, who visited the U.S. this fall to meet officials and politicians.

President Bush may have ignored the desires of our Polish allies, but at least he didn't forget about them during the first presidential debate. Not getting a special televised shout-out from the Commander-In-Chief would have really upset them.

Catching On?

Four months after George W. Bush made destroying "reforming" social security a top priority for his second term in office during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, the media is finally noticing a rather important bit of information that has long been overlooked: "Bush Short on Social Security Details". It would have been nice if they could have done that during the campaign, but they never bothered. Even now, as we draw ever closer to actually implementing (or derailing) social security privitization, I am worried that the fact there is no actual plan for privitization and other important facts (the absence of a social security crisis for example), will get overshadowed by the War On Chistmas and other matters not worth the attention of any thinking person. The media's track record is far from reassuring when it comes to things like this.

Shorter Donald Rumsfeld

Great men have been criticized in the past. I am being criticized now and therefore I must be great.

Message: Rumsfeld Cares

The President's defense of his Secretary of Defense (and by association, his own policies) has grown even more pathetic:
Accused of being insensitive to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and their families, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld received a fresh endorsement Monday from President Bush, who called him "a caring fellow."

"I have heard the anguish in his voice and seen his eyes when we talk about the danger in Iraq and the fact that youngsters are over there in harm's way," Bush said at a White House news conference....

"I know Secretary Rumsfeld's heart," Bush said. "I know how much he cares for the troops," adding that Rumsfeld and his wife visit hospitalized soldiers "all the time to provide comfort and solace."

He said beneath Rumsfeld's "rough and gruff, no-nonsense demeanor is a good human being who cares deeply about the military and deeply about the grief that war causes."

First we were told that Donald Rumsfeld was "the best secretary of defense the United States ever had", now he is just "caring fellow". This is a particularly unoriginal move by President Bush, who played the compassion card to defend himself when his own job was in trouble. If Rumsfeld is as caring as Bush says he is, perhaps he should leave the Defense Department and spend the rest of his days as a counselor to thousands left in grief by his war.


Note: My closing suggestion was shamelessly lifted from here.

Gambling on immigration

The reputable and always objective mooninite mouthpiece, the Washington Times, reports:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is staking out a position on illegal immigration that is more conservative than President Bush, a strategy that supporters and detractors alike see as a way for the New York Democrat to shake the "liberal" label and appeal to traditionally Republican states...
In an interview last month on Fox News, Mrs. Clinton said she does not "think that we have protected our borders or our ports or provided our first responders with the resources they need, so we can do more and we can do better."
    In an interview on WABC radio, she said: "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants."
    "Clearly, we have to make some tough decisions as a country, and one of them ought to be coming up with a much better entry-and-exit system so that if we're going to let people in for the work that otherwise would not be done, let's have a system that keeps track of them," she said.
    Unlike many pro-business Republicans, Mrs. Clinton also has castigated Americans for hiring illegal aliens.

Even though controlling illegal immigration might be a good policy if it is done in a way that is both humane and effective, it is probably not an issue the Democrats ride back into power on. Pushing to hard and too gracelessly on this front could helpthe Republicans consolidate their gains among hispanic voters. It also seems unlikely that Democrats with anti-immigrant views are actually going to win the votes of red state voters. The Republicans have built in advantage in this area and it is unlikely that the Democrats, especially a Democrat like Hillary Clinton, can take it away from them. Putting aside the some what disadvantages that Hillary suffers from, a North Easterner probably won't have the cultural credibility with red state voters to successfully use immigration reform as a wedge issue.

Nerd Power

Virtual gaming worlds overtake Namibia

"You may think that when you spend time in online game worlds such as Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies, you are just enjoying yourself.

But analysis of how long people spend in the games and what they do there has shown that game-playing has a significant economic value too.

According to the analysis this gaming activity has a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the Southern African nation of Namibia."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3570224.stm

Unilateral Disarmament

San Francisco Supervisors Propose Gun Ban
City residents will vote next year on a proposed weapons ban that would deny handguns to everyone except law enforcement officers, members of the military and security guards.

If passed next November, residents would have 90 days to give up firearms they keep in their homes or businesses. The proposal was immediately dismissed as illegal by a gun owners group.

If this ban passes it will only be a matter of time before the King of England walks into San Fransico and starts shoving its citizen around.

More Bollocks

Bernard Kerik's nomination for head of Homeland Security was withdrawn, at least officially, because Kerik hired an illegal immigrant to be a nanny. However, it could be that the nanny never existed in the first place and the real reaon the former NYPD commissioner's nomination was cancelled was because he was terrible, terrible choice thanks to an impressive combination of ethical lapses and incompetence. If that is the case, than the killing of Kerik's nomination is a real surprise, I thought immorality and incompetence were job requirements for officials in this Administration.

Noblesse Oblige

Jenna Bush plans to teach at school for low-income kids
President Bush's daughter Jenna will live in Washington and teach at a public school serving low-income children. Jenna Bush, 22, graduated last spring from the University of Texas with a degree in English.

I am sure Ms. Bush will make an excellent role model for underprivelleged youth.

Just "A Few Bad Apples"

Or systematic torture:

Newly released U.S. Navy documents portray a series of abuse cases stretching beyond Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison where photos surfaced this year of U.S. troops forcing prisoners - often naked - to pose in humiliating positions.

The files released Tuesday document a crush of abuse allegations, most from the early months of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, including U.S. Marines forcing Iraqi juveniles to kneel while troops discharge a weapon in a mock execution and the use of an electric shock on a prisoner.

Not only are these practices barbaric, but (as has been noted before) they are ineffective, too:

Early in the Bush administration's detention of foreign terrorism suspects, FBI agents told Pentagon officials that the military's harsh interrogation tactics in Cuba would produce "unreliable results," according to documents released Tuesday.

Never Mind The Bollocks

Bernard Kerik, who I discussed in a recent post, has withdrawn his nomination for the Department of Homeland Security. In addition to being very illiberal and not terribly qualified Kerik also hired an illegal immigrant and so like Linda Chavez before him is out of the running. If a man with as many problems as Kerik was the Administration's first choice I wonder what kind of character they will dredge up for that posistion now. I hear Zell Miller, who judging by his speech at the Republican Covention believes that running against George W. Bush is close to treason, is looking for work...

As an aside, I find it odd how worked up certain conservatives can get worked up over those Evil Illegal Immigrants, but don't really have anything to say about the inviduals and businesses that have a vested interest in illegal immigration since it provides them with cheap exploitable labor. You would think that tolerating massive lawbreaking so that you can take advantage of people with no legal rights and use the money you save to buy yourself something nice would be slightly worse than exposing yourself to tremendous risk in order to escape grinding poverty and build a new life in a new country. Yet for some reason that is not that is not the case. I am not talking about Kerik (or Chavez) here specifically, I have no idea how either of treated their illegal employees or what their intentions were. It is just strikes as very wrong that NewsMax would described Bernard Kerik as a "victim", while they probably view his nanny and people like her as some of the greatest villans of our age, on par with gay couples willing to give a home to orphans or Iraqi torture victims.

Edited for greater bitterness.

Science Rules!

Scientists have discovered how to harness brainwaves, through the use of electrode covered caps, allowing people to move a cursor on computer screen. How fuckin cool is that?! And whats more, they said that after a little practise they got good at it, so I think we can be fairly certain that they will be able to come up with some really cool systems using this technology. Imagine the new videogames we are going to have!

check the article out at news.nationalgeographic.com

Item: Evil Jews out to destroy Christianity

Blogstar Josh Micah Marshal has noted that William Donahue, President of the Catholic League For Religious And Civil Rights is gunning for the Jews:
Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, OK? And I'm not afraid to say it. That's why they hate this movie. It's about Jesus Christ, and it's about truth. It's about the messiah. Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common.

I wonder if Donahue believes are the same Jews (or perhaps The Eternal Jew) responsible for the death of Christ. I am also curious as to whether or not self-made anti-semitism watch dog David Brooks will condemn William Donahue for his remarks. Since Donahue's organization has purchased ads on the op-ed page of the NY Times it seems that Brooks might have a special obligation to this. Or maybe he'll just direct us to someone who holds the same bigoted views as William Donahue, but expresses them in a more sublte, high brow fashion. It wouldn't be the first time he has done something like that.

Real Ultimate Authoritarianism

You learn a lot of things reading the paper. Today I learned about Bernard B. Kerik, the man George W. Bush wants to lead the Department of Homeland of Security. Mr. Kerik believes (or at least has said) that "Political criticism is our enemy's best friend", "Loyalty to his patrons" is one of his calling cards and keeps a picture of Oliver North (a man who defended his role in the Iran-Contra scandal on the grounds that there is a higher law that the constitution) in his office. Kerik also came up the hard way. It seems Mr. Kerik has a lot in common with Bush appointee for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, who also had humble beginnings and in his previous job as White House counsel wrote memos justifying torture. On the basis of this information, I'd like to say that I am glad that the government's main domestic security agencies are in the hands of such upright, unquestionably competent>men and that their selection is another brillian move by the our infinitely wise President.

Consumers Are Stupid

Consumers Cheer Up, Wholesale Prices Rise
The University of Michigan's December consumer survey rose to 95.7, its highest since August. Wall Street had forecast the index, a closely-watched measure of consumer sentiment, at 93.5 against 92.8 in November..."

Earlier the government reported that wholesale prices for November climbed unexpectedly in the wake of mounting energy costs, buttressing the Federal Reserve (news - web sites)'s case for higher interest rates to keep inflation at bay.

Our oil producing friends are not coming to the rescue either:

"OPEC agreed Friday to reduce output by one million barrels a day in hopes of staving off further price declines without triggering a new buying frenzy, delegates said."

Best of all the dollar is decline so oil (and other imports) will cost more and new cases of unemployment are surprisingly high! We truly are living in the best of all possible worlds.

Happy Happy Happy

Apparently the soldier that asked Rumsfeld why there was a shortage of up-armored humvees in Iraq had the question suggested to him by a reporter. As we know, reporters are all partisan Democrats that are hell bent of destroying the president. Also, for some reason combat hardened soldiers are easily bullied into saying things they don't mean by notebook wielding English majors. It follows then that the question was not meant to address an actual problem facing American forces in Iraq, but rather to embolden our enemies. We can safely conclude then that everything is going according to plan, the Pentagon has not made any serious mistakes and there is absolutely nothing wrong in the beautiful land of Iraq, a country that has a future so bright that its citizens must wear shades and which is so prosperous that these sunglasses were made by the hottest new designer and were imported directly from Milan.

T: For Time To Leave

This post by Spencer Ackerman suggests that the insurgency is wearing out its welcome thanks to its intimidation of local populations and holds out that the possibility that a bid to restore order by an elected government in Iraq could have popular support. If that is true we probably ought to leave Iraq soon, since the presence of American forces hasn't been able to stop the insurgency and maybe preventing effective counter-insurgency from taking place.

Party off

25 Bowling Green Students Seek Legal Action
Twenty-five college students cited under the city's new nuisance party law say it's unconstitutional.

The ordinance allows police to shut down a party and cite the hosts if illegal activity such as underage alcohol consumption or disorderly conduct is taking place.

But the lawyer for Student Legal Services at Bowling Green State University, who is representing the students, says the law is vague and arbitrary and violates students' rights of free assembly and due process.

As a self-hating student, I fully endorse anything that infringes on the rights of college students, particulary if these said college students are irritating decent, productive memebrs of society. As Deputy police Chief Gary Spencer said in the article:

"if people would obey the law, if they would pee indoors, if they would leave their neighbors alone, it wouldn't be an issue."

Amen.

Furthermore, all spring break hot spots should be razed. I know it will cause some damage to the local economy, so I think it is only fair that those that formerly worked in these hot spots be given copies of dorm keys so that might engage in some "instant socialism" at the expense of their former clients.

For Serious?

The Bush administration, saying that religion ``has played a defining role'' in the nation's history, urged the U.S. Supreme Court to permit Ten Commandments displays in courthouses.

The Justice Department today filed a brief supporting two Kentucky counties accused of violating the constitutional ban on government establishment of religion by posting framed copies of the Ten Commandments.

``Official acknowledgement and recognition of the Ten Commandments' influence on American legal history comport with the Establishment Clause,'' the administration argued in a brief filed with the court in Washington.
-Bloomberg

This whole "historical importance" of the Commandments is complete nonsense. The only influence the Commandments have had on the American legal system is a negative one, our system was consciously made to not be the theocratic model set by the commandments.

Honestly, I have trouble understanding people who feel the need to have the government recognize their faith. Not enforce it, those people I can understand, even though I think that they are barking loons and their aims are terrible. If you for some reason think that God has declared eating pork, worshipping another false God or certain sexual practices are verbotten, then it makes sense to want to prohibit them. But how can people be so pathetic that they find validation in the government acknowleding their faith? After careful consideration I have no choice but to pronounce these people to be losers of the most losing sort and I know something about losing and being a loser, I am a liberal and blogger, after all.

ITEM!

TAPPED catches David Brooks promoting the work of a white supremacist. Perhaps next week Mr. Brooks will take a sober, serious look at the world situation and gravely conclude: "Civilization’s going to pieces...I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by this man Goddard?"

What does Donald Rumsfeld do?

Since Donald Rumsfeld is going to stay on for a second term as Secretary of Defense I think the media needs to start asking exactly what the public is paying Rumsfeld to do. Apparently Donald Rumsfeld doesn't believe that planning and running a war is not part of his job description:

[Rumsfeld] remained defiant in the face of critics who say the United States failed to send enough troops to Iraq initially to handle postwar security and, now, to combat the insurgents.

He contended that the decision on troop levels was largely "out of my control," since he was following the advice and requests of his regional commanders, first Gen. Tommy R. Franks and now Gen. John P. Abizaid and Gen. George W. Casey Jr.

And yet he has found that other tasks are not worth his attention either:

And now, apparently, Rumsfeld’s obsession with machines and their efficiency has translated into his using one to replace his own John Hancock on KIA (killed in action) letters to parents and spouses. Two Pentagon-based colonels, who’ve both insisted on anonymity to protect their careers, have indignantly reported that the SecDef has relinquished this sacred duty to a signature device rather than signing the sad documents himself.

Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld believes that his time is better spent playing computer solitaire or devising more one-liners to charm his personal fan club the press corps with.

Comments

When other bloggers complain about their comments section overflowing with spam, I am filled with feelings of jealousy. My blog has never been spammed, except for the one time that a certain Big Tom E flooded my comments with slanderous accussations. It is like almost like weblog isn't even worth advertising get-rich-quick schemes, e-z credit plans, dangerous medications and deviant pornography on.

Views In Brief

Shorter Michael Ruff:
I find it outrageous that in a "politically correct" America the government couldn't promote one set of religious beliefs over another.

A Diversion

US Senator John McCain warned that Congress may consider imposing drug tests on major league baseball players, as Washington tries to stem the damage from a raging doping scandal that has discredited professional sport.

"I will introduce legislation in January that requires some kind of regimen for testing of Major League baseball players. And I believe that we can pass it through the Congress of the United States," Senator John McCain told the "Fox News Sunday" television program.-AFP

Normally I'd be inclined to criticize Senator McCain for his desire to waste congress' time with something so unimportant, but no longer. With the growth of the GOP's majority in congress and Bush's re-election it is clear that there is no chance of anything good (in terms of legislation) happening in the near future. I would much rather congress waste its time regulating America's past time than say, privatizing social security or trying to invade people's privacy.

Heal Thyself

UN Reform Sought to Tackle Global Threats
A panel created by Kofi Annan has come back with a report on reforming the United Nations. The panel's recommendations include authorizing the use of military force to prevent genocide and other atrocities, expanding the security council and recognizing the danger posed by nuclear proliferation and international terrorism, which sounds like a good start to me. I am not sure how likely it is that these reforms will be implemented. There are certain countries that have an interest in blocking any sort of reform that my infringe on the rights of sovereign nations in the name of human rights and they are likely to resist these changes. The United States for its part is unlikely to press for reform since this government does not have any interest in building working international institutions and because of its policies, we are moving towards the posistion of the Red Chinese when it comes to rights of national governments.

Think Nationally, Act Locally

Democrats Want DNC to Focus on Local Races
Congressional leaders and state party officials "are insisting that the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee... radically redirect the committee's resources toward congressional races and other local contests and away from the presidential enchilada," The Hill reports.

"In behind-the-scenes positioning, key congressional lawmakers are seeking to prevent the national party from lapsing into another four-year presidential gestation cycle."

Now there is an idea. Presidential elections, while very important, have been overvalued. Winning local races are critical to building up the strenght of our Party. It is after all the state legislatures that draw congressional districts. Seeing as how Delay has basically gotten away with his redistricting scheme in Texas without having to suffer any real consquences we probably ought to rip off this tactic so that Democratic states send larger Democratic delegations to Congress.

GWOT Update

When Bush said he was "truly not that concerned" with finding Osama Bin Laden (who is still alive and well, plotting terrorist attacks and cracking jokes at our expense) apparently he really meant it. It looks like for now the man who leads Al Qeada and is an inspiration to jihadists are aroudn the world will hae very little to worry about:

The Pakistani army announced Saturday that it would withdraw hundreds of troops from a tense tribal region near Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and his top deputy were believed to be hiding.

Since the Bush Administration may have been pressuring Pakistan to capture Bin Laden and other High Value Targets before the Presidential election, I guess it isn't that much a surprise that they don't really care now that they can no longer be held accountable.

Republicans: More Devious Than I Ever Imagined

The Washington Post has the story:
Republican budget writers say they may have found a way to cut the federal deficit even if they borrow hundreds of billions more to overhaul the Social Security system: Don't count all that new borrowing.

As they lay the groundwork for what will probably be a controversial fight over Social Security, Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration are examining a number of accounting strategies that would allow the expensive transition to a partially privatized Social Security system without -- at least on paper -- expanding the country's record annual budget deficits. The strategies include, for example, moving the costs of Social Security reform "off-budget" so they are not counted against the government's yearly shortfall.

(link thanks to &etc.)

If this strategy works I think it will only be the beginning. If they can get away with borrowing without counting it as part of our debt, what won't/couldn't they do from disguising the consequences of their ill-concieved policies?

The Senate Democrats Reid Again

The Democrats might not have been able to stop the nomination of pro-torture Attorney General, but at least we have been able to secured a minor appointment to serve the parochial interests of our Senate Leader:

"In a deal to let 175 of President Bush's nominees take office, an adviser to new Democratic leader Harry M. Reid, the Senate's staunchest opponent of a nuclear waste dump in his home state of Nevada, will be named to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," the Washington Post reports.

Roll Call calls it Reid's "first major political victory" as the new Democratic leader.

Expect a lot of depressing "major political victories" like this, at least untill 2006.

More Things That Are Not True

Looks like the Christian Right will have another martyr persecuted by the unamerican atheist conspiracy that demands that students in public schools be taught "facts":

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.

Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.

"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson.

The Teacher in question is wrong about this "christian nation" business, so very very wrong. The historical record is quite clear on this point. To cite one rather obscure example, Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, which has a treaty is the highest law of the land, which was signed by President John Adams (one of the more religious Founders) and ratified by the US Senate:

"the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion"

Even my younger brother's High School history textbook agrees that the Founders were not especially religious and were enthusiastic supporters of tolerance for all varities of religious belief and non-belief.

Recommendations

ITEM!
Anyone looking for another weblog to read would be well advised to look into Abu Ardvark's site.

ITEM?
Also, some gentlemen scholars from an Esteemed Mid-Western College (brows to the sky) and myself have taken to publishing pamphlets and distributing them on campus. For those unfortunates that sadly do not attend aforementioned Center of Learning there is now the Pamphleteers' Archive. I hope that youn find it to be most informative, since it much more likely that there is a problem with you, not the pamphlets.

Note: Gossip column style post inspired recent e-mails by "Thomas T." informing me of racist or otherwise outrageous statements made by long dead public officials and political figures.

Terror And Liberalism

The Harvard Gazette has an article on an interesting new study:

A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation's level of political freedom.

Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks...

Instead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable.

Like those with much political freedom, nations at the other extreme - with tightly controlled autocratic governments - also experienced low levels of terrorism.

I guess that terrorists do not hate freedom, just incompetent tyranny. Sadly, as Matthew Yglesias made clear in a recent article for the American Prospectfreedom is not on the march.

Things that are not true.

A Gallup poll has found:
Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.

Great, 45% of the country is behind the Pope on the evolution question. We are in so much trouble.

All Your INFORMATION Is Belonging To Us

President Bush's second term hasn't officially begun and the new congress has not yet started and already the Republicans are very clearly drunk with power, high gravity power:

Congress passed legislation Saturday giving two committee chairman and their assistants access to income tax returns without regard to privacy protections, but not before red-faced Republicans said it was all a mistake and would be swiftly repealed.

The Senate unanimously adopted a resolution immediately after passing a 3,300-word spending bill containing the measure, saying the provision ``shall have no effect.'' House leaders promised to pass the resolution next Wednesday.

Oops! A little mistake! You know the sort of easy to make slip up that would make it so you could use the federal government to harass your political foes. Nothing to worry about, it is just the sort of thing that happens every day, or at least every day from now on.

DailyKos has more on the Provisionin question and its author Rep. Istook (R-OK).

The Reign of Prudishness

If the Republicans' desire to change America's tax laws to hurt groups likely to support to Democrats was not enough, they are out to establish their Republic of Virtue and are now gunning for our depraved culture, too:

US COMMUNICATION watchdog the FCC is apparently so pleased with its moral crusade following the Janet Jackson boob it now wants to purge what it calls immorality from the interweb and cable channels.

Apparently acting with support from both Republicans and Democrats, the FCC is poised to get even more aggressive about enforcing moral values throughout broadcasting. So far the FCC has been really good at purging swear words and sex from telly by chucking huge fines at the broadcasters. The net result of its actions have been that viewers have been switching to cable in droves.

Some analysts think that this is behind the FCC's move to expanding its jurisdiction to encompass the alternatives, cable TV, satellite TV and radio and the internet.

Just wonderful. I really, really hope the Democrats as a party don't try to go after the moral values crowd by signing off on this. It will be very difficult for the Democrats to out theocrat the fundementalists of today's Republican Party and it would send the wrong message for the Democrats too roll over so easily after the election. And of course trying to censor the sattelite and cable is a terrible idea. These mediums are not the same as broadcast, which comes into every home. If parents want to protect their impressionable darlings from four letter words and nipples of doom they can simply block these channels or not buy these services. Regulating children's exposure to objectionable material is the role of parents, not the government. Speaking of which, this issue provides an excellent opportunity for the Democrats to engange in anti-government populism, the merits of which explored in this post at NewDonkey.com.

The Tax Code As A Political Weapon

As other bloggers have noted, the Republican Tax Reform plan will hurt the citizens of states that vote Democratic as most blue states have higher state and local taxes. The tax reform package being floated now would get rid of federal deductions for these tax cuts. Wealthy blue staters (who are more likely to be Republican) of course would escape the wrath of the Bush plan since the new exemptions for unearned income would favor them overwhelmingly.

Lieberman To Zell Out?

Joe Lieberman, infamous for his willingness to appease the GOP, may have checked to see which way the winds are blowing and found that is time to cast his lot with the gang of idealogues, boobs and crooks that are currently in power:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) "respects the presidency and likes being wooed," the Hartford Courant reports, so "he's not ruling out a Bush Cabinet appointment."

"There's no opening the door a crack in Washington; you're in the game or you're not. And while there's no firm - or even flimsy - signal from the Bush team with regard to Lieberman, there is talk among the connected class in Washington that he could be in the mix for several positions."

Despite Lieberman's relatively liberal voting record, I would not be all that surprised if he joined the Bush Administration. Senator Lieberman's willingness to associate with the erudite neoconservative mouth breathers of the Committee on the Present Danger suggests that he can swallow just about anything.

Above The Law

Whether it's flying to small towns to help Republicans raise money or engineering a redistricting plan giving his party control of the Texas congressional delegation, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay delivers for his members. Now the members have delivered for him.

House Republicans on Wednesday changed a party rule so DeLay, R-Texas, could remain as leader if indicted in a Texas campaign finance investigation that he calls political.

The old rule required GOP leaders and committee chairmen charged with a felony to relinquish their positions. The new language orders a case-by-case review, with the leaders retaining their posts until all House Republicans decide their fate.-The AP

It makes sense that the GOP is protecting DeLay from a "political investigation", since they must have learned a lot about political investigations from their tax payer funded multi-year multi-million dollar quest to destroy a certain popular Democratic President. I wonder if they will change the rules again to let Rep. DeLay to serve from his cell if he gets convicted. It wouldn't be the first time the Republicans kept a criminal in power.

Bush Goes After Ordinary Americans

This may come as a shock to some readers, but President George W. Bush is out to raise your taxes and take away your health insurance so he can give tax breaks for big business and the superich:

The administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment...

To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.
-The Washington Post

Take away deductions for providing health insurance? But scores of employers might take away their employees health benefits. And getting rid of deductions for regressivestate and local taxes? This is terrible. How could President Bush do such an awful thing? He's the kind of guy who you would have a beer with! You know, if he hadn't gone dry because he lacks self-control. Well, at least America is safe from the homosexualist agenda.

This guy actually took us seriously!

This was some guy named Pat's response to my immature rant about bush supporters being dumb:

Kerry failed! (1)Kerry failed because he was a hypocrite. Sneeringly said, "Bush wore his heart on his sleeve." Kerry in the last 4 weeks mentioned God as never before. He attended black churches every weekend - sometimes two in a day. Note phony tan, new $1,000 hairdo, camoflage utilities, carrying shotgun, and he suddenly learned to plaster a smile. When asked if got a duck(?) He said, "We got six". Again: Did YOU get one. "We got six." Don't want to offend PETA but NRA note my gun. (2)He was a liar. Only one of numerous examples: "I will Never forget; it was SEARED in my memory. I was going up the Cambodia River on Christmas Eve." Impossible there were concrete piers at the mouth and boats guarding it. Later, "Oh, uh, he was on a secret mission." His Commanding officer said. "Not true." He wrote his own reports for his 4 Purple Hearts, as evidently is allowed. "Reporting for duty" -my a-- (3)He voted against the 87 billion for troops needs. (4)He is an extreme liberal.

I dont know which is funnier; the fact that this guy actually took us seriously enough to post a comment like this, or his fourth point. Havent these people ever met an extreme liberal before?! Havent they heard of Nader?!

Typical Bush Supporter

Durpy derp, buhhh, Im a retard, and I vote, cause MTV said that if I didnt vote, p diddy would kill me. I voted for bush cuz hes got moral clarity buh. Plus, there was a cool looking picture of an eagle next to his name on the ballot! I wish I was an Eagle, so I could fly around and fight terrorists and heathens.

Four More Years

Voting

If you have any problems on election day call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Hopefully the next post I write will be a political obituary for one George W. Bush.

Wheeling & Dealing

From Editor and Publisher :
Discussions at the Cleveland Plain Dealer to resolve an impasse between the paper's editorial board and its publisher about who to endorse for president have ended with a Tuesday morning editorial announcing the paper would back neither Bush nor Kerry.

"We believe our readers are perfectly capable of making an informed, rational decision by their own lights," the editorial concludes, "and we strongly urge them to do so."

The paper's editorial board, as E&P first revealed, decided last week that it wanted to endorse Sen. John Kerry, but Publisher Alex Machaskee, who has final say, prefers President George W. Bush. The paper backed Bush in 2000.

Indeed, this morning's editorial confirms, "A majority of the editorial board favored Kerry, but after long and difficult deliberations, it was decided that the better path would be to sit this one out." It does not mention Machaskee's role in this.

Just imagine the howls this would have generated if it had been a Democratic publisher trying to make his newspaper bend to his will. The Plain Dealer example is a clear case of the kind of structural bias in the media that liberals have been warning about. Even though reporters are overwhelmingly Democrats (though not "liberals", they are more economically conservative than the rest of the country and more liberal on cultural issues, or so it is said) this does not matter that much when their owners (and advertisers) do not see things the same way.

Friendly Advice

The Rude Pundit's depraved and hilarious "Requiem for Rehnquist" is worth a look.

Failure is Success

According to the Republican leadership:
With his typical flair for drama, Osama Bin Laden inserted himself directly into the presidential election yesterday, and both parties believed it would boost President Bush's reelection hopes...

A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."

He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection.
-NY Daily News

It would be rude if the ghoul quoted by the News not write Bin Laden. It is more than a little distrubing that the creeps trying to re-elect the President think of the threat of mass-casualty terrorism as a political asset.

Surprise Endorsements

Christopher Hitchens and The Economist have joined the ranks of the Kerry Haters for Kerry.

Hilarity Ensues

Food fight in Taiwan's legislature
They've fought with fists. They've thrown paper at each other. And on Tuesday, Taiwan's rowdy lawmakers had an old-fashioned food fight.

Legislators began chucking white cardboard takeout lunch boxes full of rice, meat, hard-boiled eggs and vegetables at each other during a heated debate over whether Taiwan should spend billions on weapons sold by the United States.

It was difficult to figure out who started the battle. Local TV showed the legislators yelling at each other as they sat at long tables in a committee room during a lunch meeting.

After the food fight had settled down Pan-Blue officials vowed to form an unaccountable, unconstitutional investigative committee to get to the bottom of things and punish their political opponents.

Book Learning

Politicalwire reports:
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...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.

I guess David Horowitz was right all along about Colleges and Universities (especially mine) being breeding grounds for anti-Americanism.

Nerdular Nerdence

Amygdala pointed the way to this story from Wired:

In this era of high-tech memory management, next in line to get that memory upgrade isn't your computer, it's you.

Professor Theodore W. Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, is creating a silicon chip implant that mimics the hippocampus, an area of the brain known for creating memories. If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories.

Pretty exciting, even though the experts say that it would take decades to make microchips that could work on humans. It is likely that I'll still be around to enjoy the benefits/horrors of computer enchanced brains.

Go to the video tape

Triumph the Insult Comic takes on the flacks (video here). It is almost as good as John Stewart's Crossfire appearance.

Incompetence Kills

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
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...

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings...

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

What's wrong with the administration? This was a very foreseeable danger, it is almost as bad as their failure to assassinate the Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab Zarqawi when they had the chance. If they had any plan at all for the managing Iraq after ousting Saddam this sort of thing wouldn't have happened, but of course there was no planning. Absolutely none. The annecdote from Knight Ridder's report on America's plans for rebuilding Iraq, Post-war planning non-existent", says it all:

WASHINGTON - 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."

The Opposite of Good

Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

Ohio Democrats were struggling to match the Republicans' move, which had been rumored for weeks. Both parties had until 4 p.m. to register people they had recruited to monitor the election. Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.-The New York Times

Just swell. The Republicans have not decided yet whether or not their poll watcher training sessions will be open to the public or the press. Judging by the GOP's love of secrecy (and why wouldn't they love something so effective), it is unlikely that will opt for transparency. I wonder what sort of instructions the vote blockers will receive. Hopefully some clever Democratic Party hacks or enterprising journalists have infiltrated the ranks of these recruits already.

Stay The Course

U.S. upgrades strength of Iraqi insurgency
New Pentagon estimates of the Iraqi insurgency's numbers and funding reveal a military challenge vastly more daunting than anything planned for...

U.S. officials now say when foreign fighters and the network of a Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi are counted with home-grown insurgents, the hard-core resistance numbers between 8,000 and 12,000 people, a tally that swells to more than 20,000 when active sympathizers or covert accomplices are included.

That contrasts with earlier estimates of an insurgency with 2,000 to 7,000 participants and supporters.

Of Course

Divide seen in voter knowledge
WASHINGTON -- Supporters of President Bush are less knowledgeable about the president's foreign policy positions and are more likely to be mistaken about factual issues in world affairs than voters who back John F. Kerry, a survey released yesterday indicated.

A large majority of self-identified Bush voters polled believe Saddam Hussein provided "substantial support" to Al Qaeda, and 47 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion. Among the president's supporters, 57 percent queried think international public opinion favors Bush's reelection, and 51 percent believe that most Islamic countries support "US-led efforts to fight terrorism."

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, the Sept. 11 Commission found no evidence of substantial Iraqi support for Al Qaeda, and international public opinion polls have shown widespread opposition to Bush's reelection.

Bush supporters also feared that John Kerry would "take their gun away" and that his plans to rollback the upper income portions of the Bush Tax cut would deprive them of their hammock.

World's Largest Dictatorship Backs World's Largest Democracy

China has endorsed India's application for a seat on the U.N. Security Council, a strategic step forward in bilateral relations, the Times of India reports.
-Via UPI

The Spin Cycle Summarized

Based on a true story

No?

From USA Today:
President Bush says he doesn't envision a longtime presence of U.S. troops in Iraq similar to post-World War II deployments in Europe and South Korea that continue today.

Well at least President Bush doesn't "envision" a permanent American deployment in Iraq. Unfortunately he has a poor record of predicting things and he hasn't ruled it completely either.

"Pooty Poot, I need a favor."

Putin Backs Bush
Russian President Vladimir Putin says terrorist attacks in Iraq are aimed at preventing the re-election of U.S. President George W. Bush and that a Bush defeat "could lead to the spread of terrorism to other parts of the world."

I am confident Vladimir Putin has endorsed George W. Bush simply out of the goodness of his heart and not because he expects anything in return.

AWOL

I am taking a blogtacular blogbreak from blogging my blog on the blogosphere and will be back with more partisan spin in a few days. My spite batteries are drained from contiously producing a crackling field of high-voltage hate-tricity.

The Empire Strikes First, Then Never Leaves

Pandagon brings up an interesting point here:

Bush is apparently building 14 permanent bases in Iraq, a move akin to promising the Iraqi people unending occupation and the eternal threat of reinvasion. Kerry, on the other hand, wants "no long-term military presence after the job is done". This is significant both as a substantial difference between the two men's plans for Iraq and as a counterinsurgency tool.

John Kerry wants to stay in Iraq because he thinks a failed state would be a disaster for America (providing a haven for terrorists) and for Iraqis (putting them in danger of suffering a civil war). George W. Bush wants to says he wants to stay in Iraq for those reasons, but these large military bases suggests that there are other, more sinister reasons at work (greater American control over Mid-East Oil?). The construction of these bases fits, which are a sign of plan long term American presence in Iraq, fit perfectly with the small target size for the Iraqi Army, National Guard and Police, which leave the Iraqi government dependent on the US for security well into the future. Also, a long term American involvement in Iraq would further strain the military and increase the chances of a draft. Though the Naderites might not be willing to believe it, there is only one really imperialist candidate in this election.

Good News For People That Love Bad News For George Bush

After getting pounded by the Swift Boat Vets and the Republican Convention, Kerry has taken a clear if not commanding lead in the race:

Democratic challenger John Kerry expanded his slight lead over President George Bush to three points in a tight race for the White House, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Monday.

Judging from the previous debates, it is unlikely that Bush will benefit from the third and final debate.

Not only is Kerry up in the polls, but his supporters are re-engergized, too, which is especially important in an election where all the experts are sayign that turn out is key. Here is a local news report from a John Kerry rally I attended last weekend in Ohio:
Thousands stood for hours in long lines yesterday that snaked their way through the campus of Lorain County Community College just to get a chance to listen and watch Sen. John Kerry's speech.

Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, spoke to an estimated 20,000 of his supporters on a sun-splashed picture-prefect autumn day in his first public appearance following Friday's debate with President Bush.

The Bush-Cheney Campaign seem to be getting nervous. Rove says he has some tricks left. But if they aren't any better than calling Kerry and Edwards "LIBERALS", George W. Bush is probably out of luck. The Republicans have tried to do that to every Democrat since the dawn of time (or maybe 1968), yet for the last 3 elections in a row LIBERAL DEMOCRATS with values OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM have captured the popular vote. Furthermore the facts just don't support the charge at all. Bush has expanded government more than "liberal" President has and more than any Republican has for that matter. Since the 1990's Kerry has built up some very serious centrist credentials, too, supporting balanced budgets, welfare reform and free trade (more or less). No matter how much Bush wishes it was true, John Kerry is not Michael Dukakis.

Corporate Media To The Rescue

From the LA Times:
The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday.

They must be really worried about the rabble costing them their investment.

Too Legit

Observers approve Afghan election
International observers have endorsed Afghanistan's first presidential election, rejecting opposition calls for a new poll amid reports of fraud.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said demands by 15 of the 18 presidential candidates to annul the poll were "unjustified".

The elections in Afghanistan seem to be rather successful. From what I have seen though, Bush hasn't done that much to hype the results. Is it because he was waiting for the international monitors to sign off on them? Or does Afghanistan just not really figure into his thinking all that much?

Update: Matthew Yglesias comes up with a much better question about the recent elections in Afghanistan: Why is Afghanistan working so much better than Iraq? I am damned if I have any ideas of my own, but he has some interesting "considerations".

The Debates Go Into Syndication

In case you haven't had a chance to see the debates or if you want to relive all the magic moments of the presidential and vice-presidential debates ("I own a timber company?"), audible.com has them on mp3 for your downloading pleasure.

Huh huh conservatism's best and brightest

While browsing the internets for the latest on J-Pop and anime scene, I came across the Public Enquiry Project. PEP is a weblog created by Adrian Spidle. Mr. Spidle's blog is essentially Hasan's Blog For Bush except he is for serious. Mosts posts from the Public Enquiry Project either accuse Kerry of treason for his anti-war activism, repeat the lies of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, extol the greatness of the blog's author, condemn pundits for partisanship and include comments such as this:

"I made the mistake of sending my son to Massachusetts Public Schools and he turned into a knee jerk Democrat. That will never happen with my daughter."

H. Khan himself could not have done better.

Round II

In the second Presidential debate, Bush managed to exhibit slightly more self-contronl. He stopped looking so irritated, which was a definite step up for him, though he frequently looked confused while Kerry was speaking. Only towards the end of the debate did he figure out that taking notes makes you look less like of an akward buffoon. No matter, John Kerry did better than last round, thereby countering any improvements in Bush's performance. Kerry was relentless, launching attack after attack on the President. Additionally, Senator Kerry's wooden demeanor actually helped him because his digs seemed less mean-spirited and more matter-of-fact. Bush was unable to repsond in any meaningful way to most of them. The audience for its part did a very good job of assisting Kerry. Unlike those half-bright punks that go for moderators these days the members of the general public asked real questions about serious issues. Naturally, these sorts of questions are not what one of the worst Presidents in recent memory needs. This debate was a win for Kerry and an effective post debate PR operation (I am sure I detected at least a few statements by Bush that were complete nonsense) could make it a crushing vicotry for the Democrats.

They Like Him, They Really Like Him

Kerry beats Bush on 'likeability' in new survey
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and President George W. Bush are neck-and-neck in their race for the White House, but Kerry is seen as a bit more likeable according to a new poll out just ahead of the second presidential debate.
Who would have thought people wouldn't find an irresponsible frat boy turned preachy, teetotalling dry drunk likeable? He sounds like the kind of guy you'd want to have a bee-a refreshing diet Spite with.

Jobs Awaaaay

U.S. Job Growth Weaker Than Expected
U.S. employers hired just 96,000 workers in September, the government said on Friday in a weak jobs snapshot, the final one ahead of presidential elections that also fueled speculation about a pause in interest-rate rises.

That jobs report with its liberal bias. Clearly the Treasury department is willing to do anything to get John Kerry elected and has cast its lot with the MSM (MainStream Media) and the Iraqi insurgency.

The Credibility Chasm

ABC News
Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, who found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991, justifies rather than undermines President Bush's decision to go to war.

Noted without comment.

Hacking One Up

Matt Taibi is overseeing Wimblehack the New York Press' search for the worst campaign journalist in America.

Second Stringers

The vice-presidential debate wasn't a blow out for either side. John Edwards held up well during the national security portion of the debate, which naturally favored Dick Cheney simply because of Cheney's grave demeanor and reputation. Edwards easily won the domestic policy section, despite the ridiculous questions that were being asked of him by the moderator , blasting the Administration's failures and serving up the Democrats' solutions. Cheney floundered, reciting irrelevant statistics and looking fairly cold and indifferent. A modest, but respectable victory for Edwards is a strategic defeat for the Republicans. They needed the Vice President to decisively defeat John Edwards in order to undermine Kerry's rise in the polls and Cheney didn't deliver.

Bremer (Accidently) Comes Clean

From the Washington Post:
The former U.S. official who governed Iraq after the invasion said yesterday that the United States made two major mistakes: not deploying enough troops in Iraq and then not containing the violence and looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein...

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," he said yesterday in a speech at an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. "We never had enough troops on the ground."

Why didn't Paul Bremer do something about this earlier, when he was running the US occupation? Did he think that protecting his career was more important thans saving American and Iraqi lives? Already the shameless Mr. Bremer is backpedalling at top speed:

"A Bremer aide said that his speeches were intended for private audiences and were supposed to have been off the record."

Forget Poland

During the debates Bush made much of Poland's participation in the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. Unfortunately, the Poles are heading for the exit:
In a surprise announcement, Poland said Monday that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq by the end of 2005, leaving the U.S.-led multinational forces the task of finding replacements to fill a crucial security role in south-central Iraq.

Beginning To See the Light

In IMF talks, U.S. shifts toward debt-forgiveness pact
With public pledges and in private conversations, Britain managed over the weekend to move the United States closer to full forgiveness of the debts of the poorest countries during the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Before the meetings, the United States privately discussed a more modest plan that had no obvious source of new funding. Throughout the meetings, the stronger American focus was on forgiving the debt of Iraq. But on Sunday, Treasury Secretary John Snow told the gathered officials that the United States was working with Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the Exchequer, and that it "is time for us to get serious" about the unsustainable debt loads being borne by large parts of the world.

"We're prepared to go to debt forgiveness of up to 100 percent," he told the gathering of world finance ministers and governors of central banks. "What's important is that we all embrace that goal."

It is about time the United States' is reversing itself on Third World debt forgiveness. I wonder what the British officials did to chance the minds of the Americans. Perhaps the British pointed out the contradiction in supporting forgiveness for Iraq while at the same time opposing freeing other poor nations of their odious debts.

Down To The Wire

Registration Deadline For Ohio
I turned my form in at 11:30. I had completed one earlier, but there must have been something wrong with it since the Board of Elections doesn't have me on their rolls. Anyway, don't be like me, take care of this stuff before the last possible day.

Pull My Strings

Apparently Ayad Allawi, Prime Minister of the Iraqi Interim Government, has allowed himself to become nothing more than an exentsion of Bush-Cheney 2004. His speech before congress very closely mirrored statements made by George W. Bush on Iraq, which makes sense since a representitive of the Bush campaign (not the White House mind you, but the campaign itself) helped Allawi with his speech (more here). I'll bet this new will go over really well with Iraqis.

Partisan Spin

The first presidential debate was definetly a victory for John Kerry, the only question is how badly he crushed his opponent. George W. Bush was dishonest and looked dumb (pausing akwardly, mispeaking). The real damage Bush inflicted on himself was his angry, irritated appearance. In order for the President's dishonesty to harm him, people need to be aware of the facts and if people did know the facts, this clown would be the victim of the greatest bone shattering landslide in history. It is also well known that Bush is not all that bright and that has not held him back. His anger though was clear to see and will work against him the way Al Gore's undermined his campaign. Kerry in contrast played it cool, looked tall, serious and Presidential, unlike the real President of the United States.

Presidential Debate Transcript

Feeling Secure?

From the NY Times
Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 120,000 hours of potentially valuable terrorism-related recordings have not yet been translated by linguists at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and computer problems may have led the bureau to systematically erase some Qaeda recordings, according to a declassified summary of a Justice Department investigation that was released on Monday.

Billions for tax cuts, Homeland Security spending to defend public libraries in Wyoming but we still can't be bothered to hire enough translators at the FBI to translate intercepted messages in a timely manner.

Disgraceful

The House has no shame:
The national bird, the bald eagle, will have a national tree, the oak, to alight on if legislation passed Tuesday by the House makes its way through Congress and is signed by the president.

The Oak Tree? How dare they! The Oak tree might be the worst tree in the world to pick. These losers can hardly defende themselves against fungi, walking stick bugs and caterpillars. Additionally they don't have the stones to keep their leaves on all year, instead they make a mess of the place each and every autum. Some of the older Oaks also drop acorns in the fall, which are small and ugly. The noble pine tree is way better. It stays nice and green even in winter and produces pine cones, pine cones that can be turned into bird feeders.

Thermidor

Ralphspierre is the Insufferable is now polling 1.6% according to Real Clear Politics' poll averages. That is less than the margin of error of most of the polls used by RCP, so it is possible that Nader is doing even worse. My in-depth analysis: this is the kind of thing that happens when you are jerk that no one likes (including every American civil rights group, organized labor, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, The Greens, The Democratic Socialists of America, The Nation Editorial Board and the Communist Party USA).

Surrender Monkeys

Rumsfeld: U.S. Troops Can Leave Before Iraq Peaceful
The United States does not have to wait until Iraq "is peaceful and perfect" before it begins to withdraw military troops from that troubled country, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday.

Responding to questions from reporters, Rumsfeld said Washington was determined to provide security for scheduled January elections in Iraq, where nearly 140,000 American troops are now fighting a growing insurgency.

But "any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and U.S. forces, I think, would obviously be unwise," he told a press conference after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

I guess when John Kerry talks about reducing American forces it shows how he is unfit to be Commander-In-Chief, but when Donald Rumsfeld, the Iron Secretary of Defense and International Lawbreaker says so it is just hard headed realism and evidence of his straight talking style worthy of a one of the wits that share the spotlight with SNL drop-out Collin Quinn on "Tough Crowd".

The Wrath Of Holy Joe

Bush, Kerry, whatever
Democrats have had a field day with Sen. John McCain 's criticism of President Bush 's Iraq war management, so it seems fair play to air a Democratic senator's hit on Sen. John Kerry. Former vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman says, "I disagree with Senator Kerry's look back" at his earlier views on Iraq. Lieberman says he doesn't quibble with Kerry's call for a multilateral approach but suggests that there isn't that much original in the pitch. "I don't find much difference between what he is proposing and what President Bush is doing."

If I didn't know better I would say Senator Lieberman is still a little sore over the stomping he recieved from every single candidate other than Al Sharpton and LaRouche in the primaries. However, Lieberman has a long history of undermining the Democratic party. It is about time that Joe Lieberman's disloyalty was repaid in kind by the Democrats of Connecticut.

Major Flashback.

For all you Hunter S. Thompson fans, the Whiskey Bar has a nice little graphic for you.

For Your INFORMATION

Anyone looking for a good way to lose his or her money ought to check out this guide to C-low.

Secretary Of State Spits The Truth...Kind Of

One C. Powell is blowing George W. Bush's cover sky high:
Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday said anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world had increased and the insurgency in Iraq was worsening, but the United States was taking action to improve security ahead of elections.
Reuters

I have a sneaking suspicion that the rumors that Powell wouldn't be around for Bush's second term are true. As of late he has been sprinting off the reservation at break neck speed, first owning up to the fact that the absence of WMD's undermines the case for the President's war and now recognizing that Iraq is a mess. If Collin Powell really wants to flip George W. Bush the bird on his way out the door, he could resign in protest shortly before the election. His credibility is in shreds because of Iraq (remember his presentation to the UN?) and the Bush crowd, the least he could do is take them down with him.

"My administration will give you the resources you need to fight and win the war on terror"

or maybe not. It looks the negligent underequpping of our armed forces in Iraq has reached new lows:

About 800 members of the 98th Army Reserve Division from Rochester, New York will begin a year-long mission in Iraq next month.

The unit, which normally trains reserve and active-duty soldiers in the U.S., will find itself training Iraq’s new army.

The 98th is a non-combat unit that doesn't even have its own weapons or vehicles.

"This is a hard war and we, frankly, inside the Army Reserve have been not properly prepared for it,” said Lt. Gen. James Helmly, chief of the U.S. Army Reserve.

-Army Sends Weaponless Reserve Unit To Iraq
-2004 State of the Union Address

Winning The Ground War

Today's New York Times reports that there has been a big increase in new voters in swing states. The Democrats are leading the race to register new voters, registering 250% more than they did in 2000 (compared with the Republicans 25%) in Ohio (and lead in new registrations in Florida). Despite the much vaunted Republicans' much vaunted Get Out The Vote (GOTV) program, which was the subject of a front page story for the NY Times Magazine a few months ago, it seems that the Democrats' turnout operations are outdoing them. If the polls are at all close by election day, it is pretty likely then that Kerry will win thanks to usually below the radar factors (which do not appear in opinion polling) like this.

The Doppelganger

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

Now, the President should look at the whole reconstruction package…draw up a list of high visibility, quick impact projects… and cut through the red tape. 

Bush Today:
President Bush under election-year pressure from Democrats and some fellow Republicans over Iraq, promised on Saturday to step up the pace of spending on reconstruction contracts in that country despite the violence.

"There is nothing more important than cuttingtaxes in the face of a war"

Congress Approves a Bill to Extend Bush's Tax Cuts
The Republican-controlled Congress easily passed legislation on Thursday that would extend expiring provisions of last year's tax cuts for families as well as about 20 business tax cuts, at a cost of about $146 billion over 10 years.

Even though Democrats protested that the tax cuts would worsen the federal deficit and should be paid for with spending cuts or other tax increases, party leaders gave their members free rein to vote for the bill rather than incur the wrath of voters just a few weeks before Election Day.

I am not sure if conceding victory to the Republicans in this case was the best idea. It is irresponsible to continue cutting taxes without a way to make up for the lost revenue, but the tax cuts in and off themselves were not all that objectionable and was mentioned in the quote above there were political dangers to putting up a fight. Letting a Republican partisan like Porter Goss become CIA director is certainly worse than allowing these cuts to pass.

Update: After reading a more in-depth examination of the tax cut in question (available here), I have changed my mind. It was a bad bill with a small middle class tax breaks thrown in for political reasons. The Democrats should have opposed it outright. The legislative appeasement of our party stands in contrast to the combative rhetoric of the campaign. This soft approach is not all that good an idea, because it makes the Democrats seem unprincipled, weakens the enthusiam of the party faithful and there is the danger that we might lose the election, in which case there will be almost zero chance of retaking the ground we lost. As Patton once said (in the movie at least) I don't like paying for the same real estate twice. This strategy has failed us in the past (the 2002 congressional elections being the most recent example) and may fail us again.

Block The Vote

245 Electronic Votes Lost in Fla. Primary:
TAMPA, Fla. - A mistake by an election worker "lost" 245 electronic ballots cast in last month's Florida primary, but the mix-up didn't affect the outcome of any race when the votes were finally counted, authorities said.

Hillsborough County residents cast the ballots before the Aug. 31 election on an ATM-style machine set up at a library, said Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson. A member of Johnson's staff left the machine, made by Sequoia Voting Systems, in test mode. The votes were recorded and stored but not counted until they were found Friday


This is reassuring. Digital voting is going and going according to plan. I just hope this is the worst sort of irregularity we'll see during the Presidential Election. It isn't like certian members of the government don't have other ways to undermine democracy. Vote suppression has been practiced in the past by Bush and other Republicans in the past (Salon has a very thorough article about this ) and there is no reason to doubt they won't do it again.

Rumsfelded Into Submission

"At some point the Iraqis will get tired of getting killed and we’ll have enough of the Iraqi security forces that they can take over responsibility for governing that country and we’ll be able to pare down the coalition security forces in the country."

-- Secretary of Defense

Donald Rumsfeld..

Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.Via Knight Ridder.

It Takes A Budget Cut of Millions

How do you respond to a million new Americans living in poverty this year? If you are President Bush you

cut rent subsidies for the poor:

The proposals could have a "significantly detrimental impact" in some areas by forcing poor families to pay hundreds of extra dollars per month in rent, according to United States Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican. That extra burden could be too much for thousands of tenants, "potentially leaving them homeless," Mr. Shays wrote in a recent letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The changes would affect most of the 1.9 million families who participate in the Section 8 program, the government's primary housing program for the poor, including 110,000 in New York City

The More The Merrier

India, Japan want seats in Security Council
Japan, Brazil, Germany and India formed a lobbying group on Tuesday to help one another get permanent seats on the UN Security Council and head off proposals that might work against them.
It is hard to argue against allowing these countries into the Security Council. They are certainly as important as some of the Council's other permanent members. Additionally, it would be nice if the Security Council better reprsented the interests of the Third World. The only problem is that increasing the number of members makes decision making less efficient, but then again those that are really interested in quick results generally don't look toward the UN anyhow.

Prophets of Rage

Kerry has gone negative, laying into into George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq War one day and ripping apart his plan to dismantle Social Security the next. TheFrom the

Polls are starting to head in the right direction again, though it is not clear that John Kerry has pulled ahead yet. It seems that the Kerry campaign is revitalized and picking up momentum. Perhaps the American people are as spiteful as even the readers and writers of this blog are.

Red On Red

From the

NY Daily News
A trio of top Republicans criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq yesterday - just as Democrat John Kerry is refocusing his campaign to slam the President over the blossoming anarchy there.

"I don't think we're winning," Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) told CBS' "Face the Nation."
---
Asked if Bush has been straight about the deadly insurgency that has put several major Iraqi cities off-limits to U.S. troops, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the President has been "perhaps not as straight as maybe we'd like to see."
---
And from the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee came a scathing critique of the Bush administration's failure to spend more than $1 billion out of $18 billion for Iraq reconstruction appropriated by Congress a year ago.

"This is the incompetence in the administration," Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) told ABC's "This Week."

I guess these guys haven't heard that

"freedom is on the march".

Kerry Wins The Debate Debate

Bush, Kerry Tentatively Settle on 3 Debates
The campaigns of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry have tentatively settled on a package of three face-to-face debates that both sides view as a potentially decisive chance to sway huge audiences ahead of the Nov. 2 election, Democrats and Republicans said yesterday.

Initially Bush was trying to blow off the third presidential debate, but now it looks like his bid has failed. Details about the three debates still have to be worked out so it isn't quite a sure thing yet. Having more debates are likely to benefit John Kerry since the polls indicate that George W. Bush is probably in the lead and the debates provide Kerry with an opportunity to change the direction of the race.

Don't Blow Saturday With Ordinary Wing-Nuts

GOP Mailing Warns Liberals Will Ban Bibles
Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee (news - web sites) warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Friday that he wasn't aware of the mailing, but said it could be the work of the RNC. "It wouldn't surprise me if we were mailing voters on the issue of same-sex marriage," Gillespie said.

Thankfully the RNC has yet to inform the unsuspecting citizens of West Virginia of the Democratic Party's secret plan to take away their guns, make the US a UN protectorate and force all Americans over the age of 5 into work camps run by mean-spirited "peacekeepers" from the third world where they will be forced to manufacture crystal meth and package shipments of hardcore pornography under the most dangerous circumstances possible.

Cheaps Shots All Around

File photo of Mr. Brooks (photo credit:

Oliver Willis)

Shorter

David Brooks: Kerry is such an indecisive flip-flopper that he has actually hired advisors!

Nothing Is Our Fault

Insurgents aim to influence U.S. vote, official says
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage alleged Friday that insurgents have stepped up their deadly assaults in Iraq because they want to "influence the election against President Bush," a statement that drew a sharp condemnation from the campaign of Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry.

It is apparently the first time that a Bush administration official has linked the escalating violence in Iraq to an effort by insurgents to help defeat Bush in November.


Interesting how the Democrats are always somehow responsible for everything bad while the Republicans control all three branches of government. I guess next Elaine Chao will tell us the economy is intentionally underpeforming in an attempt to elect John Kerry.

Tunes

In addition to writing a book supporting the internment of Japanese Americans and supporting racial profiling, writing a syndicate column that appears in such respected outlets as the New York Daily News, Michelle Malkin is also into the music business. You can listen to her latest single

here, I recommend it highly.

November Surprise

Via

Drudgereport :

STATEMENT FROM REP JOHN P. MURTHA [D-PA]:
I have learned through conversations with officials at the Pentagon that at the beginning of November, 2004, the Bush Administration plans to call up large numbers of the military guard and reserves , to include plans that they previously put off to call up the Individual Ready Reserve.

I have said publicly and privately that our forces are inadequate to support our current worldwide tempo of operations. On November 21, 2003, a bipartisan group of 135 members of the House of Representatives wrote to the President urging an increase in the active duty army troop levels and expressed concern that our Armed Forces are over-extended and that we are relying too heavily on the Guard and Reserve.

We didn't get a reply until February 2004, and now as the situation in Iraq is deteriorating, it seems that the Administration will resort to calling up additional guard and reservists, again with inadequate notice.


What a lovely little stab in the back Bush has prepared for his guardsmen supporters.

Losing Bin Laden

C.I.A. Unit on bin Laden Is Understaffed, a Senior Official Tells Lawmakers

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress.

The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90 days, and they leave before they know enough to be able to perform any meaningful work, according to a letter the C.I.A. officer has written to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

This is just grand. It looks like we are back to ignoring Osama Bin Laden like we were before 9-11. But then again the War on Terrorism is about more than just one man (even though he is still playing a

key leadership roles
) and we have other national security priorities like the greatest threat to western civilization ever, Iraq, building a magical missile shield with technology that doesn't exist and letting North Korean develop nuclear weaposn because we couldn't stand the moral degradation of negotiating.

Never again?

More disturbing news is breaking about the race murder being committed by the Sudanese government. Khartoum's inhumanity is reaching new heights if the latest reports are to be believed:

"Syria tested chemical weapons on civilians in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region in June and killed dozens of people.

The German daily Die Welt newspaper, in an advance release of its Wednesday edition, citing unnamed western security sources, said that injuries apparently caused by chemical arms were found on the bodies of the victims...

Syrian officers were reported to have met in May with Sudanese military leaders in a Khartoum suburb to discuss the possibility of improving cooperation between their armies.

According to Die Welt, the Syrians had suggested close cooperation on developing chemical weapons, and it was proposed that the arms be tested on the rebel SPLA, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, in the south.

But given that the rebels were involved in peace talks, the newspaper continued, the Sudanese government proposed testing the arms on people in Darfur."

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/106666/1/.html

Update:On Saturday the

UN passed a resolution threatening Sudan with sanctions if it fails to curb the Arab militias terrorizing refugee camps in Darfur.

Facing Facts

It looks like the Killian memos aren't real:
Two document experts retained by CBS News for the disputed "60 Minutes" story on President Bush's National Guard record said yesterday they had warned the program that the memos involved had significant problems but that their concerns were not heeded.
-The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21675-2004Sep14.html

Some are saying that the Memos, though probably fakes, are accurate in the sense in that they reflect the facts found in other documents. Even so, I am sure this is likely to be a major blow for CBS News, Dan Rather and 60 Minutes.

One Dishonest Bastard

"To be fair, there are some things my opponent is for -- he's proposed more than two trillion dollars in new federal spending so far, and that's a lot, even for a senator from Massachusetts. To pay for that spending, he is running on a platform of increasing taxes -- and that's the kind of promise a politician usually keeps.

His policies of tax and spend -- of expanding government rather than expanding opportunity -- are the policies of the past."
-George W. Bush in his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention




The Washington Post Today:

:
"The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.

A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan."

What a deal! John Kerry's going to make us pay for his 2 trillion dollar Spendocrat program (you can tell he is a real LIEbrel from TAXachusetts, huh huh), but we will get Bush's 3 trillion dollar agenda for free. I am going to use the money I save to buy myself a hammock!

Sworn Enemy

Via

Teagan Goddard's Political Wire:
"In what could become a worst-case scenario for Democrats, Ralph Nader announced plans to launch a spirited new phase to his independent candidacy in swing states," the Hartford Courant reports. Nader says "part of its purpose would be to retaliate against Democrats who had fought his candidacy."

It isn't really news that Ralph Nader has been focusing on critical swing states (he's been doing that all year and was doing it days before the 2000 election, too), but now he has made his intentions clear. He wants revenge against the Democrats, his main goal is spiting the Democratic Party by helping to re-elect George W. Bush. Since the start of his absurd campaign Nader maintained that he was committed to seeing President Bush defeated in Novemeber. Now he has dropped the pretense and has all but openly embraced four more year of Republican misrule simply because he feels slighted.

Powell Refuses To Stand By Bush's War

From the WP:

"NBC's Tim Russert, using language similar to a question President Bush had posed about Kerry regarding the former Iraqi leader, asked Powell if he "knew today that Saddam did not have these weapons of mass destruction, would you still advocate an invasion?"

Powell did not answer directly, but said, 'I would have to look at the total picture, and we'd have to sit down and talk about his intention to have such weapons, the capability that was inherent.'"

So now the Secretary of State is expressing doubt about the most important part of the Administration's foreign policy, the Iraq War. I guess Colin Powell got fed up with those ""fucking crazies" and their bloody misadventure. If people on the President's payroll aren't willing to stand by their man why should anyone at all back George W. Bush? Bush has based his entire presidency on his war time leadership and it is becoming clear to everyone with eyes to see that he has driven our war on terrorism into a ditch.

I am sure the infamous Tech-9 Is Delighted

Federal Ban on Assault Weapons Expires


"The expiration Monday of a 10-year federal ban on assault weapons means firearms like AK-47s, Uzis and TEC-9s can now be legally bought — a development that has critics upset and gun owners pleased."

But it gets better! Not only can you buy an assault weapon, but you can get cool accessories for it, too:

"Now, some gun manufacturers are planning to give away high-capacity magazines as bonuses for buying their weapons. Sales of formerly banned gun accessories, such as flash suppressors and folding stocks, are also expected to take off."

Wit & Wisdom

"WWI was the most profitable thing ever happened to the United States, not withstanding WWII I mean"-Jon Chin

A Freudian Slip?

It seems the like the Best Secretary of Defense the US has ever had is a bit confused about who our enemies are:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mixed up al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein twice in a speech on Friday about the war against terrorism.
on to the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan and was killed by al Qaeda two days before the Sept. 11 attacks."
- Reuters

A Film Festival Celebrating Good Ol' American Values

The first American Film Renaissance Festival (in Dallas, Texas, of course)will be airing a wide variety of films reflecting "pride, humility and appreciation for our great nation", such as Michael Moore Hates America. Supposedly these films will provide the counterbalance to all the shrill and unbalanced liberal hate media that has been flooding the market of late. Other features include but are not limited to: Beyond the Passion of the Christ, DC 9/11: A Time of Crisis (starring Timothy Bottoms as President Bush) and Michael and Me (another Michael Moore attack movie). No doubt the American Film Renaissance Festival will soon take its place in the international film community as the new Cannes.

(Personally, I cant wait to see M. M. Hates America, becuase mudslinging and attack documentaries never fail to entertain)

More Technical Things

Once again the template of this weblog is undergoing some changes. The haloscan comment system was becoming increasingly problematic, Blogger's new built-in comments seem to be better and Blogger's new navbar was not meshing well with the old format. With some luck the new system will work out and maybe I will be able to add a running comments section.

Unpersons

Lawmakers Troubled by 'Ghost Detainees'


"Congress may keep up the focus on the prison abuse scandal following the disclosure that the military has concealed as many as 100 "ghost detainees" from the Red Cross...

Under the Geneva Conventions, the United States is obliged to give the neutral, Swiss-run humanitarian agency access to prisoners of war and other detainees to check on their conditions and allow them to send messages to their families."

Is it really a good idea for the United States to be joing in on the race to the bottom with regards to international law? These conventions were designed to protect all prisoners of war, by undermining them we are endangering the safety of our own soldiers.

The New New Thought Police

I guess the gentle college conservatives could take all that liberal hate speech:

"A university president and a Democratic state lawmaker said rules put in place this year to protect conservative views on Colorado campuses have led to death threats against professors and a harmful effect on free speech.

Republican lawmakers responded that conservative students are still being harassed and more needs to be done...

Colleges agreed to implement a stripped-down version of the policy after lawmakers killed a measure that would have required them to allow students to file grievances against professors if they felt they were being harassed for their political or religious beliefs. "

Colo. Educators Worry About Free Speech

Real Moral Clarity

Powell calls Sudan killings genocide

After mass murder it is common for those that could have stopped it to deny knowing of the crime while it was happening. Now that option isn't open to us, hopefully this will result in significant action.

New Blog In Town

Since I am nothing if not objective and nonpartisan, I think it is my solemn obligation to help promote a broad and informative discourse and expose my readers to other points of view. A new, young conservative opinion maker has hit the scene. Already people across the Right are flocking to read his regular rants and there is talk that he maybe given a syndicated column in dozens of respected money losing publications like the Washington Times and New York Daily News. His latest material can be found here:

bush4Ever.blogspot.com

Slander Slander!

What a cook:
"President Bush (news - web sites) on Thursday blamed the Clinton administration for the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and warned against backing the Democratic ticket in November because of a 'hidden Kerry tax plan.'"

First, Bush tries to draw attention away from the dismal failure of his economic policy by...bringing up the Clinton era, which saw the death of millions of Americas due to the hunger caused by Bill Clinton's bungling of the economy. Then he continues by suggesting that Kerry has a secret plan to raise taxes. I guess tomorrow George W. Bush is going to warn us that John Kerry has made a covert agreement with the UN to take our guns away. Fortunately Dick Cheney and some of his buddies from Wyoming have constructed a survivalist hideaway/weapons cache and will be ready to defend America when that day comes.

Bush Warns of Secret Tax Plan

Flip Flopper!!! Flip Flopper!!!

Bush has just once again the worst thing an American politican can ever do, change their posistion on an issue. In the wake of the 9-11 Commission's Report, which proposed a cabinet level intelligence chief, the President proposed creating a post that mirrored the Commission's recommendations, but which would have denied the intelligence head almost any real power. Now President Bush is willing to grant a new intelligence director with budgetary powers. Man, with this guy you don't know whether he is coming or going!

Questions of consistency aside, Bush is still in the wrong on the merits. Even FBI Director Robert Mueller, who would actually lose some power under the commission's plan, supports implementing creating a strong intelligence czar like the one the
9-11 Commission suggests.

Bush Seeks Strong Intelligence Director

Call of Duty

The AP Reports:
"New documents unearthed in the midst of the presidential campaign fill in some blanks but raise other questions about the sometimes mysterious and spotty story of President Bush (news - web sites)'s military service during Vietnam when he won a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard and avoided the war."

It is great that the press is really beginning to dig into the Bush AWOL story. I just hope the Democrats don't get too involved with it. The short term political benefits of this issue are likely to be limited. A story like this is far more usefull against a challenger rather than an incumbent. Furthermore it runs the risk of legitimizing the Swift Boat Smears in the eyes of the public because both are to some degree a manifestation of the "politics of personal destruction", even though there is much more substance to the charges against Bush. For now the Democrats should avoid using Bush's guard service directly and do what Bush's Republican surrogates have been doing by expressing "interest" in the investigation, thereby leaving the question open and keeping the story in the news while reducing the risks of blowback. At a later date the National Gaurd business go be very useful if woven into a broader attack on George W. Bush's personal courage, possibly by connecting it with Bush-Cheney '04 attempt to duck the third presidential debate or any other instances where the President has tried to bodly run away.

Questions Raised About Bush Guard Service

Hey Brian, Guess What...

I ran into Kathrine McGuiness yesterday, and she told me that she and her roomate are going to TRL this weekend, because Usher is going to be there. No joke.

John Kerry: Catholic Church Approved.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "Grand Inquisitor for Mother Rome", has determined that a Roman Catholic can vote for a pro-choice politician provided that they agree with him or her on other issues. On the whole this should help out John Kerry who outside of the abortion question, shares a lot of posistions with the Church on issues like foreign affairs (according to catholicvote.org Kerry and the Catholic Bishops are in 100% agreement in this area) and social justice.

Catholics Allowed Pro-Choice Vote

Cheney Threatens America W/Terrorist Attack

Well, not exactly, but the Vice-President's remarks were awful even compared to his other public statements:

" Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040907/D84V15AG0.html

The ugliness of the Bush-Cheney campaign has now gotten to the point of self-parody.

Abuse of Power

From the Telegraph:

"In a fresh blow to John Kerry's flagging presidential campaign, the Pentagon has ordered an official investigation into the awards of the Democratic senator's five Vietnam War decorations."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/05/wus05.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/05/ixworld.html

Anyone willing to bet this isn't politically motivated?

What Lies Ahead

It is widely believed that the moderate Republicans that spoke at the Convention, Giuliani, Pataki and McCain are trying to posistion themselves for 2008 by gaining some national exposure and getting on the good side of George W. Bush. I am not sure how good an idea that is. A second Bush term will likely strengthen the right wing of the Republican Party while a Bush defeat (which would be the fourth consecutive time the Republicans failed to win the most votes in a Presidential election) could spark a little reflection on the part of the GOP. Furthermore all the ambitious moderates will have to contend with some serious conservative rivals (Jeb Bush, Condoleeza Rice?). Based on the President's long history of screwing those that cut deals with him, it isn't likely that the loyalty of McCain and his fellow travellers will be remembered in 2008. Some of the moderates in question ought to just give up now. Pataki in particular may as well give up all hope for the future. He can either run for the Republican nomination and get crushed by any other living Republican (unlike Giuliani or McCain he has no reputation for personal heroism that could help him along) or loes to Attorney General Elliot Spitzer in New York. Governor Pataki richly deserves either of these two fates.

"Stay the course"

Because our current strategy, whatever it is, is working so well and you wouldn't want to mess it up. Don't let news stories likes these turn you into a defeatist:

"About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and Marines were wounded in Iraq during August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&ncid=716&e=18&u=/washpost/20040905/ts_washpost/a62425_2004sep4

------

"In Iraq, the list of places from which American soldiers have either withdrawn or decided to visit only rarely is growing: Falluja, where a Taliban-like regime has imposed a rigid theocracy; Ramadi, where the Sunni insurgents appear to have the run of the city; and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf to the south, where the Americans agreed last month to keep their distance from the sacred shrines of Ali and Hussein."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/weekinreview/05filk.html?hp

So Americans are spilling more blood and losing control of more and more territory. Perhaps we should take a break from demanding some specifics from John Kerry about his Iraq plan and start asking the War President (trademark) what exactly HIS plan is.

Technical Problems

As you may have noticed my post-siesta posts have not featured direct links to internet sources. For some reason Blogger has deprived me of certain key tools and I don't know why they are gone or how or when I can get them back. I beg your pardon.

No Baby Bounce

From Bloomberg.com

President George W. Bush opened an 11- percentage point lead in his re-election race against Democrat John Kerry, according to a Time magazine poll taken during the Republican National Convention this week.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a_INcToj77l4&refer=us

Is it getting warm in here? It looks the Republican Convention is helping Bush more than Democrats' helped John Kerry, not good. Then again this might not be the case. The Bloomberg story did not provide many details on the poll in question and other surveys suggest a much more modest lead for Bush than the Time one does. The American Research Group has a poll from 8/30 to 9/1 with Kerry enjoying a slight lead. The true impact of the Convention probably won't be clear untill after the weekend.

Weird Stuff

Thanks to the Chin and collegehumor.com I have come across "Salad Fingers", one of the most bizzare internet cartoons I have ever seen. Salad Fingers can be seen at:
http://www.newgrounds.com/collections/saladfingers.html

Watching The Convention

Regrettably I missed Zell Miller's Pat Buchanan impersonation last night so I have basically missed what was the best part of the convention. Tonight I did get to see George W. Bush accept his party's nomination. Well, what can I say about the President's speech? A bunch of bad policy ideas (privatizing social security, making his regressive tax cuts permanent, etc.) that he has been yammering about for the better part of four years, misleading statements ("lies" if you want to prove how much of a fanatical bush hater you are) and empty platitudes, just like almost every speech he has given. I admit I was surprised how much they used September 11th or more accurately how gracelessly they incorporated it into their event. Since I was watching C-SPAN in true high brow fashion I was unable to enjoy the insight and wisdom of such luminaries as Joe Scarborough and Bill O'Reilly, so I am more or less in the dark about the media elite's take on the convention, I wonder how it is playing out with the general public.

Trogdor Strikes Again

Students at the University of South Carolina ("go gamecocks!") have elected Trogdor as their Hall's representitive. It remains to be seen whether or not Trogdor will use his new found power as a member of student government for good or for awesome.

The full story is available here:
http://www.dailygamecock.com/main.cfm?include=subApplication&subApplicationName=quickRegister&fuse=registrationOrLoginRequired&thereferer=http%3A//www.dailygamecock.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/611287.htmlhttp://www.blogger.com/

Another Foreign Leader For Kerry

Looks like "Bush's poodle" is thinking about jumping the fence and making a run for it:

"John Kerry supporters in America have been told by Peter Hain that Downing Street is hoping the Democratic candidate wins the US presidential election in November...

Those who met him had the strong impression that he was acting with No 10's support, and that a Democratic victory was clearly sought. Such a supposition ought to be natural, but historic ties have been jolted by the strategic and sometimes personal alliance between George Bush and Tony Blair over Iraq. Mr Hain's visit may be seen by some as diplomatic ground-covering in the event of a Kerry victory"

From the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1294572,00.html

One D. Brooks

David Brooks is one of the favorite targets of this blog and attacks on his writing make up a signifcant portion of all my posts. So far I have had to be content with scorning Brooks and all his works from a far, but now the "liberal's conservative" is coming to my neighborhood

. I'll have more on David Brook's appearance at it develops.

Speaking of Mr. Brooks, the NY Times Magazine ran an essay by him onthe future of the Republican party titled "Reinventing the GOP"

. Brooks doesn't do a bad job recognizing the mess that the Republicans are in. He notes that the American Right is running out of useful, relevant ideas and is becoming unprincipled and undisciplined. Brooks goes on to layout a program for a largely unobjectionable progressive conservative agenda which I would love to see the other side embrace. The problem is that Brooks views the Bush Administration as an ally of progressive conservatism rather than an obstacle to it and the main cause for the the problems with conservatism that he identifies. It was George W. Bush after all who oversaw the collapse of the GOP's values, who has cynically made political calculations the basis for his policy decisions and has refused to stand up to special interests even once in the name of "conservative values" (Bush has never vetoed a single bill and has even href="http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry022102.shtml"> signed legislation which he believed to be unconstitutiona

.

So tired, so sleepy.

This blog will be taking a siesta untill further notice.

Quote of the day

"How far gone are we? We're so far gone that Chris Mathews thinks it's ridiculous. That's how far gone we are."-The Poor Man

They Got Our Number

From The Guardian:

Eight terrorism suspects charged with conspiracy to murder and to launch radioactive, chemical or explosive attacks were remanded in custody amid high security at their first court appearance yesterday.

Three members of the alleged conspiracy, who are accused of holding documents including "reconnaissance" plans of the New York stock exchange, the International Monetary Fund in Washington, banks in New York and New Jersey, and recipes for explosives, are also charged with offences under the Terrorism Act.

This string of arrests confirms what is now becoming an old saw, we aren't just fighting a specific terrorist organization, but an ideology as well. As haltingly as the military and law enforcement components of our War on Terrorism are progressing, it appears that the battle for hearts and minds is going much more poorly. Right now, the government's campaign on this front seems to be comprised of publishing an Arabic version of Seventeen and photos of Americans torturing innocent people. We really, really need to do better.

Don't Forget

Register to vote here and get your absentee ballot here.

No Shame

U.S. Now Said to Support Growth for Some West Bank Settlements
The Bush administration, moving to lend political support to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a time of political turmoil, has modified its policy and signaled approval of growth in at least some Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, American and Israeli officials say.

For the last three years, American policy has called for a freeze of "all settlement activity," including "natural growth" brought about by an increase in the birthrate and other factors. As a result, when settlement expansions have been announced, American officials have called them violations.

Constructing settlements in the Occupied Territories is gravely immoral, probably violates international law and undermines the security of Israel by increasing Palestinian anger, putting more Israelis in harm's way and further reducing the chances for peace. There is no good reason why the United States should condone Sharon's decision, yet the Bush Administration is. This is almost certianly another case of George W. Bush putting short-term electoral politics over the long-term interests of America.

Bill Kristol Is A Hack

Or as Bill O'Reilly might say, a modern Joseph Goebbels. Kristol's piece,
"John Kerry Doesn't Know His Own Mind", proves hackery beyond the shadow of a doubt. Kristol wrote:

Apparently, Sen. Kerry wanted to appeal to the "get-the-boys-back-home" sentiment in the country when he spoke on This Week. Yesterday, addressing a convention of veterans, Kerry was busy burnishing his credentials as a hawk by suggesting that cutting our forces in Korea "is clearly the wrong signal to send" at this time.

Who knows what Sen. Kerry believes? Does Sen. Kerry even know?

What the crap? These are two different issues, yet Kristol acts like they are one and the same. The situations in question are not at all comparable. Kerry's point is clear, he hopes to reduce American forces in Iraq because the occupation there has created a swarm of problems for the US and is opposed to withdrawing troops from South Korea because it could weaken our hand with North Korea. William Kristol's article is nothing but cheap propaganda. It is remarkable that the Weekly Standard has the nerve to poke fun at Ann Coulter when they are no better she is.

Emergency Pork To The Rescue?

Bush Declares Major Disaster in Fla.
President Bush declared a major disaster in the state of Florida on Friday, ordering federal aid for the recovery effort just two hours after Hurricane Charley hit the mainland.

Here we have critical swing state, a chance to distribute federal money and one of the most cynically politicians in recent memory. Perhaps someone should look at this story's political angle.

The Reactionary

Keyes Wants to End Election of Senators
Alan Keyes said Friday he would like to end the system under which the people elect U.S. senators and return to pre-1913 practice in which senators were chosen by state legislatures.

Perhaps Ambassador Keyes will decide to come out in favor of the gold standard next because he just doesn't trust money that isn't backed up by shiny rocks. The Republicans did Obama a real favor by selecting a complete cook to run against him. A local, levelheaded politician would probably would have lost to Barack Obama, but he or she might have been able to get some good jabs in and done something to diminish Obama's star power. Instead they chose Alan Keyes for some reason or another and the consequences of that choice are becoming clear.

Funny Article, with nudity bonus points!

Nude newscasts hit Europe

First Fox tries to distract us from the news with crazy graphics and drums. Now this. I can only imagine what’s next. . .

Straight Talk

"The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway."
- President Bush, quoted by the AP, on the campaign trail.

The wealthy are able to avoid paying their taxes? I wonder why.

In Other News...

I am richer than the Reform Party.

An endorsement

Upon carefully examining the evidence, Board of Pomposity has decided to endorse Beer Baron Peter Coors in his race to become the Republican candidate in Colorado.

The Nerve!

States: School's lessons full of errors

When I first read about a school teaching that there were 53 states, I was amused. It reminded me of the time I heard a woman telling her child about how Canada was the biggest state. Then I read the rest of the article and it became very clear to me that it was not a matter of typos or honest mistakes. The school is clearly and deliberately continuing to profit off of miseducating its students, presumably mostly poor immigrants. It is not merely an attempt to make money with no regards to anything else. If that was the case, the errors would have been corrected long ago to reduce the bad media attention. The fact that the school continues to teach incorrect information indicates more sinister goals, mainly the humiliation of its students. Arrrgh! I wanted a funny article.

Once A Spoiler, Always A Spoiler

Nader's ballot hopes hinge on state's Greens via Daily Kos

Ralphspierre the Insufferable appears to be greasing up his guillotine for the Greens. The Nader campaign has suspended its unsuccessful signature drive, but it has not given up on its goal of getting on the California ballot. Rather than actually go out and get the signatures themselves Nader and Camejo are attempting to take the Greens' line even though they are no longer members of the Green Party and their micro-coup would actually rob the Greens' real nominee David Cobb of his spot on the California ballot. I guess Ralph Nader thinks it is time to stick it to the corporate shills of the so-called "Green" Party.

Every Dog Has His Day (Of Reckoning)

The Iraqi government has issued arrest warrants for Ahmed Chalabi and his brother Salem. I am sure the Prince of Darkness is crying himself to sleep tonight.

Buh? What's going on?

Reuters is reporting that US officials have blown the cover of one of our moles inside Al Qaeda.

Update: The original source that exposed Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan as an Al Qeada informant was Pakistani, not American (via the Political Animal).

Dark Horse Figures

A detail from Fox News' latest poll is more than a bit puzzling to me:

- More knowledgeable on the issues
Bush 43 (was 48% two weeks ago)
Kerry 40 (was 32% two weeks ago)

George W. Bush is more knowledgeable than John Kerry? Does this surprise anyone else? For objectivity and bipartisanship, President Bush barely pays attention to the news. Just look at his excerpt from the Washington Times (which I hope is spin meant to appeal to honest, simple folk):

...[T]he president often cites articles that Mrs. Bush flags for greater scrutiny, even when he has not personally slogged through those stories. Mrs. Bush routinely delves more deeply into the news pages than her husband, who prefers other sections.
"He does not dwell on the newspaper, but he reads the sports page every day," Mr. Card said with a chuckle.

I wish I could laugh along with Andrew Card, but somehow that tidbit seems a little distressing.

A Day At The Track

RealClearPolitics' poll average has Kerry leading by 1.7% in a two way race and by 2.1% when Nader is factored in, which is pretty good seeing as how RCP has a bit of a conservative bent and how averaging polls gives them an opportunity to pick surveys with favorable results and doesn't seem to consider the quality of the polls used.

Better Late Than Never

I would like to take a crack at summarizing "Unfairenheit 9/11"
(get it? eh? eh?)
Christopher Hitchens' critique of "Fahrenheit 9/11":

In different segments of Mr. Moore's film Bush portrayed is a liar, a crook and a buffoon. Well, which is it? Is Bush a liar, a crook or a buffoon? He can't be all three can he, you dangerous, depraved, dishonest dastard!

Protecting Our national Sovereignty At The Expense of National Security?

U.S. Shifts Stance on Nuclear Treaty
In a significant shift in U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear weapons materials.

Not only has the Bush Administration come out against the verification program (probably the most important part of any arms control agreement) supported by the British, the EU and previously the United States under Bill Clinton, they have yet to really explain why. In the "U.S. Proposals to the Conference on Disarmament", American representative Jackie W. Sanders simply dismisses the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty because "effective verification of an FMCT is not achievable". Does that make any sense at all? They are opposing a policy because there is a chance it might not work! It would have been nice if they had used that logic when they considered invading Iraq...but at any rate these justifications are absurd. Can this Administration be so opposed to international cooperation that it would oppose an agreement that could add to the security of the United States simply out of dogmatic unilateralism or does it have more sinister motives? The NY Times' editorial on the State Department's decision cites concerns about protecting secret American nuclear technology as one reason for Bush's refusal to support the inspections component of the FMCT. I am curious by what they mean by that, perhaps the White House doesn't want to draw attention towards the US' newly invigorated nuclear program, an effort which seems to be geared towards creating weapons intended to be used preemptively.

Kicking down the ladder he climbed up

Bush opposes 'legacy' college admissions
Another Bush Flip Flop! First he uses legacy preferences to get into Yale University and now he is denying a generation of stupid good ol' boys a chance at unearned wealth and privilege.

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

Rick James has died of "natural causes".

Inform the Jr. Fed Reserve Group

From George W. Bush's campaign homepage:
The economy is strong and getting stronger. The President’s pro-growth policies have helped drive the economy and move the recovery forward, putting more money in the pockets of America’s families and laying a foundation for robust growth and job creation now and for years to come.

From the AP:
The nation's payroll growth slowed dramatically in July with a paltry 32,000 jobs being added-- a potentially troubling sign that the rough patch the economy hit in June was no aberration...

The 32,000 net jobs added in July represented the smallest gain in hiring since December and followed a revised gain of just 78,000 in June, even less than previously reported. May's payrolls also were revised down to show a gain of 208,000.

Where are those 300,000 jobs a month the Administration promised us? Congress did pass his "stimulus" package last year, after all. The critics of the President must be to blame! Just like how it is these infernal Democrats that are causing these high gas prices, reality be damned!

Born Loser

Alen Keyes, a religious fundementalist, former ambassador and infamous crowd-surfer is running against the popular, well-financed and now famous Barak Obama in the Illinois senate race. I guess the Republicans weren't able to get a more widely respected figure, like Ted Nugent, to run.

Kerry: The New Rhetorical Grenadier?

John Kerry blasts the President's Patrick-like reaction to being told of the September 11th attacks:

"Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to -- and I would have attended to it,"

Tomorrow When The War Began

The second most popular man in Iraq, radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, has once again declared war on the United States and urged Iraqis to rebel against Coalition forces and those in Iraq that collaborate with them. Sadr's first uprising made April far and away the bloodiest month of the entire war and globalsecurity.org is currently projecting that August will come in second.

Beat the Press

The following was posted on the National Review's weblog, the Corner:

Aug. 2, 2004 - U.S. News and World Report (8/9, Bedard) reports in its "Washington Whispers" column, "Reporters, beware: The Democratic Party is revamping its lovey-dovey approach and telling campaign press secretaries to come down like a ton of bricks if you screw up or slip in a little attitude. 'When it comes to the media,' suggests Democratic strategist James Carville, 'intimidation works.' He offers a tactic: 'Send E-mails to the press. They do respond to pressure.' That message was part of the training new campaign press secretaries were given in Boston last week during the party's convention." Press secretaries were urged to "bully the reporter and cow the newsie into tossing you a bone, or hit hard and scare him into changing his tone and coverage."

It looks like Kerry has decided he won't get "Gored" like the last Democratic nominee was. As anyone with the correct opinions knows, the media has been giving the Democrats a pretty hard time ever since Reagan and it has only gotten worse in recent years (just read the incomparable Daily Howler to see for yourself). The conservatives have known for a long time how to work the press, establishing partisan news outlets and mericlessly beating them up for supposed "liberal bias". Now with this new aggressive strategy for dealing with the fourth estate the left could be on its way to getting better, fairer coverage.

Great Moments In Sloganeering

Is it just me or is "We're turning the corner, and we're not turning back" a rather weak slogan for a man who is not just an incumbent President, but an incumbent who enjoyed having both houses of congress under his control party's control. Isn't it basically admitting that things went wrong on your watch? Next thing you know, George W. Bush will start out his next television spot by saying "As you well know, ever since I took office, well, things have been really really bad."


An aside: And yes, I am a party hack copying our STRONG and WISE candidate's talking points nearly verbatim, which makes me no worse than my favorite whipping boy, David Brooks.

The Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade

From the AP:
RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP) -- Some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President Dick Cheney speak here Saturday were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse President Bush.

The measure was a security step designed to avoid a disruption, which Bush campaign spokesman Dan Foley alleged Democrats were planning. Democratic Party officials denied it

Kerry campaign spokesman Ruben Pulido Jr. said there had been no plan by the campaign to disrupt Cheney's event.

"I think that every American should have the right to see their vice president and hear from him firsthand what he plans to do for our country," Pulido said.

He also said the Kerry campaign had not attempted to screen Bush supporters out of Kerry's appearance at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque on July 9.

On that occasion, about a dozen Bush supporters wearing flip-flop beach sandals began chanting "Viva Bush" and waved their flip-flops over their heads. They contend Kerry has flip-flopped on the war.

Denying access to a public event for those that refuse to sign a pro-Bush pledge isn't the worst thing that the Republicans have done, but it does nicely symbolize the super-partisan governing style of the GOP's leadership, which has treated the Congress, the Presidencey, Supreme Court and various federal agencies like they were appendenges of their PR department.

I believe the proper response to this ridiculous policy is to paraphrase the pithy if not eloquent Major --- de Coverley: Gimme Speech.

MORE Convention Blogging

Air America Place has all the speeches from the 2004 Democratic Convention in MP3 format.

Convention Bounce?

Since Thursday night opinion polls have come out that have claimed to measure the impact of the Democratic Convention on the presidential race. The problem is that these polls are not all that accurate and so it may be a bit longer untill the Convention's true consequences are clear. it is clear. The latest Newsweek poll (via MSNBC) shows Kerry with a 5 point bounce, though the blog Donkey Rising calls the Newsweek unreliable since it included data that was collected before Senator Kerry's acceptance speech. Rasmussen Reports' daily presidential tracking poll (which show Kerry with a 4% post-convention boost) suffers from the same flaw, with a third of their interviews conducted before John Kerry spoke.

Because organization matters

U.S. Lacks Records for Iraq Spending
U.S. civilian authorities in Baghdad failed to keep good track of nearly $1 billion in Iraqi money spent for reconstruction projects and can't produce records to show whether they got some services and products they paid for, a new audit concludes.

We Interrupt This Broadcast

On the last day of the Democratic Convetnion the Pakistanis announced the capture of a "high-level al Qaeda operative". Funny how that lives up the predictions made in the TNR piece "July Surprise" , which suggested that the Bush Administration was putting pressure on Pakistan to bring in members of the Al Qeada leadership before the election.

"Vote for John Kerry, Fool"

Kerry's acceptance speech is avaiable, surprisingly, on John Kerry's web site. He might never be as charsmatic or politically talented, but his performance tonight was pretty good. Senator Kerry had some particularly clever lines tonight that may have made an impact; "There is nothing more pessimistic than saying America can't do better" was a nice burn and "I don't want to claim that God is on our side As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side." which stand in contrast to statements made by the other candidate. All in all a good speech and even the folks on Fox have called it Kerry's best, though that could easily be seen as an underhanded compliment.

Just Great

Since the constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage was defeated the Republicans have been looking for other ways to fight homosexualism. The Marriage Protection Act is part of the right's latest offensive and has already passed the House. The bill would prevent any federal court, including the Supreme Court, from ruling on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. This of course undermines the principle of seperation of powers within the government by cutting out the judicial branch of government. It is interesting how being absolutely sure that gay marriage doesn't become a nation institution takes priority over protecting foundations of our government for the Republicans. Then again, as Rick Santorum said "Isn't that the ultimate homeland security—standing up and defending marriage?"

Operation Fiscal Trainkwreck Going according to plan

White House to Project Record Deficit
The White House will project soon that this year's federal deficit will exceed $420 billion, congressional aides said Tuesday, a record figure certain to ignite partisan warfare over President Bush's handling of the economy.

The best part of this story though is that the Administration has been trying to put a positive spin on it:

Either way, the White House was ready to emphasize that the figure is well below the $521 billion it projected for this year last February, and tie it to improvements in the economy.

A bit like that whole "even if we did torture innocent people, at least we aren't as bad as Saddam Hussien!" line of reasoning.

Bad Union! Bad!

On the whole I support the labor movement in this country. Unlike in many western European nations the US has been able to avoid developing any really troublesome unions. The problem here is just the reverse, too few workers are organized. However, there are some unions that live up to the worst stereotypes about trade unions (go teamsters!). The pilots' unions are fighting a the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation that crash-proof cameras be installed in cockpits of large and small aircraft. The pilots are worried that these cameras will invade the privacy of the pilots. Of course invading pilots' privacy is the whole point. It isn't like this sorts of things are at all uncommon. Bank tellers, 7-11 clerks and host of other occupations are subject to this kind of observation. It doesn't seem unreasonable to ask the same when the lives of hundreds of people can be at risk.