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October 31
“I’m Osama bin Laden and I approved this message”
By now, everyone has either seen or heard about Osama bin Laden’s latest taped message, first aired on Al-Jazeera last Friday. The first thing that struck me when I read the transcript was that it resembled a campaign ad. It looks like one, too: Bin Laden has ditched the fatigues and cave-wall backdrop for tasteful beige and a podium. His message—”…Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands…”—would almost sound like a campaign slogan were it not for the fact that it is a dangerous threat coming from the mouth of a terrorist with the blood of thousands on his hands.
Both Kerry and Bush were quick—and rightly so—to condemn bin Laden and his message, dismissing it as a terrorist threat which America would not bow down to. And yet, bin Laden’s tape was no mere threat. By having the message broadcast right before the election, bin Laden seeks to place himself once again on the world stage, reminding all observers that he is a shaper of world events and a force to be reckoned with. (Military analyst Daniel Benjamin argues that his message is directed more at Muslims worldwide than to the US, thereby hoping to reinforce his self-styled role as a leader of international Islam and attracting more followers to the cause of jihad.)
That bin Laden has been able to do this speaks to the fact that his is still very much alive and uncaptured. And yet the Bush camp is claiming this as a boon to Bush’s campaign, arguing that anything that puts terror in the minds of voters will remind them that Bush is the better candidate to protect America. Some (such as FOXNews’ Neil Cavuto) have even argued that bin Laden is trying to help Kerry get elected.
This form of thinking is simply obtuse. It is hardly to Bush’s credit that bin Laden is still free and able to broadcast messages of terror three years after Bush committed himself to tracking him down and capturing him. And if bin Laden prefers any candidate, it’s Bush, not Kerry. The wingnuts have been trying to push the “terrorists-love-Kerrry” conceit for a while, but it’s not sticking. Bush is far more valuable to bin Laden. He is a polarizing figure in the Muslim world and his pursuit of a radical foreign policy in the execution of the “war on terror” only provides further justification—in the minds of radicals like bin Laden—for a militant Islamic crusade against the West.
The fact that the Bush camp claims that the bin Laden message will boost his campaign points to the fundamental ineptitude and cynicism of the Administration. It’s taken three years, and we’re no closer to capturing bin Laden. Not that we’re trying very hard. The fact that Bush could point to this tape as proof that America needs his continued leadership highlights Bush’s use of an interminable War on Terror as a political trump card—so long as the terrorists are out there, we need to delegate ever-increasing power to the President to track them down.
Bush is not an effective leader when it comes to terror. He presided over one of the greatest intelligence failures in US history and failed to prevent an attack that claimed more than 3,000 lives. He has tried to assume the mantle of a Great Leader simply by shrouding himself in the dust of masonry and corpses at Ground Zero. This latest message from a hale and healthy Osama bin Laden only further illustrates his ineffectiveness.
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October 30
GOP whines, while operatives cheat
I don’t know how much more of this I can take. The state GOP has challenged 5,600 questionable addresses in Milwaukee among new voters. This number conveniently mirrors the gap between Bush and Gore in the last election. So if you can’t win the vote by convincing people your ideas are correct, grab that number of voters from the inner city (because you KNOW those people don’t vote for Bush) and disqualify them.
Ah, but the catch is, most of the addresses do exist, or they’re simple data entry errors. I love it, massive voter fraud by Democrats is…transposed address numbers.
Or if you can’t disqualify them, lie to their faces. This particular bit of ridiculous propaganda being floated around downtown Milwaukee is reprehensible.
Now the GOP refutes they have anything to do with this loathsome flyer, but they have said that this group, the Milwaukee Black Voters League, will be helping run their election day challenges.
So it’s clear. The GOP cheats, lies and steals and then points the finger at Democrats as playing dirty pool.
It’s clear who has their hands dirty in this election, and it isn’t the Democrats.
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October 29
And that’s the end of that
Video Shows Explosives Went Missing After War
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October 28
WI Voters’ Bill of Rights
No matter who you intend to cast your vote for on Tuesday, know your rights. Print this pamphlet off and take it into your polling station if you’re worried about being challenged—although Madison will be just about one of the safest places in the country to vote, both in terms of ease of same-day registration and the likelihood of your vote being counted (the optical scan technology used in Madison has one of the lowest miscount rates of the many methods that will be used across the country).
A few points that should be emphasized:
If you’re in line before 8:00PM, you have the right to vote and cannot be turned away.
If you are eligible but not registered, you may register at the polls by signing a certification form and either providing proof of residence (such as a recent item of mail) or having another voter vouch for you.
If you have moved to Wisconsin within ten days of the election, you have the right to vote for President and Vice-President.
If you make a mistake on your ballot, you may request up to three replacements.
Be assertive, and if you encounter any problems call the Election Protection hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
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FBI investigating Halliburton, Cheney
From the AP: “The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices. The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company.”
Continue reading "FBI investigating Halliburton, Cheney"
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100,000 for Kerry
The fire marshall has confirmed that the crowd at today’s Kerry rally had at least 60,000 supporters plus another 20,000 on side streets.
[update] “Madison Assistant Fire Chief Carl Saxe told AFP that at least 80,000 people were in the main crowd, while, at least 20,000 more were trying to get in on sidestreets, making the rally the biggest event in Madison’s history.”
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100,000 dead in Iraq war
The AP reports that a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva estimates that 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion of Iraq.
The survey indicated violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and air strikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal.
“Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children,” they said.
The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases. However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces — with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships
Also available on Yahoo!.
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Economist endorses Kerry
Readallabouddit here.
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Where else but in Florida?
Police: Bush Supporter Imprisons Kerry-Supporting Girlfriend
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October 27
HAVA used to keep voters from polls
Even though it was passed in the wake of the disastrous 2000 election with the goal of making it easier for Americans to vote, the Help America Vote Act appears to be a tool for some election administrators to actually prevent eligible citizens from voting, particularly in Ohio. The recent Sixth Circuit ruling only exacerbates the problem.
UPDATE:
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Dlott has ended a Republican-led challenge to the eligibility of 35,000 voters (largely minorities) in Ohio.
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“The Russkie talks big, but frankly we think he’s short of know-how”*
[updated, with a fresh injection of passive voice]
Now the Washington Times claims that the Russians stole the missing explosives, solely on the basis of the claims of one John Shaw. Before we succumb to Drudgitis, here’s an overview of the story so far. To begin with, Scott McClellan said nobody heard about this until October 15th, and yet Shaw claims this has been known about for nine months. And the Pentagon appears to be distancing itself from Shaw’s claims. Besides, the looters—Iraqis all—are starting to be identified by eyewitnesses. It’s not like we’d ever done that great a job of safeguarding Al Qaqaa. And the AFP reports that the Iraqis—the ones we like—tell us it would have been impossible for the explosives to have been removed before the invasion anyway.
*Obligatory quote from Dr. Strangelove. Not that the Russians have said anything to corroborate Shaw’s claims.
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Go Pack Go!
If this isn’t a reason to cheer for the Packers then I don’t know what is.
This is hilarious. If the Redskins lose this weekend, then Kerry wins. And I love the Packers! Too cool….
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Bush’s One Finger Salute
You know, the president is just a regular guy.
As this video shows Bush really knows how to connect with the common man.
Now, after watching this brief bit of hilarity (back when Bush was a governor) I didn’t really think any worse of him. It’s actually kind of funny. But imagine if this sort of off-the-cuff moment had been caught of Kerry?
Imagine the way the right would spin it into inapporpriate behavior of a man wanting to be president, etc. etc. etc.
Not that this will change anyone’s mind at this point, but it’s pretty funny.
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Tomorrow’s News on the Weapons Cache
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein’s weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
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BBC documents voter intimidation in FL
A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan—possibly in violation of US law—to disrupt voting in the state’s African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign’s national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called “caging list”.
It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
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The headline says it all
Judge Rules Against 10,000 Floridians Barred From Voting
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Web-based politics
Like it or hate it, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is now available for free distribution via BitTorrent. And Bush has apparently blocked overseas surfers from viewing his campaign website.
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A Blue for Bush?
Today’s Slate discusses how our fair state is one that neither candidate can afford to lose, and how it hangs precariously in the balance.
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FT endorses Kerry
Noted wacko left-wing rag the Financial Times endorses John Kerry for President.
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October 26
New Yorker endorses Kerry
The New Yorker, one of the country’s longest running journals of politics, literature, and criticism, has broken with its eight-decade tradition of refraining from endorsing candidates for office by running a pro-Kerry op-ed piece that is, in large part, a stark critique of the past 3½ years under the Bush Administration: “Its record has been one of failure, arrogance, and—strikingly for a team that prided itself on crisp professionalism—incompetence…” The piece also portrayed Bush in particular as being in “a self-created bubble of faith-based affirmation” and intolerant of any dissent. Primarily an attack on Bush, the piece nevertheless claims that “[i]n every crucial area of concern to Americans, Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery.”
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What Did Kerry Know About the Fraudulent 60 Minutes Story?
Shortly before 60 Minutes ran the forged documents regarding President Bush’s National Guard service, John Kerry began talking about the issue again, and he raised questions as to whether President Bush went AWOL. What a coincidence! How did he know to start talking about that story just days before 60 Minutes ran the story? Other evidence further suggests prior knowledge by the Kerry campaign.
Interestingly enough, less than three weeks ago Kerry said that President Bush, “didn’t even guard the ammo dumps.” He said this on national television in the town-hall debate in St. Louis. What ammo dumps were Kerry talking about? We never heard any story about failure to guard ammo dumps before this week. Another coincidence? Perhaps. But when too many coincidences happen, they’re no longer coincidences.
The complete debate transcript.
The context in which Kerry made this comment:
KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy, but winning the peace is larger than just the military component.
General Shinseki had the wisdom to say, “You’re going to need several hundred thousand troops to win the peace.” The military’s job is to win the war.
A president’s job is to win the peace.
The president did not do what was necessary. Didn’t bring in enough nation. Didn’t deliver the help. Didn’t close off the borders. Didn’t even guard the ammo dumps. And now our kids are being killed with ammos right out of that dump.
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Another Fraudulent Story from CBS’s 60 Minutes
As it turns out, the story on the weapons cache that the New York Times ran yesterday was being held by CBS’s 60 Minutes for airing on October 31, right before the election. This election’s October Surprise apparently came a week early!
To add insult to injury, we now know that the story was, at best, dubious and lacking in relevant details. NBC News has reported that the weapons disappeared before the liberation of Iraq began. This again raises questions of John Kerry’s suggestion that the inspections just needed more time. If these weapons were smuggled out before the liberation of Iraq began, what else got smuggled out? Where did these weapons go to?
Rob Deters (see below) and John Kerry desperately wanted this story to be true and have done their best to explode its impact and wrongly point the finger at President Bush. Deters says, “By my calculations, that’s 742,000 planes that could be blown up with the amount of missing explosives gone.” These may not be biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, but they certainly could have caused massive destruction.
This means two things: 1. Saddam Hussein had weapons that could collectively cause mass destruction. 2. About the last thing we should have done was sit around and wait for France, Germany, and the UN to get on board. Who knows what else could have been smuggled out had we done that?
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Newspapers Abandon Bush
You know, Hunter has alluded to this, and Salon points out the good work that Editor and Publisher magazine (a non-partisan trade rag for you journalists) has pointed out that only two Democrats have ever won the majority of endorsements in this country.
Since in this election Kerry is crushing Bush and won many “flip-flop” newspaper endorsements (papers that endorsed Bush in 2000 and now endorse Kerry) it’s interesting to see how Bush’s campaign has spun this.
They claim they can’t win the major newspaper editorial boards over and by saying that they’re clearly playing into the false “liberal media” assumption made by, well, a lot of people.
But as was stated before, in 2000 Bush had a 2 to 1 margin on Gore for major newspaper endorsements.
So in the last 60 years only Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Bill Clinton in 1992 won more endorsements than their Republican challenger.
What does that say about where Bush is today? Why has he so completely lost the support of the media? Is it because he can’t fool them like he has about 46% of the public right now?
This isn’t a “liberal media” issue. This is an “informed public can’t support a lying, inept president” issue.
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October 25
OMG! Ashlee can’t sing!
Did everybody see Ashlee Simpson on the Radio Music Awards? I mean, I know she was caught lipsynching on SNL and her daddy said it was because her tummy hurt but ugh! She just sang tonight on NBC and she, like, so sucked!
What effect will this have on swing state voters?
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Charming to the last
Ann Coulter on The Sean Hannity Show: “I’m sure—being good liberals—their views on gay marriage will serve them well” in prison.
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Judge dismisses Wexler’s FL vote concerns
U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn ruled that the state of Florida will not be required to create a paper trail for its new touchscreen voting system. U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) had filed suit against Secretary of State Glenda Hood in an attempt to ensure that “undervotes” and voting errors could be minimized through accountability. Cohn disagreed and ruled for the state, arguing that Wexler’s suit hadn’t met the required burden for issuing an injunction.
I think I understand now. Florida liked being the center of attention in 2000 so much that it’s doing everthing possible to mess up in 2004 as well.
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Today is not Opposite Day
The Idaho Statesman, the paper with the largest daily circulation in the most Republican state in the Union, has endorsed John Kerry:
… We recognize Bush’s finest moments on the job: The president showed remarkable poise and leadership in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and earned all the bipartisan support he received.
Somewhere along the way, however, the man who promised to be a “uniter” took a turn away from common ground. He courted conservatives with deep tax cuts, controversial judicial nominees and his support of a superfluous constitutional amendment on gay marriage. Bush has denounced the partisanship on Capitol Hill as if he were a bystander. The record suggests otherwise …
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11th Circuit: x-rays hazardous to your civic health
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has declared that the specter of terrorism is insufficient to warrant the reduction of First Amendment protections as understood by the courts in its decision in Bourgeois v. Peters, a case with broad implications for the screening procedures used at the GOP and Democratic conventions, campaign rallies, as well as the ongoing debate about civil liberties and the “war on terror”.
From the 11th Circuit’s decision: “Sept. 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country.”
From the article: “This is really the first case in the country involved with mass searches of nonviolent demonstrators,” says Georgia ACLU director Gerry Weber, who argued the case two years ago. “It’s the first case I’m aware of where government reliance was grounded in generalized concern about terrorist attacks.”
The decision will likely be cited in future cases where the government raises the attacks of Sept. 11 as a reason to change or diminish constitutional rights, he says.
Police are now going to have a harder time justifying mass searches without warrants simply by appealing to concerns over terrorism. How this ruling will directly affect what few large rallies are left in this campaign is not clear, since the GOP and the Dems still have the final say over who enters their events.
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Why Wisconsin matters
From the Christian Science Monitor.
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A Plague of Lockerbies
The news networks are abuzz after a NYTimes article shows that about 371 tons of high explosive are missing in Iraq from the Al Qaqaa weapons facility.
This facility used to be monitored by the IAEA, who have raised the alarm on the missing explosvies. Kerry has pounced (as he should) on this development.
One pound of HMX (the missing explosive) was used to down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
By my calculations, that’s 742,000 planes that could be blown up with the amount of missing explosives gone.
The Bush administration has known this for almost a month. In the NYTimes article they attempt some weak spin by noting that Iraq is awash in explosives and the only reason this is being brought to our attention is that the IAEA was watching it and now is making a big deal out of it.
Well, shouldn’t they? And isn’t it pretty weak to state that these missing explosvies aren’t a big deal, since there are a lot more missing explosvies?
This kind of story could be crippling to Bush’s assertion that he’s made us safer. It belies the fact that the war in Iraq is actually producing more terrorists, and unleashing more deadly components for terrorists on the world.
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Ohio ballots
Ohio voters (of all persuasions) are now truly screwed. Just try and read that ballot.
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The “Non-Arguable Case”
…against the Bush Administration: “100 Facts and 1 Opinion”.
Continue reading "The “Non-Arguable Case”"
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October 24
By popular demand
It is becoming increasingly evident that a distinct possibility exists for George Bush to become America’s first ever two-term President to have not even claimed a plurality of a popular vote. Karl Rove and company seem to have engineered a plan that manipulates the Electoral College to the nth possible degree, ignoring red and blue states while emphasizing “swing states.”
The result has been that blue states are becoming even bluer - Kerry’s popularity in friendly territory cannot be underestimated - while red states loiter at just over even and the swing states hang in the balance. This presents the likely scenario of a Bush win with even only 46% of the popular vote.
What would such a win do to the Commander in Chief’s legitimacy? What would it do to the Electoral College? And, perhaps most interestingly, what would it do to voter turnout next time around?
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Bush supporters miss the point
According to the Program on International Policy Attitudes, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (contrary to the Duelfer Report) and 75% believe that Hussein’s Iraq had a relationship with bin Laden’s al Qaeda (which even Bush Administration officials deny, in their more lucid moments).
Continue reading "Bush supporters miss the point"
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J’accuse
Bush supporters deride Kerry as both Francophone and -phile. Kerry boosters accuse Bush of being in bed with the Saudis. Now you can figure out who’s worse, courtesy of Slate.
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October 22
Hanky Panky with the Elderly
Thanks to Talkingpointsmemo for this link.
In our discussions of what constitutes voter fraud, this situation seems to take the cake.
Lying to the elderly and impersonating an elections official in doing so? Now that’s a dirty trick.
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October 20
Voter Fraud Discussion
Mark and I have been keeping up regular posts (and the other Rob) on the on-going issues regarding voter registration and the voter fraud vs. voter suppression debate taking place between Democratic and Republican camps.
Lets be clear. No one is denying that both are taking place. I do not contest that there are voter registrations being submitted that are fraudulent. One of the inherent problems with paid for voter registration campaigns is that people will submit registrations that are not on the up and up so that they can paid (be it in crack or money).
It is also true that voter suprression tactics are also in full swing. The recent headline story in the Milwaukee Journal about the DA asking for more poll workers is case in point. In that story, a Republican staffer has been sitting in the office of the Milwaukee City Election Commission watching people pick up and drop off absentee ballots. When asked by the media if he was concerned the city would hand out too many ballots, he muttered about the media getting it all twisted, and didn’t really have a great reason for being there.
Well, he has the right to be in the office. But why exactly is he there? Is it to make sure that the system is working properly? Or is it to give the impression to voters that their actions are somehow shady?
That’s the tip of the iceberg. The Sproul case is a perfect example.
The right to vote is fundamental and what we see, nationwide, are attempts to inflate voter rolls by Democrats, but further attempts to disenfranshise voters by Republicans. Once again, unless evidence of actual attempts to vote multiple times or coordinated efforts to dilute the vote are found, incorrect voter registrations will not have as detrimental an outcome as outright suppression.
This is a perfect “plague on both your houses” scenario. No Democrat should encourage multiple or fraudulent registrations. No Republican should turn a blind eye to voter suppression.
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Kerry and the Global Test
A while back, Senator John F. Kerry discussed the idea of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia and made some rather interesting comments. This was another mission in which then President Bill Clinton did not seek U.N. approval to clean up the mess that Europe refused to take care of. We have not yet won the peace in that region from the war that Clinton and Wesley Clark conducted, but of course, we don’t hear about this from Kerry or the media wing of the Democratic party.
Kerry, perhaps giving us further insight as to what he means by the “global test”, had this to say when making his comments (Washington Post):
In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, “If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no.”
Do we really want this guy being commander in chief of our armed forces? Does he understand that the U.S. Constitution grants us sovereignty over our military decisions? We have seen a consistent pattern of questionable behavior from Kerry over the years, both in his words and actions. Knowing this, questioning his ability to lead during time of war is both legitimate and prudent.
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Axis of Evil for…Bush?
The Iranian government has announced it is backing George Bush for reelection.
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Vote Fraud Update (10/20/04)
We could almost have a daily update going for vote fraud across the country.
The story speaks for itself- vote fraud is out there whether we like to admit it or not.
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The Boy in the Bubble
The Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson on Bush’s departure from the reality-based community:
[T]he Bush campaign has all but made a virtue of the bubble in which Bush resides and presides. This presidency is a triumph of the will, of resolve. Facts are for flip-floppers; data, for girlie-men. Kerry commands the facts and it breeds vacillation. The force is with Bush, and that is all he, and the nation, need. Bush has fused anti-empiricism and cultural resentment — and that, should he ride it to victory, will truly be a catastrophic success.
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“The most self-assured man I’ve ever met in my life”
Robertson: “Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.”
Bush: “We’re not going to have any casualties.”
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October 19
Sinclair Drops Stolen Honor
Facing a shareholder lawsuit, an advertiser boycott and a $105 million stock shortfall, Sinclair Broadcast Group has announced that it will not air the anti-Kerry documentary Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal on its 62 member stations. Instead it plans to run a “balanced” news presentation titled A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media in the same time slot. Legal proceedings may resume if the new broadcast is deemed insufficiently balanced.
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“God is not a Republican or a Democrat”
The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, Jr. does an excellent job of puncturing the religious hyperbole surrounding the campaign.
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Voter Registration Fraud Strikes Again
Some of my colleagues on the opinion page have pooh-poohed my concern over vote fraud in Wisconsin. One argued that those intending to vote fraudulently would have to steal mail before a fraudulent registration turns into a fraudulent vote. There are a number of problems with this argument. First, it is incredibly easy to come up with a phony piece of mail, and with poll workers being incredibly lenient, this is hardly an obstacle to fraudulent voting. With the hundreds of lawyers the Kerry campaign has stationed at polling places, it’s hard to believe that poll workers would have the final say in preventing a fraudulent vote anyway. Of course, an easy way to avoid this whole situation is to require photo IDs at the polls in Wisconsin- just as banks, movie rental stores, and many other polling wards in different states do. There’s a number of other common sense measures Wisconsin could adopt to prevent vote fraud- a problem our current laws only ripen the situation for.
Forgery on even one voter registration form is a felony, and should never be taken lightly. In other swing states, we now other examples of questionable voter registrations, and I link two of the stories below.
Ohio- A man was charged Monday with filling out more than 100 fictitious voter registration forms and was paid in crack cocaine for doing so.
Colorado- An estimated 55,000 names appear on the state’s voter list more than once. Twenty counties have more registered voters than residents eligible to vote. The New Voters Project (responsible for many problematic voter registration forms here in Wisconsin) also has a strong presence in Colorado.
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CIA stalls on damning 9/11 report
The LA Times (login: heraldreader | password: badger) reports that the CIA has “named names” of senior officials in its own 9/11 report, but as it contains material that would be extremely damaging to the Administration it will be kept under wraps until after the election. Definitely an article worth reading in its entirety.
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Thoughtcrime at GOP rallies
Let it be known that the phrase “Protect Our Civil Liberties” is “obscene”. And disagreeing with the President in public is a “criminal trespass”. That is all.
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Breaking up
It should come as no surprise that, as Salon (linked through the Guardian so you don’t have to register) reports, George Bush and the Administration have dumped the New York Times.
Love it, hate it, or ignore it, the Times is the country’s paper of record, and for most of the past century every President has felt compelled to address the paper as being a “gatekeeper” in the flow of press coverage for policymaking and campaigning. Bush, however, who (as the Times itself has pointed out) is rather thin-skinned when it comes to criticism or failures of faith, has finally dispensed with approaching the paper with courtesy or deference to its role in American print media, secure in the support he receives through cable, Internet, and radio media outlets.
The supposedly liberal Times was remarkably meek and uncritial for the first three years of Bush’s term, and its coverage of foreign affairs leading up to the invasion of Iraq was nothing if not dutifully deferential to the official line. But Bush obviously believes that he has nothing to lose and much to gain by ignoring and even attacking the Times’ credibility and objectivity. By barring its reporters from campaign events, slamming the paper in public speeches, and running email campaigns to smear Times journalists, this White House has all but broken up with the Gray Lady.
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Sinclair moves to silence internal critics
Sinclair Broadcast Group fired Jon Leiberman, its Washington bureau chief, on Monday for publicly critizing company plans to air a documentary—charging John Kerry with prolonging the Vietnam War through his antiwar activities upon his completion of his tour of duty—on all of its 62 stations across the country just before the election.
Leiberman said Monday that Sinclair is using the documentary, Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, “to drive their political agenda… I don’t think it served the public trust… I know I stood up for the principles of objectivity.”
One of the Vietnam veterans featured in the documentary has filed a libel lawsuit claiming that he was falsely portrayed as a liar by the filmmakers.
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Kerry & The Church
John Kerry has apparently been excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
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October 18
The Path to Florida
Supreme Court clerks break the tradition of silence and spill the beans to Vanity Fair (posted in two parts in PDF format) on the behind-the-scenes partisan dealings in the Court following the 2000 election.
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October 17
“A civil war”
In today’s New York Times, Ron Suskind—the journalist who quoted former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill as describing George Bush’s leadership style as that of a “blind man in a room full of deaf people”—describes how Bush’s particular reliance on guts, instinct, and above all, unswerving religious conviction to guide decisionmaking at all levels, has fundamentally altered the office of the presidency, shrouding its functioning in secrecy and giving rise to a culture of president-as-messiah both within the Administration and at the grassroots level.
Suskind’s central point is his identification of the “key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith.”
The Republican Party is a deceptively diverse coalition of different kinds of conservatives—fiscal and social—as well as libertarians, hawks, and deeply religious Americans of all stripes. The coming presidential election may not simply be a national referendum on whether Bush’s or Kerry’s policies are fit to guide the nation—as former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett puts it in Suskind’s article, “if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3”—a battle for the future direction of the party. Whether Bush’s faith or some other Republican philosophy—fiscal restraint and smaller government, robust libertarianism, or something new—will emerge ascendant is an open question.
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October 16
A liberal rag for a liberal man
To paraphrase “Casablanca,” I am shocked, shocked, to see that the New York Times is endorsing John Kerry.
But what I can’t understand is why such a self-important fish-wrap as the Times would endorse more than two weeks out. If they are as furious with President Bush as their piece indicates - and, believe me, they are irate - it would seem that they would want to maximize the impact of their piece by running it closer to the election so as to contribute to last minute momentum.
Yet by running it now, they will lose any resultant press (although, like I said, this is like saying the sun will rise in the morning) before long, and their words will be distant memories by Election Day.
Then again, hopefully John Kerry will be but a distant memory by the time the New York Times takes to writing their next endorsement.
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October 13
Dirty Tricks
It’s true that both sides are engaging in vandalism in this debate when it comes to compaign headquarters. And when I say that I usually doubted that vandals painting a W on a Democratic headquarters or throwing a rock through the window of a Republican one are higher-ups.
But when a targeted attack on a Democratic campaign office in crucial swing state Ohio is perpetrated the antennae go up. And when it isn’t vandalism, but the theft of computers with sensitive GOTV information then you have to wonder.
This sort of behavior is simply reprehensible. It undercuts the legitimacy of the election, it sullies the Republican party, and it simply doesn’t belong in the democratic process.
No one should condone this behavior, for any reason whatsoever.
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October 12
Hussein’s Brain
Since Iraq is one of the biggest topics of the election it seems odd that when the Duelfer report came out, it didn’t have as big a splash as it might have had about two months ago. That’s namely because it came in a week of huge news (the first debate had just occurred) and because, well, it’s freakin’ huge.
The LA Times has a great article boiling down what Charles Duelfer found.
It’s worth a read because it shows how we got to where we are.
Interestingly the Duelfer report has been Kryptonite to the Bush campaign, who tried to spin it their way by talking about Hussein gaming the U.N. oil for food program, but have since dropped nearly all reference to it.
Why? Because it blows their justifications for the war wide open.
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Keeping it in the Family
I don’t really want to….there are just too many jokes possible.
Just take a look at this picture and come up with your own.
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October 11
Bush not a favorite among economists
An informal, stochastically-selected poll of academic economists conducted by the Economist, has yielded somewhat surprising results, with more than 70% of respondents labelling Bush’s first-term economic policies as “bad” or “very bad”, and nearly 60% disapproving of his economic agenda for a second term. 27% disapproved of Kerry’s proposed overall agenda.
The primary source of economists’ discontent with Bush is the centerpiece of his economic policy—tax cuts, with more than 70% of those polled describing Bush’s tax cuts as “bad” or “very bad”, based on concerns about America’s fiscal health and the pressures the eventual retirement of our parents’ generation will place on the infrastructure of the federal government.
Those polled also preferred Kerry’s health care plan to Bush’s by a significant margin.
Bush did better than Kerry on trade: 60% regard Kerry’s plan as a bad idea, based largely on many economists’ opinions that concerns over outsourcing are inflated and outsourcing does not pose a significant threat to the American economy. There are compelling reasons for agreeing with that opinion, but given that there are many Americans with strongly negative opinions about jobs moving overseas, it’s unlikely that we’ll see either campaign deny the importance of the outsourcing issue.
For the sake of even-handedness, here’s a story on ASU economics professor Edward Prescott, 2004 Nobel Laureate, who thinks that “[w]hat Bush has done has been not very big, it’s pretty small… Tax rates were not cut enough.”
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Commission on Civil Rights criticizes Bush
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an agency of the federal government, has released a report, Redefining Rights in America—The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration, 2001-2004, taking President Bush to task for having “neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words.” The report states that Bush has not worked hard to promote civil or human rights: “Failing to build on common ground, the Bush administration missed opportunities to build consensus on key civil rights issues and has instead adopted policies that divide Americans.”
Among the areas of division: a poor track record for promoting and defending voting rights and ballot access; the failure of the No Child Left Behind Act to reduce the achievement gap between white and non-white students (largely because the Act underfunds failing schools rather than assisting them); minorities unfairly bearing the burden of waste and environmental contamination; and the systematic violation of civil rights that has taken place since 9/11 in the name of security, particularly a rise in racial profiling.
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Point/Counterpoint
—Bush: “Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into office. And today it’s less than 1 percent, because we’re working together to try to bring this deficit under control.” (from the St. Louis debate)
—The Cato Institute: Nuh-uh.
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Yes, it’s the same Sinclair as last time
If Michael Moore’s Farhenheit 9/11, seen by some as an anti-Bush screed, were screened on major network television on or just before the election, there’d be a storm of outrage from right-wing politicians, pundits, and activists. But what if an anti-Kerry documentary received the same treatment? You guessed it…
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October 9
WV GOP attempts to intimidate Democrats
In a move that stinks of voter intimidation, Republicans in the battleground state of West Virginia have resorted to calling registered Democrats and informing them that they are not registered to vote in November.
Republican spokesperson Mary Diamond defended the calls, saying, “[e]veryone needs to be registered to vote in this election, it’s as simple as that.”
And after all, we can’t rely on voter registrars and poll officials to make sure of that, now can we?
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And they thought Dean was out of control
Angry, defensive, loud, and irascible.
Click here to see Bush tearing into moderator Charlie Gibson and ranting rather than allowing Gibson to ask him the next question.
And that’s all I have to say about the debate.
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October 8
What is John Kerry’s Secret Plan?
John Kerry keeps telling us he “has a plan”. But what is it? He apparently doesn’t know himself, as became apparent in his speech yesterday in Englewood, Colorado:
“And I’ll have to wait until January 20th. I don’t know what I’m going to find on January 20th, the way the President is going. If the President just does more of the same every day and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively speaking. Now, I just don’t know. I can’t tell you. What I’ll tell you is, I have a plan. “
This is laughable, and it’s a wonder anyone takes him seriously on foreign policy. It’s easy to be a senator and a Monday morning quarterback. It’s another to be president and have to make decisions.
Whether you agree with President Bush’s foreign policy or not, you know what it is, and anyone who reads the Duelfer report entirely sees that President Bush was absolutely correct, even knowing what we know now. The most important part of the report (and the part that the media wing of the Democratic party is not reporting) is the details of the oil for food scandal and the involvement of our allies (?) France and Germany. With the involvement of France, Germany, and Russia, leaving Saddam Hussein alone would have been the worst possible thing to do. Talk about “the coerced and bribed”- France was being paid off to veto any U.N. resolution authorizing force! We now know who we ultimately would be siding with if we would have sided with France and Germany.
Incidentally, I absolutely agree with Rob Hunter about the impact this election will have on the Judiciary. This is one of the oldest Supreme Courts ever. Unlike, Rob, however, I think this makes it imperative to re-elect President Bush, and that is one of my main reasons for doing so.
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What you won’t hear in tonight’s debate
…is a discussion of the most important issue of this campaign: the future make-up of the Supreme Court. The next president will be in a position to appoint three and perhaps four justices, dramatically affecting the composition of the court in terms of legal and jurisprudential philosophies. This in turn will have an immeasurable impact on the development of American law and politics in the coming decades. While it’s unclear what kind of justices Kerry would look for, the speculation about what a Bush-appointed Court would look like is well underway.
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Third party shenannigans
Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb intend to storm tonight’s debate in a bid to rumble with the big-leaguers or get arrested trying. If they do get arrested, they won’t be able to show up for a special airing of NOW with Bill Moyers on PBS featuring third party candidates such as themselves as well as Ralph Nader and Michael Peroutka.
Update: They were both arrested. Shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but the incident does serve to illustrate the limitations of the two-party system.
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Glad to see they’ve finally started
U.S. Said to Develop Strategy for Iraq
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Rove’s Mouthpiece?
Bush has been accused by many of simply parroting the lines fed to him by Karl Rove. But no one thought it was this direct.
Is it possible that while Republicans were whining about Kerry bringing out his own pen, Bush was getting answers fed to him by an in-ear radio?
Salon follows up on several blogs that have questioned what the bulge on Bush’s back was during the debate.
Frankly, this is as legitimate a post as Bob’s pen brouhaha, and far more damaging.
After all, this would prove what Democrats have been saying all along….Bush is a retarded puppet.
Obviously this is not going to be proven (the radio pack on his back that is) but if it were, wow. It would turn out the marionette strings pulling our presidents are a lot more direct than we thought.
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The peaceful left…terrorizing their opposition
The peace loving, “let’s talk about it”, left has resorted to brutish techniques to silence their critics. There have been several shootings at Bush Cheney campaign sites and protestors have taken over and trashed several others across the country. It seems like every conservative speaker on this campus is protested and then silenced as the “progressives” make a loud scene while the speaker is trying to enlighten them with a differing opinion than their own. Where is the peace when Bush campaign workers found their offices trashed by AFL-CIO members in Milwaukee and Miami? Where is the “intellectual superiority” when Bush supporter’s are kicked and their signs are ripped in two at a Kerry rally. Where is the intellectual wit when John Edwards said that anyone who votes for Bush is stupid? This campus is worse of all. Students wearing Bush pins are not served at local restaurants the same way Kerry supporters are. They are sneered at while walking, flicked off when waving their signs, and ridiculed by professors when they want to make a point in class. Where is the diversity the left loves so much when it comes to thought? I guess diversity of every category except for political ideology is what is sought over at this campus. Enough is enough.
Stop slicing republican’s tires (Florida), stop shooting at Bush Cheney Campaign Buildings (several states) and stop ridiculing Republicans for believing it something (everywhere).
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October 7
Election day terrorism alert
John Ashcroft has issued a directive expanding the powers of federal law enforcement agencies and dramatically increasing the scope of police and law enforcement presence before and during November 2nd in order to secure polling areas. No word yet on whether or not this is motivated by a genuine concern for the integrity of American democracy or if these actions will further depress voter turnout through fear and intimidation.
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So Desperate
Alright, it’s official folks, the BC04 campaign has gone off the deep end.
After a week in which every bit of news was bad, from L. Paul Bremer saying we never had enough troops, to the current Duelfer report which indicates that Saddam had no WMD’s, no programs in place, and no abilities to restart them, to the CIA report denying a Saddam / Zarqawi link poor old Bushie just can’t catch a break.
In fact, he can’t catch one so bad, this week could break his candidacy. Finally, it seems like all the falsehoods and misrepresentations are going to sink this ship of state.
So how do you recover? How do you spin this ten ton dumptruck of bad bad news? You make the ridiculous claim that you invaded Iraq to keep Saddam from defrauding the U.N.
To put it bluntly, you have to be fucking kidding me.
The neo-cons are so screwed on the outcome in Iraq their theories will be discredited for a lifetime.
I cannot wait to watch their downfall. The American public isn’t stupid. They will not be happy that their kids are losing limbs in Ramadi because there was NO IMMINENT THREAT.
This intellecutally bankrupt administration just bought the farm with this news cycle.
And the American public is finally realizing it as well.
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October 6
No WMDs in Iraq, then or now
From CNN:
Contradicting the main argument for a war that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, the top U.S. arms inspector reported Wednesday that he found no evidence that Iraq produced any weapons of mass destruction after 1991. He also concluded that Saddam Hussein’s weapons capability weakened during a dozen years of U.N. sanctions before the U.S. invasion last year (emphasis added).
Iraq used chemical agents against Iranian troops in the 80s, as well as against internal Kurdish and Shia groups shortly thereafter. But according to the report, Iraq’s weapons capability and program deteriorated rapidly after Desert Storm and during the subsequent sanctions.
Although it’s possible that Iraq intended to revive its program in the unlikely event that sanctions were sufficiently relaxed, as Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) pointed out today: “We did not go to war because Saddam had future intentions to obtain weapons of mass destruction.” President Bush and the Administration made their case in no uncertain terms that the WMD threat in Iraq was not only imminent, but present.
Between this report and the common knowledge that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, President Bush now lacks any real justification for why he committed American troops to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
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Listen for it! The Spin that is…
You know what keeps the Republicans such a tight oiled machine when it comes to message? Thinking in lockstep.
People believe things they hear over and over, it’s why advertising works. So when the Bush-Cheney campaign sends this out to the campaign staff….
TO: BC’04 Surrogates FROM: BC’04 Communication RE: Talking Points
We will be sending more talking points later this evening, but the decisive line by Vice President Cheney during the debate was the following:
“So they, in effect, decided they would cast an anti-war vote, and they voted against the troops. Now, if they couldn’t stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to standup to Al Qaeda?”
And then you hear Bill Kristol and Rich Lowry (ultra right-wing commentators on Fox, and writers and editors for the Weekyl Standard and National Review) repeat the line right after the debate…well, no wonder all Republicans think the same!
It’s called marching orders, and my, do they march….
People don’t care for this, and let’s face it, Cheney said so many lies in that debate he’s going to be killed in the upcoming days as the fact checking catches up to him.
I especially loved the “I never met you before,” comment which was disproven with video within minutes of the close of the debate.
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Draft? No Way
Draft? No way
Some people in the media are using the prospect of a draft as a scare tactic to get young people to vote against Bush. Come on! That is ridiculous. Bush will not reinstate conscription and no one has shown me proof to the contrary. If there are problems with force numbers, pay and benefits will be increased far before a draft is instated.
It is pathetic how far some people are willing to go to win this election, including spreading speculation AS FACT. If you can show me proof (not conjecture) that the Bush White House has a draft plan in place and intends to use it in the next four years, please send it to me. Do you have any clue the political fall out of a draft? Republicans would lose the House and the Senate and wouldn’t get into the white house for 12 years. Republicans are not stupid; they know the consequences to such an action, the riots, the protests, and the political fall out.
Most democrats know that Bush wouldn’t do such a thing. In the last 100 years, the only Presidents to instate a draft have been Democrats and I think that drives most democrats CRAZY. If another person mentions the word Draft , I want hard proof, not some figures that the author doesn’t fully understand. Ask the Pentagon if they need a draft. They say NO. As a solider if they want a draft, they say NO, but you ask a left wing opinion columnist if America needs a draft, and he says yes. I don’t know who is worst, the guy who had the opinion, or the guy who passes off the opinion as fact. Give me a break.
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Cheney handedly wins debate
Once again, experience beats wealth (and health) when Dick Cheney trampled Edwards last night. Dick Cheney is a wealth of information and had Edwards retreating the entire evening. Whenever things got bad for Edwards, he would latch onto the Halliburton issue, but as Cheney said, there are no facts to the democrat’s allegations. One of the best lines of the entire debate was when Edwards said that he didn’t pick Kerry as a running mate but Kerry picked him.
Cheney just did a marvelous job in stopping the Johns from spinning the issues. It is easy to see why Cheney is the VP, he is logical and a great debater, a perfect compliment to Bush’s compassion and vision of America.
Edwards is a great trail lawyer, but the jury is out and he lost the VP debate. Seems like the democrat’s southern dandy just doesn’t have the facts, the experience, or the composure to be the next VP of the United States.
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October 5
Significant damage control
In an effort to counteract the recent poll trends that brought the candidates into virtual parity following last Thursday’s debate, President Bush will deliver an unexpected “significant speech” tomorrow instead of a previously scheduled local stump speech. The new speech will be an attempt to restate Bush’s foreign policy positions without the troublesome presence of John Kerry.
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Bait ‘n’ switch?
Recent remarks by Kerry and Edwards (in which they emphasized that they have no plans for any kind of draft) have led to renewed speculation that Bush intends to reintroduce the draft after (if) he’s reëlected. Pundits have been alternately touting or decrying the rumors for over a year now, but as columnist Eric Zorn points out, exactly where will we find sufficient manpower for Bush’s ambitious international agenda?
Consider that thousands of soldiers have been forbidden to leave the military under “stop-loss” orders in the past year.
Consider what Kerry calls the “back-door draft,” a policy that has compelled National Guard members and reservists to take lengthy and sometimes multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. No doubt because of this grueling reality, the Army National Guard came up short on its recruiting goals in the recently ended fiscal year for the first time since 1994.
Consider that the Army, which did meet its recruitment goals last year, has nearly tripled its previous top enlistment bonus to certain recruits, lowered its standards for new recruits and added hundreds of new recruiters in what looks to be a long-shot effort to meet next year’s goal.
Consider also that the Army, to fill 4,200 vacancies in its ranks, has begun issuing call-up orders to members of the Individual Ready Reserve, a pool of those who have completed their service but remain eligible for duty in times of national emergency.
Additionally, House Republicans attempted to silence Bush critic Charlie Rangel (D-NY) by rushing a vote today on his proposed draft legislation (intended to draw attention to the fact that high status young Americans have thus far managed to avoid military service in Afghanistan and Iraq), a move which, in Rangel’s own words, “is a political maneuver to kill rumors of the President’s intention to reinstate the draft after the November election.”
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Why doesn’t Bush go to church?
It may seem like a trivial issue (and ordinarily I would be the first to say that), but for a president who has made faith such a large issue in this and previous campaigns (by calling for a larger role for churches in policymaking through “faith-based initiatives,” not to mention his dubious mixing of science and religion), it’s rather odd that that Bush doesn’t go to church. And not in too-lazy-to-go-each-and-every-week way. He doesn’t even belong to a congregation.
Supporters of Bush will no doubt argue that security concerns make it too difficult for him to regularly attend church. This was, after all, Reagan’s excuse in the 80s. And yet Clinton, vilified by so many as an irreligious president, found the time to attend church without disrupting services or other parishoners’ access to the church.
Before Republican campaigners try to attack Kerry as being a poor Catholic for having his own opinions, they ought to think of a plausible defense for their own candidate’s lackadaisical performance in the religious sphere.
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Rumsfeld’s Freudian Slip
Donald Rumsfeld, everyone’s favorite cranky plutocrat, told the Council on Foreign Relations there was no hard evidence of a connection between Iraq and al-Queda . This statement was quickly repudiated by Rumsfeld saying he was “misunderstood.”
Yet, this goes to the heart of the matter on Iraq and on our ability to trust our president. Bloggers on this site, and in many other, simply rely on the administration as being the source of all that is true and good. However, our duty as reasonable citizens is to weigh the evidence and decide for ourselves whether or not a) al-Queda ever really had meaningful contact with Iraq, or if b) Iraq was ever a real threat to our security.
Why is it that we want to believe the president when he’s clearly found wanting? Well, reassurance that you didn’t vote for a serial liar might be one part. Assurance that our intelligence agencies aren’t totally inept might be another.
Or maybe it’s because this administration has gone so far down the wrong path that its supporters cannot admit any sort of mistake or re-evaluation without completely abandoning their candidate?
My guess is that all this misinformation, all these broken promises and all these inaccuracies on behalf of this president are going to sink him as a candidate. And if he’s re-elected it will cripple America’s ability to actually deal with terrorism and make us much more unsafe.
I know the voters of America are smarter than that and will save our collective bacon.
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October 4
Faces of the Fallen
The Administration has worked hard to keep the human cost of the invasion of Iraq out of the public eye, by prohibiting any photography of the fallen, and through the President deliberately avoiding military funerals.
The Washington Post now has a special feature, Faces of the Fallen, which allows readers to see the faces of the men and women who have died in service in Iraq. A related page shows the faces of those who died during and after the invasion of Afghanistan.
In related news, Poland now intends to withdraw its 2,500 troops from Iraq. Poland was one of the most enthusiastic members of the “Coalition of the Willing”, with its leaders hoping that cooperation with the US would bring concomitant trade and economic benefits. Since the invasion, however, Poles have become increasingly frustrated with the perceived ingratitude of the US and the lack of any real change in political and trade relations.
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Did Kerry cheat? Nope.
The blogosphere was briefly abuzz yesterday with “Pocket-Gate” — Drudge called attention to Kerry pulling something out of his pocket before the debate began, and then apparently handling a piece of paper. Wingnuts everywhere, of course, saw this as incontrovertible proof that Kerry was cheating with a crib sheet.
So was Kerry cheating? The right-wing New York Post, after reviewing a FOXNews videofeed, says no. The object that Kerry pulled out of his pocket? A pen. The paper on the podium? Placed on both podiums before the debate for the candidates to take notes on.
Quoth Kerry spokesman David Wade: “We plead guilty to having a pen.”
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October 3
WMD Challenge
I firmly believe there are or were WMDs in Iraq at the time of the liberation. Don’t forget that a dorm room full of Anthrax could infect every person in the State of Wisconsin. They are not hard to hide but very difficult to find. Chemicals can be stored in their inert forms miles apart from each other and biological agents can easily be created and destroyed if the right equipment is present.
With this in mind I have formulated this challenge: I will hide a bag of flour (if it were anthrax, it could infect most of the audience at a football game) somewhere in Madison, it may be in a dorm room, buried, an apartment, or a car. If you can find it, I will give you 100 dollars for your effort. You can use as many people as you want but any damage to public or private property is at your own risk. This should be easy, because Madison is a very small city compared to the entire county of Iraq! Someone is going to make some easy money and you have nothing to lose.
Note: If I see you getting too close, I may destroy the flour. When you go away, I will simply buy some new flour and the game will resume. I can also move it or split it up into smaller proportions.
If you want to play, please post a response with you name and phone number.
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Did Kerry Cheat??
Video Evidence suggests that John Kerry brought a “cheat sheet” into the debate. Before the debate starts, with the back to the Audience, John Kerry seems to pull something out of his coat and put it on the Podium.
The rules clearly state:
c) No props, notes, charts, diagrams, or other writings or other tangible things may be brought into the debate by either candidate.
(d) Notwithstanding subparagraph 5(c), the candidates may take notes during the debate on the size, color and type of paper each side prefers. Each candidate must submit to the staff of the Commission prior to the debate all such paper and any pens or pencils with which a candidate may wish to take notes during the debate, and the staff or commission will place such paper, pens and pencils on the podium, table or other structure to be used by the candidate in that debate.
Why must John Kerry even Cheat at something he is so good at? Please visit http://www.dailyrecycler.com/blog/2004/10/winners-never-cheat.html to see evidence of this transaction.
He flip-flops and now we know he at the very least breaks the rules and at worst cheats. This is the man 41-47 percent of American’s want to be President?
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Rookies Run the White House
You know, in the whole flip-flop vs. mendacious liar debate (that’s Kerry v. Bush) in case you were wondering…it shocks me that people are more worried about Kerry’s changing views than the fact that BUSH BLEW IT when it came to intelligence.
In fact, why is that a president who can’t seem to find the hundreds if not thousands of WMDs he promised before going to war isn’t getting tossed on his ass? If this were a Democract, of course, Republicans would be howling at his/her ineptness. Instead, they blame the CIA and pretend that the decisionmaker isn’t to blame.
Who is to blame at the CIA for letting the White House believe that Saddam had WMDs (which we can’t find) or a nuclear program that they can’t uncover?
“The White House, though, embraced the disputed theory that the tubes were for nuclear centrifuges, an idea first championed in April 2001 by a junior analyst at the C.I.A. Senior nuclear scientists considered that notion implausible, yet in the months after 9/11, as the administration built a case for confronting Iraq, the centrifuge theory gained currency as it rose to the top of the government.”
That’s from this Sunday’s NYTimes and it details who and how the White House went down the path to non-existent WMDs.
Come on people. Kerry changed his mind because the facts on the ground changed. Bush and Co. knew there were no WMDs and knew Saddam was not a threat and lied to us all. Truly, which is worse?
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Kerry’s Flip Flops on Iraq should be news!
Kerry’s Flip Flops should have been the forefront of the first debate and I find it interesting that the liberal media establishment has done little to high light it. Although Bush alluded to it a little, Kerry has taken so many sides on Operation Iraqi Freedom that many in his party don’t even know what is going on. It is a shame that the media spends more time trying to derail President Bush than they do looking into real stories. Why hasn’t Nightline done a special about Kerry and his views on Iraq? Please visit www.kerryoniraq.com and see what Kerry thought about Iraq before he flipped to gain popularity during the primary. If you don’t at least look at the movie on at www.kerryoniraq.com , you must be afraid of why you might see!
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Bush’s lead increases in Electoral Math polls
If the election were held today, President Bush would win based on the newest set of state polls and the electoral math that accompanies them. Kerry is barely winning New Jersey (one point race) and is losing Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the entire south. For more information and to follow the polls, go to www.electoral-vote.com. Be cautioned, this “nonpartisan site” is slanted to the left, so poll numbers may be skewed in that direction as well. Kerry is only leading in 18 of the nations 51 states and Districts, making many believe that even some modest bounce from his debate performance is too little too late.
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October 2
Kudos to Kerry
I’m pretty firmly on record as a Bush guy, but that doesn’t mean the Kerry campaign doesn’t have its classier moments. As noted in this USA Today article, a Fox News reporter recently erred tremendously and allowed a satirical piece of creative writing end up on the network’s website as hard news.
Fox has since apologized, and the reporter has been reprimanded.
This would have been an easy moment for the Kerry camp to deride Fox as a wantonly conservative news channel with clearly biased reporters (the satire was less than flattering of Mr. Kerry).
Rather, though, the campaign simply accepted the apology and noted that is appreciates the ease with which Fox News admits its mistakes.
If only CBS News were as dignified, indeed.
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Bush’s poll lead “evaporates”
According to the latest Newsweek/MSNBC poll (the first after Thursday’s debate), Kerry now leads Bush 47% to 45% among registered voters.
What remains to be seen is how this will affect the state races, which in the end are the only ones that matter. Only one month remains until Election Day. If you paid for more than the edge of your seat, you were ripped off.
[update] You can also read the story on Drudge. [/update]
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FOXNews’ faux pas
Fair and balanced… until caught with their pants down.
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October 1
Points proven, opportunities missed
This debate was one of those events in which the average viewer could come away with a different perspective, depending on his thoughts of the two candidates in the first place. It’s sort of like a controversial defensive pass interference penalty. Those strongly rooting for one team or the other will see different things and talk about it the next day, while neutral observers probably will forget about it a few minutes later.
This debate probably will not cause much movement either way in the polls. Those who know Senator Kerry as indecisive had their point proven multiple times. For example, Kerry tried to explain that he only had only one position on Iraq, and his explanation was simply laughable, “I’ve had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way.” On the other hand, Bush-haters like Rob Deters who calls President Bush a, “whiny defensive 80 lb. intellectual weakling” also had multiple chances to prove that point. The transcript shows that President Bush gave clear, concise answers, but it does not show his sometimes sloppy presentation of those issues- and presentation does have an effect in these debates.
One thing Deters is correct about- President Bush missed some important opportunities, and not even in the most obvious places. For example, Senator Kerry, speaking on nuclear proliferation, said, “You talk about mixed messages. We’re telling other people, ‘You can’t have nuclear weapons,’ but we’re pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using.” Only a far-left ideology would truly believe that America is just as much of a problem in the area of nuclear proliferation as rogue nations are, that wars and conflicts are just as much the fault of both sides. This line of thinking may go over well in Madison, but it doesn’t fly well with mainstream American voters. President Bush could have exploded these comments, using them as an opportunity to, once again, show moral clarity in the war on terrorism, but chose not to.
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Bush on Valium
Bush on Valium
Now, this is hard for me to say, but I was, in fact, wrong. My prediction was that Bush would wipe the floor with Kerry. Now, I don’t think Kerry won overwhelmingly, but I will say that he held his own. Bush had a unique chance to strike hard and knock Kerry off as a contender. I am a strong Bush supporter, but even I felt he pulled far to many punches tonight. I don’t think Kerry did as well as much as I think Bush just was too relaxed. Too many missed opportunities for strong rebuttals were missed with the same rhetoric I have heard far too many times. Even if he would have been more enthusiastic, I would have been more satisfied. Now, Bush did not win the debate, but neither did Kerry. I would rate it as a tie, just for the fact that Kerry has the burden of proof and he did not fulfill that burden.
I have heard the President speak many times and I can say that he was sedated in someway. If not by some heavy drug, then his advisors tied his hands. Again, this is Bush’s to lose at this point. He did not come with his A-game and I am really disappointed because of it. All I ask is that the President comes with all he has next week and I will bet again that Bush will beat Kerry.
Kerry had more than enough problems with his debate, his rhetoric was old and he just was not overly impressive, but overall, Bush just didn’t show up. It almost feels like a smarter more vocal Bush brain was trapped in his Pre-2000 nomination body.
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