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... Some Meditations Before You Vote ...

10.31.04 (12:33 pm) [edit]

[b]"We the People" have a very serious task ahead of us on Tuesday ... It is imperative for you to vote ... Four years of lies, deceptions and falsehoods -- waging neo-con warfare based upon phony fabrications used to dupe the American people -- plundering the US Treasury on behalf of the corporate-take-all neo-fascists' Global Corporate Empire -- destruction of the environment -- neglecting the health care, education and need of our citizens -- etc. etc. etc. ... We deserve better and should be voting for a candidate who will restore sanity, integrity and decency to the White House ... I strongly urge you to vote for John Kerry for President of the United States of America ...[/b]

This campaign season has been marked with a high degree of partisanship and rancor in the discourse leading up to Tuesday's presidential election. Both sides, armed with focus groups and experts, have crafted messages gilded with oversimplifications and spurious "facts."

Logic, common sense and truth scatter like dust before the powerful and well-financed marketing machines roaring across the landscape. My advice? Take time to reflect on what is truly important, and let your own intelligence and compassion guide your decisions.

Here's some food for thought before you vote:

. Democrat, Republican, Green, Independent, Libertarian, left, right, center, liberal, moderate, conservative, rich, poor, gay, straight, black, white, brown, male, female, pro-life, pro-choice — we're a mixed bag, but we're all Americans.

. No individual, party or ideology has cornered the market on truth or God's blessing.

. Dying soldiers in all countries call for their mothers with their last breath.

. Any child killed by war, poverty, abuse or neglect is one too many.

. Fear is our worst enemy. Those who would scare us are not our friends.

. 9/11 was a tragic event. But everything did not change. The sad fact is, too much has remained the same, or gotten worse.

. Killing innocents in any war dishonors those who died on 9/11.

. Those most distant from a conflict are always the ones shouting loudest for war.

. War is almost always a tragic detour from the more difficult road of peace.

. Anyone who impugns your patriotism for exercising your constitutional right to free speech is not a patriot. In a true democracy, all points of view are valued and heard.

. Love is the core value of the Islamic, Christian and Jewish faiths. Only love and understanding can bring the peace and security all good people of the world desire.

Every vote counts, and every vote should be counted.

[b]Bush Win Would Mean Dark Times

World Would Perceive Support For Preemptive War[/b]

The presidential election on Tuesday is one of the most crucial in American history.

There are many reasons -- in foreign policy and on the domestic front -- why President George W. Bush should not be reelected.

Among them is the dominance of the radical right in his advisory councils, who are taking the United States down the wrong road at the start of the 21st century.

The road could lead to more mindless wars abroad and a widening gap between the rich and the poor in this country.

There will be only one way to read the election results if Bush wins: The world will see his victory as an affirmation by the American people of his disastrous preemptive war policy, which led the United States to invade Iraq without provocation.

The U.S. attack on Iraq is a clear violation of international law and has made us helpless to condemn others for similar acts.

If he wins reelection, Bush may see his victory as a signal to follow the neo-conservative dream of a political transformation of the Middle East through military force.

The president also would likely continue his new-style isolationism by giving short shrift to post-World War II treaties, such as those banning biological and chemical weapons. There is nothing to indicate Bush is willing to stop the gross violations of the Geneva Conventions on the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Dark reports of the shameful treatment and secret transfers of detainees still emanate from Iraq and the U.S. brig at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba.

Despite his vehement denials, Bush may be compelled to call for another military draft if he persists in making war.

He is scraping by now with his all-volunteer military, along with reservists and National Guard members, keeping them on duty longer than planned with a so-called a back-door draft. If he wins a second term, he wouldn't have to worry about running again and would have a free hand to undo his read-my-lips campaign promises.

On the homefront, the rich will be sitting pretty again with big tax cuts while the budget deficit and national debt zoom sky high.

Bush donors from the military-industrial complex are being well rewarded, especially Halliburton, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, which already has reaped no-bid contracts to the tune of billions of dollars.

Organized labor will still be behind the eight ball under a new Bush administration. Workers will be pressured to accept "comp time" in place of overtime pay, and the lowered safety standards imposed by Bush's Labor Department will lead to more industrial accidents.

Don't expect Bush to lift a finger to stem the tide of outsourcing of the nation's biggest companies to China, India and other points East, where they can find cheaper labor.

The president is expected to keep trying to weaken public education with voucher programs to aid private schools, many of them religious. He is certain to follow through on his pet project to privatize part of the Social Security system with voluntary private investment accounts, driving a big hole in the program's trust fund. We should all hope that Congress won't go along with such a dangerous idea.

Social Security was the 1936 Depression-era program to support the elderly, the disabled and deprived dependent children.

Senior citizens, meantime, are staying away in droves from Bush's highly touted prescription drug program, which the administration publicly underpriced by $1 billion. Furthermore, the resident's compassionate conservative legislation banned importation of cheaper drugs from Canada. That is not expected to change in a new Bush term.

Bush also wants to cater to corporate interests by capping damages in medical malpractice suits at $250,000.

If reelected, Bush -- who has injected religion into public affairs more than any president has in modern times -- is expected to continue his messianic mission in the White House. He will blur even more the separation of church and state.

For women and minorities who support abortion rights and affirmative action, there is the scary prospect that the candidate who wins Tuesday may be able to appoint three, perhaps even four Supreme Court justices.

Bush undoubtedly will see his reelection as a mandate to push the country further to the right. And if he elected, he will be answerable to no one.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Some Meditations Before You Vote, http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Bush Win Would Mean Dark Times, http://www.commondreams.org/v...

... Trick Or . . . ...

10.31.04 (11:21 am) [edit]

"They take the paper and they read the headlines, so they've heard of unemployment and they've heard of bread lines, and they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball." - Ogden Nash

[b]George W. Bush has been dressing-up in [i]"Halloween"-style [/i]political costumes,[i] pretending [/i]to be President, Top-Gun and "Compassionate Conservative [[i]sic[/i]]" for the last four disastrous years, while our U.S. Soldiers and Innocent Iraqi Civilians have been slaughtered[i] enmasse [/i]... Instead,[i] in reality [/i]the White House and Pentagon have been hijacked by traitorous neo-con thugs and neo-fascist goons [i]only loyal [/i]to their Global Corporate Empire, while [i]betraying[/i] the U.S.A.-- using Dubya as their Useful Idiot ... It is time for a change of leadership before we lose Our Republic ...[/b]

It's fitting that the last seven days of a presidential campaign fall during Halloween week. Scare tactics are the order for each day. The difference this year is the Republicans only have innuendo, while the Democrats can simply point to facts on the ground.

Bush's recent attack ad http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,13918,1334228,00.html tried to cry wolf, but those dogs won't hunt. The real fear factor is Mesopotamia, where M is for Massacre, Mutiny, and Missing Explosives. In Iraq, everyday is the Day of the Dead. The tragedy is that this tragedy was not inevitable.

It is clear the Administration's handling of the occupation of Iraq goes beyond incompetence into the realm of negligence. As the situation went south in the Sunni Triangle http://www.washingtonpost.com... , Bush punted, refusing to either increase the number of troops in Iraq or withdraw them. He did neither, preferring to dither on with a failed policy. Bush is not a war president; he's a war criminal president.

Even worse, Bush blames the "commanders-in-the-field, " claiming that they say they have enough troops. Of course, they can't disagree publicly. When General Shinseki, the then Army Chief-of-Staff, told Congress we needed more troops to secure Iraq, the Bush Administration retired him early http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages... , shooting the messenger. When Paul Bremer, the second Bush appointed civil administrator of Iraq, privately asked for more troops http://www.washingtonpost.com... , he was ignored.

Bush has spent his adult life in costume, pretending to be a Texas good ole boy. What he actually is, however, is the anti-Midas. From Arbusto to the Texas Rangers to the US surplus, everything golden he touches turns to lead. We can't afford to bail him out for four more years.

[b]Source:[/b]

Katrina vanden Heuvel,[i] Editor's Cut[/i], The Nation, http://www.thenation.com

... Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 283 vs. Bush 246 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.31.04 (10:31 am) [edit]

[b]... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 283 vs. Bush 246 ...[/b]

[b]Oct. 31 New polls:[/b] AR CO CT FL IL IN IA MD MI MN MO NV NH NJ NM OH OR PA UT VA WV WI

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (95)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (101)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (87)
White - Exactly tied (9)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (17)
Light Red - Weak Bush (82)
Red - Strong Bush (147)

[b]Needed to win:[/b] 270

[u][b]News from the Votemaster[/b][/u]

It was bound to happen and it happened. Today we have more state polls than there are states. There are 54 new polls in 22 states today. Furthermore, the lead has changed in five states, and all five changes favor Kerry. As a result, Kerry has now passed Bush in the electoral college. If today's results are the final results Wednesday morning, John Kerry will be elected as the 44th President of the United States, with 283 votes in the electoral college to George Bush's 246. But don't count on it. Many of Kerry's leads are razor thin. Counting only the strong + weak states, Bush leads 229 to 196, with 113 electoral votes in the tossup category Kerry's leads in the tossup states mean little to nothing. The turnout Tuesday will determine who wins.

Let's take a look at what happened state by state. New polls in Iowa, Michigan and New Mexico reverse Bush's previous leads and now favor Kerry by 1% in each case, well within the margin of error (about 4% in most cases). New Hampshire, which had been in the Bush column is now tied at 47% each. Finally, New Jersey is now safely back in the Kerry column with an 8% lead. Kerry retains his lead in Florida and Bush retains his lead in Ohio.

Mason-Dixon, Rasmussen, and Zogby all released multiple polls yesterday in many of the battleground states.

For more detailed information, see the tables: http://www.electoral-vote.com... ...

And Sunday wouldn't be Sunday without a new cartoon of the week http://www.electoral-vote.com... .

[b]This optimistic forecast should [i]not[/i] make anybody complaisant ... The outcome of the election will depend upon voter turn-out ... "We the People" must exercise our moral obligation and civic duty to cast our vote on the 2nd November ... Please encourage your family members, friends and neighbors to vote for John Kerry for President of the United States of America ...[/b]

... The Flip-Flop Flim-Flam ...

10.30.04 (2:56 pm) [edit]

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

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

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

If 2000 was the year of the soccer mom, 2004 is the year for flip-flops: as fashion footwear, waving props (at the Republican convention) and taunting yells (at Bush rallies). This strategy was the brainchild of Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, who decided that the way for Bush to win was to destroy Kerry’s credibility and to attack his leadership qualities, largely by focusing on his alleged inconsistencies about the war in Iraq.

Rove’s flip-flop charges quickly became the mantra of the Republican National Committee and the GOP apparatchiks who feed sound bites to the broadcast media, especially the Fox News network; and the president made the flip-flop accusation the rhetorical staple of his stump speech.

It’s a measure of Rove’s skill in the dark arts of political spin -- which he learned from Richard Nixon’s “dirty tricksters” of Watergate infamy -- that the strategy has succeeded in obscuring two central facts about the presidential candidates: that Kerry’s positions have, in fact, been largely consistent; and that Bush, far from being the steady, conviction-driven leader of Republican imaginings, is by far the greater flip-flopper. Rove succeeded because the news media fell for his flip-flop flim-flam. How else could Bush’s flip-flopping have become the best kept secret in American politics? This is remarkable, given the sheer quantity of examples. Here’s a partial list of Bush flip-flops, with their presumed motivations.

• [b]Prescription drugs from Canada:[/b] For, then Against (Big campaign contributions from pharmaceutical corporations)
• [b]Assault weapons in our streets:[/b] Against, then For (Pandering to the NRA and gun manufacturers)
• [b]The creation of a homeland security agency:[/b] Against, then For (Public outcry and political expediency)
• [b]McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform:[/b] Against, then For (Unprincipled opportunism)
•[b] Nation-building:[/b] Against, then For (A double somersault to justify neocon invasion plans)
• [b]Steel tariffs:[/b] Against, then For, then Against (A free-trader becomes a protectionist to win votes in Pennsylvania and Ohio)
• [b]Arsenic in water:[/b] For, then Against (Public outcry...those darned scientists)
• [b]Mandatory caps on carbon dioxide:[/b] For, then Against (The power of the coal and power companies)
• [b]Outside investigation into WMD:[/b] Against, then For (Public outcry and world opinion)
• [b]WMD:[/b] We found them and then we didn't find them (Confusion, convenience and "flexibility")
• [b]Gay Marriage:[/b] First it's an issue for the states and then a federal issue (An opportunistic, red-meat, divisive wedge issue)
• [b]Osama bin Laden:[/b] In 2001 he was our No. 1 public enemy; in 2002, "I truly am not that concerned about him" (Failure to prosecute the real war against terror)
• [b]North Korea's nuclear threat:[/b] First it was extremely important; now it's not much of a threat (A parry to divert attention from misplaced priorities)
• [b]Cutting troops in Europe:[/b] Against, then For (Bad planning for the number of troops needed in Iraq and Afghanistan)
•[b] Immigration reform: [/b]For liberalization, then Against (A conflict between wooing the Hispanic vote and angering his nativist base)
• [b]AmeriCorps funding:[/b] For, then Against (A favorite target of congressional reactionaries)
• [b]Patriot Act II:[/b] For, then Against (The need to appear more moderate in the middle of an election; even angered Republican civil libertarians)
• [b]The 9/11 commission:[/b] Six flip-flops, Against and then For: 1) The creation of the commission; 2) the composition of the commission; 3) the extension to allow it to complete its work; 4) his testifying; 5) the testimony of his national security advisor; and finally 6) the implementation of the findings (Public outcry, particularly from the families of 9/11 victims and then commision members -- Republicans and Democrats)
• [b]The war in Iraq:[/b] At least nine different rationales as to why the U.S. invaded, and still counting (Reality catching up with fantasy)
• [b]The war in Iraq:[/b] "It will be a cakewalk," then, "It will be long and difficult." (Talking out of both sides of the mouth; depending upon audience)

So much for Bush and his “steady leadership.” Kerry has been a model of consistency by comparison. On the Iraq war, his position is complex. It requires the ability to understand history and shifting circumstances. These are not exactly the strong suits of the White House and the mass media -- particularly cable TV and the talk-radio ranters, two media that are notoriously serious about unserious issues, and unserious about serious issues.

The Bush spinmeisters wanted to undermine the simple truth that Kerry does understand history and complexity, particularly when it involves the most important decision that a president can make: that of taking our country to war, with all its drastic consequences in human lives and expenditure of national treasure.

Bush does not seem to understand that those who do not learn from history are condemned to make the same mistakes. Kerry seems to know a basic historical truth, that genuine international cooperation, multilateral force, and traditional alliances are absolutely essential to our nation's well-being and security in a dangerous world of terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

If Kerry can be faulted, it is because he believed and trusted Mr. Bush -- as did most Americans -- when he voted for giving the president the latitude he needed to pursue all the necessay and viable diplomatic avenues before the Iraq invasion. Kerry then became convinced that Bush misled Congress and the American people by confusing the all-important war against terror with Bush’s own separate agenda of invading Iraq. Those were, and still are, two separate issues!

Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant, but overthrowing him and invading Iraq did not lessen the threat of terror; it increased it. It did not strengthen American military capability; it weakened it. It did not make Americans at home or abroad safer; it had the opposite effect of increasing recruitment for al Qaeda and other anti-American militant groups. Invading Iraq did not increase international cooperation for anti-terrorist efforts or the respect for America’s diplomatic leadership that is indispensable to the war on terror; it diminished them. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, in leading the victorious WWII allies in the war against fascism, understood the suffering, the human costs, and the scourge of war. They understood only too well the need for international cooperation, diplomatic and military. They understood the critical need for the exchange of intelligence and multinational action by and among traditional allies. They understood the need for strategic alliances that every single president since then, Republican and Democrat, has understood, with the glaring exception of Bush.

Roosevelt, before his death, was quite clear. He said that the United Nations was the place to go not to end wars, but to end the beginnings of wars. And Churchill was just as explicit when he warned us, “The United Nations is an imperfect institution that is a reflection of an imperfect world. Its purpose is not to lead us into an ascent to heaven but to prevent us from going into a descent to hell.” Those words are just as true today as they were in the aftermath of WWII. Kerry understands what they meant. Bush isn’t interested.

For the past 3 1/2 years I have listened carefully to the President and his chief advisors. All of it has reminded me of a passage in "The Heart of Darkness." Joseph Conrad put it this way: "Their talk was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight ... in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world."

Conrad’s words capture the strategy of the Bush campaign and his four years in Washington; they reflect the mood and the moral nullity of the reactionary enterprise that seeks to tear apart the public good at home and to lead us into risky pre-emptive wars abroad. The Bush administration just doesn’t get it. No country can sustain itself, much less grow, on a political fare of one-liners, rerun ideas, deliberate distortions, paranoia, and official policy pronouncements borrowed from Orwell’s "1984" - where recession is recovery, war is peace, and a social policy based on aggressive hostility is compassion.

In the final analysis, there are two disturbing realities about the 2004 presidential election campaign that should concern all Americans. The first is that[i] Bush[/i], not Kerry, is guilty of big-time flip-flopping. The second is that the mass media, through incompetence and a herd mentality, have missed this defining and crucial story. Bush's flip-flopping had nothing to do with complexities or principle, and everything to do with political expediency. This is not a case of one or two isolated switches; it's a deliberate pattern of manipulation designed to deceive the American electorate. What we find behind the pattern, and the mask, is a candidate who lacks character, principles, and integrity. George W. Bush cannot be trusted to govern.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Professor Arthur I. Blaustein teaches public policy and politics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was chair of the President’s National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity during the Carter Administration. His most recent books are "Make a Difference: America’s Guide to Community Service" and "The American Promise: Justice and Opportunity.", http://www.motherjones.com/co...

Questions About Bush, David Corn, [i]The Nation[/i], http://www.thenation.com/capi...

... Osama's Election Editorial ...

10.30.04 (12:53 pm) [edit]

A frame grab taken today from a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera news channel shows Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden delivering a message addressed to the American people.

In as much as it is possible for a wanted mass murderer to have a conversation with the American public, this is what we are seeing tonight. Osama bin Laden directed his message not at the Muslim world, not at the American government, but at the people gearing up to vote for a President on Tuesday. "You American people, my speech to you is the best way to avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons and results," said bin Laden. A lot of people thought the capture of bin Laden would be the 'October Surprise' to affect the vote. Instead, we got, hard as it is to believe, an election editorial from Osama, who remains alive and free. As far as October surprises go, this one is completely off-the-grid strange.

For the first time, bin Laden openly took responsibility for the attacks of September 11. "We fought you because we are free...and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security, we undermine yours," he said. "To the U.S. people, my talk is to you about the best way to avoid another disaster. I tell you: Security is an important element of human life and free people do not give up their security."

Bin Laden attempted to explain his reasons for the 9/11 attacks, stating that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 lit his homicidal fuse. "I will tell you the reasons behind these incidents," he said. "I will be honest with you on the moment when the decision was taken. We never thought of hitting the towers. But after we were so fed up, and we saw the oppression of the American-Israeli coalition on our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind and the incidents that really touched me directly goes back to 1982:. When the US permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the 6th fleet. In these hard moments, it occurred to me so many meanings I can't explain, but it resulted in a general feeling of rejecting oppression, and gave me a hard determination to punish the oppressors. While I was looking at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it came to my mind to punish the oppressor the same way and destroy towers in the U.S. to get a taste of what they tasted, and quit killing our children and women."

While candidates Bush and Kerry were careful to avoid using the video as a club to batter each other, their surrogates have already taken to the airwaves to spin this event for one or the other. At first blush, it is difficult to imagine how bin Laden's entrance into this voting season helps the election prospects of Mr. Bush. The videotape was first broadcast by the al Jazeera network, which is based out of Qatar. According to CNN, the U.S. Ambassador to Qatar attempted to stop Al Jazeera from broadcasting the tape. That, as much as the actual content of the tape, speaks to how nervous the re-appearance of bin Laden makes the Bush administration.

Beyond the demonstrable fact that Mr. Wanted-Dead-Or-Alive is still upright and breathing, there is the scathing mockery bin Laden leveled at Bush, along with a back-handed thank-you to Bush for giving the 9/11 terrorists the time they needed to complete the attack. "We never thought that the high commander of the U.S. armies would leave 50,000 of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors alone," bin Laden said. "It appeared to him that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God."

Once again, Bush's comments from March of 2002 rise again with the impact of a gut-punch. "So I don't know where he is," said Bush of bin Laden at the time. "Nor - you know, I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I... I truly am not that concerned about him." The fellow who orchestrated the massacre of 3,000 people, the fellow whom Bush said he wasn't concerned about, thanked Bush for giving him the time necessary to complete his wretched act. In the parlance of American youth, Bush got punked by the top terrorist on national television.

An issue which has already been pressing on this campaign season now resonates with new urgency. For the last several days, the Bush administration has been wrestling with the fact that nearly 400 tons of high explosives - the same kind of explosives used to bring down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, the same kind of explosives used to blow a hole in the USS Cole - walked away from a storage bunker in Iraq.

Videotape from a Minnesota news station, shot by embedded reporters during the invasion of Iraq, showed members of the 101st Airborne cutting the locks on the place. No troops stayed to guard the well-known bunker, however, because such duty was not a priority of Bush administration officials handing out marching orders to the troops. Bush's own weapons inspector, David Kay, was appalled at what he saw on the Minnesota news station's footage of the opening of the bunker. "When you break into it, you own it," said Kay. "It's your responsibility to secure it."

Thanks to the disastrous Iraq invasion, and the continuing debacle that is the occupation, Iraq is now a place where al Qaeda terrorists may operate freely. How much of the missing explosives in question have fallen into the hands of bin Laden loyalists? How much of the thousands of tons of explosives and weaponry that went similarly unguarded by American forces all across Iraq have likewise found their way into al Qaeda hands? The re-emergence of Osama bin Laden makes these questions all the more pressing.

How all of this will shake out among the American electorate remains to be seen. Perhaps the American people, upon seeing a healthy bin Laden again on their televisions, will be reminded of Bush's failure to capture or kill him and punish Bush at the polls. Perhaps they will be angered that bin Laden dared to throw his two bloody cents into the political conversation and side with Bush over Kerry. Perhaps the only absolute conclusion to draw from all this is the one that almost certainly occurred to every American who tuned into the broadcast.

[b]The bastard is still alive[/b].

[b]Sources:[/b]

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.', http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

Osama bin Forgotten??? ... Until Now!!!, http://www.tblog.com/template...

... Osama bin Forgotten??? ... Until Now!!! ...

10.30.04 (4:44 am) [edit]

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

[i]VERSUS[/i]

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

[b]"We the People" must not be diverted from the critical task at hand by the "surprises" in the news during the next few days:-- Instead, we must get out and vote for John Kerry for President ... However, [i]Daily Kos [/i]does offer a thought-provoking analysis of the OBL (Osama bin Laden) tape ...[/b]

From a look at the diaries and comment threads, people are a little exercised about the Bin Laden tapes. Stop and think about this.

It's the Friday before the election, and here are the two leading non-campaign stories: Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose and threatening the U.S., and tons of explosives are missing from Iraq and presumed to be in the possession of terrorists and/or the insurgents fighting our troops in Iraq. Regardless of what a shoddy Reuters story http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mymod/...*http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... may say, there is no way it helps Bush for the American voters to be reminded that Bin Laden is still on the loose. Those voters who are already voting for Bush may be all atwitter because of this tape, but the cynics who don't much like either candidate--and these folks are disproportionately included in the shrinking pool of undecided voters--won't be convinced that we should reelect George Bush because he's the guy who's been President for the last three years of our failure to capture Bin Laden.

The Bin Laden tape [i]does not [/i]help Bush. It probably has no significant effect, but if it does, that effect is probably negative toward Bush. The Bin Laden tape does not present any reason for us to be concerned in terms of the election. Our concern should be that Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose, and we need to elect a President who will make it a priority to capture Bin Laden.

So, get to that phone bank, put on your walking shoes, and get out there and do the GOTV. George W. Bush has ignored Osama Bin Laden. For that reason, for the next couple days we need to ignore Osama Bin Laden and train our attention on getting rid of George W. Bush. Then, we will have a President who doesn't ignore the threats to our national safety.

[b]Out task is to talk to voters and convince them to vote for John Kerry and Democrats from the top of their ballot to the bottom. Get out there, and savor the feeling of knowing we're on the verge of a win.[/b]

[b]Sources:[/b]

Daily Kos, http://www.dailykos.com

Apparently Osama bin Laden is Alive and Well???, http://www.tblog.com/template...

Osama Tries to Give Bush the Election, http://www.tblog.com/template...

Another Manhattan? My analysis of bin Laden's speech, http://www.tblog.com/template...

Bush Misleads on Osama Bin Laden, http://www.misleader.org/dail...

... Gore Vidal: Beyond the Voting ...

10.29.04 (11:28 am) [edit]

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." - Gore Vidal

[b]Prolific author and commentator Gore Vidal speaks of an Imperial America and of the threats to the Republic. Be sure to listen to the new [i]RadioNation[/i] Audio-Blog on http://www.thenation.com/blog... ...[/b]

"We the People" are fortunate indeed to have an insightful political observer, keen iconoclast and brilliant thinker who truly is an American Original, a Patriot and a National Treasure ... Gore Vidal questions the direction that America is going under the mis-direction of the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] ... The following interview was conducted last December by Marc Cooper,[i] LA Weekly[/i], and published by [i]AlterNet.org[/i], on http://www.alternet.org/story... ...

[b]The take-no-prisoners social critic skewers Bush, Ashcroft and the whole damn lot of us for letting despots rule.[/b]

It's lucky for George W. Bush that he wasn't born in an earlier time and somehow stumbled into America's Constitutional Convention. A man with his views, so deprecative of democratic rule, would have certainly been quickly exiled from the freshly liberated United States by the gaggle of incensed Founders. So muses one of our most controversial social critics and prolific writers, Gore Vidal.

When we last interviewed Vidal just over a year ago, he set off a mighty chain reaction as he positioned himself as one of the last standing defenders of the ideal of the American Republic. His acerbic comments to L.A. Weekly about the Bushies were widely reprinted in publications around the world and flashed repeatedly over the World Wide Web. Now Vidal is at it again, giving the Weekly another dose of his dissent, and with the constant trickle of casualties mounting in Iraq, his comments are no less explosive than they were last year.

This time, however, Vidal is speaking to us as a full-time American. After splitting his time between Los Angeles and Italy for the past several decades, Vidal has decided to roost in his colonial home in the Hollywood Hills. Now 77 years old, suffering from a bad knee and still recovering from the loss earlier this year of his longtime companion, Howard Austen, Vidal is feistier and more productive than ever.

Vidal undoubtedly had current pols like Bush and Ashcroft in mind when he wrote his latest book, his third in two years. Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson takes us deep into the psyches of the patriotic trio. And even with all of their human foibles on display -- vanity, ambition, hubris, envy and insecurity -- their shared and profoundly rooted commitment to building the first democratic nation on Earth comes straight to the fore.

The contrast between then and now is hardly implicit. No more than a few pages into the book, Vidal unveils his dripping disdain for the crew that now dominates the capital named for our first president.

As we began our dialogue, I asked him to draw out the links between our revolutionary past and our imperial present.

[b]MARC COOPER: Your new book focuses on Washington, Adams and Jefferson, but it seems from reading closely that it was actually Ben Franklin who turned out to be the most prescient regarding the future of the republic.[/b]

[b]GORE VIDAL:[/b] Franklin understood the American people better than the other three. Washington and Jefferson were nobles -- slaveholders and plantation owners. Alexander Hamilton married into a rich and powerful family and joined the upper classes. Benjamin Franklin was pure middle class. In fact, he may have invented it for Americans. Franklin saw danger everywhere. They all did. Not one of them liked the Constitution. James Madison, known as the father of it, was full of complaints about the power of the presidency. But they were in a hurry to get the country going. Hence the great speech, which I quote at length in the book, that Franklin, old and dying, had someone read for him. He said, I am in favor of this Constitution, as flawed as it is, because we need good government and we need it fast. And this, properly enacted, will give us, for a space of years, such government.

But then, Franklin said, it will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism -- the only form of government suitable for such a people.

[b]But Jefferson had the most radical view, didn't he? He argued that the Constitution should be seen only as a transitional document.[/b]

Oh yeah. Jefferson said that once a generation we must have another Constitutional Convention and revise all that isn't working. Like taking a car in to get the carburetor checked. He said you cannot expect a man to wear a boy's jacket. It must be revised, because the Earth belongs to the living. He was the first that I know who ever said that. And to each generation is the right to change every law they wish. Or even the form of government. You know, bring in the Dalai Lama if you want! Jefferson didn't care.

Jefferson was the only pure democrat among the founders, and he thought the only way his idea of democracy could be achieved would be to give the people a chance to change the laws. Madison was very eloquent in his answer to Jefferson. He said you cannot [have] any government of any weight if you think it is only going to last a year.

This was the quarrel between Madison and Jefferson. And it would probably still be going on if there were at least one statesman around who said we have to start changing this damn thing.

[b]Your book revisits the debate between the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Hamiltonian Federalists, which at the time were effectively young America's two parties. More than 200 years later, do we still see any strands, any threads of continuity in our current body politic?[/b]

Just traces. But mostly we find the sort of corruption Franklin predicted. Ours is a totally corrupt society. The presidency is for sale. Whoever raises the most money to buy TV time will probably be the next president. This is corruption on a major scale.

Enron was an eye-opener to naive lovers of modern capitalism. Our accounting brotherhood, in its entirety, turned out to be corrupt, on the take. With the government absolutely colluding with them and not giving a damn.

Bush's friend, old Kenny Lay, is still at large and could just as well start some new company tomorrow. If he hasn't already. No one is punished for squandering the people's money and their pension funds and for wrecking the economy.

So the corruption predicted by Franklin bears its terrible fruit. No one wants to do anything about it. It's not even a campaign issue. Once you have a business community that is so corrupt in a society whose business is business, then what you have is, indeed, despotism. It is the sort of authoritarian rule that the Bush people have given us. The USA PATRIOT Act is as despotic as anything Hitler came up with -- even using much of the same language. In one of my earlier books, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, I show how the language used by the Clinton people to frighten Americans into going after terrorists like Timothy McVeigh -- how their rights were going to be suspended only for a brief time -- was precisely the language used by Hitler after the Reichstag fire.

[b]In this context, would any of the Founding Fathers find themselves comfortable in the current political system of the United States? Certainly Jefferson wouldn't. But what about the radical centralizers, or those like John Adams, who had a sneaking sympathy for the monarchy?[/b]

Adams thought monarchy, as tamed and balanced by the parliament, could offer democracy. But he was no totalitarian, not by any means. Hamilton, on the other hand, might have very well gone along with the Bush people, because he believed there was an elite who should govern. He nevertheless was a bastard born in the West Indies, and he was always a little nervous about his own social station. He, of course, married into wealth and became an aristo. And it is he who argues that we must have a government made up of the very best people, meaning the rich.

So you'd find Hamilton pretty much on the Bush side. But I can't think of any other Founders who would. Adams would surely disapprove of Bush. He was highly moral, and I don't think he could endure the current dishonesty. Already they were pretty bugged by a bunch of journalists who came over from Ireland and such places and were telling Americans how to do things. You know, like Andrew Sullivan today telling us how to be. I think you would find a sort of union of discontent with Bush among the Founders. The sort of despotism that overcomes us now is precisely what Franklin predicted.

[b]But Gore, you have lived through a number of inglorious administrations in your lifetime, from Truman's founding of the national-security state, to LBJ's debacle in Vietnam, to Nixon and Watergate, and yet here you are to tell the tale. So when it comes to this Bush administration, are you really talking about despots per se? Or is this really just one more rather corrupt and foolish Republican administration?[/b]

No. We are talking about despotism. I have read not only the first PATRIOT Act but also the second one, which has not yet been totally made public nor approved by Congress and to which there is already great resistance. An American citizen can be fingered as a terrorist, and with what proof? No proof. All you need is the word of the attorney general or maybe the president himself. You can then be locked up without access to a lawyer, and then tried by military tribunal and even executed. Or, in a brand-new wrinkle, you can be exiled, stripped of your citizenship and packed off to another place not even organized as a country -- like Tierra del Fuego or some rock in the Pacific. All of this is in the USA PATRIOT Act. The Founding Fathers would have found this to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged.

[b]So if George W. Bush or John Ashcroft had been around in the early days of the republic, they would have been indicted and then hanged by the Founders?[/b]

No. It would have been better and worse. [Laughs] Bush and Ashcroft would have been considered so disreputable as to not belong in this country at all. They might be invited to go down to Bolivia or Paraguay and take part in the military administration of some Spanish colony, where they would feel so much more at home. They would not be called Americans -- most Americans would not think of them as citizens.

[b]Do you not think of Bush and Ashcroft as Americans?[/b]

I think of them as an alien army. They have managed to take over everything, and quite in the open. We have a deranged president. We have despotism. We have no due process.

[b]Yet you saw in the '60s how the Johnson administration collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. Likewise with Nixon. And now with the discontent over how the war in Iraq is playing out, don't you get the impression that Bush is headed for the same fate?[/b]

I actually see something smaller tripping him up: this business over outing the wife of Ambassador Wilson as a CIA agent. It's often these small things that get you. Something small enough for a court to get its teeth into. Putting this woman at risk because of anger over what her husband has done is bitchy, dangerous to the nation, dangerous to other CIA agents. This resonates more than Iraq. I'm afraid that 90 percent of Americans don't know where Iraq is and never will know, and they don't care.

But that number of $87 billion is seared into their brains, because there isn't enough money to go around. The states are broke. Meanwhile, the right wing has been successful in convincing 99 percent of the people that we are generously financing every country on Earth, that we are bankrolling welfare mothers, all those black ladies that the Republicans are always running against, the ladies they tell us are guzzling down Kristal champagne at the Ambassador East in Chicago -- which of course is ridiculous.

And now the people see another $87 billion going out the window. So long! People are going to rebel against that one. Congress has gone along with that, but a lot of congressmen could lose their seats for that.

[b]Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?[/b]

No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don't want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn't their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?

So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines. He can't lose.

[b]But Gore, aren't you still enough of a believer in the democratic instincts of ordinary people to think that, in the end, those sorts of conspiracies eventually fall apart?[/b]

Oh no! I find they only get stronger, more entrenched. Who would have thought that Harry Truman's plans to militarize America would have come as far as we are today? All the money we have wasted on the military, while our schools are nowhere. There is no health care; we know the litany. We get nothing back for our taxes. I wouldn't have thought that would have lasted the last 50 years, which I lived through. But it did last.

But getting back to Bush. If we use old-fashioned paper ballots and have them counted in the precinct where they are cast, he will be swept from office. He's made every error you can. He's wrecked the economy. Unemployment is up. People can't find jobs. Poverty is up. It's a total mess. How does he make such a mess? Well, he is plainly very stupid. But the people around him are not. They want to stay in power.

[b]You paint a very dark picture of the current administration and of the American political system in general. But at a deeper, more societal level, isn't there still a democratic underpinning?[/b]

No. There are some memories of what we once were. There are still a few old people around who remember the New Deal, which was the last time we had a government that showed some interest in the welfare of the American people. Now we have governments, in the last 20 to 30 years, that care only about the welfare of the rich.

[b]Is Bush the worst president we've ever had?[/b]

Well, nobody has ever wrecked the Bill of Rights as he has. Other presidents have dodged around it, but no president before this one has so put the Bill of Rights at risk. No one has proposed preemptive war before. And two countries in a row that have done no harm to us have been bombed.

[b]How do you think the current war in Iraq is going to play out?[/b]

I think we will go down the tubes right with it. With each action Bush ever more enrages the Muslims. And there are a billion of them. And sooner or later they will have a Saladin who will pull them together, and they will come after us. And it won't be pretty.

... Battle Grounded In Facts ...

10.29.04 (9:12 am) [edit]

"Don't confuse facts with reality." - Robert D. Ballard

[b]If most Americans voted in accordance with their own self-interest, then Kerry would[i] win [/i]in a landslide ... Bush has squandered the good-will of the entire world, making us hated & despised; placed us in greater danger than ever before in our nation's history; waged illegal and immoral warfare; recklessly plundered our economy for his rich cronies; impoverished working people; ignored our health care crisis; given corporations a free-hand to exploit our environment; trampled upon the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights; etc. ... "We the People" should [i]wise-up [/i]...[/b]

With presidential elections a mere five days away, campaigns are pulling out all the stops this weekend in crucial battleground states. Citizens have been barraged by a confusing array of ads, polls and speeches. American Progress has created two maps that give you the facts on the cost of war http://www.americanprogress.o... and the environment http://www.americanprogress.o... in all 50 states. Here's a look at what's really been going on in key states on the economy, war in Iraq, health care and the environment over the past four years:

[u][b]OHIO[/b][/u]

[b]IRAQ: [/b]Cost of the war in Iraq for Ohio taxpayers so far: $5.7 billion.

[b]JOBS:[/b] The Bush administration projected 151,000 new jobs would be created in Ohio. As of September 2004, the economy had actually lost 18,200 jobs, a 169,200 job shortfall.

[b]ENVIRONMENT:[/b] According to EPA consultants, "fine particle pollution from power plants shortens the lives of 1,743 Ohioans each year. Ohioans have the fourth highest risk in the country of dying from power plant pollution." The administration, however, has acted in the interests of power plants, ending legal action to force compliance with clean air standards and rolling back clean air standards for the oldest, dirtiest power plants.

[b]POVERTY:[/b] More Ohioans slipped into poverty last year. According to the Columbus Dispatch, "about one in six children and nearly one in three households in Ohio headed by women were in poverty in 2003, both increases from the previous year." Cleveland was ranked the number one poorest city in the nation, with 31.3 percent of citizens living under the poverty line.

[b]HEALTH CARE:[/b] The Ohio State Medical Association reports the number of uninsured Ohioans grew to more than 1.3 million in 2003.

[b]TAXES:[/b] According to Citizens for Tax Justice, "between 2001 and 2006, Ohio taxpayers will receive $35.6 billion in tax cuts – but will face $145.7 billion in added federal debt, for a net added burden of $110.1 billion." And by 2006, 5 million Ohio taxpayers – 89 percent of all state residents – will receive less than $100 in tax cuts.

[b]EDUCATION:[/b] A report commissioned by the Ohio Department of Education found President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was underfunded for the Buckeye State. It costs Ohio "$1.4 billion more annually than it gets from the federal government for public education," leaving the cash-strapped state to make up the difference.

[u][b]PENNSYLVANIA[/b][/u ]

[b]IRAQ:[/b] The Bush administration has spent $6.3 billion of Pennsylvania taxpayers' money on the war in Iraq.

[b]ECONOMY:[/b] In 2003, The Bush administration projected 142,800 new jobs in Pennsylvania. As of September 2004, the economy had actually created 37,100 new jobs, a 105,700 job shortfall. The state has been hit especially hard in the manufacturing sector, where Pennsylvania has shed 154,600 jobs, a decline of more than 18 percent. Average wages have also fallen. The state's job creation performance is the fourth worst since World War II.

[b]POVERTY:[/b] Poverty in Pennsylvania increased substantially in the last year, especially for children. The share of children in poverty has jumped by a third (from 11.6 to 15.5 percent) from 2000 to 2003. The share of adults in poverty increased from 8.6 to 10.5 percent during the same period.

[b]HEALTH CARE:[/b] "The growth among those without health insurance is increasing faster in Pennsylvania than it is nationally. According to recent U. S. Census figures, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage in Pennsylvania has grown from 10.3% in 2001-2002 to 11.4% in 2002-2003."

[b]EDUCATION:[/b] Due to changes in the No Child Left Behind funding formula, Pennsylvania authorities "estimate that 507 of our 576 districts and charter schools will lose a portion of their Title I [Education] funding" in 2005. Pennsylvania authorities worry they will "lose an additional $9 million in other NCLB programs such as Reading First, Education Technology, Even Start, and Comprehensive School Reform." In May, "Superintendents from 171 school districts in 19 Western Pennsylvania counties…added a loud chorus to the protests against" the act. The school leaders "signed a position paper that they say addresses 'critical flaws' in the controversial federal education law, signed by President Bush in 2002."

[u][b]FLORIDA[/b][/u]

[b]IRAQ:[/b] The cost of the war in Iraq for Florida taxpayers so far: $7.8 billion.

[b]JOBS: [/b]Between June 2003 and September 2004, the Bush administration projected 327,900 new jobs in Florida. As of September 2004, the economy had created only 181,300 jobs, a 146,600 job shortfall.

[b]ECONOMY:[/b] According to Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2001 and 2006, Florida taxpayers will receive $69.1 billion in tax cuts – but will face $216.6 billion in added federal debt because of the administration's inattention to the deficit. By 2006, 87 percent of all Floridians will receive less than $100 in tax cuts as a result of the latest Bush tax schemes.

[b]VETERANS: [/b]There are 1.9 million veterans living in Florida. The National Priorities Project, however, reports the White House budget proposal underfunds Florida's veterans' health care facilities by at least $191.4 million.

[b]POVERTY:[/b] Florida's poverty level is higher than the national average, with 12.7 percent of Floridians living in poverty. The situation is even worse for kids: 19.2 percent of Florida's children live below the poverty threshold.

[b]HEALTH CARE:[/b] The State of Working Florida reports, in 2003, 18.2 percemt of Florida residents had no health insurance, "over 2.5% higher than the national average." The state was even worse in providing coverage to children – 14.5 percent have no coverage, tying Florida for fifth worst in the nation. The state's budget problems have been exacerbated by White House policies; Bush's 2005 budget proposed a 3 percent decrease in federal grants to states at the same time federal tax cuts meant a $16 billion decrease in state tax revenues.

[b]Source:[/b]

The Center for American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.o...

... 100,000 War Crimes ...

10.29.04 (7:58 am) [edit]

"One kills a man, one is an assassin; one kills millions, one is a conqueror; one kills everybody, one is a god" - Jean Rostand

[b]"We the People" should be outraged by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]illegal and immoral bloodbath in Iraq ... Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the rest of their insane neo-con cabal of neo-fascist War Criminals should be put on trial for Crimes Against Humanity ...[/b]

The staggering research reported in the British journal Lancet shows the magnitude of the Bush administration’s war crimes: 98,000 Iraqi civilians dead, including 40,000 children. And that’s not even counting Fallujah.

The number of deaths is particularly shocking because the researchers measured deaths in the 18 months after March 2003 in comparison to a similar period before March 2003. But it’s been widely reported the under sanctions deaths in Iraq were already very high, including among children—so the post-March ’03 increase is even more significant.

The researchers didn’t include Fallujah because the number of deaths there were so high they didn’t want that city’s dead to skew their national sample, measured in 808 Iraqi households in 33 clusters spread across Iraq.

[i]Newsday,[/i] reporting the study, notes http://www.newsday.com/news/n...,0,7799287.story?coll=sns-ap-world-h eadlines :

... "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." ...

I guess I don’t think most Americans care a lot about dead Iraqis. I hope I’m wrong. The researchers deliberately released their report on the eve of the U.S. elections in the hope that it would have the greatest impact. Two more American soldiers died yesterday in combat, bringing the total of American dead to 1,106. That the ratio is 100 to 1 won’t change most American minds, I don’t think. But in a close election, if it affects one of a hundred American voters, it can make a difference. It should.

[b]Source:[/b]

Robert Dreyfuss, [i]The Dreyfuss Report[/i], TomPaine, http://www.tompaine.com

... Whatever It Takes, Huh??? ...

10.28.04 (5:09 pm) [edit]

"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[b]"We the People" have been subjected to four years of obscene lies, deceptions and falsehoods by the corrupt Bushies, that has resulted in the deaths of over a thousand US Soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi Men, Women and Children ... So the following deception is simply nauseating in its' cynicism, disdain and disregard for the American people ...[/b]

[b]The Kerry campaign has issued a press release directing press to the diary and published by Daily Kos http://www.dailykos.com :[/b]

In response to the stunning revelation that the Bush-Cheney campaign's much touted closing ad has been exposed as doctored, the Kerry campaign is demanding that this fake ad be taken off the airwaves immediately.

Senior Adviser Joe Lockhart issued the following statement:

"Now we know why this ad is named `Whatever it Takes.' This administration has always had a problem telling the truth from Iraq to jobs to health care. The Bush campaign's advertising has been consistently dishonest in what they say. But today, it's been exposed for being dishonest about what we see.

"If they won't tell the truth in an ad, they won't tell the truth about anything else. This doctored commercial is fundamentally dishonest and insults the intelligence of the American people. The Bush campaign has no choice but to take this ad down immediately and issue an apology for its latest attempt to mislead the American people.

"Unless George Bush has changed its position on human cloning, it's got to pull this fundamentally dishonest ad immediately."

[b]The story is CNN, AP has it, etc. "We the People" should be [i]outraged and appalled [/i]at such ugly deceptions perpetrated upon us by the traitorous neo-con Bush regime ... Although one cannot however be [i]surprised[/i] at the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] neo-fascist tactics ...[/b]

... Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 260 vs. Bush 254 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.28.04 (9:17 am) [edit]

[b]... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 260 vs. Bush 254 ...[/b]

[b]Oct. 28 New polls:[/b] AZ CO FL GA IL IA LA MI MN NV NJ NM NC OH PA VA WA WI

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (88)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (87)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (85)
White - Exactly tied (24)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (41)
Light Red - Weak Bush (66)
Red - Strong Bush (147)

[b]Needed to win:[/b] 270

[u][b]News from the Votemaster[/b][/u]

Today's harvest is 39 polls in 18 states. In most states the winner didn't change, but we have motion in two key states. The most recent poll in Ohio http://www.electoral-vote.com... , Zogby's tracking poll, puts Kerry a tad ahead there, 46% to 45%, well within the margin of error. Other Ohio polls are mixed. Rasmussen's tracking poll puts Bush 4% ahead but the LA Times poll puts Kerry 4% ahead. Let's call Ohio a tie. Which way it goes will almost assuredly depend on the turnout Tuesday, especially among younger voters. Could OSU elect the next president? It is not out of the question.

The other state where we have a change is Michigan http://www.electoral-vote.com... . According to the latest poll there (Zogby's tracking poll) Bush and Kerry are tied at 47% each. However, two other polls (Rasmussen and Mitchell Research put Kerry ahead by 6% and 1%, respectively). All in all, by gaining Ohio and having Michigan be tied, Kerry makes a net gain and now leads in the electoral college, but neither candidate has the required 270 electoral votes it takes to win.

Ellis Henican had a very insightful column http://www.newsday.com/news/c...,0,6524909.column yesterday that is relevant to the Rasmussen poll I cited yesterday in which 1/3 of the voters weren't sure the election would be fair. Henican said the banks execute millions of ATM transactions every day, giving the customer a printed receipt if requested, and get them all right all the time. Not a margin of 1%, no recounts, but 100% right all the time. Why can't we make a voting system that is 100% right all the time? It would seem to me that the right way to do this would be a touch screen machine that asks the voter to make choices for the various offices in a language chosen by the voter (with audio output if desired), and when all done prints a paper ballot the voter can personally verify and deposit in the ballot box. The computer total would be available instantly after the polls close but in the event of a challenge, these paper ballots could be optically scanned or even hand counted. I can't believe a system like this is infeasible and it would certainly help restore faith in the electoral process.

But the problems aren't only technological. There may be deeper forces at work. Today's New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... reports that tens of thousands of absentee ballots in Florida's heavily Democratic Broward County have mysteriously vanished. The county says it mailed them but the post office says it never got them.

Several lawyers have contacted me about the issue of what to do if you show up to vote and the election officials say you are not registered. Here is the procedure. First, be absolutely sure you are in the correct precinct. If you are in the wrong precinct, in most states, your vote won't be counted. If you are not 100% certain of your polling place, go to www.mypollingplace.com http://www.mypollingplace.com... and check. Alternatively, call the toll-free number 1-866-OUR-VOTE or your county clerk. If you are sure you are in the correct polling place and the officials claim you are not registered, ask for a provisional ballot and fill it out correctly. You are entitled to one by law http://www.electionline.org/s... . Politely, but firmly, insist on being given a provisional ballot.

Today's Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com... has an excellent story dealing with the issue of whether the polls are accurate. The basic problem is that the vast majority of people refuse to participate, so the sample is no longer random. Surveying mostly elderly, lonely, or bored people can bias the results. The Post reports that one caller apparently was so fed up with telemarketeers and pollsters that he attached a device to the telephone that made such a loud noise it damaged the pollster's eardrum. Even response rates for exit polls on election day have dropped to 50%. This information goes a long way to explaining why the polls are so erratic this year. But in all fairness, the final 2000 polls http://www.electoral-vote.com... weren't so hot either. Eleven of the 15 national polls just before the election predicted Bush would win the popular vote by a margin of 2% to 6%. Ultimately, Gore won it by 0.5%.

Legal news: A U.S. District Court judge in Cleveland killed an effort by the GOP to remove tens of thousands of Ohio voters, largely minorities from the voter rolls, but a judge in Cincinnati has granted a temporary restraining order in a related case. See Rick Hasen's Election Law http://www.electionlawblog.or... blog for more on these stories.

Stupidity news: One of Kerry's electors in Ohio, Rep. Sherrod Brown, is a congressman. Unfortunately, the constitution forbids federal office holders from being electors. It is possible that if Kerry wins Ohio, Brown's right to cast an electoral vote will be challenged in court. Whoever picked a constitutionally ineligible elector needs to get his or her mental software ungraded to the latest release.

[b]Sleeper news:[/b] A Rasmussen poll taken Oct. 26 in Arizona puts Libertarian party http://www.lp.org/ candidate Michael Badnarik at 3%. When the pollsters actually ask about him, he does surprisingly well. He might end up canceling out the Nader factor by appealing to disgruntled Republicans who support a balanced budget and small government and are appalled by the current deficit and power the Patriot Act gives the government to snoop on people's lives.

How political involved is your college or alma mater? Take a look at university hits http://www.electoral-vote.com... page. Note that there is no correction for size here, just the raw hit count.

Earlier I pointed out a number of prominent conservatives supporting Kerry, such as President Eisenhower's son, John, a lifelong Republican. I said that if any prominent liberals supported Bush I would mention them, too. OK, I'll keep my promise. Several readers pointed out that former NYC mayor Ed Koch, has endorsed Bush. Some people also pointed out Sen. Zell Miller, too, but he is certainly not a liberal and has been voting with the Republicans in the Senate for years, so he is barely even a Democrat.

Several people commented that Hawaii is colored weak Bush when it should be barely Bush. This is simply because Hawaii doesn't have enough pixels. If you have any spare pixels, please donate them to Hawaii.

[b]"We the People" must exercise our moral obligation and civic duty to cast our vote on the 2nd November ... Please encourage your family members, friends and neighbors to vote for John Kerry for President of the United States of America ...[/b]

... Bush Endorses Kerry ...

10.28.04 (8:38 am) [edit]

"Any idiot can face a crisis, it is this day-to-day living that wears you out." - Anton Chekov

[b]George WMD Bush is truly an idiot ...[/b]

[b]George WMD Bush: “A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as commander in chief” (... You have got to be kidding ....)[/b]

George Bush has apparently http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPo...%5CPolitics%5Carchive%5C2 00410%5CPOL20041027d.html endorsed John Kerry for President, advising America that we don’t want as commander in chief “a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts.” True enough, Mr. President. How much better off we would have been had you not jumped to conclusions (re WMD) without knowing the facts.

Much better, no doubt, is a commander in chief who bases conclusions upon the facts, or, even better, acts when he learns of the facts (as this Administration did not do when it learned, in January, of the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and Cuba).

[b]"We the People" agree:-- John Kerry will make a far better president than Bush (with his neo-con cabal of crooks, traitors and war criminals), who continually finds himself [i]jumping to conclusions [/i]resulting in his criminal neo-fascist actions that the rest of us have to pay for in precious blood and treasure ...[/b]

[b]Sources:[/b]

TomPaine, http://www.tompaine.com

Daily Kos, http://www.dailykos.com

... The Road to Abu Ghraib ...

10.27.04 (4:49 pm) [edit]

"The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers" - Carl Gustav Jung

"It is tragic that in the 'war on terror', the USA has itself undermined the rule of law. Its selective disregard for the Geneva Conventions and international human rights law has contributed to torture and ill-treatment," writes Amnesty International http://web.amnesty.org/librar... . ... "The torture and ill-treatment of Iraqi detainees by US agents in Abu Ghraib prison was -- due to a failure of human rights leadership at the highest levels of government -- sadly predictable," it continued. Refer to "Amnesty: US 'War on Terror' Mentality Leads to Torture" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... ...

[b]"We the People" should hang our heads in shame at the Crimes Against Humanity being committed by the insane neo-con Bush regime in our name ... The biggest scandal of the Bush administration began at the top and these neo-fascist War Criminals deserve to be impeached and put on trial ...[/b]

Read the full account by Phillip Carter, The Washington Monthly, on http://www.unipeak.com/gethtm... ... -[i] Excerpt [/i]-

A generation from now, historians may look back to April 28, 2004, as the day the United States lost the war in Iraq. On that date, “CBS News” broadcast the first ugly photographs of abuses by American soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. There were images of a man standing hooded on a box with wires attached to his hands; of guards leering as they forced naked men to simulate sexual acts; of a man led around on a leash by a female soldier; of a dead Iraqi detainee, packed in ice; and more. The pictures had been taken the previous fall by U.S. Army military police soldiers assigned to the prison, but had made it into the hands of Army criminal investigators only months later, when a soldier named Joseph Darby anonymously passed them a CD-ROM full of prison photos. The images aroused worldwide indignation, and illustrated in graphic detail both the lengths to which the United States would go to get intelligence, and the extent to which those efforts had been corrupted by the exigencies of the difficult war in Iraq. ...

... The world will forgive—and indeed, secretly applaud—those occasions, such as Kosovo, where we ignore the letter of the law or sidestep international institutions in the service of an obviously greater good. What it will neither understand nor condone is the wholesale abandonment of the law. The Bush administration has cast the debate over the laws of war in all-or-nothing terms—either you can throw out the old laws of war, or do nothing to secure the nation against a terrorist attack. In many ways, this position resembles much of the administration's rhetoric in the war on terror and its bid for reelection: You're either with us or against us, for good or for evil, a supporter of American policy or a supporter of terrorism. But the world is far more complex than that. There was a third path between living with the anachronistic laws of war and rejecting them in favor of expediency. The Bush administration rejected that path, and now, every day, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens are paying the ultimate price for its mistake.

[b]Continue [/b]... http://www.unipeak.com/gethtm...

[b]Also refer to "Memo On New Evidence on Abu Ghraib: Breakdown in the Chain of Command", The Center for American Progress, on http://www.americanprogress.o... ...[/b]

... Promises to Keep ...

10.27.04 (2:21 pm) [edit]

"We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot." - Abraham Lincoln

[b]"We the People" have been brutally lied to, deceived and manipulated by the corrupt neo-con Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]all throughout their obscene neo-fascist reign in office ... It is time for a change ... It is time for us to elect John Kerry to restore honesty, integrity and decency to the White House ... [/b]

The Presidential election of 2004 is finally upon us. After a thousand days of fear, doubt, anger and set-jawed patriotism in the face of everything we as a nation have been forced to deal with, we are down to a single week in which to consider our place and position, a single week to decide where we go from here, a single week to remember where we have been.

John Adams once said, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Today in America, politics has become a bloodsport where wishes, inclinations and passions lead us to attack those we disagree with as fools, as dangerous, as less than patriots. Both sides of the political aisle are guilty of recrimination and hyperexaggeration; debate, these days, is done at top voice, a means to shout your opponent down. It is a lessening of us all.

[i]More than 1,100 flag-draped symbolic coffins line the reflecting pool at the base of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, Oct. 23, 2004 in Washington. The tribute is in honor of the American service men and women who have been killed in Iraq to date. In the background is the Washington Monument[/i].

Yet the stubborn facts and evidence remain, and no amount of red-faced bellowing by partisans and paid operatives can change their nature. The following facts are addressed to the fence-sitters, to the undecided voters, to the independent voters, to those who have come to see voting as a waste of time, and to the millions upon millions of Republicans in America who are of good conscience, who voted for George W. Bush four years ago and wonder now at the wisdom of their choice.

[b]These are the facts[/b].

George W. Bush and the members of his administration told us, beginning in September of 2002, that the nation of Iraq was a grave and growing threat to the security of the American people. We were told by this administration that Iraq was in possession of vast stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, that they were vigorously pursuing a nuclear weapon, and that they enjoyed operational connections with the al Qaeda terrorist network.

The implications were clear: Saddam Hussein would be more than happy to deliver these horrible weapons to the same terrorists who attacked us on September 11. "It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country," said Bush in his January 2003 State of the Union address, "to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known." Bush, in that same speech, went on to specify the exact volume of weapons in Iraq which were demanding invasion: 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents - 500 tons equals 1,000,000 pounds - plus nearly 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, and additionally, a plan to seek uranium from Niger for use in the production of nuclear weapons. If you doubt these facts, please reference the White House website http://www.whitehouse.gov/res... . Their page describing these horrors is still there.

Now, of course, we know better. The American weapons inspection team sent to Iraq by the Bush administration itself - 1,625 inspectors investigating 1,700 suspected weapons sites over two years at a cost of $1 billion - came up completely empty. There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there have been no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq since the UN inspections of the mid-1990s, Hussein had no concrete plans to make any weapons of mass destruction, and even if he did, the facilities needed to create such weapons were no longer operational in any way, shape or form. Bush's threat of a "day of horror like none we have ever known" because of these Iraqi weapons was revealed to be devoid of substance.

The push to invade and occupy Iraq was so strong that it overwhelmed other, more pressing matters. The war in Afghanistan remains unfinished to this day because the Bush administration removed vital American military forces from that nation and sent them to fight in Iraq. Because of that decision, the warlords in Afghanistan are powerful again. Because of that decision, opium production in Afghanistan is booming. Because of that decision, Osama bin Laden is still alive and free.

As the occupation of Iraq ground on, as the promises that we would be greeted as liberators were rendered hollow by a steadily rising death toll among our soldiers and their civilians, the rationale for war proffered by the Bush administration began to drift. It wasn't about weapons of mass destruction anymore. It was about bringing freedom and democracy, and about bringing hope to a beleaguered populace that had lived long under a tyrant.

Leave aside the long argument about the efficacy of bringing democracy by the point of a sword, leave aside the reality that nothing approximating democracy is going to take root in Iraq while an American-installed government with no credibility among the Iraqi people sits in power, and leave aside the reality that no kind of true democratic election is going to take place in Iraq because large swaths of that nation are beyond the control of any government, are still at war with the American army, and will never see a ballot.

The fact remains that bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq was not the reason given to the American people for why war was necessary, and necessary now. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, we were made to feel fear because Saddam Hussein was going to give his weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, and they were going to use those weapons against us.

Millions of people in America did not go out and buy plastic sheeting and duct tape to support democracy and freedom in Iraq. Millions of Americans bought plastic sheeting and duct tape because their government terrified them into believing a poison cloud would envelop them and their families at any moment.

It comes down to this. George W. Bush and his administration desired a reckoning with Saddam Hussein from the moment they took office. Powerful administration officials like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz had been advocating for an invasion and occupation of Iraq for many years, [u]well before they ever took office[/u]. http://truthout.org/cgi-bin/a... They used the fear and uncertainty that came after September 11 to arrange that reckoning. They used September 11 against their own people, against us all, deliberately and with intent.

Three new terms have entered the American political lexicon in the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of Iraq: Abu Ghraib, Valerie Plame and transfer tube.

Abu Ghraib is, of course, the chamber of horrors well-known to the American people by now. Under the instruction of American soldiers and private military contractors, [u]innocent Iraqi civilians were tortured, raped and murdered[/u] http://www.truthout.org/docs_... in the prison once used by Saddam Hussein for the same purposes. Photographs of these degradations were broadcast far and wide, delivering a crippling blow to the reputation of the United States.

The investigations which followed these revelations have revealed that such abuses were not relegated solely to Abu Ghraib, but had taken place in military detention facilities from Afghanistan to Cuba. 45 troops have been recommended for courts-martial, and some 23 others face summary discharge. Yet the officers who ordered or allowed all this to take place have thus far escaped any serious censure. The civilian leaders in Washington, whose lawyers argued that torture isn't really torture and is therefore acceptable in war, bear as much of the burden of responsibility for this as the soldiers who put the policy to living flesh. They, too, have not been called to account.

Where does the awful reality of Abu Ghraib fit into the global puzzle that is this War on Terror? Philip Carter, writing for Washington Monthly, said it best. "America suffered a huge defeat the moment those photographs became public," writes Carter. "Copies of them are now sold in souks from Marrakesh to Jakarta, vivid illustrations of the worst suspicions of the Arab world: that Americans are corrupt and power-mad, eager to humiliate Muslims and mock their values. The acts they document have helped to energize the insurgency in Iraq, undermining our rule there and magnifying the risks faced by our soldiers each day. If Osama bin Laden had hired a Madison Avenue public relations firm to rally Arabs hearts and minds to his cause, it's hard to imagine that it could have devised a better propaganda campaign."

If the story of Abu Ghraib strikes at the heart of our reputation worldwide, the story of Valerie Plame http://truthout.org/docs_03/0... reaches into the guts of our ability to defend ourselves at home. Plame was a deep-cover CIA agent running a network dedicated to tracking any person, nation or group that would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was dispatched in February of 2002 to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking uranium there for use in a nuclear weapons program. Wilson returned from Niger after a diligent investigation and reported to the CIA, the office of the National Security Advisor, the State Department and the office of Vice President Cheney that the claims had no merit whatsoever.

In January of 2003, during the same State of the Union speech in which he spoke of that "day of horror" and described Iraq's weapons by the numbers, Bush used the debunked Niger uranium claim as further evidence that the invasion of Iraq was an absolute imperative. Wilson, in July of 2003, exploded the administration's Niger-uranium claim in a detailed editorial in the New York Times. Days later, his wife Valerie Plame was exposed to several reporters as a deep-cover agent by operatives for the White House. Plame's operations against those who would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists were wrecked. Her intelligence network was destroyed. The front company she worked out of, Brewster Jennings & Associates, was likewise exposed, a fact that had the corollary effect of ruining the operations and networks of any other agents working under the cover of that office.

The White House agents who blew Plame's cover did so for one reason, and one reason alone: To intimidate and silence any government analysts or whistleblowers who might go to the press and contradict the Bush administration's carefully crafted story line about the threat posed by Iraq. A number of people had come forward before Wilson wrote his article, but few came after Plame was attacked. It is one thing to put yourself at risk by taking on the Bush administration, but it is another thing entirely to be shown that the decision to do so puts your family in the line of fire.

Beyond the fact that our capacity to track and interdict the transfer of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists was damaged by the outing of Valerie Plame - and isn't that the reason we went to war in Iraq in the first place? - there is the damage done to our overall capacity to watch a world filled with threats. The Bush administration ignored the data and warnings coming from the American intelligence community before the war, because that data did not fit the decision for war which had already been made, and then scapegoated the intelligence community after their story line did not match reality. The attack upon Valerie Plame is but one example of the administration's dangerous misuse and abuse of our intelligence services. Today, the CIA is at war with the White House because of this. In no way does this deplorable situation heighten our security here at home.

Finally, there are the transfer tubes. One thousand one hundred and six transfer tubes have been put to use by the American military since the invasion of Iraq was undertaken 17 months ago. You may not have heard of these things, because the Bush administration has forbidden the press from taking pictures of them. The term itself is a bland Pentagon-created euphemism. Once upon a time, 'transfer tubes' were called coffins.

It has been widely reported since Monday that almost 400 tons of high explosives disappeared from a storage facility in Iraq called al Qaqaa. The International Atomic Energy Agency voiced public warnings about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured. These warnings went unheeded; American soldiers were used to guard [u]petroleum facilities after the invasion[/u], http://www.truthout.org/docs_... and were used to tear down statues in politically helpful photo-opportunities in Baghdad. The explosives were left unprotected.

How much of the stuff has been used in the last 17 months to kill American troops? How many of the 1,106 are dead because of a decision to ignore the al Qaqaa facility? Because of the woeful ineptitude of the Bush administration in managing the occupation and in guarding the borders of Iraq, that country has become the terrorist haven it never was before March of 2003. How much of this missing material has fallen into the hands of people who would use it to explode airplanes and buildings, along with American soldiers in convoys and military bases?

When a man or woman raises their right hand and swears the oath, when they don the uniform of the United States military and take up arms in the common defense of us all, they are promising to give their lives. [u]They stand and deliver[/u], http://www.truthout.org/docs_... and the honor and nobility of their service goes beyond description. The only promise they expect in return is that their lives will not be spent by their leaders for anything less than the greatest need.

That promise has not been kept by George W. Bush and his administration. The failure to secure the al Qaqaa facility is but one example of this. Some have argued that 1,106 dead American soldiers in Iraq is a paltry number compared to the death toll absorbed by American troops in places like Normandy and Iwo Jima. Some have argued that, compared to annual murder rates in places like Detroit and Los Angeles, 1,106 dead American soldiers is statistically insignificant.

One American soldier sent home to his family in a transfer tube after dying in an unnecessary and mismanaged war is exactly one American soldier too many. No manipulation of statistics can alter this last, heartbreaking, stubborn fact. If nothing else touches you, if the missing weapons of mass destruction and the deliberate use of fear and the shame of Abu Ghraib and the abuse of our intelligence services and the recreation of Iraq into a terrorist stronghold does not touch you, if the fact that all of this combined has birthed a world where we are all far less safe does not move you, remember that promise.

They made it. We must keep it.

[b]Source:[/b]

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.' - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

... Swift and Steady Sabotage ...

10.27.04 (11:18 am) [edit]

"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
An eternity in an hour." - William Blake

[b]"We the People" are part of the natural world without which we will perish ... It is therefore crucial that we act as responsible, loving caretakers of the Spaceship Earth and not gluttonous, rapacious barbarians who wantonly destroy the world around us ... It is for this reason that we must elect John Kerry for President ... The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] is comprised of short-sighted, corporate-take-all thugs & goons greedily grabbing resources for themselves alone, with no concern for the future of our planet or for the generations to come ... [/b]

Last week, the Washington Post reported http://www.washingtonpost.com... thirty-four Superfund projects in 19 states will go unfunded this year. The Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged that Superfund, which is the government's toxic waste cleanup program, is now nearly bankrupt. Why are these crucial sites being neglected? Carol Browner, the administrator of the EPA from 1993-2001, explains, "Because the fees that are used to pay for these cleanups are no longer being collected." In a sop to the oil industry, the Bush administration ended the tax on corporate polluters that funded the program by refusing to ask Congress to reinstate the fee oil and chemical companies paid that generated the money for cleanups. This is part of an overall pattern of a swift and steady sabotage of environmental safeguards.

[b]THE ENVIRONMENT AT A GLANCE:[/b] A new study by Knight Ridder, for example, found that the steady improvement in air and water quality of the past three decades "has stalled or gone in reverse in several areas" since January 2001. Specifically, Superfund cleanups of toxic waste fell by 52 percent; fish-consumption warnings for rivers doubled; the number of beach closings rose 26 percent; civil citations issued to polluters fell 57 percent; asthma attacks increased by 6 percent; and there were "record-low" additions to national parks, wilderness, wildlife refuges and the endangered species list. (For a look at how your state stacks up with health, safety and the environment, check out American Progress's new interactive map http://www.americanprogress.o... .)

[b]LETTING THE INMATES RUN THE ASYLUM:[/b] The Washington Post reports that the chemical industry has given $2 million to the EPA for a study supposedly "exploring the impact of pesticides and household chemicals on young children." (For those of you keeping track, the American Chemistry Council is the same group that fought against the finding that wood treated with arsenic shouldn't be used in playground equipment.) The EPA already has a $572 million research budget; no word on why the agency needed to take money from the chemical industry to conduct an independent study. The EPA admits the money means "We will seek their opinions." Carol Henry, a vice president at the American Chemistry Council, also acknowledges the association has set up a board of hand-picked academics and industry officials to be a "resource to investigators," adding, "We'll give them our guidance." (The administration has a track record of allowing corporations to call the regulatory shots; check out this comprehensive report about the special interest takeover http://www.americanprogress.o... .)

[b]DRILLING AWAY THE WILDERNESS:[/b] President Bush has claimed, "I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land." Not really. According to the Los Angeles Times, environmentally damaging policies put in place by Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton take away the safeguards which for decades have protected potential wilderness areas. Even more egregious, the administration claimed that the Department of the Interior "is barred – forever – from identifying and protecting wild land the way it has for nearly 30 years." In effect, "The administration is giving industry virtual carte blanche to look for oil and gas wherever it wants outside of existing parks and wilderness areas." The Washington Post points out that President Bush has "approved about 70 percent more drilling permits on public lands during the first three years of his administration" than the three preceding years. And, writes the New Yorker, "By stripping away restrictions on the use of federal lands, often through little-advertised rule changes, the Administration has potentially opened up sixty million acres, an area larger than Indiana and Iowa combined, to logging, mining, and oil exploration."

[b]GLOBAL WARMING:[/b] A top NASA climate expert yesterday joined a long line of scientists in criticizing the Bush administration for its disregard of science. Dr. James E. Hansen, who has twice briefed Vice President Dick Cheney's task force on global warming, charged, "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it is now." Hansen also "said the administration wants to hear only scientific results that 'fit predetermined, inflexible positions.'" Specifically, he charged the White House edited reports that outline the potential dangers of global warming to make the problem appear less serious. "This process is in direct opposition to the most fundamental precepts of science," he said. "This," he warned, "is a recipe for environmental disaster."

[b]Source:[/b]

The Center for American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.o...

... 'Caging' Democracy ...

10.27.04 (9:14 am) [edit]

"Whoever is detected in a shameful fraud is ever after not believed even if they speak the truth" - Phaedrus

"Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it." - Samuel Johnson

"Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason." - Charles Curtis

[b]"We the People" are witness to the heinous fraud underway by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]who employ their neo-fascist "win-at-all-cost" warfare against the American people in this election and neo-con terror against us on a daily basis ... Ergo, we must get out in force and vote for John Kerry in order to save Our Republic ...[/b]

Yesterday, new evidence emerged that high ranking members of the Bush campaign are engaged in an orchestrated effort to disrupt voting in predominately African-American precincts. But don't expect to read about it in your morning newspaper – the only major news organization that has bothered to report the story is the BBC. Two e-mails, obtained from the Bush campaign, contain a 15-page "caging list," containing "1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida." Ion Sancho, an elections supervisor in Tallahassee, said, "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day." Civil rights attorney Ralph Neas noted, "US federal law prohibits targeting challenges to voters, even if there is a basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the voters." Republican state campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher said that the list was not created to challenge voters "but refused to say it would not be used in that manner." Similar efforts are taking place in other battleground states, such as Ohio. According to ACORN, a non-profit group, "46 percent of the Republican challenges in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, were against black people, who represent only 27 percent of the county's population." (Don't let tactics like these keep you from the polls. Remember, if you don't vote, this election will not be stolen; it will be given away http://www.americanprogress.o... .)

[b]THE MYTH OF VOTER FRAUD: [/b]The Republican talking points manipulate the facts to create a false impression of widespread voter fraud in key states. For example, appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie said that "If you look at Franklin County [Ohio]... a very important county in the election, there are 815,000 people according to the census, 18 or older eligible to vote. There are 845,000 registered voters." Gillespie suggests that the only way this can be explained is voter fraud. That isn't true. Federal law prohibits purging records of voters who have moved out of the state – or should otherwise not be on the rolls – for four years. So if there are more registered voters than eligible voters, that doesn't mean scores of people are attempting to commit fraud. It means the state is complying with the National Voter Registration Act.

[b]THEY AREN'T COMMITTING VOTER FRAUD, THEY'RE IN IRAQ:[/b] Many of the people that Republicans are targeting in Ohio – claiming their addresses are invalid – "are overseas military members...whose mail cannot be forwarded." Among those challenged was "Lisa Potts, a longtime Marine currently stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C." Potts – a Republican – said, "I pay taxes to the state of Ohio every year."

[b]VOTER FRAUD IS RARE:[/b] According to a new study http://www.demos-usa.org/page... by Demos finds that "election fraud is at most a minor problem across the 50 U.S. states, and does not affect election outcomes." For example, election officials in Arizona "say voter fraud involving undocumented immigrants is rare." Karen Osborne, Maricopa County's director of elections, said, "if we have one case a year, it's an amazement." Officials in Arizona are concerned that a new ballot measure – which would require proof of citizenship to vote – "could end up blocking legitimate voters from exercising their rights."

[b]Source:[/b]

The Center for American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.o...

... Iraq Heartache ...

10.27.04 (8:46 am) [edit]

With Congress requesting an additional $70 billion for the war in Iraq, the financial costs of occupation—already staggering—are getting worse. But here, writer David Corn focuses on the emotional costs of war that can't be measured so neatly. And he says he's finding it increasingly difficult to be measured and polite.

[b]"We the People" should no longer be so measured and polite either ... Too much is at stake ... We must rid ourselves of the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who have reeked blood-thirsty wars, murders-and-tortures-and- rapes and terrors[i] and [/i]brought fear, shame and disgrace upon our nation ...[/b]

[b]David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for[i] TomPaine.com[/i]. Corn is also the Washington editor of [i]The Nation [/i]and is the author of [i]The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception [/i](Crown Publishers):--[/b]

This past Saturday I was in the green room in the Reuters television studio overlooking Times Square, waiting with others to appear on the Dutch equivalent of Nightline , and it felt like my heart was going to explode. I was staring at Cathy Heighter. Her 21-year-old son Raheen, an Army private, was killed when a convoy in which he was riding outside Baghdad was attacked. Sitting across the room from Heighter was Ivan Medina, a 23-year-old veteran who served in Iraq. His twin brother, Irving, an Army specialist, was killed in Baghdad when his convoy struck an improvised explosive device. I tried to envision their sense of loss. Medina, a co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, handed me a business card that had on it his brother’s photograph and an American flag. Heighter offered me a magnet bearing the image of her son and the address for a scholarship fund created to honor him. It was not possible to fathom fully their bottomless grief.

In the room and the adjoining hallway, other guests milled. I spotted Dan Senor, the former spokesman for the U.S. authority in Iraq. There was a Republican lawyer who spins for the White House. There was a member of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Vets outfit that was spending millions of dollars on attack ads against John Kerry in order to keep George W. Bush in office. All in one setting: the victims of George Bush and Bush’s lieutenants—there to discuss calmly and reasonably the war in Iraq and the upcoming U.S. election. I wanted to scream.

Before me was one price of Bush’s war in Iraq—or 0.18 percent of it. I did the math, multiplying the suffering in this room by the tens of thousands of relatives and friends of Americans whose lives ended too early in Iraq. I added in the pain and misery of those wounded in Iraq and their families. And none of this included the suffering on the Iraqi side. In terms of past wars, the number of killed and wounded U.S. troops in Iraq has not loomed large, but the collective grief I was imagining seemed overwhelming.

If Bush had been in the room, I would have had the strong urge to throttle him and ask, “Was it absolutely, 100 percent, without any doubt, necessary for these people to lose their loved ones?” Before the invasion, Bush said the primary reason for war was to address the “direct,” “immediate” and “gathering” threat Saddam Hussein’s regime presented. And Iraq was such a threat, Bush asserted, because it possessed biological and chemical weapons and a revived nuclear weapons program and because it was “dealing” with Al Qaeda. None of that has proven true. The Duelfer report concludes that Hussein had neither WMDs nor any active WMD programs (and that Hussein’s WMD programs were in a state of decay—that is, de-gathering). The 9/11 Commission and the CIA found no evidence of an operational relationship between Hussein’s government and Al Qaeda. There was no pressing threat that required a war. There was plenty of time to pursue other options. In fact, the inspections and sanctions had worked. These days, Bush hails the war in Iraq as an essential part of an overall crusade to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East. But that is not how he sold the invasion originally. The main reason for which those two men—and others—have died was bunk. Bush failed the most solemn obligation of his office: to order men and women to their death for good cause and only if there is no other choice.

I confess: I find it increasingly difficult to be civil about this. I certainly can argue politely and passionately with conservatives about welfare reform, school choice, faith-based initiatives, tax cuts, antiballistic missile defense. I can see how people of good faith might disagree in good faith over these contentious issues. But I am losing my patience with anyone who refuses to acknowledge that Raheen Heighter, Irving Medina and many others died under George Bush’s false pretenses. And given that the war in Iraq was indeed an elective war, I want to grab advocates of the war by the lapel and say, “Unless you’re willing to put your butt—or that of a precious son or daughter—in an unreinforced Humvee in Iraq, why should anyone die for your and Bush’s assertion that the war in Iraq is essential for America’s safety?”

What compounds the ill will I feel for Bush and the war-backers is the manner in which Bush discu