tBlog - Winston Smith's Daily Journal

Winston Smith's Daily Journal

Blog For Free!

Archives
Home
2005 January
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
2004 June
2004 May
2004 April
2004 March
2004 February
2004 January
2003 December
2003 November
2003 October
2003 September
2003 August
2003 July

My Links
Contact Congress
Casualties in Iraq
National Debt Clock

tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images

Sponsored
Blog

... 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 discusses the war while campaigning. Rather than strive for a high-minded and somber debate about the most critical issue of the campaign, he has resorted to cheap shots and derision. He blasts Kerry for advocating “pessimism and retreat” and for considering terrorism a “nuisance,” when Kerry merely said is that it would be desirable to reach a day when terrorism is nothing more than a “nuisance.” (That sounds like a decent goal, particularly when Bush says, "Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is—you know—is up in the air.”) Bush claims Kerry would submit U.S. national security decisions to other nations for a veto. At a campaign rally on Monday, he declared that Kerry “Believes that instead of leading with confidence, America must submit to what he calls a global test. I'm not making that up… That means our country must get permission from foreign capitals before we act in our own self-defense.” That is not what Kerry has said. He has explicitly stated he would not allow other governments to block actions he deemed necessary. But he did say that if a U.S. president orders an pre-emptive strike, he ought to do so for a reason that is compelling enough to convince the American public and people abroad. Bush responds to that with mockery based on a falsehood.

Bush has belittled any discussion of the war that is not black and white. For example, he attacked Kerry foreign policy adviser Richard Holbrooke, a former UN ambassador, for saying "We're not in a war on terror in a literal sense" and for calling the so-called war on terrorism a "metaphor" like the war on poverty. "Confusing food programs with terrorist killings reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the war we face," Bush exclaimed, "And that is very dangerous thinking." This is not serious debate about a serious matter: the war in Iraq and the best way to counter the threat of Islamic jihadism. This is a shallow-minded Bush putting politics over all else. Accusing Holbrooke of not knowing the difference between “food programs” and “terrorist killings”—there is a word for that: stupid.

Worse, Bush refuses to acknowledge he sold the war with false information. Even after the Duelfer report was released, Bush insisted Hussein had been a “gathering” threat. And if the mission in Iraq was, as Bush now describes it, “to help Iraq become a free nation in the midst of the greater Middle East,” why did he have to invade Iraq on March 19, 2003—before the inspections process was done, before more of the United States’ major allies were recruited for the coalition, before the U.S. troops were fully equipped with body armor and reinforced Humvees, before plans were readied for the post-invasion period and the economic, social, legal, political and security challenges to come?

Bush has not been honest about this war. That means he has not been honest about the immense loss suffered by Cathy Heighter, by Ivan Medina and by thousands of other Americans. What an insult. And those who stand with Bush share in the deceit. They are the masters of war who force others to be their servants of sacrifice. And I appear with them in television studios so we can debate the finer points of the latest developments in Iraq and the so-called war on terrorism. I am not sure if I hate them. But I do despise what they have wrought and what they defend. And I do want to shout—I mean really shout—at them for supporting and enabling the callous miscalculations of a reckless and disingenuous president. But that would make for bad and ineffective television. So I sit politely and wait to have my say, as do Heighter and Medina, and hope that somewhere, somehow, sometime (perhaps even this coming Tuesday) what we say rather than scream—as well as what Heighter and Medina feel—will matter.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Iraq Heartache, David Corn, http://www.tompaine.com/artic...

Iraq Turning Point?, Robert Dreyfuss, http://www.tompaine.com/artic...

... Understanding the Bush Doctrine ...

10.26.04 (3:14 pm) [edit]

"Bush planners know as well as others that the resort to force increases the threat of terror, and that their militaristic and aggressive posture and actions provoke reactions that increase the risk of catastrophe. They do not desire these outcomes, but assign them low priority in comparison to the international and domestic agendas they make little attempt to conceal." - Noam Chomsky, http://www.zmag.org/content/s...

[b]Noam Chomsky is a Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. His book "Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance" (part of[i] The American Empire Project [/i]series, Metropolitan Books) is a must-read for anyone interested in the adoption of brute force, fear and terror by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]in order to put in place their Global Corporate Empire. "We the People" should pay careful heed to Noam Chomsky's dire warnings regarding the barbaric militaristic neo-con policies put in place by the vicious neo-fascist Bush regime-- [i]and[/i] we must change our government before it is too late ...[/b]

Perhaps the most threatening document of our time is the U.S. National Security Strategy of September 2002. Its implementation in Iraq has already taken countless lives and shaken the international system to the core.

In the fallout from the war on terror is a revived Cold War, with more nuclear players than ever, across even more dry-tinder landscapes around the world.

As Colin Powell explained, the NSS declared that Washington has a "sovereign right to use force to defend ourselves" from nations that possess weapons of mass destruction and cooperate with terrorists, the official pretexts for invading Iraq.

The obvious reason for invading Iraq is still conspicuously evaded: establishing the first secure US military bases in a client state at the heart of the world’s major energy resources.

As old pretexts collapsed, President Bush and his colleagues adaptively revised the doctrine of the NSS to enable them to resort to force even if a country does not have WMD or programmes to develop them. The "intent and ability" to do so is sufficient.

Just about every country has the ability, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. The official doctrine, then, is that anyone is subject to attack.

In September 2003, Bush assured Americans that "the world is safer today because our coalition ended an Iraqi regime that cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction." The president’s handlers know that lies can become Truth, if repeated insistently enough.

The war in Iraq incited terror worldwide. In November 2003, Middle East expert Fawaz Gerges found it "simply unbelievable how the war has revived the appeal of a global jihadi Islam that was in real decline after 9-11." Iraq itself became a "terrorist haven" for the first time, and suffered its first suicide attacks since the 13th century CK assassins.

Recruitment for Al Qaeda networks has risen. "Every use of force is another small victory for bin Laden," who "is winning," writes British journalist Jason Burke in Al-Qaida, his 2003 study of this loose array of radical Islamists, now mostly independent.

For them, bin Laden is hardly more than a symbol. He may be even more dangerous after he is killed, becoming a martyr who will inspire others to join his cause. Burke sees the creation of "a whole new cadre of terrorists," enlisted in what they see as a "cosmic struggle between good and evil," a vision shared by bin Laden and Bush.

The proper reaction to terrorism is two-pronged: directed at the terrorists themselves, and at the reservoir of potential support. The terrorists see themselves as a vanguard, seeking to mobilise others. Police work, an appropriate response, has been successful worldwide. More important is the broad constituency that the terrorists seek to reach, including many who hate and fear them but nevertheless see them as fighting for a just cause.

We can help the terrorist vanguard mobilise this reservoir of support, by violence. Or we can address the "myriad grievances," many legitimate, that are "the root causes of modern Islamic militancy," Burke writes.

That basic effort can significantly reduce the threat of terror, and should be undertaken independently of this goal.

Violent actions provoke reactions that risk catastrophe. US analysts estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted response to Bush administration bellicosity. On both sides, nuclear warheads remain on hair-trigger alert. The Russian control systems, however, have deteriorated. The dangers ratchet up with the threat and use of force.

As anticipated, US military plans have provoked a Chinese reaction as well. China has announced plans to "transform its military into a technology-driven force capable of projecting power globally by 2010," Boston Globe correspondent Jehangir Pocha reported last month, "replacing its land-based nuclear arsenal of about 20 1970s-era intercontinental ballistic missiles with 60 new multiple-warhead missiles capable of reaching the United States."

China’s actions are likely to touch off a ripple effect through India, Pakistan and beyond. Nuclear developments in Iran and North Korea, also in part at least a response to US threats, are exceedingly ominous. The unthinkable becomes thinkable.

In 2003, at the UN General Assembly, the United States voted alone against implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and alone with its new ally India against steps toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

The United States also voted alone against "observance of environmental norms" in disarmament and arms control agreements, and alone with Israel and Micronesia against steps to prevent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East -- the pretext for invading Iraq. Presidents commonly have "doctrines," but Bush II is the first to have "visions" as well, possibly because his handlers recall the criticism of his father as lacking "the vision thing."

The most exalted of these, conjured up after all pretexts for invasion of Iraq had to be abandoned, was the vision of bringing democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. By November 2003, this vision was taken to be the real motive for the war.

The evidence for faith in the vision consists of little more than declarations of virtuous intent. To take the declarations seriously, we would have to assume that our leaders are accomplished liars: While mobilising their countries for war, they were declaring that the reasons were entirely different. Mere sanity dictates scepticism about what they produce to replace pretexts that have collapsed.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Understanding the Bush Doctrine, http://www.chomsky.info/artic...

The Resort to Force, http://www.zmag.org/content/s...

... The Republicans For Kerry Movement Is Growing Fast!!! ...

10.26.04 (1:09 pm) [edit]

"'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" - G. K. Chesterton

[b]Whatever the outcome of this presidential election 2004, it is clear that increasingly a growing number of Republicans are putting their country before party and standing against the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] ... "We the People" need to bring a change of direction to our nation and together build a better society for all of our citizens ... Please vote for John Kerry for President of the United States of America ...[/b]

One of the many strange hallmarks of Election 2004 are the numerous Republican groups which have formed to organize support for Democrat John Kerry's campaign. There are also, of course, "Bush Democrats" around, but they're far less organized, and if my colleague Patrick Mullvaney's crawl around the internet is any indication, far fewer in number than their counterparts.

President Bush's extremist agenda, his Administration's skyrocketing budget deficits and his dishonesty in the run-up to war are the main reasons cited by longtime Republican voters for abandoning their party's nominee. The choice is simple to voters like Mitch Dworkin, who explains in an article on the Republicans for Kerry 2004 site that, "Bush and most of his Administration represent an extreme faction of the Republican Party and are out of touch with the American people."

There are numerous groups and organizations to check out to get a sense of the unusual number of Republican and conservative groups opposing President Bush in the upcoming election:

Republicans for Kerry http://www.republicansforkerr...

Another Republican for Kerry http://%20www.anotherrepublicanforkerry .com/

Republicans Against Bush http://republicansagainst bush...

Republican Switchers http://inprogress.typepad.com...

Republicans 4 Kerry http://www.republicans4kerry....

Conservatives for Kerry http://conservativesforke rry....

There are also several less formal, web-based groups comprised of Republicans opposing the Bush re-election effort, including the "Republicans Against Bush" http://repagainstbush.meetup.... Meetup and an AOL journal called "Republicans for the ouster of King George II http://journals.aol.com/timbu... ." And even the Log Cabin Republicans http://www.logcabin.org/logca... , which notes on its website that "every victory for a fair- minded Republican is a victory for the future of [the Republican] Party," have pointedly chosen not to endorse President Bush's re-election bid.

It's unclear what effect these typically GOP voters will have on the race's electoral math but it's clear that Bush is the most unpopular Republican nominee in memory among members of his own party.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Peter Rothberg, [i]ActNow[/i]!, TheNation, http://www.thenation.com

Republicans For Kerry: "Country Must Come Before Party", http://www.tblog.com/template...

Republican Air Force Officer: Why I'm Voting Against My Commander in Chief, http://www.tblog.com/template...

... Adventure Capitalism ...

10.26.04 (12:15 pm) [edit]

Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner fired? Why are our troops still there? Investigative reporter Palast uncovers new documents that answer these questions and more about the Bush administration’s grand designs on Iraq. Like everything else issued during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy has corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it. You expected the oil industry lobbyists, but Grover Norquist?

[b]Greg Palast is an investigative reporter and author of The New York Times best seller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His new film, "Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," was released this month in DVD. For a trailer, see http://www.gregpalast.com/bff... ... The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]illegally and immorally invaded Iraq for purposes having nothing to do with our national security ... [/b]

[b]In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department. [/b] Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," it was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The Iraq Strategy."

The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges—in fact, "ALL state enterprises"—to foreign operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws.

And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting industries." The Plan makes it clear that—even if we didn't go in for the oil—we certainly won't leave without it.

If the Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wishlist drafted by U.S. corporate lobbyists, that's because it was.

From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's tariffs (taxes on imports of U.S. and other foreign goods), the package carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist.

Norquist is the capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right. In Washington every Wednesday, he hosts a pow-wow of big business political operatives and right-wing muscle groups—including the Christian Coalition and National Rifle Association—where Norquist quarterbacks their media and legislative offensive for the week.

Once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express, Norquist today directs Americans for Tax Reform, a kind of trade union for billionaires unnamed, pushing a regressive "flat tax" scheme.

Acting on a tip, I dropped by the super-lobbyist's L-Street office. Below a huge framed poster of his idol ("NIXON— NOW MORE THAN EVER"), Norquist could not wait to boast of moving freely at the Treasury, Defense and State Departments, and, in the White House, shaping the post-conquest economic plans—from taxes to tariffs to the "intellectual property rights" that I pointed to in the Plan.

Norquist wasn't the only corporate front man getting a piece of the Iraq cash cow. Norquist suggested the change in copyright laws after seeking the guidance of the Recording Industry Association of America.

And then there's the oil. Iraq-born Falah Aljibury was in on the drafting of administration blueprints for the post-Saddam Iraq. According to Aljibury, the administration began coveting its Mideast neighbor's oil within weeks of the Bush-Cheney inauguration, when the White House convened a closed committee under the direction of the State Department's Pam Wainwright. The group included banking and chemical industry men, and the range of topics over what to do with a post-conquest Iraq was wide. In short order, said Aljibury, "It became an oil group."

This was not surprising as the membership list had a strong smell of petroleum. Besides Aljibury, an oil industry consultant, the secret team included executives from Royal-Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco. These and other oil industry bigs would, in 2003, direct the drafting of a 300-page addendum to the Economy Plan solely about Iraq's oil assets. The oil section of the Plan, obtained after a year of wrestling with the administration over the Freedom of Information Act, calls for Iraqis to sell off to "IOCs" (international oil companies) the nation's "downstream" assets—that is, the refineries, pipelines and ports that, unless under armed occupation, a Mideast nation would be loathe to give up.

[b]The General Versus Annex D[/b]

One thing stood in the way of rewriting Iraq's laws and selling off Iraq's assets: the Iraqis. An insider working on the plans put it coldly: "They have [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming out saying it's going to be a democratic country … but we're going to do something that 99 percent of the people of Iraq wouldn't vote for."

In this looming battle between what Iraqis wanted and what the Bush administration planned for them, the Iraqis had an unexpected ally, Gen. Jay Garner, the man appointed by our president just before the invasion as a kind of temporary Pasha to run the soon-to-be conquered nation.

Garner's an old Iraq hand who performed the benevolent autocratic function in the Kurdish zone after the first Gulf War. But in March 2003, the general made his big career mistake. In Kuwait City, fresh off the plane from the United States, he promised Iraqis they would have free and fair elections as soon as Saddam was toppled, preferably within 90 days.

Garner's 90-days-to-democracy pledge ran into a hard object: The Economy Plan's 'Annex D.' Disposing of a nation's oil industry—let alone redrafting trade and tax laws—can't be done in a weekend, nor in 90 days. Annex D lays out a strict 360-day schedule for the free-market makeover of Iraq. And there's the rub: It was simply inconceivable that any popularly elected government would let America write its laws and auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum industry.

Elections would have to wait. As lobbyist Norquist explained when I asked him about the Annex D timetable, "The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election." Our troops would simply have to stay in Mesopotamia a bit longer.

[b]New World Orders 12, 37, 81 and 83[/b]

Gen. Garner resisted—which was one of the reasons for his swift sacking by Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on the very night he arrived in Baghdad last April. Rummy had a perfect replacement ready to wing it in Iraq to replace the recalcitrant general. Paul Bremer may not have had Garner's experience on the ground in Iraq, but no one would question the qualifications of a man who served as managing director of Kissinger Associates.

Pausing only to install himself in Saddam's old palace—and adding an extra ring of barbed wire—"Jerry" Bremer cancelled Garner's scheduled meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders called to plan national elections. Instead, Bremer appointed the entire government himself. National elections, Bremer pronounced, would have to wait until 2005. The extended occupation would require our forces to linger.

The delay would, incidentally, provide time needed to lock in the laws, regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with the Economy Plan.

On that, Bremer wasted no time. Altogether, the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan. In May, for example, Bremer—only a month from escaping out Baghdad's back door—took time from fighting the burgeoning insurrection to sign orders 81—"Patents,"and 83, "Copyrights." Here, Grover Norquist's hard work paid off. Fifty years of royalties would now be conferred on music recording. And 20 years on Windows code.

Order number 37, "Tax Strategy for 2003," was Norquist's dream come true: taxes capped at 15 percent on corporate and individual income (as suggested in the Economy Plan, page 8). The U.S. Congress had rejected a similar flat-tax plan for America, but in Iraq, with an electorate of one—Jerry Bremer—the public's will was not an issue.

Not everyone felt the pain of this reckless rush to a free market. Order 12, "Trade Liberalization," permitted the tax- and tariff-free import of foreign products. One big winner was Cargill, the world's largest grain merchant, which flooded Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat. For Iraqi farmers, already wounded by sanctions and war, this was devastating. They could not compete with the U.S. and Australian surplusses dumped on them. But the import plan carried out the letter of the Economy Plan.

This trade windfall for the West was enforced by the occupation's agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz, himself an import from the United States. Prior to George Bush taking office, Amstutz chaired a company funded by Cargill.

There's no sense cutting taxes on big business, ordering 20 years of copyright payments for Bill Gates' operating system or killing off protections for Iraqi farmers if some out-of-control Iraqi government is going to take it away after an election. The shadow governors of Iraq back in Washington thought of that, too. Bremer fled, but he's left behind him nearly 200 American "experts," assigned to baby-sit each new Iraqi minister—functionaries also approved by the U.S. State Department.

[b]The Price[/b]

The free market paradise in Iraq is not free.

After General Garner was deposed, I met with him in Washington. He had little regard for the Economy Plan handed to him three months before the tanks rolled. He especially feared its designs on Iraq's oil assets and the delay in handing Iraq back to Iraqis. "That's one fight you don't want to take on," he told me.

But we have. After a month in Saddam's palace, Bremer cancelled municipal elections, including the crucial vote about to take place in Najaf. Denied the ballot, Najaf's Shi'ites voted with bullets. This April, insurgent leader Moqtada Al Sadr's militia killed 21 U.S. soldiers and, for a month, seized the holy city.

"They shouldn't have to follow our plan," the general said. "It's their country, their oil." Maybe, but not according to the Plan. And until it does become their country, the 82nd Airborne will have to remain to keep it from them.

[b]Source:[/b]

Greg Palast, TomPaine, http://www.tompaine.com

... Howard Dean: Why I am Voting for John Kerry ...

10.26.04 (9:26 am) [edit]

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." - Edward Abbey

[b]"We the People" have a moral obligation and a civic duty to exercise our most precious right to vote ... Please vote for John Kerry for President of the United States of America ... Howard Dean is an American Patriot who endorses John Kerry:--[/b]

I decided long ago that John Kerry would be a better president than George Bush. We need a new president because we need to change the course of this country. We need a new president because we need our country to be fiscally healthy with more jobs that pay better. We need a new president to ensure that everyone in this country will have health insurance. And, we need a new president because George W. Bush has not been truthful with the American people.

America ought to join every other industrialized country in the world and have health care for all our people. As a physician, I am concerned that over the past three years, a larger number of Americans are finding it more and more expensive to buy less and less health care. I am concerned that 43 million Americans still do not have health insurance and since George W. Bush has been president, the cost of family health insurance has increased by more than $3,500. John Kerry has said that one of his first priorities would be to focus on the health care crisis. He has a realistic plan that will provide affordable health care for 95 percent of Americans, including every child. For example, he wants to cut prescription drug costs and allow drugs from Canada to be easily obtained. And, he wants Americans to be able to have a greater choice of health care plans, just like members of Congress. John Kerry's plan is not full of empty promises - it is practical and affordable.

America has to stop the "borrow and spend" philosophy that is so prevalent in Washington. Not one Republican President since 1968 has ever balanced a budget. John Kerry, like Bill Clinton before him, will give our children the fiscal discipline we deserve, which will lead to job growth. President Bush ran up the largest deficit in American history, therefore forcing our children to be financially responsible for his senselessness. John Kerry will balance the budget. He has an extensive plan to cut the deficit in half in four years. In order to accomplish this, one thing he will do is to reverse the special interest tax cuts President Bush implemented that only affected big corporations and families making more than $200,000 a year. John Kerry will ensure that future generations do not have to pay for George Bush's mistakes.

America can restore its moral leadership at home and abroad with John Kerry as our president. At his core, John Kerry is a truthful person. He has told us what he thinks, sometimes to his detriment, but we know what he believes. George W. Bush has not been truthful with the American people. He has endangered America by creating a crisis in Iraq where there was not one before we invaded. He has misled us on the deficits, on jobs, on health care, on public education and on prescription drugs for the elderly. He appears to stand for little that is not dictated by polls.

America is the greatest nation on the face of the earth. We are a great people - Republicans as well as Democrats, conservatives as well as liberals. America deserves the kind of leadership that will give us back our position as a moral leader in the world. I believe that President Kerry will be that kind of leader.

... Bush's Disgrace: Turning A Blind Eye to the Abuse of Human Beings ...

10.26.04 (7:59 am) [edit]

The [i]New York Times [/i]reports, "FBI agents witnessed harsh treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003, but did not believe that what they saw was abusive or worth reporting, according to a newly released document." Some of the things the agents saw: an inmate with a sack over his head who was covered with a shower curtain and handcuffed to a waist-high rail; a naked or partly clothed inmate made to lie prone on a wet floor; inmates stripped naked and put in isolation cells. "The document, a May 19 report by the FBI's counterterrorism division," shows the bureau's leadership became concerned about what its agents had seen only after Abu Ghraib went public. The report said the treatment witnessed by the agents seemed similar to what agents "had seen in prison strip-searches in the United States." - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

[b]High-profile convictions of low-level soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib obscure the bigger picture: senior officers are in line for promotions and the House is pushing to legitimize torture ... Abu Ghraib represents to the world the murder, torture, rape and abuse of men, women and children ... The atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib are heinous war crimes and are a blight upon our nation that "We the People" must [i]deal with [/i]and [i]stop ignoring [/i]... The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]should be impeached and put on trial for Crimes Against Humanity ...[/b]

With most of the nation's eyes on a tight presidential race heading into its final days, it is hardly surprising that the growing allegations of torture and abuse of detainees carried out by U.S. authorities have largely fallen off the political radar screen. Neither campaign has much interest in saying anything that could be seen as negative about our troops, the vast majority of whom have indeed performed admirably. Likewise, the last topic any member of Congress facing re-election wants to discuss is how to be more "sensitive" to the laws against torture in the "war on terrorism."

Still, it is one thing for the political parties in these final weeks to remain silent on how to address the damage done by the now many hundreds of allegations of torture and abuse – and dozens of deaths – of those in U.S. custody from Iraq to Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It is quite another to actively embrace these practices as a matter of law. Yet, not even six months removed from the publication of photos of torture from Abu Ghraib, that is precisely where we seem to be.

On the accountability front, senior commanders and civilian leaders whom the military's own investigations have found responsible for gross failures to train and discipline their subordinates are not facing censure but promotion. Major General Geoffrey Miller – formerly in charge of interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and credited in Major General George Fay's investigation with instituting the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib – is now the senior commander in charge of detention operations in Iraq. Major General Barbara Fast – the highest-ranking intelligence officer tied to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal – is on deck to be put in charge of the U.S. Army's main interrogation training facility at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. And last week, Pentagon officials indicated that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was planning to reward Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez – who oversaw detention facilities in Iraq and received scathing criticism in Defense Department investigations for his handling of interrogation policy and practice – with a fourth star following the election.

As for policy developments, the Pentagon continues to hold detainees at Guantanamo Bay in prolonged solitary confinement, under conditions that, according to one detainee's appointed military defense counsel, violate basic prohibitions against cruel and inhuman treatment under U.S. and international law. At the same time, the administration has steadfastly refused to allow the International Red Cross, which operates in complete confidentiality, even to visit an unknown number of detainees still held in U.S. custody. Arguably worst of all, 232 members of the House earlier this month voted for a bill, introduced by Speaker Dennis Hastert, that would require the secretary of homeland security to exclude from the protection of the United Nations Convention Against Torture – a treaty the United States signed and ratified a decade ago – any foreign national the government deems a terrorist suspect.

A particularly telling case in point, the dense and hastily drafted House version of the bill to implement the September 11 commission recommendations includes a provision widely seen as an attempt to legalize "extraordinary rendition" – a technical euphemism to describe the practice of sending suspects to the Syrians or Jordanians so we can avoid doing the dirty work of torture ourselves. The Torture Convention naturally bars parties from sending anyone to a country where "there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." But the House bill would lift this prohibition, enabling the United States to deport (or "render") foreign nationals to countries long condemned by the U.S. State Department for widespread practices of torture and other gross abuse. A potential deportee could avoid this fate only by proving through "clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured" upon return. Merely showing that torture is more likely than not would no longer be enough.

Given the parade of horrors around the world these past few years, Americans may understandably be too shell-shocked to debate such issues carefully and in public. We have witnessed the stunning deaths of some 3,000 friends and loved ones in New York and Washington. We have lost more than a thousand U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, with thousands more badly wounded. We have seen deeply disturbing photos of our own troops brutalizing the Iraqis that we were supposed to set free. And we are now treated with alarming frequency to gruesome reports of beheadings in Iraq. The violence is enough to overwhelm rational consideration of evidence that torture does not produce reliable intelligence, or that revelations of our detention practices have spurred terrorist-recruiting efforts more effectively than the terrorists ever could. But psychic exhaustion will be small comfort if the rendition provision – which has now been publicly condemned by everyone from Human Rights First to the American Bar Association to the White House itself – survives the congressional conference committee this week.

Whichever candidate wins in November has an enormous task ahead of him to repair the damage done this past year to America's efforts in counterterrorism, and to restore America's moral authority to advance the cause of democracy and human rights around the world. Congress might be forgiven for pausing to catch its breath before it begins. But there is no excuse for doing further violence to the cause of security and justice while we wait.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Deborah Pearlstein is director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) and a visiting lecturer on human rights and national security at Stanford Law School. - http://www.alternet.org/waron...

"F.B.I. Saw Inmates Treated Harshly at Abu Ghraib", http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

... Iraq: The $225 Billion Mess ...

10.26.04 (7:37 am) [edit]

"The American part of [paying for Iraq's reconstruction] will be one-point-seven billion dollars. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."

– Bush USAID Director Andrew Natsios, 3/23/03, http://www.theatlantic.com/is...

[i]VERSUS[/i]

"The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion."

– Washington Post, 10/26/04, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6...

[b]Instead of protecting our homeland and focusing on the dire needs of the citizens of the United States of America, the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]is intending to squander over $225 Billion on their bloody guerrilla quagmire (Halliburton, Carlyle Group, etc.) turned fiasco resulting from their illegal and immoral neo-con war in Iraq ... "We the People" must fire these incompetent, dishonest and ruthless traitors and war criminals ...[/b]

The Washington Post reported this morning that the White House is planning to seek another $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, bringing the total cost close to $225 billion. Also, USA Today reports, "Pentagon officials are considering increasing the current U.S. force by delaying the departures of some U.S. troops now in Iraq and accelerating the deployment of others scheduled to go there next year." This will affect more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers. The new numbers "underscore that the [Iraq] war is going to be far more costly and intense, and last longer, than the administration first suggested." Unfortunately, the war has also been made longer and tougher in part by a series of serious mistakes and errors in judgment by the administration. (For an idea of just how much the war in Iraq has already cost your state, take a look at this map http://www.americanprogress.o... .)

[b]INSURGENT THREAT IGNORED:[/b] USA Today reports the administration was repeatedly warned about the strong possibility of Iraqi insurgency in the days before the war. These warnings, however, were ignored. For example, two reports by the National Intelligence Council "warned Bush in January 2003, two months before the invasion, that the conflict could spark factional violence and an anti-U.S. insurgency." A separate report by the Army War College a month before the invasion predicted, "The longer U.S. presence is maintained, the more likely violent resistance will develop." The war plan put together by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Army Gen. Tommy Franks, however, "discounted these warnings."

[b]LOSING FALLUJAH:[/b] The Los Angeles Times reports the administration's inconsistent, politically motivated response to the insurgency "turned Fallujah from a troublesome, little-known city on the edge of Iraq's western desert to an embodiment of almost everything that has gone wrong for the United States in Iraq." Today, Fallujah is a "haven for anti-American guerrillas, a base for suicide bombers, and a headquarters for the man U.S. officials consider the most dangerous terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi."

[b]ZARQAWI GOT AWAY:[/b] The White House passed up the chance to take out Zarqawi before the war in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal reports that in June 2002, the Pentagon drew up detailed plans for a military strike designed to hit the terrorist in his camp. Gen. John Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff, called the camp "one of the best targets we ever had." The White House, however, quashed the plan, unwilling to cause any international controversy in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq. Zarqawi got away and used the war in Iraq to spearhead a terrorist insurgency. He is responsible for a string of deadly car bombings, beheadings as well as the recent massacre of more than 40 Iraqi army recruits.

[b]REAL THREATS IGNORED:[/b] In its zeal to chase down phantom weapons of mass destruction – which did not exist – the White House left dangerous explosives – which did exist – unguarded and open to looting by terrorists. Pentagon officials said the facility "was not high on U.S. commanders' list of sites to guard because survey teams found no nuclear or biological materials." Scott McClellan also stated yesterday, "There is not a nuclear proliferation risk," he said. "We're talking about conventional explosives." These "conventional explosives" have been widely used in the car bombs and suicide bombs that are killing U.S. troops in Iraq. They are also powerful enough to bring down entire buildings or "shatter" airplanes.

[b]ADMINISTRATION PUSHES BOGUS THEORY:[/b] Yesterday, in an attempt to downplay the looting of the dangerous explosives, the administration tried to sell the theory that the weapons were already gone by the time the U.S. forces reached the Al Qaqaa military facility, leaving the U.S. no chance to safeguard the material. The LA Times reports, "Given the size of the missing cache, it would have been difficult to relocate undetected before the invasion, when U.S. spy satellites were monitoring activity." One former U.S. intelligence official who worked in Baghdad concurred: "You don't just move this stuff in the middle of the night." On top of that, Iraqi officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency earlier this month "that the explosives were looted after April 9, 2003, when U.S. forces entered Baghdad."

[b]OIL WAS THE PRIORITY:[/b] The administration has had to fight the perception that the United States invaded Iraq for the oil, a perception that has fueled Iraqi anger at the U.S. presence. In a press conference yesterday, however, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked why the U.S. had left the dangerous explosives unguarded. He responded, "At the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there were a number of priorities. It was a priority to make sure that the oil fields were secure, so that there wasn't massive destruction of the oil fields."

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... The Empty Terror War ...

10.25.04 (8:02 pm) [edit]

"America will vote for whoever it sees as best to assure its security. Hence Kerry's caution -and ambiguities - with regard to Iraq, terrorism, the restrictions on freedom, etc., with a concern above all not to appear "soft". To us Europeans - to say nothing of poor countries, which are experiencing an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism- , Bush's irresponsible and arrogant policy has added war to the war, intensified wounds, weakened international institutions...

... In short, [Bush] made the world more dangerous. However, it's precisely this cowboy style -the Bible and the gun - that seduces the heart of his target [audience]. If we were voting, Kerry would be elected in a landslide, but being the champion of foreign public opinion, opposed to someone who presents himself as the incarnation of "heartland America" constitutes a handicap rather than an advantage.", http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

[b]To anything that might brake the autistic tendencies of this coalition of reactionary fundamentalists, cynical wheeler-dealers, and reckless ideologues that makes up the Bush administration. "Dubya" has been one of the worst presidents in United States history. "Dubya II" would be worse." ... "We the People" must recognize that Dubya[i] is [/i]the terrorist who represents the greatest threat to our nation ... [/b]

By now it’s clear that if Bush wins the election, it will be because many Americans believe that the president will better protect them from terrorism at home. Readers of this column know that I believe that the White House has consistently exaggerated the threat from Islamic terrorists in order to keep people scared.

Two important stories in the Sunday[i] New York Times [/i] http://www.nytimes.com are relevant to this.

First is a major feature explaining how a secret clique of conservative lawyers, many from the right-wing Federalist Society, rewrote military law—including rules to create so-called military tribunals. The relevant paragraph is this:

... "Three years later, not a single terrorist has been prosecuted. Of the roughly 560 men held at the United States naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, only 4 have been formally charged... And since a Supreme Court decision that gave the detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court, the Petnagon has stepped up efforts to send home hundreds of men who it once branded as dangerous terrorists." ...

In a second piece on the supposed Al Qaeda plot to attack the United States before the election, the [i]Times[/i] notes that despite the well-publicized Tom Ridge-led warnings that an attack was imminent, there is zero evidence to back up the claims:

... "In interviews, [officials] based in eight countries, including Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Jordan, said that they had not seen a single solid piece of intelligence, like a statement from a Qaeda operative or an intercepted phone conversation, to back up the warnings." ...

And this:

... “I’ve seen some analytical pieces from the bureau and the agency,” said one senior American counterintelligence official, referring to election threat reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. “On a scale of one to a hundred, I’d give it about a two.” ...

[b]Sources:[/b]

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

Frightens with Wolves, http://www.tblog.com/template...

... Bush Regime Opens Wilderness to Corporate Puppet-Masters ...

10.25.04 (7:16 pm) [edit]

"President Bush may become the first president since Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act in 1964 to detract from America's inventory of "wilderness," defined as land set aside "for the sake of wildlife, clean water sources, scientific study and human enjoyment."", http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,3791084.story?coll=la-home-headli nes

[b]The short-sighted corporate-take-all Bush regime does [i]anything and everything [/i]demanded by their gluttonous puppet-masters:-- greedy corporations and hyper-rich plutocratic campaign donors-- to the detriment of working people; consumers; investors; the environment; the planet and life here on earth ... It is time to rid ourselves of these rapacious crooks, traitors and war criminals for they are destructive to our health and well-being ...[/b]

Bush administration is sending a "strong message" on the environment: "no more wilderness." http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,3791084.story?coll=la-home-headli nes The [i]LA Times [/i]reports on how a Bush administration policy reversal is ending "decades of shielding the nation's untamed areas." Not only does the new policy cancel previous protections of land, "it withholds the interim safeguards traditionally applied to areas with wilderness potential until Congress decides whether to make them part of the national wilderness system." And the Interior Department is "barred – forever – from identifying and protecting wild land the way it has for nearly 30 years." http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,3791084.story?coll=la-home-headli nes The administration says it needs to balance concerns about wilderness with "other important uses such as energy development." But its position is better characterized by a memo from Utah's lead lawyer just before a major settlement in that state. "We need a clear statement," the lawyer wrote to an Interior Department attorney. "No more wilderness." Environmentalists say "the state got what it wanted, and so did wilderness protection opponents everywhere."

[b]Also visit BushGreenWatch on http://www.bushgreenwatch.com... ...[/b]

... Explosive Mistake ...

10.25.04 (6:43 pm) [edit]

"There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought." - Laurence J. Peter

"We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us." - Rabindranath Tagore

"Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied." - Pearl S. Buck

[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]has failed miserably in Iraq ... The insane neo-con Bushies illegally and immorally invaded a sovereign nation (Iraq) that posed no threat to us ... They have brutally massacred tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis ... Instead of securing Iraq, they "guarded" the Oil Ministry, letting the people of Iraq suffer horribly, and letting insurgents raid, loot and steal the ammunition and weaponry ... The traitorous neo-fascist Bush regime is unfit to lead our nation ...[/b]

The [i]New York Times [/i]reports this morning that "nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives" are missing http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... from one of Iraq's "most sensitive former military installations." The enormous cache of explosives is unaccounted for and may have fallen into the hands of terrorists or been used in bombing attacks against U.S. and Iraqi troops. The White House has thus far been at a loss to explain how a mistake this egregious was allowed to happen under their watch: administration officials "say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded." A look at the administration's mismanagement of post-invasion Iraq offers an explanation, though. After the invasion of Iraq, the White House failed to safeguard the large stockpiles of powerful explosives; the administration also failed to send enough troops to Iraq to quash the post-war insurgency, resulting in rampant looting.

[b]HMX AND RDX EXPLAINED:[/b] The powerful explosives in question are HMX – high melting point explosive – and RDX – rapid detonation explosive. HMX and RDX can be used in bombs which could bring down entire buildings or "shatter" airplanes; for example, "the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material." The chemical makeup of these explosives make them "insensitive to shock and physical abuse during handling and transport," making it particularly simple to smuggle the munitions to terrorists.

[b]INTERNATIONAL WATCH WAS WORKING:[/b] The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tried to warn the U.S. about the potential danger posed by the explosives and "specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured" after the invasion. The Bush administration, however, refused to allow the agency back into the country after the invasion to verify the status of the explosives stockpile.

[b]EXPLOSIVES USEFUL FOR INSURGENTS:[/b] The danger posed by the explosive "is its potential use with insurgents in very small and powerful devices." Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the IAEA, warns, "Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the wrong hands they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the bombings that we've seen." HMX and RDX are "the key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents have widely used in a series of bloody car bombings in Iraq." According to the Nelson Report, cited by Josh Marshall's Talking Points, "administration officials privately admit this material is likely a primary source of the lethal car bomb attacks which cause so many US and Iraqi casualties."

[b]ADMINISTRATION FAILED TO SECURE KEY FACILITIES:[/b] Explaining the theft in a letter to the IAEA, a senior official from Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology wrote the explosives disappeared because of looting that occurred "due to lack of security." The White House has increasingly come under fire for neglecting to send an adequate number of troops into Iraq to secure the country after the invasion. Recently, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, charged inadequate military presence after the invasion allowed rampant looting in Iraq and said the U.S. "paid a big price" for not sending enough troops to secure the peace.

[b]WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?: [/b]Iraqi officials say they warned Bremer in May 2004 that the sensitive military installation had probably been looted in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. Note this happened while the United States was still in command, before the transfer of power to the Iraqis. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claims she only found out about the missing explosives within the past month. The IAEA was only notified – by the Iraqis – a few weeks ago. According to Talking Points, the Nelson Report reveals the Defense Department not only may have known about the looting, it may have exerted pressure on the Iraqis to keep the story quiet.

[b]WHOOPS, WE DID IT AGAIN:[/b] This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened in Iraq. Earlier this month, international U.N. weapons inspectors found that sensitive material and equipment had been looted from nuclear facilities in Iraq. The IAEA had successfully monitored equipment and low-grade uranium at a plant in Iraq before the invasion. It was forced to leave in March of 2003, however, and the sensitive material was looted and may have found its way to the black market.

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... Frightens with Wolves ...

10.25.04 (5:15 pm) [edit]

"Terror is an efficiacious agent only when it doesn't last. In the long run there is more terror in threats than in execution, for when you get used to terror your emotions get dulled." - quoted in Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field, Fisher

[b]For the sake of Our Republic for Which It Stands, "We the People" should reject the politics of terror that the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] is inflicting upon our nation ...[/b]

With the presidential election just eight days away, the truth has finally emerged: if John Kerry becomes president you will be eaten by wolves. The script of Bush's new television ad, read as a pack of wolves lurks ominously through a forest, accuses Kerry of voting to slash intelligence spending. While the ad is good theater, the charges in it are misleading and inaccurate.

[b]FACT – THE VOTE OCCURRED SEVEN YEARS BEFORE 9/11:[/b] The advertisement says that John Kerry's vote came "after the first terrorist attack on America" implying that it occurred after 9/11. In fact, the vote in question occurred in 1994. In the years immediately prior to 9/11, John Kerry consistently supported increases in intelligence spending.

[b]FACT – GOSS VOTED TO DRAMATICALLY REDUCE INTELLIGENCE PERSONNEL:[/b] The central message of the advertisement is that because Kerry supported reductions in intelligence resources in the mid-1990s, he can't be trusted to be in charge today. But in 1995, Porter Goss "sponsored legislation that would have cut intelligence personnel by 20 percent." That didn't stop President Bush from appointing Goss this year to head the Central Intelligence Agency. In contrast, Kerry's proposal would have amounted to just a 3.7 percent reduction in intelligence funding.

[b]FACT – KERRY'S PROPOSAL WAS PART OF AN EFFORT TO REDUCE THE DEFICIT:[/b] It's not surprising Bush would criticize Kerry's 1994 proposal – it was an effort to reduce the deficit, which is something Bush doesn't understand. Bush has turned a $236 billion surplus into a more than $400 billion deficit. The national debt – which Bush said he would "pay down to a historically low level" – now exceeds $7.4 trillion, an all-time high. For more of Bush's broken promises, check out this document http://www.americanprogressac... from the American Progress Action Fund.

[b]SCARE TACTIC HYPOCRISY:[/b] While his campaign runs advertisements featuring menacing wolves, Vice President Cheney has recently accused the Kerry campaign of trying to "scare people" by talking about Bush's public plan to begin privatizing Social Security. Let's review some of what Cheney has said recently on the campaign trail. Cheney on Sept. 8: "if we make the wrong choice [on Nov. 2] then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating." Cheney last Tuesday: "The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists' ending up in the middle of one of our cities with...biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind...able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.'' Cheney on Saturday: "if John Kerry had been in charge, maybe the Soviet Union would still be in business."

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... The Forests Are Scared ...

10.22.04 (4:08 pm) [edit]

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." - Frank Lloyd Wright

[b]"We the People" should put [i]no[/i] faith in a leader with contempt for the natural world ... The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]are rapacious, with disdain and disrespect for our environment and for life ...[/b]

[b]The forests are scared ...[/b]

[b]... by the Bush administration's plans to open America's last wild roadless forests to logging. Watch the "Monster Slash" video http://www.monsterslash.com/i... for an entertaining take on the plans[/b].

... Botched! ...

10.21.04 (9:37 pm) [edit]

"The Republicans are out to steal the 2004 election - before, during, and after Election Day. Before Election Day, they are employing such dirty tricks as improper purges of voter rolls, use of dummy registration groups that tear up Democratic registrations, and the suppression of Democratic efforts to sign up voters, especially blacks and students. ... ... ... Call me partisan, but the best insurance against this horrific outcome would be a Kerry win big enough so that even Karl Rove would not dare to mount this maneuver. A razor-thin race virtually invites it. And if Bush wins handily, our democracy will have other problems." - The Art of Stealing Elections, Robert Kuttner, http://www.boston.com/news/gl...

[b]"We the People" must exercise our most precious right to vote in order to save our Republic ... Please vote for John Kerry for President of the United States of America in order to restore dignity, integrity and real intelligence (i.e. sanity) to the White House ...[/b]

The United States prides itself on having invented modern democracy and boasts of exporting it to the entire planet. Is it capable of organizing truly democratic elections? This provocative question deserves to be posed and is, by a former American president, Jimmy Carter, who is often called on by the world to oversee the regularity of elections. "The basic conditions according to international norms to assure an equitable vote... have not been met," he has just declared. He was talking about Florida, but his fear is valid for the whole country. On November 2 there will be observers on the ground, such as one sees more usually in Afghanistan or in Byelorussia.

In 2000, Americans discovered that they voted on antediluvian machines with the results subject to dispute and interpretation by Supreme Court justices. Today, the electoral process has barely begun and it is already in dispute. The electronic machines that have been put in place are suspected of crashes like any other computer, even of vote tampering, without even mentioning the other flaws of an incoherent, too-decentralized system from which many voters are excluded. Armies of lawyers are preparing to bring the battle of the ballot boxes before the courts, since, as Tocqueville noted, in America, everything ends up in court.

These imperfections are not new. In 1960, Kennedy's election had been tainted with suspicion of fraud. However the aggravation of the political conflict and the balance between the Republican and Democratic sides today make these failures of democracy in America more explosive than ever.

[b]Source:[/b]

Botched!, Patrick Sabatier, Libération, http://www.liberation.fr/page...

... Leaving Women Behind ...

10.21.04 (7:09 pm) [edit]

"In early September, Bush led Kerry among women, 48-43% in the CBS News poll. As of Sunday, in The New York Times/CBS News poll, Kerry was leading among women who are registered voters, 50% to 40%. Other polls show Kerry with a smaller lead among women, but a lead nonetheless." Deconstructing this info, we make the following conclusion: CBS polls are blatantly pro-Bush and flagrantly "weighted". So, we suspect that Bush never actually had a lead among women (having a high regard for the intelligence of American women, we'd be stunned, to say the least, if he did!). Many different key indicators now point to a mammoth lead for Kerry among women of all age groups - even so-called "security moms" have waked up to the fact that Bush, by inspiring unprecedented global hatred of the US government, has made them and their loved ones FAR less safe than even before. Kerry's lead among single women under 30 is estimated to be as high as 3 or even 4 to 1. - http://www.thestate.com/mld/t...

[b]Some things are meant to be private ... The decisions regarding women's health should[i] not [/i]be made by the government ... Women need to make[i] their own [/i]decisions that are necessary for[i] their own [/i]well-being and[i] their own [/i]health ... The government however[i] should [/i]be providing assistance to women who are struggling and desperately trying to raise a family in an economy that is spinning [i]out-of-control [/i]towards inflation ... "We the People" must stand-up against the medieval Bush/Cheney Inc. junta's [i]insane[/i] assault against women. Please check out "Campaign for Women" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ...[/b]

The president has been touting his plan for an "ownership society" a lot on the campaign trail, and in his nomination acceptance speech, he claimed it would benefit working moms. But his approach is classic bait-and-switch politics, say policy experts Karen Kornbluh and Laurie Rubiner. The ownership society would simply ask Americans to "own" the risks they now share with the government in programs like employer-sponsored health care. What American women really need is reform of outdated New Deal programs. For more analysis of Bush's "ownership society," see [i]Bush And The Vision Thing [/i]by Roger Hickey on http://www.tompaine.com/artic... .

[b]Karen Kornbluh directs the[i] New America Foundation’s Work and Family Program[/i]. Laurie Rubiner directs the[i] New America Foundation’s Universal Health Insurance Program[/i][/b] : http://www.tompaine.com/artic...

President George W. Bush has framed his domestic agenda in recent speeches as a response to women's economic security concerns. In fact, in the president’s “Ownership Society,” women would be less—not more—economically secure.

The president’s nomination acceptance speech contained a direct appeal to working moms. He offered women a post-"era-of-big-governme nt-is-dead" message about putting government on the side of families: “The times in which we live and work are changing dramatically...Today, workers change jobs, even careers, many times during their lives, and in one of the most dramatic shifts our society has seen, two-thirds of all moms also work outside the home...This changed world can be a time of great opportunity for all Americans to earn a better living, support your family, and have a rewarding career. And government must take your side.”

It's smart politics to offer help for struggling families. Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced himself to California voters by championing an after-school initiative before he ran for governor. President Bill Clinton campaigned on the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1992. It was the first bill he signed and he mentioned it in every State of the Union Address. President Clinton won among married women in both 1992 and 1996. Sen. Kerry’s focus on policies to help struggling middle class families pay for childcare, college and health insurance helped him earn high marks on the economy earlier in the election.

Americans today find themselves struggling to give their kids a shot at the American Dream. They compete with workers around the world for wages and benefits, switching jobs every five years and—in one out of four cases—work in nonstandard (temp, contingent, freelance) jobs. As a result, they must work longer and longer hours just to make ends meet. We refer to these new workers as “global free agents” and their families, in which both parents work, as “juggler families.” Both lack protection from programs (designed in the New Deal era) that rely on large employers to deliver benefits.

Women pay the greatest price for our outdated social contract. They can no longer depend on a lifelong mate to provide economic security, and when they enter the job market themselves, their family responsibilities close many doors. They have less job security, lower wages and fewer benefits. Women constitute a full two-thirds of those who lost health insurance coverage this year.

But what the president offers women is bait-and-switch politics. His Ownership Society proposals would make women far less economically secure than they are today by eliminating—instead of reforming—the risk-sharing mechanisms of our social contract programs. The agenda includes privatizing Social Security; replacing the current health care system with tax shelters; offering additional tax shelters to replace or augment private pensions and undermining the 40-hour workweek. These proposals would leave Americans "owning" more of their own economic insecurity.

Take just one piece—arguably the cornerstone—of the president’s Ownership Society agenda: his health care plan. Women are less likely than men to have employer-sponsored health insurance, yet the president’s proposal includes no increased access for those who do not get insurance through their employers—other than a meager inducement to individuals to purchase a policy on the private market. But these tax credits are far too small to make coverage affordable, and would actually buy less coverage for women than for men. Women's premiums and deductibles are typically higher than men's due to their need for services such as maternity care. His only mechanism for controlling costs is to hope that individuals will exert control over insurance companies and the medical profession when they have to pay health expenses out of their own pockets. As a result, under the president’s plan, the cost of employer-sponsored coverage will continue to climb. More people will find themselves without employer-sponsored insurance coverage. And those individuals without such coverage will continue to have nowhere to go.

The right response to the changing family and economy is not to ask families to own more of the risk inherent in the global economy, as the Ownership agenda proposes to do. Instead of undermining the social contract, we should redesign it so it can once again offer families the tools to share risk and prosper in a global economy. Reforms should include citizen-based health insurance, subsidized by income; progressive retirement accounts; new refundable, tax-subsidized accounts to help parents save for the expenses of having a family; universal pre-K and after-school programs; and childcare subsidies and workplaces that do not penalize parents who need flexibility to care for kids.

Women may appreciate that a conservative president, in a Nixon-goes-to-China gesture, has demonstrated he understands the concerns of working mothers. But they need more than recognition. They need real reforms to outdated social contract programs giving them the tools to share risk and prosper in a global economy.

... The World According to a Bush Voter ...

10.21.04 (6:52 pm) [edit]

"In the survey of 976 likely voters, Democrats Kerry and Sen. John Edwards had 49 percent, compared to 46 percent for Republicans Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. That's within the margin of error for the poll conducted Oct. 18-20." - New AP Poll, http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

[b]A new survey reveals that Bush supporters choose to keep faith in their leader than face reality. This is scary and "We the People" must fight for a change-of-course [i]now[/i], before it is too late!!! ...[/b]

Do the supporters of President Bush really know their man or the policies of his administration?

Three out of 4 self-described supporters of President George W. Bush still believe that pre-war Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them. According to a new survey published Thursday, the same number also believes that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided "substantial support" to al Qaeda.

But here is the truly astonishing part: as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago. In other words, more people believe the claims today –- after the publication of a series of well-publicized official government reports that debunked both notions.

These are among the most striking findings of a survey conducted in mid-October by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm.

The survey polled the views of nearly 900 randomly chosen respondents equally divided between Bush supporters and those intending to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry. It found a yawning gap in the perceptions of the facts between the two groups, particularly with regards to President Bush's claims about pre-war Iraq.

According to the accompanying analysis offered by PIPA:

[i]It is normal during elections for supporters of presidential candidates to have fundamental disagreements about values or strategies. The current election is unique in that Bush supporters and Kerry supporters have profoundly different perceptions of reality. In the face of a stream of high-level assessments about pre-war Iraq, Bush supporters cling to the refuted beliefs that Iraq had WMD or supported al Qaeda[/i].

The survey probed each respondent's views at three separate levels: One, their personal belief about the two issues; two, their perception of what "most experts" had concluded about the same; and three, their knowledge of the Bush administration's claims on either WMDs or al Qaeda.

The survey found that 72 percent of Bush supporters believe either that Iraq had actual WMD (47 percent) or a major program for producing them (25 percent). This despite the widespread media coverage in early October of the CIA's "Duelfer Report" – the final word on the subject by the one billion dollar, 15-month investigation by the Iraq Survey Group – which concluded that Hussein had dismantled all of his WMD programmes shortly after the 1991 Gulf War and never tried to reconstitute them.

Nonetheless, 56 percent of Bush supporters are under the impression that the expert consensus is exactly the opposite – that Iraq had actual WMD. Another 57 percent think that the Duelfer Report itself concluded that Iraq either had WMD (19 percent) or a major WMD program (38 percent).

Only 26 percent of Kerry supporters, by contrast, believe that pre-war Iraq had either actual WMD or a WMD program, and only 18 percent said "most experts" agreed on the same.

Results on Hussein's alleged support for al Qaeda are similar. The contention – which has been most persistently asserted by Vice President Dick Cheney – was thoroughly debunked by the final report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission earlier this summer.

Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters said they believed that Iraq was providing "substantial" support to al Qaeda, with 20 percent asserting that Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Sixty-three percent of Bush supporters even believe that clear evidence of such support has actually been found, and 60 percent believe that "most experts" have reached the same conclusion.

By contrast, only 30 percent of Kerry supporters said they believe that such a link existed or that most experts have concluded that it did.

Ironically, the only issue on which the survey found broad agreement between the two sets of voters was the role of the Bush administration in actively promoting the claims about Iraq's WMD and connections to al Qaeda.

"One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these (erroneous) beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them," notes Steven Kull, PIPA's director. "Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree."

In regard to WMD, those majorities have actually grown since last summer, according to PIPA.

On WMD, 82 percent of Bush supporters and 84 percent of Kerry supporters believe that the administration claims that Iraq either had WMD or major WMD programs. On ties with al Qaeda, 75 percent of Bush supporters and 74 percent of Kerry supporters believe that the administration claims that Iraq provided substantial support to the terrorist group.

Remarkably, when asked whether the U.S. should have gone to war without evidence of a WMD program or support to al Qaeda, 58 percent of Bush supporters said no. Moreover, 61 percent said they assumed that Bush would also not have gone to war under those circumstances.

"To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about pre-war Iraq," Kull says.

He added that this "cognitive dissonance" could also help explain other remarkable findings in the survey. The poll also found a major gap between Bush's stated positions on a number of international issues and what his supporters believe Bush's position to be. A strong majority of Bush supporters believe, for example that the president supports a range of international treaties and institutions that the White House has vocally and publicly opposed.

In particular, majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assume that he supports multilateral approaches to various international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent).

In August, two-thirds of Bush supporters also believed that Bush supported the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although that figure dropped to a 53 percent majority in the PIPA poll, it's not much of a drop considering that Bush explicitly denounced the ICC in the first, most widely watched presidential debate in late September.

In all of these cases, majorities of Bush supporters said they favored the positions that they imputed, incorrectly, to Bush. Large majorities of Kerry supporters, on the other hand, showed they knew both their candidate's and Bush's positions on the same issues.

Bush supporters also have deeply erroneous views regarding the extent of international support for the president and his policies. Despite a steady flow over the past year of official statements by foreign governments and public-opinion polls showing strong opposition to the Iraq war, less than one-third of Bush supporters believe that most people in foreign countries oppose the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. Two-thirds believe that foreign views are either evenly divided on the war (42 percent) or that the majority of foreigners actually favors the war (26 percent).

Three of every four Kerry supporters, on the other hand, said it was their understanding that the most of the rest of the world oppose the war.

Similarly, polls conducted during the summer in 35 major countries around the world found that majorities or pluralities in 30 of them favored Kerry for president over Bush by an average of margin of greater than two to one. Yet 57 percent of Bush supporters believe that a majority of people outside the U.S. favor Bush's re-election, while 33 percent think that foreign opinion is evenly divided.

On the other hand, two-thirds of Kerry supporters think that their candidate is favored overseas; only one percent think that most people abroad preferred Bush.

Kull, who has been analyzing U.S. public opinion on foreign-policy issues for two decades, says that this reality gap reveals, if anything, the hold that the president has over his loyalists:

[i]The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters – and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion would be critical of his policies or that the president could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters[/i].

In other words, a Bush supporter chooses to keep faith in his leader than face the truth either about their president or the world as it is.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Jim Lobe writes on international affairs for Inter Press Service, Oneworld.net, Foreign Policy in Focus and AlterNet.org, http://www.alternet.org

[b]Poll Shows Most Americans No Longer Trust Bush to Fight Terrorism

AFP:[/b] http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm... "George W. Bush approval rating in the fight against terrorism dropped below 50 percent this month for the first time since the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to a poll out. Bush's approval rating on that question was 62 percent last month, 58 percent in August and 56 percent in June. With less than two weeks to the November 2 election, the Pew Research Center poll of 1,307 registers voters showed Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry tied at 45 percent among registered voters and at 47 percent among likely voters. Those numbers were a net gain for the Massachusetts senator, who had trailed in both groups earlier in the month. Pew director Andrew Kohut [said]..."In particular {Kerry] has virtually erased Bush's advantage for honesty and having good judgment in a crisis."

... Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 271 vs. Bush 257 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.21.04 (2:25 pm) [edit]

[b]... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 271 vs. Bush 257 ...[/b]

[b]Oct. 21 New polls:[/b] AZ CA CO GA KY ME MI MN NH NJ NM PA TN VA WA WI

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (88)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (87)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (96)
White - Exactly tied (10)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (63)
Light Red - Weak Bush (47)
Red - Strong Bush (147)

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

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

We have 35 new polls today, with updates to the map in 16 states. Wisconsin http://www.electoral-vote.com... is the only state that has switched sides as a result of a new Strategic Vision (R) poll showing Bush ahead there 46% to 49%, although this is within the margin of error. Also, Minnesota http://www.electoral-vote.com... is now tied according to a new Rasmussen 7-day tracking poll. The changes in the other states do not cause any electoral votes to change.

Survey USA http://www.surveyusa.com/Scor... has conducted a poll in 30 states and reported that men are from Bushland and women are from Kerryland. Interestingly enough the state with the biggest gender gap is Georgia, where it is 28%. Those southern belles don't actually like Kerry (they support Bush by 6%), but the Georgia men prefer Bush by a huge 34%. The gender gap is also very high in Rhode Island, Oregon, Nevada, and Florida. Only in two states, Kansas and North Carolina, does Bush do better among women than among men. Kerry's advantage with women averages 11%. With the upcoming get-out-the-vote efforts, it won't be surprising to see the Republicans focusing on men and the Democrats focusing on women.

It is surprising that Bush and Kerry don't like each other very much. After all they are family http://msn.ancestry.com/landi... : ninth cousins twice removed to be exact. Thanks to politicalwire.com http://www.politicalwire.com/... for pointing this out.

Although I have explained this before, it seems to be confusing some people, so I will try again. The poll that is used is the one that was conducted most recently. It is the middle date of the POLLING PERIOD that matters. The RELEASE DATE does not matter at all. For example, yesterday I announced a new Zogby poll in Florida taken Oct. 13-17. But there was already a Survey USA poll taken Oct. 15-17 in Florida. The Zogby poll has a middle date of Oct. 15. The Survey USA poll has a middle date of Oct. 16. Thus the Zogby poll did NOT replace the Survey USA poll on the map because it was older. Some pollsters get their results out the door a bit faster than others. What matters is the middle date of the polling period. And if there are ties, such as Oct. 13-17 vs. Oct. 14-16, the shorter one wins because it is a better snapshot. If multiple polls with the same polling period are tied for most recent, they are averaged. All the data is in the Polling data http://www.electoral-vote.com... to the right of the map. If you don't understand why a poll was or was not used, look there. The first column is the middle date, counting forward from Sept. 1, so Oct. 1 is 31.0, Oct. 12 is 42.0, etc. For each state, all polls are sorted in descending order, most recent on top. This file can be read by Excel.

Tuesday http://www.electoral-vote.com... I cited Richard L. Hasen on five ways this election could end up in the Supreme Court. Let me now add a sixth way. Today Salon.com http://www.salon.com/news/fea... reported massive snafus with getting absentee ballots to the estimated 4 million American voters overseas. The office in charge of helping overseas Americans to vote is totally ineffective. In 2000 it was excoriated by the GAO for losing thousands of overseas votes. It now appears to be doing its best to make sure the 10% of overseas Americans who are in the military (and largely Republican) can vote while ignoring the 90% who are civilians and who hear about America's loss of respect in the world daily and are much more likely to want to replace George Bush. The office is dawdling about putting the emergency write-in ballot on its website http://www.fvap.gov/ , so Americans overseas who need one should get it from their consulate or embassy. The case which may well hit the Supreme Court will revolve about a simple question: Can a county send a voter his absentee ballot by snail mail to a far-away country a couple of days before the election and then refuse to count it because it came back after the deadline http://projectvote.org/index.... ?

As some people pointed out, there were a couple of minor glitches in the new software at first. I fully realize that software should be thoroughly tested before being deployed, but there is no time. The new predicted map had wacky 2000 scores because the program that made the spreadsheet with the new data didn't print a header line as the other spreadsheets have. But the map-making software skips line 1 as a presumed header and assumes line 2 is Alabama, line 3 is Alaska, etc. So in the map, every state had the 2000 results of a different state. Both programs were actually correct, but the output produced by program 1 didn't match the input expected by program 2. There was also an ambiguity about what Nader is assumed to have. Originally it was 2%, but after all the Zogby polls came in showing him at 0.5%, I changed the parameter to 1% and forgot to change the text. Haste makes waste. And working on the site 10, 12 hours a day (including reading the mail) doesn't help, either.

I am really determined to defeat the hackers, so I just added a sixth server. It is www.electoral-vote6.com. Again, use the main site under normal conditions, but if that doesn't work, try www.electoral-vote2.com, www.electoral-vote3.com, etc., currently up to 6.

[b]"We the People" must remain courageous, diligent and strong ... Please advise all of your family members, friends and neighbors to get out and VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY ...[/b]

... Jon Stewart: "Stop Hurting America..." ...

10.21.04 (12:51 pm) [edit]

Jon Stewart to Tucker Carlson: "You're a dick", http://www.tblog.com/template...

[i]Daily Show [/i]host [b]Jon Stewart [/b]was a guest on [i]Crossfire[/i] last week, and America's favorite fake journalist was dead serious in his exchange with Tucker Carlson about media ethics.

Watch the segment: http://www.ifilm.com/filmdeta... or Read the transcript: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TR...

[b]"We the People" are indeed [i]lucky [/i]to have Jon Stewart with the wit and courage, out there fighting against the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]...[/b]

... Divergent Paths ... [Graph] ...

10.20.04 (5:54 pm) [edit]

"The dollar fell below $1.26 per euro for the first time since February as concern about slowing international investment in the U.S. pushed a widely watched dollar gauge past a key technical level. The Dollar Index, a basket of six currencies, fell below 87 yesterday for the first time in eight months and weakened again today. The trade gap, exports minus imports, widened in August to the second largest ever while foreign investors slowed their purchases of U.S. financial assets, reports this month showed. ``The dollar breaking below 87 on the broad index hasn't helped,'' said Chris Melendez, president of Tempest Asset Management, a currency hedge fund in Newport Beach, California. ``We think the soft patch in the U.S. economy is getting softer.'' " - US Dollar Falls to 8-Month Low as 'Soft Patch' is gets Softer, http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap...

Karl Rove said he had a few 'October Surprises' and tricks - and[i] this [/i]is one. Corporate-take-all Pimp Big Oil is trying to steal a second term for their sluts, the Bush/Cheney Oil Co. by keeping gasoline prices down ([i]now[/i]). Beware the NOVEMBER Surprise - gasoline prices will SOAR right AFTER Election Day, when these traitorous crooks will[i] cash in [/i]big-time on their neo-con, neo-fascist scam!

[b]"We the People" should [i]not[/i], under any circumstances, let the corrupt Bushies get away with this wholesale embezzlement of the American Working People's hard-earned dollars ... Vote for John Kerry and let's oust Bush from office!!! ...[/b]

[b]Sources:[/b]

[b]Oil Speculators Have Helped Drive Oil Prices Up

Business Week Online:[/b] http://www.businessweek.com/b... "There is no doubt most of oil's huge price leap -- up 40% in the past year -- is grounded in fundamental supply-and-demand issues." However, hedge funds and other financial players "are helping to push up the volume of crude-oil contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Such trades are on their way to an all-time record this year, up 13% thru July....Today, there are more than 3,200 funds registered with the cftc, almost twice the number in 1999. So-called noncommercial traders..that don't use or produce oil -- added 7,453 contracts of crude-oil futures and options on the Nymex as of Aug. 3... This recent buying helped propel crude oil prices." Take away costs added by speculation and Bush's SPR refill policy, say some economists, and you'd find oil prices would be closer to $35 per barrel than $50.

[b]Oil Tops $48/Barrel While Supplies Reach Dangerously Low Levels

AP:[/b] http://www.forbes.com/busines... "Crude futures prices surged above $48 per barrel Wednesday as oil production and shipping disruptions caused by Hurricane Ivan caused domestic supplies to shrink more than expected. The country's sharply reduced oil supply is significant because it now falls below the estimated "lower operating inventory" level of 270 million barrels set in 1998 by the National Petroleum Council, a consortium of oil and gas executives that advises the Energy Department. At that level, the refining industry has "diminished flexibility" to handle unanticipated disruptions." One reason this has happened: Bush's insistence against all advice on transferring oil into the SPR. Now you watch! On the eve of the election, to magically drop oil prices, he will release SPR oil!

[b]Obscene! Oil Hits $44/Barrel as ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch/Shell Make $5.8 Billion in Profits in THREE MONTHS

Seattle Post Intelligencer:[/b] http://seattlepi.nwsource.com... "Happy days are here again at the gas pumps, for the oil companies.Two major oil companies announced huge growth in income last week, with Exxon Mobil scoring a record $5.8 billion in profits for just the second quarter of the year. Royal Dutch/Shell Group reported a 54 percent growth in net income." [These two companies have also been given multi-million-dollar contracts to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which means they have been given free range of public oil lands in the Gulf of Mexico. They are making money hand over fist as the public gets burned, coming (to the pump) and going (shelling out tax dollars to support the SPR scam).] "As markets reopen this morning for the week, traders will wonder whether the price of oil, just $10 per barrel a few years ago, might hit $45 a barrel. Do we hear $50?" What we heard on 8/03 was $44 - followed by media propaganda gushes of "oil prices drop!" (When it slid down a buck or so.)

[b]Bush's October Surprise Could be Unwelcome Oil Price Increases

Tom Engelhardt writes[/b], http://www.tomdispatch.com/in... "The U.S. hasn't even been able to stop the escalating attacks on and sabotage of Iraq's oil pipelines [while] the threat to oil supplies has been seeping across the border into Saudi Arabia. Oil prices, which had dipped from recent highs, are again inching up toward the $40 a barrel mark. Throw in chaos in Russia's oil industry; stir in a Middle East guaranteed to be ever more in turmoil, add in the skyrocketing global desire for ever more oil, and you're beginning to deal with the realities of a business which could provide a distinct October surprise for the Bush administration and many more surprises in future years for the rest of us. Only yesterday, according to the British Financial Times, 'Strong global demand for oil, limited supply increases and continuing security fears led the US government -- to raise its central price forecast for US crude over the next 18 months to $37 a barrel. As recently as April it forecast crude falling below $30.' "

... Funding Up in Flames ...

10.20.04 (5:02 pm) [edit]

"Hypocrisy: a lie in action - the legacy of indecency." - Anon

"It is wrong to try to scare people going into the polls." - President Bush, 10/20/04, http://abcnews.go.com/Politic...

[i]VERSUS[/i]

"Cheney: Terrorists May Bomb U.S. Cities." - Chicago Tribune, 10/19/04, http://www.chicagotribune.com...,1,5324790.story?coll=chi-news-hed

[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] is hypocritical and dishonest with the American public ... The traitorous Bushies have not protected our homeland, but instead are heinously terrorizing the American people and the entire world community ...[/b]

A new Homeland Security appropriations bill http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... signed by President Bush on Monday cuts funding for first responders by nearly $500 million and shortchanges programs vital to local fire departments. This didn't stop President Bush from appearing in New Jersey to assure voters the new law included "vital money for first responders." In fact, the president had provided inadequate funding for first responders even before the latest cut. Last year, the Council on Foreign Relations reported America would fall $98.4 billion short of meeting critical emergency responder needs over the next five years if current funding levels were maintained.

[b]BUSH HOSES FIREFIGHTERS:[/b] The president's homeland security cuts could hit firefighters – whom Bush has called part of America's "new generation of heroes" – especially hard. The new bill cuts state homeland security block grants by 35 percent, and halves funding for Urban Search and Rescue grants. FIRE Act Grants – used to purchase fire equipment for local departments – have been cut for the first time since 9/11. These programs would have been cut further, says Fire Fighters Union President Harold Schaitberger, if Congress had followed the president's initial budget proposals, which "zeroed out funding for the FIRE Act program" and fought against an act meant to add firefighters to the nearly two-thirds of America's fire departments that are understaffed. Schaitberger called Bush's disingenuous claims of increases in homeland security "deplorable."

[b]PROBLEM: BUSH WON'T REQUIRE INDUSTRY TO SECURE CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE:[/b] The private sector controls "85 percent of the nation's critical infrastructure." The 9/11 Commission report says, "homeland security and national preparedness...often begins with the private sector." Nevertheless, the Bush administration refuses to require private companies to secure chemical plants, nuclear reactors, seaports, water systems or the transportation of hazardous materials from a potentially catastrophic terrorist attack. For example, an attack at one or more of the nation's 15,000 industrial chemical plants across the United States "could cause thousands, even millions of deaths or injuries. A 2001 Army study http://www.citizen.org/docume... found "2.4 million people could be killed or wounded by a terrorist attack on a single [chemical] plant."

[b]EXPLANATION: CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRY LINES BUSH'S POCKETS: [/b]A new report from Public Citizen http://www.citizen.org/docume... reveals that private companies which control the nation's critical infrastructure are among President Bush's "biggest campaign contributors." Ten Bush Rangers (those who raised $200,000+ for Bush's re-election campaign) and 20 Bush Pioneers ($100,000+) are executives from these industries. The companies themselves have "spent at least $201 million lobbying the White House, executive branch agencies and Congress from 2002 through June 2004." Public Citizen notes these companies "do not want new rules to follow even if their participation could help to stave off a terrorist attack."

[b]HOLES IN THE BIOSHIELD:[/b] President Bush has touted his support for Project BioShield, the federal program designed to combat potential biowarfare. In his speech Tuesday, he said, "Through Project BioShield, we are developing new vaccines and treatments against biological attacks." But while Bush claimed last July that he would make $5.6 billion available to Project BioShield to counter anticipated threats, so far "no money from BioShield has been allocated." Instead, experts claim, the law has generated "indifference or frustration among biodefense contractors." According to a new study by the Center for Biosecurity, experts believe the U.S. is "woefully ill-equipped" to handle a sophisticated biological attack by terrorists.

[b]TSA'S PATTERN OF WASTE:[/b] A recent Department of Homeland Security audit found the Transportation Security Administration, the government agency in charge of airport security, was guilty of lax oversight and unsound practices in awarding government contracts. According to the report, the TSA ended up overpaying Boeing Co. by at least $49 million for "the installation and maintenance of explosives detection equipment at U.S. airports." The report concluded TSA "didn't use 'sound contracting practices' in awarding the contract to Boeing; also, the agency failed to monitor progress and never conducted evaluations to ensure the work was being completed. This is just the latest example of fiscal irresponsibility to plague the two-year-old agency; TSA recently was under fire after reports surfaced that the agency awarded bonuses three times larger than the government average to its executives and spent a half million dollars on an extravagant party for staff members.

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 291 vs. Bush 247 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.20.04 (2:55 pm) [edit]

[b]... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 291 vs. Bush 247 ...[/b]

[b]Oct. 20 New polls: [/b]CA IA LA MI MN MO NV NJ NM OH OR TN WA WV WI

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (103)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (125)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (63)
White - Exactly tied (0)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (64)
Light Red - Weak Bush (47)
Red - Strong Bush (136)

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

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

Wow! 41 new polls today. Zogby http://online.wsj.com/public/... has released new polls conducted in the battleground states Oct. 13-18 and there is good news and bad news for each candidate. For Bush, the good news is that he is now leading in seven of the 16 battleground states (Arkansas, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia), his best showing ever in the Zogby poll. The bad news is that all of these leads are within the margin of error, so they are statistical ties. For Kerry, the good news is that his leads in Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington are all outside the margin of error, which ranges from 2% to 4%.

But there are other polls today as well. A new poll from the University of Cincinnati shows Kerry ahead in Ohio, 48% to 46%. Rasmussen's tracking poll shows Bush and Kerry tied at 47% each in Ohio, the first time Bush has not led there for weeks. ABC News says its Kerry 50%, Bush 47%, but Fox News says it is the other way: Kerry 45% and Bush 47%. On the other hand, Survey USA has Kerry ahead 49% to 47%. All in all, Ohio is a complete tossup at the moment; it could go either way. My rule is still: most recent poll (based on the middle date) wins, with ties resolved in favor of the shortest poll. If two or more polls with the same dates are most recent, they are averaged. Currently, The Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll is the most recent by 0.5 day, so it is being used today. The complete list of polls is given at the Polling data http://www.electoral-vote.com... link to the right of the map.

Some people have said I should average over some time interval, but when I did that in early October, there was massive objection to the idea, so I am going to stick with the most recent poll from here to election day. No more discussion. It is the most objective system. But it should be obvious that many states are locked in an exact tie. The get-out-the-vote efforts will be crucial. Rasmussen also shows Bush and Kerry tied in Florida at 47% apiece, again for the first time in weeks. Early voting has already started in Florida and other states. In fact, it is expected that up to a third of all votes may be cast before election day.

Overseas voters who have not yet received their absentee ballot should call the U.S. consulate or embassy in their country immediately and obtain an emergency write-in ballot. The deadline by which absentee ballots must arrive varies from state to state as shown in this list http://projectvote.org/index.... . In most states, the deadline is the closing of the polls on election day, but in some states it is earlier. If you are overseas and have not yet voted, it is essential that you do it this week. If snail mail from your country to the U.S. takes a week or more, you might even consider using an overnight express courier. Absentee ballots arriving after the deadline are not counted.

A new Gallup poll taken in Colorado Oct. 15-17 on amendment #36 to split the electoral vote in proportion to the popular vote is now behind, with 53% against it and 39% for it.

Rasmussen also conducted a poll asking if people thought voting would go smoothly or we would get another mess in Florida like last time. 58% of the people expected another mess. Not a good sign that most people don't have much faith in the election process. Surely the richest country in the history of the world can devise voting procedures that work correctly. A good start would be to have the election procedure in each state be supervised by two people, one Republican and one Democrat, instead of by highly partisan elected officials.

Both campaigns are running scary http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... ads to frighten voters into voting for them. At Devincible.com http://www.devincible.com/tru... there are some mock commercials that are satirical rather than scary. They poke fun at both candidates. The site is called "The Truth about John Kerry." One of the ads poses the (rhetorical) question "Should you vote for a man dumb enough to believe George W. Bush?" Worth watching.

Since I don't think too much of the predicted map based on the linear regression lines, I decided to make a new map based on a much better model. Here is the model.

1. Voters currently preferring Bush or Kerry will actually vote for them.
2. Nader will get 1% where he is on the ballot, 0% where he is not.
3. The minor candidates (Cobb, Badnarik, Peroutka, etc.) will get 1% total.
4. The undecideds will go for Kerry 2:1

Here is the rationale. Number 1 is easy. A lot of people have made up their minds. There is little chance they will switch now. Number 2 is based on the fact that although Nader got 2.7% in 2000, many Naderites (Naderonians?) have been wearing goat-hair shirts and engaging in self flagelation since them for helping to elect Bush. Nader will surely get fewer votes this time. I have guessed at 1% based on today's Zogby polls in which he is averaging 0.5% in 16 battleground states. Number 3 is based on the fact that the minor candidates got 1.01% in 2000.

Number 4 is the hardest, but there is some hard data on how the undecideds break. Nick Panagakis http://www.pollingreport.com/... analyzed 155 elections, specifically looking at polls taking two weeks before an election. In 127 cases, the challenger got most of the undecided vote. In 9 cases the undecided vote was split equally, and in 19 cases most went to the incumbent.

Panagakis' study was done in 1989, but it has been updated recently by Chris Bowers http://www.mydd.com/story/200... . He studied polls and elections from 1976 to 2002 and examined the differences between the final polls and the actual vote. On the average, the undecideds went for the challenger 2:1. This is the figure used in the model. The consequence of this historical fact is that in states where Kerry is tied now or even 1% behind, he will probably win. The predicted map is at www.electoral-vote.com/pred http://www.electoral-vote.com... . This is a stable page, which will appear on the menu under the map as "Predicted final results", and can be bookmarked. It will be updated daily and old ones will be archived. The old-style linear regression predicted map is also reachable from this page. I think this new predicted map is much more solid than the old predicted map because it is based on a large amount of current and historical data.

The page listing the military service http://www.electoral-vote.com... of numerous public figures has been updated. It has also been placed on the More data page http://www.electoral-vote.com... for future reference. Similarly, the pollsters page http://www.electoral-vote.com... has also been updated.

Senate news: In an unusual move, the two largest Kentucky newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal http://www.courier-journal.co... and the Lexington Herald-Leader have both endorsed challenger Dr. Daniel Mongiardo (D) over incumbent Sen. Jim Bunning (R) on account of the incumbent's bizarre behavior. It is increasingly obvious that the voters of Kentucky don't want to get themselves into a situation in which people talk about Mitch McConnell as the senior senator from Kentucky and Jim Bunning as the senile senator from Kentucky. As the Courier-Journal so aptly put it: "Sen. Bunning could readily put to rest any concern that a health problem may be the cause of his odd behavior and absences. All he has to do is hold public forums and press conferences, speak on the issues and answer all questions." If he continues to hide from the people of Kentucky, he will continue being hammered. The most recent poll shows Bunning and Mongiardo tied, down from Bunning's 10% lead only a few months ago.

I have now installed a fifth server at www.electoral-vote5.com as yet another emergency backup. There is scheduled maintenance at my main provider HostRocket.com http://www.hostrocket.com/ this evening so they can install a faster Internet connection. If you try later today or in the future and the main servers are down, use one of the backups. If the attackers goal was to get me to spend some money, they succeeded; if the goal was to silence me they failed completely.

[b]"We the People" must remain courageous, diligent and strong ... Please advise all of your family members, friends and neighbors to get out and VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY ...[/b]

... Votergate ...

10.20.04 (1:46 pm) [edit]

"Fraud is the ready minister of injustice." - Edmund Burke

[b]Please make sure that you get out and vote on the 2nd November for John Kerry ... Also, please ensure that you ask for a paper receipt, or preferably a paper ballot, because the electronic voting is not to be relied upon, and the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]is committing voter fraud all around the country ... "We the People" must demand that free and fair elections take place this year, something that did not happen in 2000 ...[/b]

Set aside the 15 minutes you'll need to watch this compelling documentary about electronic voting machines. Using [b]interviews and demos with hackers and computer scientists[/b], [i]Votergate[/i] presents a picture of the myriad ways machines could change the election outcome. And if you have the choice, make sure to choose a [b]paper ballot [/b]on Nov. 2.

[b]See the film: http://www.archive.org/stream... [/b]

... Desperate Measures ...

10.19.04 (9:19 pm) [edit]

"Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters." - Abraham Lincoln

[b]"We the People" deserve better than the corrupt and incompetent servants in the traitorous Bush regime ...[/b]

In the last Presidential election, it was Florida that made the mess. This time, it could very well be Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia and Nevada, and that's just for starters.

The problems with electronic voting machines put in place after the passage of the Help America Vote Act have been well-documented. In Ohio, where thousands of Diebold electronic voting machines have been deployed, a consultant discovered that anyone with a security card and access to the voting terminals could take control of the machines by inputting a frighteningly simple password. Security consultants in Maryland found they could hack into the election system, delete vote counts and make wholesale changes to election results. Horror stories like this abound.

As if this wasn't frightening enough, there are the other stories.

Last week in Nevada, Eric Russell, a former employee of a firm called Voters Outreach of America, which also goes by the names America Votes and Project America Votes, accused the firm of deliberately destroying voter registration forms filled out by people who registered themselves as Democrats. "I personally witnessed my supervisor at VOA, together with her personal assistant, destroy completed registration forms that VOA employees had collected," said Russell. "All of the destroyed registration forms were for registrants who indicated their party preference as 'Democrat.'" Thousands of people who believe they are registered to vote in Nevada will go to the polls on November 2nd and get a nasty shock.

Voters Outreach of America is, basically, a Republican-funded outfit. It is run by a man named Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Republican Party. Sproul and his company, Sproul & Associates, received nearly $500,000 from the Republican National Committee to collect voter registrations. Sproul engineered in Arizona the push to get Ralph Nader on the ballot, and has been accused of collecting some 14,000 invalid signatures in that process.

Sproul and his outfit have also been accused of similar registration tampering in Oregon and West Virginia. Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and Attorney General Hardy Myers have begun an investigation into allegations of registration form tampering that are eerily similar to what has been happening in Nevada. The firm at the center of the Oregon scandal, again, is Sproul & Associates. Mike Johnson, a 20-year-old canvasser working for Sproul's firm in downtown Portland, said he was instructed to only accept Republican registration forms. "I have never in my five years as secretary of state ever seen an allegation like the one that came up tonight - ever," said Oregon Secretary of State Bradbury. "I mean, frankly, it just totally offends me that someone would take someone else's registration and throw it out."

In Ohio, the name 'John Kerry' has been left off absentee ballots sent out to voters. A man named Chad Stanton (yes, for the love of crumbcake, his name is 'Chad') was paid in crack cocaine to submit phony registration forms, and was arrested for his troubles. There are reports that Ohio college students are being paid $100 to vote Republican on absentee ballots.

The Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, attempted to block newly registered voters from getting on the rolls by claiming their registration forms were invalid because they were not on postcard-weight paper. Blackwell has also made efforts to block newly registered voters from receiving provisional ballots, which allow new voters to cast a ballot if they have moved. Such an action not only affects newly registered voters, but also the working poor, who are constantly required to move from residence to residence as their financial status rises and falls.

What is most infuriating about these Ohio stories is the fact that they are taking place amid an unprecedented surge in voter participation. Hundreds of thousands of people have registered to vote in that state; four years ago, newly registered voters could only be measured in the tens of thousands. Ohioans are racing to participate in the democratic process, and are being foiled not just by criminals and fools, but by their own elected representatives.

Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia and Nevada amount to a combined total of 37 Electoral College votes. Each is considered a swing state in the coming election. In a race as tight as the professional pundits tell us this one is, those 37 EC swing-state votes are huge.

It is probably safe to say that the American people do not want a re-enactment of the carnival of folly that was Florida in 2000. It is bad enough that millions will vote on outdated equipment, and perhaps worse that millions more will vote on new and highly suspect equipment, raising the specter of yet another contested vote count. That some people are also deliberately tearing up the system in swing states is beyond the pale.

One the most egregious attempts at affecting the outcome of the election has been unfolding away from the voting booth. A broadcasting company called The Sinclair Broadcast Group ordered its 62 affiliate stations all across the country to air a highly dubious anti-Kerry 'documentary' which claims he betrayed Vietnam prisoners of war. The Los Angeles Times has reported that at least two of the former POWs featured in the film have links to the Bush administration and have also appeared in anti-Kerry attack ads.

Sinclair refused for weeks to offer equal time for a documentary, such as the recently released film titled 'Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry,' that offered an opposing view. 'Going Upriver' could easily have been included in the Sinclair broadcast, if fairness was on the menu; it has been made available for download in its entirety http://www.thekerrymovie.com/... on the internet.

The Democratic Party filed complaints with both the FCC and the FEC, charging that Sinclair was essentially offering a gratis political contribution to the Bush campaign. Despite these charges, despite the fact that the scandal surrounding this broadcast has caused Sinclair's stock to crater in recent days, and despite the fact that some 80 companies who advertise on Sinclair affiliates said they would pull their business away, the film was slated to run this week.

The Washington Bureau Chief for Sinclair's Maryland-based news division, Jon Lieberman, blasted the film and his company in a Baltimore Sun article on Monday. "It's biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election," said Leiberman. "For me, it's not about right or left - it's about what's right or wrong in news coverage this close to an election...the selection of the material - dumping it on the news department, and giving them four days, and running it this close to the election - it's indefensible, in my opinion." One day later, Lieberman was fired by Sinclair.

Apparently, however, the public and financial pressures upon Sinclair became too much to bear. On Tuesday the 19th, the company released a blatantly self-serving press release http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/0... claiming they never intended to show the biased anti-Kerry film in its entirety, and will instead show an hour-long news program on the use of documentary film to affect elections, of which the aforementioned Kerry slam piece will only comprise a small part.

The irony surrounding the Sinclair cave-in is palpable. For the last two weeks, they absorbed massive abuse for their unprecedented intention to manipulate the airwaves, and for their obvious and ham-fisted attempt to influence the election. In finally succumbing to the onslaught, they are going to run a supposedly straightforward news program that documents the exact form of election tampering they were planning to take part in. Though the Kerry slam will not be shown, this demonstrably biased broadcast company cannot be trusted to keep its word. It is entirely probable that their intended 'news' program will be as much a propaganda screed as the now-defunct documentary. All in all, this has been a shameful episode, a new low in an already debased media environment.

The simple and central ideal of our democracy - count every vote, and make every vote count - is being betrayed by the actions of those who would deny Americans the ability to vote, and by this powerful media company that tried to foist a biased and factually questionable program upon its viewers. These are desperate measures being taken by obvious political partisans who do not want to leave the choice of the vote to the voters, because they do not trust the outcome.

Jon Lieberman, who lost his job for fighting this, said it best. "At the end of the day," he said, "all you really have is your credibility." This must be above issues of Left and Right. If the United States of America cannot have a free, fair, open and untrammeled election, if our nation cannot perform its most solemn duty without criminal interference and blatant propaganda soiling the process, perhaps we do not deserve the democracy so many have fought and died for.

We deserve better.

[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_...

For more information about issues and incidents surrounding your right to vote, please reference our [u]Voter Rights Page[/u] on http://www.truthout.org/voter...

... Scowcroft Blasts W. ...

10.19.04 (7:09 pm) [edit]

"A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience." - Elbert Hubbard

[b]"We the People" should listen closely to Brent Scowcroft, G. H. W. Bush 41's National Security Adviser, far, far wiser than the ignorant, corrupt and insane neo-con, neo-fascist cabal of crooks serving the dim-witted G. W. Bush 43 ... George W. Bush is a miserable failure who can only "cash in" (exploit us) if we let him ...[/b]

Remember how Bush One's National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft used a [i]Wall Street Journal [/i]op-ed http://www.opinionjournal.com... in the run-up to the Iraq war to warn Bush Two about the perils of an invasion? At the time, many believed Scowcroft, a close collaborator of the 41st President, was acting as a proxy for his former boss.

More recently, in the first presidential debate http://www.thenation.com/capi... , Scowcroft's words were thrown back at Dubya when John Kerry invoked Bush One's prescient warning (from [i]A World Transformed[/i], the 1998 book http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... he wrote with Scowcroft) that "had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

Now, Scowcroft is back http://www.commondreams.org/h... --a little more than two weeks before a highly contested election--with more tough criticism http://www.nation.com.pk/dail... of the Bush Administration. In an interview in the October 14 [i]Financial Times[/i], Scowcroft bluntly criticized the President's handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft told the [i]Financial Times[/i]. "I think the president is mesmerized." He added: "When there is a suicide attack [followed by a reprisal] Sharon calls the president and says, 'I'm on the front line of terrorism,' and the president says, 'Yes, you are...' He [Sharon] has been nothing but trouble."

Scowcroft also denounced Iraq as a "failing venture," and lambasted the "extremes of the neocons" for their unilateralist approach which has harmed relations between Europe and the US.

If you need any more evidence that George W. and his neoconners are reckless extremists who need to be booted from office on November 2, check out Scowcroft's remarks http://www.commondreams.org/h... .

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... Voting: Fraud And Suppression In The Battleground States ...

10.19.04 (4:48 pm) [edit]

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." - John Quincy Adams

[b]"We the People" must hold our elected representatives accountable ... It is vital that we get out and vote in record numbers on the 2nd November ... Cast your vote for John Kerry in order to restore dignity, integrity and sanity to the White House ...[/b]

In his speeches lately, President Bush likes to tell the story of Afghan elections – of voters registering by the millions, camels carrying ballot boxes across mountains, the "dream of freedom" taking root at polling places. Sadly, for Americans, "President Bush's enthusiasm to export democracy is not matched by his desire to defend it at home." Even as the president sings the praises of voter registration abroad, his operatives in Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada and elsewhere are working around the clock to suppress the vote and disenfranchise minorities in crucial battleground states. Thankfully, Americans are continuing to register in record numbers: The Center for American Progress has joined 23 concerned parties in a joint statement on how to uphold democracy – and encourage everyone to get out and vote – in the upcoming election.

[b]SUPPRESSING PHILADELPHIA:[/b] According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Republican operatives working to re-elect President Bush" in battleground Pennsylvania "submitted last-minute requests in Philadelphia on Friday to relocate 63 polling places…Of the 63 requests for changes, 53 are in political divisions where the population of white voters is less than 10 percent." All 63 are "in political divisions where Democrats hold an overwhelming advantage among registered voters." The city denied the requests, saying they were filed too late to be eligible for a hearing and appeared to be "discriminatory."

[b]ROBB OPPOSES AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLLS:[/b] Challenged on the transparent attempt to make it more difficult for 37,000 – mostly minority – Philadelphians to vote, Republican Alderman Matt Robb pleaded discomfort with African-Americans. Robb said he allowed his name to be used on the request "because those polling places are in neighborhoods he doesn't wish to visit. "'It's predominantly, 100 percent black,' he said. 'I'm just not going in there to get a knife in my back.'"

[b]FRAUD AND LOATHING IN NEVADA:[/b] A district judge in Nevada, Valerie Adair, has denied the Democratic Party's request to reopen voter registration to voters whose forms may have been destroyed by a Republican-backed organization. Despite testimony by a former employee of the Republican-backed group Voter's Outreach of America, who told local media that his "organization paid only for Republican forms and tore up any Democratic registration forms," Adair claimed she did not want to "'open the floodgates' to allow people not affected by the purported fraud to register" (indeed, what could be worse than a "flood" of registered voters). She said the "appropriate remedy" was for those who believe they've been denied the vote to file individual lawsuits. Of course, most of the people who have had their registrations trashed will not know it until Election Day.

[b]JEB IGNORES ELECTION OFFICIALS:[/b] New evidence indicates Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ignored advice to throw out a flawed felon voter list before it went out to county election offices, despite warnings from state officials. A May 4 e-mail revealed Gov. Bush had been told to "pull the plug" on the voter database by Department of State computer experts. The e-mail said state election officials "weren't comfortable with the felon matching program they've got," but added, "The Gov rejected their suggestion to pull the plug, so they're 'going live' with it this weekend." Despite efforts by election officials to keep the felon list private, news organizations including the Miami Herald found deep flaws in how the list was put together, including thousands of African-American voters who should have had their rights restored. Bush was finally forced to scrap an earlier state-sponsored list, which caused thousands of innocent voters to be disenfranchised in 2000, in July.

[b]CRASHING EARLY AND OFTEN:[/b] Meanwhile, citizens in Gov. Bush's state began casting votes on Monday, "and within an hour problems cropped up." A Democratic state legislator in Palm Beach County said she wasn't given a complete ballot when she opted to use paper instead of the touch-screen machine, and "in Orange County, the touch-screen system briefly crashed, paralyzing voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs." Meanwhile, "early voters at nine of Broward County's 14 sites ran into computer-generated problems." The breakdowns resulted in long lines and many would-be voters leaving for work. A coalition of private citizens and elected officials plan to file a lawsuit to avoid similar problems in New Jersey.

[b]Sources:[/b]

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

Voting, Bush/Cheney-Style, http://www.tblog.com/template...

Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 284 vs. Bush 247 ... [Map of the USA], http://www.tblog.com/template...

... Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 284 vs. Bush 247 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.19.04 (2:45 pm) [edit]

[b]... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 284 vs. Bush 247 ...[/b]

[b]Oct. 19 New polls:[/b] AR CO FL NH NJ OH OK PA TN WA

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (103)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (125)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (56)
White - Exactly tied (7)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (64)
Light Red - Weak Bush (45)
Red - Strong Bush (138)

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

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

Kerry keeps moving up in the electoral college. A new Survey USA poll shows he has now inched ahead of Bush in Florida, although his 1% lead means the state is still a statistical tie. Nevertheless, we now show Kerry with more than the critical 270 votes in the electoral college to win. Perhaps more signficant, though, is the fact that in states where Kerry's lead is at least 5%, he has 228 electoral votes. In states where Bush's lead is at least 5%, he has 183 electoral votes. Clearly the race is still wide open.

If you love horror stories, [i]Slate[/i] http://slate.com/Default.aspx... has a good one for you by Richard L. Hasen. In it, he describes five ways the presidential election could end up in the Supreme Court. Briefly summarized, they are:

- Voting glitches involving electronic or other voting machines
- Litigation over which provisional ballots are valid
- A fight over the Colorado amendment to split the electoral vote
- A tie in the electoral college or a faithless elector
- A terrorist attack that disrupts voting in a swing state

Are the voters stupid? It is not considered politically correct to point out that an awful lot of voters don't have a clue what they are talking about. A recent poll http://www.mtsusurveygroup.or... from Middle Tennessee State University sheds some light on the subject. For example, when asked which candidate wants to roll back the tax cuts for people making over $200,000 a year, a quarter thought it was Bush and a quarter didn't know. And it goes down hill from there. When asked which candidate supports specific positions on various issues, the results were no better than chance. While this poll was in Tennessee, I strongly suspect a similar poll in other states would get similar results. I find it dismaying that many people will vote for Bush because they want to tax the rich (which he opposes) or vote for Kerry because they want school vouchers for religious schools (which he opposes).

Senate News: A new Garin Hart Yang (D) poll in Kentucky shows the race between incumbent Sen. Jim Bunning and challenger Dr. Daniel Mongiardo to be an exact tie. Bunning should have won reelection in a walk, but his increasingly bizarre behavior is catching up with him. He showed a picture of an expensive house to the press and claimed it was Mongiardo's (it wasn't), then he said Mongiardo looked like one of Saddam's sons, and finally he cheated during the debate by hiding in the Republican National Committee Headquarters and using a TelePrompTer, leading to speculation that he has serious mental problems. For these reasons, I have moved Kentucky to the list of competitive seats on the Senate page http://www.electoral-vote.com... .

In South Carolina, Republican senatorial candidate Jim DeMint has apologized http://www.washingtonpost.com... for saying that gays and unwed mothers should be forbidden from teaching in the public schools. But he didn't retract the statement. His race there against Inez Tenenbaum, the state's school superintendent, is also surprisingly close. In Oklahoma, Tom Coburn has repeatedly tried to unsay things (such as his supporting the death penalty for abortionists--and this coming from an obstetrician who has personally performed abortions). Finally, In the Illinois Senate race, Marylander Alan Keyes has opposed gay couples raising children saying: "If we do not know who the mother is, who the father is, without knowing all the brothers and sisters, incest becomes inevitable." Republicans are a lot livelier this year than usual. And the liveliness seems to be working. My current projection shows the new Senate with 52 Republicans, 46 Democrats (including independent Jeffords) and 2 tossups, but 8 or 9 races there are very close and change from day to day.

[b]"We the People" must remain courageous, diligent and strong ... Please advise all of your family members, friends and neighbors to get out and VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY ...[/b]

... Voting, Bush/Cheney-Style ...

10.19.04 (1:25 pm) [edit]

"The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do." - Joseph Stalin (Adopted by Karl Rove)

[b]From Discourse.net http://www.discourse.net/arch... ...[/b]

[b]Voter Suppression Attempt in Philly ... And Around the Country ...[/b]

Philadelphia Daily News, GOP fails in effort to move polls http://www.philly.com/mld/dai... :

... "REPUBLICAN OPERATIVES working to re-elect President Bush submitted last-minute requests in Philadelphia on Friday to relocate 63 polling places.

Bush’s Pennsylvania campaign staff filed the requests, using the names of two Republicans running for the U.S. Congress and seven Republican ward leaders.

Of the 63 requests for changes, 53 are in political divisions where the population of white voters is less than 10 percent. …

Bob Lee, voter registration administrator for the City Commission, said the requests appear to be “discriminatory” and were filed too late to be eligible for a hearing on Wednesday.

“They’re trying to suppress the vote,” Lee said of Republicans. …

Lee, who has worked for the commission for 21 years, said he became suspicious of the requests because of the last-minute timing, the unusually high number and the locations. …

Requests are sent to hearings before the City Commission after public notices are posted for five days at the polling place, the proposed new polling place and three other places in the division.

Lee said the City Commission on Wednesday will hold its last hearing on polling place changes before the Nov. 2 election.

Since the requests came in on Friday afternoon, he said, there is not time for the public notices." ...

Then, the understatement of the week,

[i]The requests could potentially confuse voters. The city has already ordered postcards mailed to 1.1 million registered voters before Election Day, directing them to polling places[/i].

Which is of course the whole point. Undoubtedly, Philadelphia is not the only place this will happen. And in Florida, if you vote in the wrong place, your vote will not be counted http://www.miami.com/mld/miam... (FWIW, the court reached the only possible conclusion given the wording of the state legislation).

Meanwhile, in Michigan, the Justice Department has just moved to block a Democratic lawsuit http://www.washingtonpost.com... challenging a similar rule blocking the counting of ‘provisional ballots’ when a registered voter appears at the wrong precinct.

Why can’t we allow people to vote in Post Offices or something? And why, in this computerized age, is it necessary to force people to vote in a given precinct?

[b]If this doesn't outrage "We the People", then nothing will ...[/b]

... Strong Women Speak Out ...

10.18.04 (6:43 pm) [edit]

"Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less." - Susan B. Anthony

"There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or inferior to men." - Mohandas K. Gandhi

"If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." - Abigail Adams

[b]"We the People" are [i]all[/i] in danger because the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]is no friend to women ... Please refer to "Campaign for Women" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ... Moreover, the[i] lede [/i]to a news story a few days ago reads "Bush AWOL As 250 World Leaders Reaffirm Women's Rights" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... , as Bush is not committed to women's rights or women's health ... This is harmful to men, women and children[i] alike [/i]...[/b]

Gayle Smith and Mara Rudman, senior officials with the Center for American Progress and the American Progress Action Fund, write that when it came to the largest voting bloc in America http://www.washingtonpost.com... , the candidates missed the mark. "What did we want to hear that the candidates had learned from their 'strong women'? That women have something to say, and it's worth listening to…We wanted to hear that we are valued and critical voices – not just at the dining room table but also at the corporate board table and that big table that sits in the center of the Situation Room at the White House…And we want to be more than an afterthought in an otherwise meaty debate about the future of this country and the world we live in. This is about 'your other half' – we are at least half of America. And we vote."

... Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 257 vs. Bush 247 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.18.04 (2:05 pm) [edit]

[b]... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 257 vs. Bush 247 ...[/b]

[b]Oct. 18 New polls:[/b] CO NH

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (88)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (100)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (69)
White - Exactly tied (34)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (55)
Light Red - Weak Bush (54)
Red - Strong Bush (138)

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

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

Kerry's debate lift continues today as a new ARG poll in New Hampshire http://www.electoral-vote.com... breaks the tie there and puts him ahead there 49% to 45%. The MoE is 4%, so this should still be considered a statistical tie. The few other state polls don't show much movement. On the state graphs, the lookback window for the regression lines has been dropped to 30 days on the grounds that July and August polls really don't matter much any more. The predicted graph is still there, but you have to work for it. It is at www.electoral-vote.com/fin/oct18p.html today, at oct19p.html tomorrow etc. There is no bookmarkable page for it, to discourage its use.

[i]Slate[/i] http://slate.msn.com/id/21083... summarizes the national polls, state polls and some typical survey questions like "Is the country on the right track or wrong track?" Slate does not have the most recent polls for AR, CA, GA, LA, NV, NM, OH, OK, PA, SD, VT, VA, WV, and WI, but it still has a lot of useful information.

But even if you use all the most recent polls, the problem of cell-phone-only users keeps coming up, as discussed in [i]The Hill[/i] http://www.thehill.com/news/1... .

[i]The Los Angeles Times[/i] http://www.latimes.com/news/p...,1,6516901.story?coll=la-home-headli nes has a story on polling too. It points out, as most experts already know, that an incumbent president rarely gets even more than 1% of the popular vote than the final polls show. If an incumbent is polling, 47%, 48% just before the election, that is probably what he will get. In contrast, the challenger always does much better than the final polls indicate.

I get a lot of e-mail asking why the electoral college score given here doesn't always agree exactly with other websites' score. There are several reasons. First, we may use different methodologies (e.g., most recent poll vs. an average of the past three polls). Second, some sites reject pollsters they consider unreliable (e.g. Strategic Vision). I use them all unless they get caught push polling. Third, it sometimes happens that somebody simply misses a recent poll. It is a lot of work to try to get them all, believe me. Even excellent sites such as 2.004k.com http://2.004k.com/ are sometimes a day or two behind. Fourth, not every site subscribes to every data source. PollingReport.com http://www.pollingreport.com/... costs $195 a year and The Hotline http://nationaljournal.com/ costs $6000 a year, for example.

As an aside on methodology, the list of "New polls" under the map refers to those states in which the most recent poll (the one on the spreadsheet) changed today. When a poll is released that is older than the current one, it goes into the Polling data file http://www.electoral-vote.com... , but is not included in the list under the map.

Rasmussen http://www.rasmussenreports.c...%20Overview.htm has a nice rundown of the competitive Senate races.

There has been a lot of talk about the military service records of John Kerry and George Bush. Here is a list of the service records of a number of other leading public figures. The military service records http://www.electoral-vote.com... of all 43 presidents is listed here http://www.wordiq.com/definit... .

[b]Campaign 2008:[/b] I always believe in getting an early start so I have registered the email address votemaster08@yahoo.com (but who knows if I will use it). Here is a bit of 2008 campaign news. Jeb Bush http://abcnews.go.com/Politic... has stated he will not run for president in 2008. This opens the path for Neil Bush http://www.nathanielblumberg.... and Marvin Bush http://www.commondreams.org/v... because the twins, Jenna and Barbara, won't be old enough to run in 2008.

Finally, there was another attack Friday, but we seem to have done better this time. As a precaution against future attacks, I have installed a fourth server. If you can't get through to www.electoral-vote.com, try www.electoral-vote2.com, www.electoral-vote3.com, and www.electoral-vote4.com in that order. The main one is far more powerful than the others and has multiple fiber-optic connections to the Internet. It is also updated first, so please use only www.electoral-vote.com unless it is not working. Another alternative in case of an attack is the RSS feed http://www.electoral-vote.com... , which is much harder to attack.

I would be interested in getting a one or two more backups for emergency use in case of future attacks. I have had some volunteers, but it is hard to tell if they are friend or foe. That kind offer from sneaky-joe@unknown-compan y.com might be from one of the attackers, who wants to run a server with doctored data. I thought of a simple filter that will probably reduce this problem to a minimum. The server should be in the .edu domain (NOT .com or .net) and the contact person should be a tenured professor. Senior faculty members tend to have a long paper trail and would be risking their careers by attacking a political website or monkeying with the data. Since there is hardly any time left, I basically want a clone of the current servers to make sure everything works the first time. The required configuration is a Pentium 4 or Pentium III with 512 MB RAM or more, at least 1 GB of available disk space, and a connection to the Internet capable of serving 500,000 small files an hour. The software should be UNIX, BSD, or Linux (NOT Windows or Mac OS X) running Apache and a couple of other things I will tell potential sites privately. Also needed is an experienced system administrator who has earned his spurs dealing with large-scale attacks. BEFORE making an offer, please check with your local system administrator about the configuration, capacity, and hackproofness.

[b]"We the People" must remain courageous, diligent and strong ... Please advise all of your family members, friends and neighbors to get out and VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY ...[/b]

... Obscene?!? ...

10.18.04 (11:33 am) [edit]

"We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder "censorship," we call it "concern for commercial viability."" - David Mamet

These three Medford, Ore., schoolteachers were thrown out of a Bush rally http://www.bend.com/news/ar_v...^3Far_id^3D18712.htm , even though they had valid tickets, because they wore t-shirts that said, [b]"Protect Our Civil Liberties."[/b]

BC04 officials said the teachers were ejected because their shirts were "obscene."

[b]What does the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]have in mind [i]next [/i]for "We the People"??? ... More crushing of our Civil Liberties??? ... Let us refuse to stand for this neo-fascist tyranny ... Let us vote for John Kerry for President of the United States of America on the 2nd November ...[/b]

... Osama bin Who??? ...

10.17.04 (8:49 pm) [edit]

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." - Adolf Hitler

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations."

—President Bush, in the debate http://www.washingtonpost.com... , Oct. 13, 2004

"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."

—President Bush, in a press conference http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... , March 13, 2002

[b]"We the People" should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]to get away with criminal lies, deceptions and falsehoods, leading us into their illegal and immoral neo-con war in Iraq instead of going after those responsible for attacking America on 9/11 ... The Big Lie seems to have "worked" ... But it represents a Crime Against Humanity nevertheless ...[/b]

... Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 253 vs. Bush 247 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.17.04 (5:54 pm) [edit]

[b]... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 253 vs. Bush 247 ...[/b]

[b]Oct. 17 New polls:[/b] GA OH PA WI

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (88)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (100)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (65)
White - Exactly tied (38)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (55)
Light Red - Weak Bush (54)
Red - Strong Bush (138)

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

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

Kerry is continuing to get a lift from the third debate. He has now overcome Bush's 5% lead in Wisconsin http://www.electoral-vote.com... and moved a hair ahead there, 48% to 47% according to a Rasmussen poll conducted Oct. 14. Kerry is now once again leading in the electoral college, but neither candidate has the required 270 electoral votes because Florida http://www.electoral-vote.com... , Iowa http://www.electoral-vote.com... , and New Hampshire http://www.electoral-vote.com... are exactly tied.

It is noteworthy that Nader is still polling a few percent in most states, even in states where he is not on the ballot. He could make the difference and end up giving Bush 4 more years. I saw a website, votepair.org, http://www.votepair.org/ that matches up Nader supporters in swing states with Kerry supporters in solid states (either red or blue) so they can swap votes, with the swing stater voting for Kerry and the solid stater voting for Nader. In physics they would call this "The law of conservation of Naderism." The Republican answer should be a site pairing Bush and Badnarik the same way, but I haven't seen one. Members of Congress do essentially the same thing all the time: when a Democrat goes back home and knows he will miss a vote, he finds a friendly Republican who agrees to abstain. When the Republican is out of town and misses a vote, the Democrat abstains.

Speaking of Badnarik, Rasmussen included him in his Wisconsin poll of Oct. 14 and he does as well (1%) as Nader (1%). It is a pity the pollsters don't include him more often. He could get nearly as many votes as Nader.

Both the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com... and the Louisville Courier-Journal http://www.courier-journal.co... are reporting that the Kentucky Senate race is heating up after incumbent senator Jim Bunning's erratic recent behavior, including reading from a TelePrompTer during a debate and saying that his opponent, Dr. Daniel Mongiardo, looked like one of Saddam's sons. A Garin Hart Yang (D) poll taken Oct. 6-7 shows Bunning's huge lead has melted to 6%.

The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... reports that various groups are planning to conduct exit polls on election day to monitor irregularities and possible election fraud. It is a sad state of affairs that elections in Florida are now as bad as in Georgia (the country near Russia, not the state).

Tom Friedman's http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%2 0and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd% 2fColumnists column today goes beyond the election and discusses three exceedingly unpleasant issues the next president will have to deal with. First, the baby boomers will be retiring in a few years and Social Security has a $74 trillion liability coming up. Second, as education levels are rising in China and India, not only will low-wage jobs be outsourced there, but high-skill jobs as well. Third, one third of the Arab world is under 15, and as they get older and look for nonexistent jobs, there is going to be trouble. Fortunately, Friedman is realistic enough to realize that neither of the presidential candidates will touch any of these topics with a barge pole, despite the fact that they will have a huge effect on America in the years to come. It would be nice if the media, at least, would raise the issue of how the next president is planning to deal with these colossal issues, instead of focusing on who did what 30 years ago.

Finally, we have two new political cartoons http://www.electoral-vote.com... today.

[b]"We the People" must remain courageous, diligent and strong ... Please advise all of your family members, friends and neighbors to get out and VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY ...[/b]

... A Little Patriotic Sacrifice ...

10.16.04 (11:27 am) [edit]

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt, From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

[b]Theodore Roosevelt http://www.theodoreroosevelt.... came to hate warfare and realized the heart-breaking toll it takes upon human beings after losing his own son Quentin http://www.sparknotes.com/bio... in World War I ... "We the People" should be outraged at the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who wage their illegal and immoral warfare to enrich their gluttonous corporate cronies and their wealthy plutocratic constituency (Vile War-Profiteers: Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bechtel, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.)-- while none of these neo-con, neo-fascists make any sacrifice whatsoever in blood or treasure ...[/b]

There are moments when you see suddenly crystallized in a particular event, a threat to democracy as ominous as the smoke rising from Mt. St. Helens.

This week it was that enormous payoff to big corporations by their subjects in Congress. I say payoffs advisedly. Business elites provide politicians with the money they need to run for office. The politicians pay them back with a return on their investment so generous it boggles the mind. That legislation enacted this week is worth $137 billion in tax cuts for corporations. One company alone -- General Electric -- will receive over $8 billion, despite earnings last year of over $15 billion. Many companies -- Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Eli Lilly, among others -- have been parking profits overseas rather than bring them back to America where they are taxed. So Congress has now blessed them with a one-time "tax holiday" during which they can bring home the bacon at about one-seventh of the normal tax rates.

These plums are usually couched in such language they would defy a Delphic oracle to interpret them -- all the more to hoodwink us. What's behind those hieroglyphics in Section 713, Subsection A and B, Page 385? Why, a multimillion dollar windfall to Home Depot for importing ceiling fans made by serfs in China. And that little clause written in Sanskrit so tiny it would take a Mount Palomar telescope to read? Nothing less than a $27 million tax present to foreigners who bet at American horse and dog tracks. On and on it goes, the pillaging and plundering by suits with Guccis.

In a time of war, terror, and soaring deficits, you would think the governing class would be asking these corporate aristocrats to make a little patriotic sacrifice like that asked of single mothers or our men and women in Iraq. Instead they're allowed to pass their share of the burden to workers and children not yet born. At the least they ought to be required to remove the flag from their lapels and replace it with the icon they most revere -- the dollar sign.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Bill Moyers is the host of[i] NOW with Bill Moyers[/i], airing Friday nights at 9 on PBS (check local listings at www.pbs.org/now/sched.html), http://www.commondreams.org/v...

[b]How Did Your Representatives Vote?[/b]

US House Roll Call 509, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/20... - HR 4520 10/7/2004

US Senate Vote 211, http://www.senate.gov/legisla... - HR 4520 10/11/2004

... Jon Stewart to Tucker Carlson: "You're a dick" ...

10.15.04 (7:38 pm) [edit]

"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity." - G. K. Chesterton

[b]Sometimes it is humorous for "We the People" to observe the back-and-forth sparring between the pundits ... I [i]love [/i]Jon Stewart ... Tucker Carlson[i] is [/i]a bit of a pompous twit ...[/b]

When the bookers got Jon Stewart to appear on CNN's Crossfire, they probably were expecting a funny Jon, not a testy one. But Stewart said what a lot of people had been waiting years to hear on the show -- someone calling it like it is. Stewart called Tucker Carlson http://transcripts.cnn.com/TR... "a dick."

Stewart also said:

... that Crossfire is "hurting America."
... "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America."
... that Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala are "hacks."
... "What you do is partisan hackery."

Or how about this exchange: STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably. CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think. STEWART: You need to go to one.

Or this: CARLSON: OK, up next, Jon Stewart goes one on one with his fans... STEWART: You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

Stewart may not have made any friends, but at least he pointed to one of the worst problems in our political discourse -- no not that Tucker Carlson is a dick -- but that creeps like him are in control of it.

Go Jon Go!!!

[b]Source:[/b]

[i]Jan[/i], AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org

... Republicans Running Scared ...

10.15.04 (5:45 pm) [edit]

"President Bush's New England campaign chairman stepped down Friday after the Democrats accused him of taking part in the jamming of their telephone lines on Election Day 2002." - Bush's New England Campaign Chief Resigns, http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

[b]All one has to do is look at the heart-breaking news regarding the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]bloodbath in Iraq http://www.truthout.org/docs_... and its' miserable economic failures http://www.truthout.org/docs_... here at home to see why the Republican Party is now shamelessly resorting to trashing democracy in order to "win at all costs" ... This is called fascism and "We the People" must put a stop to their illegal and immoral election-rigging ... Please write to your representatives in Congress on http://www.congress.org and demand that criminal charges be brought against all those involved in this neo-hitlerian practice ...[/b]

As the election gets closer, the Republican Party has turned to voter suppression efforts to try to sway the election, by keeping voters "off of the rolls and away from the polls." (Paul Krugman has the latest rundown on Republican efforts to block the vote http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... .) The Center for American Progress joined 23 concerned parties in a joint statement on how to protect the vote and uphold democracy http://www.americanprogress.o... in the upcoming election. Voters should not be intimidated by fears of a stolen election. If voters don't get out and vote, the election will not be stolen but given away. Instead, everyone should get out and vote, vote early, and – to be safe – bring an I.D. Also, any voter experiencing problems on Election Day should call the Election Protection hotline, at (866) OUR-VOTE.

[b]SPROUL'S REGISTRATION MALFEASANCE: [/b]This week, explosive new evidence emerged of direct ties between the RNC and a Republican consulting firm being investigated by Oregon and Nevada for perpetrating widespread voter fraud. Sproul & Associates, paid $500,000 by the Republican National Committee, created a voter registration front group in several states. Some of the canvassers the company hired say they were told they wouldn't be paid for registering Democrats. Employees in the two western states have accused the firm of destroying, dumping or shredding the forms of Democrats who thought they were registered to vote. Also, an employee in West Virginia quit after she was told to only register individuals who would confirm they were planning to vote for President Bush. The head of Sproul & Associates, Nathan Sproul, has long ties to the GOP: he was the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Committee. Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) have asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to launch an immediate investigation on the federal level. (The New Yorker provides a look at how Ashcroft's Justice Department itself has politicized the voting process http://www.newyorker.com/fact... .)

[b]OHIO'S VICTORY:[/b] U.S. District Judge James Carr ruled yesterday against Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's efforts to stop voters who show up at the wrong polling place from casting a provisional ballot, even if they are voting in the county in which they are registered. (A provisional ballot allows properly registered voters who don't show up on the registration rolls to still vote.) Carr ruled that voters in Ohio who show up at the wrong polling place on Election Day could still vote as long as they were voting in the county in which they were registered. According to Carr, "Lessened participation at the polls diminishes the vitality of our democracy."

[b]CHECK THIS BOX IF YOU DON'T WANT YOUR RIGHTS SUPPRESSED: [/b]Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood – appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2003 – recommended trashing any registration forms on which voters did not check a box at the top to indicate they were U.S. citizens, even though they had already signed an oath at the bottom of the form swearing that they were. Even after the problem was realized, election officials did not process some of the fixed forms in time. Other registrants weren't even told their forms were flawed. The San Francisco Chronicle reports, "labor unions and voting-rights groups sued to stop the disqualification of more than 10,000 incomplete registration forms in Florida, accusing the state of overly restrictive rules that disproportionately hurt minority voters." And according to a suit filed by People for the American Way, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the AFL-CIO, "more than a third of the incomplete forms in Broward and Miami-Dade counties came from African American registrants, even though African Americans make up only 17 percent of the electorate in Broward and 20 percent in Miami-Dade."

[b]MISTAKES IN MILWAUKEE:[/b] Mayor Tom Barrett asked Milwaukee County to print 938,000 ballots to accommodate a possible flood of new voters in his city. (Wisconsin has same-day registration, so turnout is often unpredictable.) County Executive Scott Walker – a Republican – refused, telling the Associated Press that having extra ballots could cause "chaos" at understaffed polling places. He's only allowing the city about 10,000 more ballots than were printed for the last presidential election. People For The American Way has a petition you can sign http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/gene... to help get Milwaukee enough ballots.

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... New Poll Reveals World Anger At Bush & Hopes For Kerry Victory ...

10.15.04 (12:16 pm) [edit]

"Clearly, if the world had a vote, the result on November 2 would not be in doubt. The president is unlikely to be surprised that the Guardian, Asahi Shimbun, Le Monde or El Pais believe that Iraq is a "deadly and highly questionable war". That though, is the view of the Lone Star Iconoclast, published in his home town of Crawford, Texas. It matters a lot what others think about the US. But it is only Americans who can choose their own leader." - The World Backs Kerry, http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,15221,1327971,00.html

[b]Eight out of 10 countries favour Kerry for president ... "We the People" choose our leader, not the world ... However, there are good, solid reasons that the rest of the world wants rid of Bush: his tyrannical 'go-it-alone' neo-imperial warmongerings; his mistreatment and disdain for democracy; his lack of concern about the environment and the well-being of our planet ... [/b]

George Bush has squandered a wealth of sympathy around the world towards America since September 11 with public opinion in 10 leading countries - including some of its closest allies - growing more hostile to the United States while he has been in office.

According to a survey, voters in eight out of the 10 countries, including Britain, want to see the Democrat challenger, John Kerry, defeat President Bush in next month's US presidential election.

The poll, conducted by 10 of the world's leading newspapers, including France's Le Monde, Japan's Asahi Shimbun, Canada's La Presse, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian, also shows that on balance world opinion does not believe that the war in Iraq has made a positive contribution to the fight against terror.

The results show that in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, Spain and South Korea a majority of voters share a rejection of the Iraq invasion, contempt for the Bush administration, a growing hostility to the US and a not-too-strong endorsement of Mr Kerry. But they all make a clear distinction between this kind of anti-Americanism and expressing a dislike of American people. On average 68% of those polled say they have a favourable opinion of Americans.

The 10-country poll suggests that rarely has an American administration faced such isolation and lack of public support amongst its closest allies.

The only exceptions to this trend are the Israelis - who back Bush 2-1 over Kerry and see the US as their security umbrella - and the Russians who, despite their traditional anti-Americanism, recorded unexpectedly favourable attitudes towards the US in the survey conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Beslan tragedy.

The UK results of the poll conducted by ICM research for the Guardian reveal a growing disillusionment with the US amongst the British public, fuelled by a strong personal antipathy towards Mr Bush.

The ICM survey shows that if the British had a vote in the US presidential elections on November 2 they would vote 50% for Kerry and only 22% for Bush.

Sixty per cent of British voters say they don't like Bush, rising to a startling 77% among those under 25.

The rejection of Mr Bush is strongest in France where 72% say they would back Mr Kerry but it is also very strong in traditionally very pro-American South Korea, where fears of a pre-emptive US strike against North Korea have translated into 68% support for Mr Kerry.

In Britain the growth in anti-Americanism is not so marked as in France, Japan, Canada, South Korea or Spain where more than 60% say their view of the United States has deteriorated since September 11. But a sizeable and emerging minority - 45% - of British voters say their image of the US has got worse in the past three years and only 15% say it has improved.

There is a widespread agreement that America will remain the world's largest economic power.

This is underlined by the 73% of British voters who say that the US now wields an excessive influence on international affairs, a situation that 67% see as continuing for the foreseeable future.

A majority in Britain also believe that US democracy is no longer a model for others.

But perhaps a more startling finding from the Guardian/ICM poll is that a majority of British voters - 51% - say that they believe that American culture is threatening our own culture.

This is a fear shared by the Canadians, Mexicans and South Koreans, but it is more usually associated with the French than the British. Perhaps the endless television reruns of Friends and the Simpsons are beginning to take their toll.

· ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,008 adults aged 18 and over by telephone between September 22-23 2004. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Poll reveals world anger at Bush, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,15221,1327568,00.html

[b]Communist Dictators Back Bush, People Longing for Democracy Overwhelmingly Favor Kerry[/b]

Here's one of the best tributes to Kerry and most revealing negative indicators about Bush we've seen! A new survey http://www.politicalgateway.c... shows that while the people of China, who have been pushing for a more democratic government, favor John Kerry overwhelmingly, the repressive Communist dictators who rule China are solidly behind Bush. N'uff said!

... Karl Rove's Dirty Tricks: October Surprise Up-and-Coming!!! ...

10.14.04 (9:38 pm) [edit]

[b]Well, now that we've had the primaries, the convention, and the nail-biting debates, all that's really left now is the Karl Rove dirty tricks portion of the campaign, right?[/b]

As Josh Green writes http://www.theatlantic.com/do... in the current issue of [i]The Atlantic [/i](finally available free online http://www.theatlantic.com/do... ), Rove's trademark is ferocious dirty-tricksterism in the final few weeks of dead-even campaigns ...

... "If this year stays true to past form, the campaign will get nastier in the closing weeks, and without anyone's quite registering it, Rove will be right back in his element. He seems to understand-indeed, to count on-the media's unwillingness or inability, whether from squeamishness, laziness, or professional caution, ever to give a full estimate of him or his work. It is ultimately not just Rove's skill but his character that allows him to perform on an entirely different plane. Along with remarkable strategic skills, he has both an understanding of the media's unstated self-limitations and a willingness to fight in territory where conscience forbids most others." ...

With Kerry coming out of the debates with the momentum, it really does come down to Karl now.

The voter registration shredding seems to have gotten upended, though a lot are probably already shredded http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... . And I suspect we'll be hearing some interesting news out of New Hampshire in the next day or so.

But what else? It'll be like a 'where's Waldo' http://www.ebaumsworld.com/wa... thing:[i] Karl Rove Dirty Trick's Watch[/i]. (For examples, see the Green piece http://www.theatlantic.com/do... .) Who will be able to spot Karl's dirty tricks first? Who has the sharpest eye? Sit back in your seat. Get out the popcorn.

"We the People" should prepare ourselves for more dirty tricks and infamous lies, deceptions and falsehoods from the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] ...

[b]Sources:[/b]

Joshua Micah Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo, http://www.talkingpointsmemo....

Rove's October Surprise, http://www.20six.co.uk/Herald...

... Trashing Democracy ...

10.14.04 (7:59 pm) [edit]

"In what appears to be the most toxic effort yet in this election to steal the rights and voices of voters by the Republican Party, GOP-funded Voters Outreach of America http://www.buzzflash.com/aler... has reportedly trashed numerous voter registration forms in Nevada and other states. Buzzflash http://www.buzzflash.com/ is all over this. According to other blog sources, there are records of this going on by Voter Outreach in Oregon and West Virginia." - These People Are Cheating, http://www.tblog.com/template...

[b]Voters Outreach of America, an outfit largely funded by the GOP, is accused of trashing registration forms of hundreds of Democrats in Nevada. "We the People" must contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand an immediate halt to this illegal and immoral practice, and an investigation into this outrageous election rigging ... The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] 'win-at-all-costs' strategy undermines our democratic system of government and represents dangerous tyranny ...[/b]

These days, schemes to suppress the vote are coming down the pike at a NASCAR-like clip: In July, Michigan State Rep. John Pappageorge told a gathering of party officials at an election strategy meeting of the Oakland County Republican Party that "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle." In Orlando, Fla., members of the Orlando League of Voters -- an African-American civic group made up of mostly elderly women that has helped turn out large numbers of Democratic voters in the city -- were the subject of an intimidating house-to-house investigation by Governor Jeb Bush’s state police, who were supposedly checking out charges of electoral irregularities. The Rev. Jesse Jackson recently charged Republican Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell with “trying to reverse gains made by the civil rights movement by limiting where some Ohioans can cast their ballots,” the Palm Beach Post recently reported.

Now, a new voter suppression scheme has been uncovered: One that thwarts the democratic process before voters even exercise their franchise. A voter registration outfit largely funded by the Republican National Committee is being accused of destroying the registration forms of hundreds of newly registered Democratic voters in Nevada.

([b]Eds. note:[/b] Click here http://www.workingforchange.c... to ask President Bush to stop the destruction of voter registrations, or visit ElectionProtection.org http://www.electionprotection... to volunteer as a polling place monitor.)

On Tuesday, November 2, when hundreds and perhaps thousands of registered Democrats enter their polling places in Nevada, they will be in for a rude surprise: They won’t be allowed to vote. Even though they filled out their registration forms properly and they did it way ahead of the deadline, there will be no record of their being registered to vote. That’s because, according to an investigation by Las Vegas television station KLAS, a private voter registration company called Voters Outreach of America -- an outfit largely funded by the Republican National Committee -- has trashed hundreds of registration forms of registered Democrats.

“Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected,” George Knapp, an investigative reporter for the television station’s Eyewitness News I-Team, reported. Knapp was able to obtain information about an “alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at Democrats,” from former employees of the company.

Over the past few months, Voters Outreach of America has been working the Las Vegas area, sending more than 300 part-time workers to shopping malls, grocery stores, government buildings and busy street corners throughout the city to register voters. The kicker, according to the former workers: Apparently, the company was only interested in Republican registrations.

Knapp reported that two former employees claimed that they had “personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.”

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assistant to get those from me," said Eric Russell, a former Voters Outreach employee.

According to Knapp, Russell said he was able “to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats” and he “took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.”

When the I-Team went to talk with Voters Outreach, the company had abandoned its offices and they were rented by someone else. According to the Voters Outreach landlord, the outfit was “evicted for non-payment of rent.”

Recently, the Reno Gazette Journal ran the following ad for “Canvassing Neighborhoods in Support of the GOP”: Voter's Outreach of America is hiring door-to-door canvassers asking people to register to vote. Must be at least 18 yrs of age, no felonies, registered to vote and have own transportation. Need good communication skills and professional appearance…Paid for by the Republican National Committee.”

According to a web site called TOPDOG04.COM, http://www.topdog04.com/ Voters Outreach “has set up registration drives in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Florida and Nevada and is accused of the same things [as KLAS-TV reported] in most if not all of these states.”

TOPDOG04.COM also reports that in a separate incident, Sproul & Associates, a Phoenix, Arizona-based Republican consulting firm run by Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Republican party and Arizona Christian Coalition, which has hired Voters Outreach, tried to pass itself off as America Votes, a truly non-partisan voter registration drive.

Sproul & Associates has received nearly $500,000 http://www.opensecrets.org/pa...+%26+ASSOCIATES%2CINC&Cmt e=RPC&cycle=2004&sort=dat e from the Republican Party this year for “political consulting” according to OpenSecrets.org, and received another $125,000 http://www.opensecrets.org/pa...+%26+Associates&Cmte=RPC& cycle=2004 for voter registration.

In Arizona, Sproul paid Aaron "A.J." James, the director of Voters Outreach of America, “to get as many signatures as possible for [Independent presidential candidate Ralph] Nader,” Arizona indymedia.org reported. "'Aaron [James] told me he was out here getting signatures for Nader. So I can only assume that Diane [Burns] was too,' said Derek Lee, who, as owner of Lee Petitions, was part of the traveling petition carnival that descended on Arizona this spring.”

On Wednesday, October 13, the Associated Press reported that Sproul “denied... that a group he hired to register Republicans in Nevada deliberately tore up Democratic voter registration forms.” Sproul blamed the controversy on a disgruntled former employee.

A recent report issued by the People for the American Way Foundation and the NAACP documented numerous incidents of voter intimidation and suppression over the past 39 years. The report notes that, as we might expect, the tactics have become "more subtle and subterranean" over time. But it also demonstrates that attempts to suppress the vote persist to this day.

According to the report, "Robbing voters of their right to vote and to have their vote counted undermines the very foundations of our democratic society. Politicians, political strategists, and party officials who may consider voter intimidation and suppression efforts as part of their tactical arsenal should prepare to be exposed and prosecuted."

The report concludes by saying: "State and federal officials, including Justice Department and national political party officials, should publicly repudiate such tactics and make clear that those who engage in them will face severe punishment."

Newly registered Nevada voters are being urged to call the Clark County Election Department at 455-VOTE or go to the County’s web site http://www.accessclarkcounty.... to see if they are registered.

Across the country, a coalition of liberal, nonpartisan groups http://www.electionprotection... -- including People for the American Way, the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law -- will be sending lawyers and law students to key precincts in unprecedented numbers -- 2,000 in Florida alone. Their T-shirts and signs will bear the message "Having trouble voting? Call us." They will carry disposable cameras to record infractions.

And, according to the Newhouse News Service, The Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee are going to “dispatch as many as 10,000 lawyers across America on Election Day and have established five post-election ‘SWAT teams’ to hit the ground running wherever they might be needed.”

[b]Source:[/b]

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right., http://www.workingforchange.c...

... Think Again: 'Ideas Have Consequences: So Does Money' ...

10.14.04 (6:34 pm) [edit]

"Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

[b]"We the People" need to take our nation back ... Over the last 30 years, the right-wing has hijacked our nation; bought-up the media/press outlets; and have propagated neo-fascist propaganda designed to persuade the American people that corporate take-overs; privatization; slave-labor wages; no health care; no public education; no environmental regulations; no consumer protections; no workers' rights & collective bargaining; etc.-- are "good" things ... (all of these neo-fascist pro-hyper-rich policies were fought valiantly against by our forefathers who struggled and died for the rights of working people that the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]are destroying ...) ... when in fact, they are very, very bad and indeed destructive for average and working Americans as well as for the health of our nation ... We need to organize and demonstrate to our fellow Americans why we cannot allow the neo-con, neo-fascists to transform our society into a military slave state benefitting a traitorous, gluttonous plutocratic class who care nothing about our citizens, nothing about our heritage and nothing about human rights ...[/b]

Over the past three decades, conservatives have painstakingly cultivated the public persona of an aggrieved outsider class, bereft of the money and media influence they claim liberals enjoy. Their well-rehearsed routine consists of the repetition of a series of catchphrases designed to snare votes by using wedge social issues to create class divisions, while their own campaigns are funded by a class of wealthy, corporate donors who keep their think tanks flush with lucre. But this bait and switch is hardly a secret, and the donor class continues to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at conservative think tanks in order to shore up the right wing's advantage in both organization and message discipline. Since the early 1970s, countless conservative foundations have sprung up to quietly influence American public policy by identifying, training, and churning out conservative journalists, thinkers, and pundits – many of whom now hold positions of power in the media.

Earlier this year, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) issued a detailed report by Jeff Krehely, Meaghan House and Emily Kernan entitled, "Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations and Public Policy," in which they sought to gauge the degree of the right's investment in its ideas infrastructure. Universally ignored by the mainstream media, the report's authors identified more than $254 million worth of public policy grants made between 1999 and 2001, with just five institutions (many of which share board members and directors) laying out the lion's share of the money. But again, this may only be news to members of the "so-called liberal media" (SCLM), who continue to treat the world of ideas as dominated by liberal academia and non-ideological foundations like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations.

Many historians identify the origins of this effort with an influential 1971 memo http://www.mediatransparency.... written by Lewis Powell—just before he was appointed by Richard Nixon to become a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Writing to Eugene Sydnor Jr. of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell decried what he termed to be the "broadly-based" attack on the American economic system by "the communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries," which found its most prominent voice in all the usual liberal bogeymen—college campuses, the media, intellectual and literary journals, and the arts and sciences. His solution: a clarion call to multinational corporations to begin to fund the necessary institutions to train conservative journalists, economists and teachers to begin preaching the right-wing gospel. Joining with right billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife, Joseph Coors and Sun Myung Moon, as well as influential pundit/politicians like Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Neoconservative "godfather" Irving Kristol, the effort quickly began to bear ideological fruit.

Powell's suggestions have been remarkably effective, as evidenced in NCRP's report, which identified 79 of the top conservative-giving foundations, breaking down how much they gave and to whom. In the three-year period covered in the report, the 79 foundations made a total of 4,812 contributions but of these, just five foundations—Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation, and the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation—made up over 50 percent of moneys given.

The report also found that despite the continued conservative denials, there is a unified network of interconnected organizations that work together to influence public policy. Most of the top 25 foundations do indeed have direct relationships with one another through their directors and board members. For example, "The Sarah Scaife Foundation is one of several Scaife Mellon family foundations, including the Carthage Foundation (10th largest) and the Scaife Family Foundation (19th largest), as well as the Allegheny Foundation (46th largest). Similarly, the Charles G. Koch Foundation (seventh largest) is one of several of the Koch family's foundations, which also include the David H. Koch Foundation (eighth largest) and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation (13th largest)." Similarily, NCRP found that 23 of the people in its database of conservative foundation and grantee board and staff members "are leaders of three or more foundations and/or nonprofits, with 19 of those individuals serving on the board or staff of at least one foundation and of at least one nonprofit. Notably, the leading family members who direct foundations also serve on the boards of various nonprofits to which their foundations often provide grants," implying a well-connected and like-minded group of people who share a single agenda and the resources to shape public policy in its political direction.

Surprisingly, fully 46 percent of funding ($115.9 million) went directly to national and state public policy think tanks. This is telling. The fact that conservatives concentrate on policymaking at both the national and state levels signals a departure from most left-leaning and centrist foundations, which generally only focus on national issues. All told, conservatives poured $21.4 million into state-centered institutions during the study period, and The State Policy Network, funded by the Roe Foundation, exists to encourage cooperation among free-market think tanks in the network. As the study notes, this program has seen some serious growth over the last 15 years: "In 1989 there were only 12 market-oriented state-based think tanks. This number has more than tripled in the past decade, and there are now 40 groups in 37 states promoting free market solutions to policy problems and challenges."

Conservative education reform, which received 10 percent of the total funding ($26.2 million) also benefits. "The organizations classified in the area of education can be further broken down into the following subcategories: academic change, school reform, higher education, youth development, public education, student services and museums/libraries," the report notes. While many liberals might be unaware of the fight over our schools, conservatives have made sure that The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is second only to the Heritage Foundation in grants, raking in $14.3 million (more than the American Enterprise Institute and Cato combined), and seeks to rid higher education of alleged liberal bias, "instead instill[ing] in students the notions of liberty and freedom." Legal programs working on issues like immigration and property rights received $24.7 million in grants in the study period, with the majority of funding ($22.6 million) going to public-interest law firms. These firms agitate for reducing government regulation and have been influential in bringing cases before the courts which attempt to eliminate affirmative action programs, turn back abortion rights, and fight to remove the government's control over public schools.

Next week we will look at the way this issues-oriented funding—vastly outstripping their competitors in the liberal think-tank world—has manifested itself in favorable media coverage for conservative causes, and the way in which conservatives have managed to frame many policy debates in their favor.

[b]Source:[/b]

Eric Alterman is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of six books, including the just-published [i]When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences[/i] http://search.barnesandnoble.... . Paul McLeary is a New York writer. For more information about the NCRP, visit www.ncrp.org., http://www.americanprogress.o...

... President Bush Makes Promises He's Already Broken ...

10.14.04 (2:47 pm) [edit]

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations." – President Bush, 10/13/04, http://www.washingtonpost.com...

[b]VERSUS[/b]

"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." – President Bush, 3/13/02, http://www.whitehouse.gov/new...

[b]Bush is unfit to be President ... For an incumbent President to stand-up and tell bold-faced lies, deceptions and falsehoods to the American people is unacceptable ... That is tragically just what Bush did http://www.tblog.com/template... ... Last night was an indictment of the miserable failures and lousy track-record of the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who have spent the last four years enriching themselves and their hyper-wealthy corporate cronies, while leaving the American people to be terrorized, killed/murdered, injured & maimed in [i]their[/i] illegal and immoral neo-con wars; and raped here at home by [i]their[/i] neo-fascist economic policies impoverishing working people ...[/b]

To those listening closely last night, President Bush's rhetoric during the third and final presidential debate on domestic issues may have sounded eerily familiar. Indeed, the president trotted out many of the exact same promises and pledges he campaigned on four years ago. In 2000, Bush promised to pay down the deficit, provide tax relief for the middle class, make health insurance more affordable and practice fiscal responsibility. Since then, he has compiled a vast record of failure in each of those areas. Even more troubling than President Bush's misstatement about Osama bin Laden, his refusal to address the minimum wage and his obfuscations on the assault weapons ban was the portrait of a president making exactly the same promises he made to the American people four years ago – promises he's already broken.

[b]BUSH PROMISE: MAKE HEALTH CARE MORE AFFORDABLE:[/b] In 2000, President Bush campaigned on the promise he would insure more Americans by "making health insurance affordable for hard-working, low-income families." Last night, he blamed "defensive medicine," "lawsuits" and "information technology" for his inability to deliver on that pledge and put forward some already discredited ideas to "control the costs in health care." But the president's record speaks for itself: since Bush took office, health insurance premiums have risen by an average rate of 12.5 percent per year and the "ranks of the uninsured" have swelled for three straight years. As for Bush's favorite scapegoats, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that even aggressive malpractice reform "would lower health care costs by only about 0.4 percent to 0.5 percent." The CBO "also says there is no way to gauge the cost of 'defensive medicine,' but that evidence it's a major factor in rising costs is 'weak or inconclusive.'"

[b]BUSH PROMISE: FISCAL SANITY:[/b] In 2000, the Bush-Cheney campaign website said that to "restore confidence in government," President Bush would "attack pork-barrel spending." Last night, the president promised he would enforce "fiscal sanity in the halls of Congress." But that pledge is "hard to take" from a president who has failed to veto a single spending bill during his time in office and now seems ready to sign the "bloated corporate tax bill just passed by Congress." The new bill includes pork for "just about every special interest that retains a lobbyist in Washington."

[b]BUSH PROMISE: TAX CUTS FOR MIDDLE CLASS:[/b] In 2000, President Bush said the "vast majority" of his tax cuts would "go to the bottom end of the [income] spectrum." Last night, Bush said, "Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans." In between those two statements, the president has passed a series of tax cuts overwhelmingly skewed towards the upper class. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities figures show "The top 20 percent of earners received 69.8 percent of President Bush's tax cuts" and about one–third of the Bush tax cuts have gone to the top one percent of households. In addition, "the richest 1 percent are paying a lower share of federal taxes in 2004 than in 2000, while those in the middle are paying a greater share."

[b]BUSH PROMISE: PAY DOWN DEFICIT:[/b] In 2000, President Bush boasted he would "pay the debt down to a historically low level." Last night, he promised to "reduce the deficit in half by five years." In between these two statements, President Bush has transformed a $5.6 trillion projected surplus into a $5.2 trillion projected deficit in just three years – the worst fiscal deterioration in at least the last half century. Total national debt now stands at $7,419,244,676,835.15. The president blames 9/11 and Iraq for the downturn, but the CBO estimates that Bush's fiscal policies, rather than external factors, "account for much of the reduction."

[b]BUSH PROMISE: INCREASE PELL GRANTS:[/b] In 2000, President Bush campaigned on the promise he would "Fully fund the Pell grant program for first-year students by increasing the maximum grant amount…to $5,100." Last night the president said he would "continue to increase Pell grants." But budgets speak louder than words, and unfortunately, Bush's 2005 budget reneges on the promise he made in 2000, capping the maximum Pell Grant award at $4,050 for the third year in a row. The American Association of Community Colleges characterizes the Pell grant freeze as "'a severe blow' to students from low-income families at a time of declining state and local support for public higher education."

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... The Grief Behind The Smile ...

10.14.04 (12:54 pm) [edit]

"After four years in office, the President of the most powerful nation in the history of the world could not offer a health care plan for the 45 million Americans without health insurance; blew a direct question asking what he would say to someone who lost their job; ducked the delicate issue of [i]Roe v. Wade [/i](but with code words for the far right); didn’t know whether homosexuality was a choice or not; and refused to take any responsibility for the mess in Iraq, the current lack of flu vaccine, record job losses, declining wages, assault weapons, huge deficits, or the divisiveness in our politics.

And this was his “best” debate. Which Kerry won (again)." - Steve Cobble, AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org/elect...

President Bush's performance last night was more of the same for him—more touting policies that have failed working families and more promises that will make things worse. [i]Campaign For America's Future [/i]Co-Director Robert Borosage does some fact-checking—and finds that what Bush said last night is far from the reality. "We the People" have finally seen the Emperor with No Clothes and it's time for a change ... Get out and VOTE for John Kerry for President of the United States of America on November 2nd ...

[b]Robert L. Borosage , a veteran strategist and institution builder, is co-director of the [i]Campaign for America's Future[/i]. Mr. Borosage writes:[/b]

[b]The goofy smile plastered on George Bush’s face [/b]in last night’s debate probably reflected the advice of handlers trying to make up for the president’s scowling performance in the first debate and his manic, handwaving theatrics in the second. But the smile seemed bizarrely out of place in a debate that finally turned attention to America’s kitchen table concerns—the things people worry about at night after the kids go to bed. Here no amount of smiling or name calling could distract from the reality that Bush cannot admit: His policies have failed and his promises will make things worse.

On jobs, as Sen. Kerry stated, George Bush has the worst jobs record of any president since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression. Asked about jobs, the president bizarrely talked about helping workers get training. This is something of an insult to the high-skilled workers and highly educated programmers who have watched their jobs get shipped abroad. The reality is that Bush’s tax cuts—which he promised would create 7 million new jobs—have failed. Not tied to jobs here in the United States, they helped run up the largest deficits in history while creating more work in Shanghai than in Cincinnati. And the president promises only more of the same. He’s about to sign a shameless corporate tax giveaway that, among many other outrages, actually benefits Chinese producers of ceiling fans—a payoff to Sen. Zell Miller, no doubt, for delivering the poisonous keynote at the president’s convention.

On wages, the reality, as Sen. Kerry noted, is that wages aren’t keeping up with prices. Asked about raising the minimum wage, which is at its lowest value in 50 years, the president talked once more about education. He not only opposes raising the minimum wage, he pushed through regulations—over the objections of majorities in both houses of Congress—to strip millions of workers of their overtime pay. He’s declared open season on unions, with his Labor Department refusing to prosecute rampant illegal corporate suppression of workers who try to organize. And his trade policies—particularly his craven surrender to China’s rigging of its markets and currency—have worsened pressure on wages here at home.

On health care, the president once more bragged about his prescription drug bill. But as Sen. Kerry noted, in a shameless payoff of the drug lobby, the bill actually prohibits Medicare from negotiating a better price for seniors. The result, as the independent Consumer’s Union has shown, is that most seniors will end up paying more, not less, for their prescriptions.

Similarly, the president continues to burlesque Kerry’s health care plans. The reality is that soaring health care costs are pricing health insurance out of the reach of more and more small businesses and damaging the competitiveness of large corporations. Kerry offers an ambitious plan to extend health insurance to those without, to relieve businesses of the costs of catastrophic care, lowering prices for all, and to provide citizens with the range of choices offered to senators and representatives. He pays for this plan by repealing the top end of Bush’s tax cuts, opening himself to the president’s jibes about being a tax and spend liberal. In contrast, the president has done nothing and offers less. He defends tax cuts for millionaires over health care for workers. He stands with the drug companies over seniors. His own token proposals on health savings accounts would actually give small businesses incentives to discontinue the health care they now offer employees. His policies have failed; his promises would make things worse.

On education, the president boasted repeatedly about his No Child Left Behind school reforms. But, as Sen. Kerry noted, he broke his promise to fund those reforms by $27 billion over four years, earning the rebuke even of Republican state legislatures in Utah and Virginia. Worse, his budget calls for cuts in education across the board starting next year, right after the election. He has done nothing to extend Head Start to the 40 percent of eligible kids who can’t get it. As Kerry noted, he’s sought to cut funding for 600,000 kids in after-school programs. He’s building schools in Iraq while cutting the Clinton program to aid school construction at home.

On college, the president’s failure is most notable. The harsh reality is that, as the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education concluded, in most states, public universities are not affordable for most families. The president has made things worse by breaking his campaign promise to raise the level of Pell grants, the leading government scholarship program that hasn’t been keeping up with soaring tuition rates. Now he repeats the promise, even as his budget plans cuts, not increases in education spending.

On retirement security, the president broke his promise to preserve the Social Security surplus, squandering it on his top end tax cuts. Now he vows to privatize Social Security, but won’t say where he’d get the $1 trillion that would be drained from Social Security if his plan went through. Private accounts are said to be popular with younger workers, but they will be the chief victims of the president’s plan. They will have to pay not only for their own private accounts, but for the full retirement of their parent’s generation, while accepting deep cuts in their own guaranteed benefits. That $1 trillion bill will be sent to them one way or another. On retirement security, the president’s policies have failed and his promises would make things worse.

The debate didn’t touch on gas prices and energy, but here too the president’s record is one of failure. We’re losing lives guarding oil pipelines in Iraq, even as oil supplies aren’t keeping up with demand. His energy plan, cobbled together in secret meetings with oil and gas companies, would only increase our dependence on foreign oil. Sen. Kerry, in contrast, has endorsed a drive to move towards energy independence over a decade by investing in energy efficiency, in conservation, in alternative energy and new technologies. As the Apollo Alliance has shown, this can not only free us from dependence on Middle Eastern oil, it will generate good jobs here in the United States and help us capture the green markets of the future.

At kitchen tables across America, worries are going up. Jobs are less secure; health care and college less affordable; retirement security too often a shattered dream. Things are getting worse, not better. Most of us don’t expect government to solve those problems. But we don’t expect an administration to make them worse, either. Last night’s debate wasn’t dramatic. The president kept that half-smile, half-grimace on his face most of the night. He kept calling Kerry names, clearly his message for the night. But his performance, once more, couldn’t hide the stark reality. On kitchen-table concerns, the president’s policies have failed—and his promises will only make things worse. When push comes to shove, he stands with what he once called “my base—the haves and the have-mores,” and is simply not on the side of America’s working families.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Robert L. Borosage, TomPaine, http://www.tompaine.com

Short Takes on the Debate, http://www.alternet.org/elect...

... "These People Are Cheating" ...

10.13.04 (8:22 pm) [edit]

"Meanwhile, in South Dakota, the [i]Rapid City Journal[/i] http://www.rapidcityjournal.c... notes former Rep. Bill Janklow (R-SD) "criticized the GOP's Victory operation, saying it has introduced scandal into an otherwise honest voting system by breaking election rules."" - Political Wire, http://politicalwire.com/arch...

[b]"We the People" should demand that Congress http://www.congress.org investigate into the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] dangerous election-rigging [i]and[/i] heinous destruction of the democratic process [i]and[/i] illegal election theft in the making ...[/b]

In what appears to be the most toxic effort yet in this election to steal the rights and voices of voters by the Republican Party, GOP-funded Voters Outreach of America http://www.buzzflash.com/aler... has reportedly trashed numerous voter registration forms in Nevada and other states. Buzzflash http://www.buzzflash.com/ is all over this. According to other blog sources, there are records of this going on by Voter Outreach in Oregon and West Virginia. There are KLAS-TV in Nevada:

"Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at Democrats. The focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else."

[b]Source:[/b]

[i]Jan[/i], AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org

... Potemkin Government ...

10.13.04 (7:01 pm) [edit]

"The Bush administration dismisses http://www.washingtonpost.com... critics "who don't understand the threats of the 21st century," using North Korea and Iran to justify their gunboat diplomacy. But Iran's deadliest missile can barely reach Southern Europe and experts doubt http://www.washingtonpost.com... North Korea could hit the United States 6,000 miles away. More to the point, after 9/11 why would any country attack the US with a traceable conventional ballistic missile launch, prompting a massive American response?

Note to Bush: The Cold War ended. It's 2004, not 1964." - Ari Berman, Apocalypse Now, http://www.thenation.com/blog...

[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] grossly misrepresents the nature (i.e. science) of nuclear weapons and recklessly dismisses the importance of nuclear disarmament ... The foolish and hypocritical Bushies are engaged in a nuclear build-up, creating a nuclear arms race world-wide-- unconscionably undermining decades of progress by our nation and the world community in ridding ourselves of nuclear arms ... "We the People" need to rid ourselves of this dangerously stupid neo-fascist Bush regime and their insane neo-con lusts for never-ending warfare that might trigger the unthinkable: a nuclear war ... We need new thinking, clear thinking, wise decision-making ... Vote for John Kerry for President ...

Jonathan Schell, [i]The Nation's [/i]peace and disarmament correspondent, is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute and the author of [i]The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People [/i](Metropolitan) and [i]A Hole in the World[/i], a compilation of his "Letter From Ground Zero" columns, which has just been published by Nation Books. Mr. Schell writes:[/b]

[b][u]Potemkin Government[/u]

Letter From Ground Zero[/b]

The longer the Bush Administration is in office, the clearer it becomes that it has a disordered relationship not just with one aspect of the world or another, such as the war in Iraq or the budget deficit, but with something like the factual world per se. Perhaps the best example is the recent decision to deploy five rockets in silos in Alaska as the first stage of a national missile defense. The problem is that strictly speaking, there is no such thing as NMD. That is, no functioning NMD has yet been invented or tested. Even the chief weapon evaluator in Bush's Pentagon says that at best the missiles have "20 percent" functionality. A previous Pentagon evaluator, Philip Coyle, now at the Center for Defense Information, goes further, saying their capacity is "nil," and calling the system "a scarecrow." Gen. Eugene Habiger, a former chief of the US Strategic Command, states flatly, "A system is being deployed that doesn't have any credible capability." And yet George W. Bush has announced to the world, "We say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America...you fire, we're going to shoot it down."

"That is incorrect," Coyle has commented.

Misrepresentation of programs, including weapon systems, is an old story. But the installation of a system of proven unworthiness is something new. It requires not just denial--a passive operation--but an active insurgency against facts and the scientific laws that guide them, in a sort of a pre-emptive strike against reality itself.

The disorder appears in many forms. Programs announced for one purpose accomplish the opposite. The Clear Skies program dirties them. The Healthy Forests Initiative clear-cuts forests. The No Child Left Behind program, unfunded, leaves millions of children behind. Social Security "reform" defunds Social Security.

Bad news delivered by the Administration's own experts prompts attacks upon them and burial of their reports. When Medicare's chief cost analyst, Richard Foster, charged with computing the price of the President's drug-benefit legislation, tried to communicate his findings to Congress, he was threatened with retaliation. When the head of the Army, Gen. Eric Shinseki, informed Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to occupy Iraq, his estimate was derided, and he was pushed aside. When the President's Assistant for Economic Affairs, Lawrence Lindsey, estimated that the Iraq war might cost $200 billion, he was fired.

Even within the Administration's inner councils, show has superseded substance. In The Price of Loyalty, by Ron Suskind, former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill has written that Cabinet meetings were not true places of decision-making, which was performed instead by an informal "praetorian guard" led by the Vice President.

Each of the lists of examples of each of these symptoms of disorder could be lengthened greatly. We are left with a portrait of a "government" whose principal activity is no longer governance but the creation and manipulation of images for political appearances. All concrete purposes, including the "war on terror," are subordinate to these ends.

And yet this same Administration is the one that has laid claim, more categorically than any in American history, to direct, often by force of arms, the affairs of the planet. Even as it has increasingly lost its grip on the world cognitively, it has reached out to grab it physically, asserting permanent military hegemony over the earth and claiming the sole validity of the American system, which it calls the "single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise."

No wonder the misapprehended world itself is undergoing a quiet revolution against Bush in the realm of public opinion. Among the 34,330 people in thirty-five countries polled by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, majorities in only three--Nigeria, Poland and the Philippines--favored the President's re-election. Four of five people preferred Senator John Kerry. The Administration has sought through international propaganda efforts (especially in the Middle East) to win the earth's peoples to join it in its fantasy world. But the world lives in the real world, and is unmoved.

How will it all end? Can a country that cannot see the world run the world? One possibility is that the bubble of illusion will pop, and the Bush Administration will be driven from office in November. Senator Kerry is trying his hardest to accomplish this feat. Another is that the United States will stay loyal to Bush and lose both its grasp of reality and the respect of the world, notably including America's traditional allies.

One more possibility remains to be considered. The President has established something like a Potemkin government. Is it possible that his global ambitions, too, are Potemkin ambitions--that they are as unreal and fungible as his grasp of, say, the mathematics of the budget deficit and rocket science? The war in Iraq, in which so many real lives have been harmed or destroyed, argues otherwise. So does the talk within the Administration of attacking Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons. And at the Republican convention, the President outlined an even more aggressive and ambitious policy to force the Middle East to accept the single viable model.

Yet it is also a fact that the Administration has quietly backed down from a number of its most bellicose threats. In his State of the Union address of 2002, the President vowed he "will not permit" Iran and North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons. But North Korea probably has acquired some, and the Administration has done nothing. Secretary of State Powell even said that the North Korean arsenal was "not a crisis." In the first presidential debate, it was the President who emerged as the most devout multilateralist. Would it be too much to hope that the unreality that characterizes the Administration's plans will swallow up its most dangerous ambitions, that global hegemony as a whole will go the way of the threats against North Korea, that in a second term the Administration might even declare a quick victory in Iraq and leave?

Probably, entertaining such hopes is too much. Voting George W. Bush out of office in November is the better idea.

... Bush Can Run, But He Can't Hide ...

10.13.04 (3:15 pm) [edit]

"According to a non-partisan report released yesterday, "more than a quarter of all working families in the United States, including 20 million children are considered low-income or poor." The study found significant "gaps in federal and state efforts to help low-wage workers in such areas as scholarships, adult education, and subsidized medical care." More than 2.5 million working families "are officially living in poverty, earning less than $18,392 for a family of four."" - http://www.boston.com/busines...

[b]"We the People" will witness the final debate tonight between Bush and Kerry ... It is extremely important to verify the answers following the debate because Bush has a sordid and squalid track-record of lying to the American people ...[/b]

In tonight's third and final debate, President Bush will have to reckon with a sobering domestic record: 800,000 jobs lost; a $422 billion deficit; underfunded domestic programs; increased poverty for three straight years. Bush campaign aides admit the president will attempt to "broaden the faceoff," skirting discussions of specifics – "such as healthcare or education" – in favor of larger, ideological issues, but that choice only underscores the administration's failure to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. Hopefully, debate moderator Bob Schieffer won't allow Bush to run away from his record – below are some questions we'd like to see him ask the president.

[b]QUESTION:[/b] Why have you prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy over programs helping middle-class families? President Bush will say his tax relief has helped the middle class, but domestic programs vital to the middle class have been rolled back to pay for the cuts, the benefits of which have gone overwhelmingly to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. Bush's tax cuts for the richest 1 percent of Americans this year alone will cost $148 billion. "That is twice as much as the government will spend on job training, $6.2 billion; college Pell grants, $12 billion; public housing, $6.3 billion; low-income rental subsidies, $19 billion; child care, $4.8 billion; insurance for low-income children, $5.2 billion; low-income energy assistance, $1.8 billion; meals for shut-ins, $180 million; and welfare, $16.9 billion." (One Treasury economist with an insider's perspective on President Bush's stewardship gives the president a failing D-.)

[b]QUESTION:[/b] Will you veto Congress's "sprawling" corporate tax bill? President Bush has said, "we've got to be wise about how we spend our money in Washington," but in four years he has not vetoed a single spending bill, running up the biggest deficit in American history. Now, he is expected to sign a "sprawling corporate tax bill" which will "shower corporations and farmers in politically sensitive states with about $145 billion worth" of subsidies and "pet tax breaks." The bill includes a $10 billion buyout for tobacco farmers, $27.9 billion for corporations that earn profits abroad, $101 million for Nascar race track owners, and $44 million for importers of Chinese ceiling fans. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called the bill "a disgrace" and yesterday's Washington Post remarked, "If Mr. Bush cannot bring himself to veto this terrible bill, it will be hard to take him seriously."

[b]QUESTION:[/b] How will your "ownership society" help working families? President Bush will likely tout his "ownership society," but the record shows Bush will continue to burden Americans with increased risk and responsibility, while reducing the safety net that once protected working families. To pay for the Bush tax cuts, the Los Angeles Times reports, the programs Americans have relied upon to buffer them from economic turmoil have been slashed or killed: "stable jobs, widely available health coverage, guaranteed pensions, short unemployment spells, long-lasting unemployment benefits and well-funded job programs" have all been reduced or eliminated.

[b]QUESTION:[/b] Why have you jeopardized affordable housing? President Bush says, "For millions of our citizens, the American Dream starts with owning a home," but the White House has made achieving that dream more difficult for more than 2 million – generally "poor, elderly, and disabled" – Americans. The administration's 2005 budget calls for an $800 million reduction in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly known as Section 8, and the White House has placed an artificial 1 percent cap on the annual rise in Section 8 grants, even though rents rise by an average of 5 percent each year. It is the first time since Section 8's inception the government has not promised to pay for the full cost of the program.

[b]QUESTION:[/b] Why should we trust you to reduce the debt in a second term? President Bush has said, "I believe it is the job of a President to confront problems, not pass them on to future Presidents and future generations." But Bush has turned a $5.6 trillion projected surplus into $5.2 trillion projected deficit in just three years – the turnaround represents the worst fiscal deterioration in at least the last half century. The Washington Post wants the president to discuss the "selfish, even piggish behavior today's leaders are showing toward the next generation."

[b]Sources:[/b]

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

Public Opinion Watch - October 13, 2004, http://www.tblog.com/template...

Checking the Facts, in Advance of Tomorrow's Debate, http://www.tblog.com/template...

... Public Opinion Watch - October 13, 2004 ...

10.13.04 (1:35 pm) [edit]

[b]Tonight's debate could prove to be a crucial turning point in the presidential election ... "We the People" must be careful because Bush will continue to lie, as he always does ... Refer to "Checking the Facts, in Advance of Tomorrow's Debate" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ... Ruy Teixeira is a joint fellow at the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation and publishes the following report:[/b]

In this edition of Public Opinion Watch http://www.americanprogress.o... :

• State of the Race

• A Note on the [i]Washington Post/ABC News [/i]Tracking Poll

[b][u]State of the Race[/u][/b]

On the eve of the third and final presidential debate, it's a good time to take a step back and assess how the race has changed since very late September—that is, since right before the first debate.

At that time, Bush was running a consistent lead over Kerry though, as I argued repeatedly, the magnitude of that lead was likely fairly modest, despite the gaudy results obtained by some public polls.

Not only that, Bush was continuing to display a number of underlying weaknesses that made even that small lead quite vulnerable. As Guy Molyneux pointed out in his excellent article, "The Big Five-Oh," "in incumbent elections, the incumbent's percentage of the vote is a far better indicator of the state of the race than the spread. In fact, the percentage of the vote an incumbent president receives in surveys is an extraordinarily accurate predictor of the percentage he will receive on election day—even though the survey results also include a pool of undecided voters. Hence the 50-percent rule: An incumbent who fails to poll above 50 percent is in grave jeopardy of losing his job."

And, before the debates, Bush was consistently averaging under 50 percent of the vote in trial heats. Not only that, but "polls in [the battleground] states actually reveal an even more precarious position for the president. Taken together, Bush receives a bit less support in these critical states than in the nation overall. In the latest NBC/WSJ poll, Bush receives 49 percent support nationally but only 47 percent in the battleground states, a typical finding. (Bush and Al Gore split the vote in these states evenly, 48 percent to 48 percent.)

More importantly, if we take an average of recent published polls of registered voters in individual states, Bush falls short of the 49-percent benchmark in nearly every one, including Ohio (47 percent), Florida (47 percent), and Pennsylvania (46 percent). Wisconsin (51 percent) is the only crucial battleground state in which Bush appears to have a fairly solid lead. Bush even fails to clear the 49-percent bar in such 2000 Bush states as West Virginia (47 percent), Missouri (49 percent), and Arkansas (48 percent)."

The root of Bush's weak support in these terms was pretty simple: people still thought he was doing a lousy job running the country, especially in key areas like the economy, Iraq, and health care. These indicators stubbornly refused to budge during the entire time Bush was maintaining a lead.

In sum, Bush was ahead before the first debate not because his campaign had succeeded in convincing voters that Bush was doing a great job, but rather because his campaign had managed to shift a significant amount of attention away from Bush's poor performance and onto Kerry's alleged character flaws. Therefore, Bush's lead was likely to dissipate as soon as voters' attention was drawn back to his actual performance in office and the concrete policy alternatives proposed by Kerry.

That is, in fact, what has happened. The debates have allowed Kerry/Edwards to refocus the campaign around Bush's record and Kerry's alternatives, thereby taking advantage of the weaknesses Bush never managed to fix in August-September. This was particularly true of the first debate where Kerry's strong performance put Bush on the defensive in what was supposed to be his area of strength: foreign policy.

The immediate post-debate polls all showed Kerry a clear winner: 43 percent to 28 percent among uncommitted voters (Knowledge Networks for CBS News); 45 percent to 36 percent (ABC News); 45 percent to 32 percent (Democracy Corps); and 53 percent to 37 percent (CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll). And, across the latter three polls, no matter Kerry's overall margin, he always won by more among undecided and independent voters. For example, in the ABC News poll, he won independents by 20 points, and in the DCorps survey, he won undecided voters by 31 points.

Moreover, by the weekend, when the debate had had a chance to "settle" in the public mind, Kerry's winning margin widened dramatically—to 57 percent to 25 percent in the Gallup Poll and a crushing 61 percent to 19 percent in the Newsweek poll.

The most important result of the subsequent vice-presidential debate was not who won overall (where Cheney had a slight edge) but the way that Edwards kept the focus relentlessly on Bush's record and Kerry's alternative proposals and repeated Kerry's success in reaching undecided voters.

The second presidential debate was another Kerry win, albeit less spectacular than the first: 44 percent to 41 percent (ABC News); 47 percent to 45 percent (CNN/USA Today/Gallup); and 45 percent to 37 percent (Democracy Corps).

As before, Kerry won easily in all these polls among independents and undecided voters. And, as before, his overall winning margin has widened as impressions of the debate have settled among voters (the latest Gallup poll, for example, has his winning margin rising to 15 points from Gallup's initial debate night margin of just 2 points).

These debates, and the dynamic they set up, have transformed the race from a referendum on the challenger and his character to a referendum on the incumbent and his record. And, in the process, voters have received a lot of direct, unmediated exposure to John Kerry and his ideas that has been nothing but helpful to his candidacy, leading more voters to conclude that he is an acceptable alternative to a poorly performing incumbent.

Here are a number of indicators of how much the race has changed:

1. [u]The horse race[/u]. Even if one accepts all current polls at face value—that is, making no adjustments for any possible over-representation of Republicans—polls taken in the last week indicate, on average, a dead heat (using 2-way registered voter (RV) data where possible; 3-way and/or likely voter (LV) data where not). In other words, Bush's pre-debate lead has been completely eliminated. Moreover, Bush's average support level since the first debate has only been running at 47 percent, a very bad sign for an incumbent (see the "50-percent rule," discussed above).

And we find particularly sharp swings toward Kerry among the very public polls that had given Bush his largest pre-debate leads: Gallup shows a 13-point swing toward Kerry among RVs; Ipsos-AP, a 9-point swing toward Kerry among RVs; and Newsweek, CBS News and ABC News, 7-point swings toward Kerry among RVs.

2. [u]Favorability ratings[/u]. Kerry now leads Bush in favorability in most recent polls. For example, Newsweek has Kerry at 52 favorable/40 unfavorable, compared to 49 percent/46 percent for Bush. Similarly, Time has Kerry at 50 percent/34 percent, compared to 48 percent/42 percent for Bush, while Gallup has Kerry at 52 percent/44 percent and Bush at 51 percent/46 percent.

3. [u]Job ratings[/u]. Bush's job ratings, never very impressive, even when he was leading, now are sinking further. The most recent Gallup poll has his approval rating at 47 percent, his worst rating in that poll since July, and Newsweek has it at 46 percent, also his worst rating since July. His ratings on Iraq, the economy, and foreign policy are also headed south.

4. [u]Bush versus Kerry on the issues[/u]. Across polls, Kerry shows substantial gains on every issue. Where he was leading before the debates, he now leads by more. And where he was losing to Bush, he is now losing by less. For example, in the Newsweek poll, Kerry is now favored by 13 points on the economy, but was only favored by 2 points before the first debate and is now favored by 2 points on health care/Medicare, compared to 10 points before the first debate. And while Bush is still favored in this poll by 5 points on Iraq and by 2 points on foreign policy, before the first debate he was leading Kerry by 15 and 16 points, respectively.

Of course, domestic issue areas are Kerry's strength and Gallup's latest poll provides some eye-opening data on the extent of that strength. Here is Kerry versus Bush in 10 domestic issue areas polled by Gallup (thanks to Alan Abramowitz for bringing these data to my attention):

. The environment: Kerry 60 percent, Bush 31 percent

. Stem cell research: Kerry 53 percent, Bush 33 percent

. Health care: Kerry 56 percent, Bush 37 percent

. Medicare: Kerry 53 percent, Bush 38 percent

. Federal budget deficit: Kerry 53 percent, Bush 40 percent

. Social Security: Kerry 50 percent, Bush 41 percent

. Education: Kerry 50 percent, Bush 43 percent

. The economy: Kerry 49 percent, Bush 45 percent

. Abortion: Kerry 46 percent, Bush 42 percent

. Taxes: Kerry 44 percent, Bush 51 percent

. Average of all 10 domestic issues: Kerry 51.4 percent, Bush 40.1 percent

5. [u]Bush versus Kerry on candidate attributes[/u]. Same story: substantial gains for Kerry on every attribute, widening his lead on attributes where he was already leading and cutting his deficit where he has been trailing Bush. In the Time poll, Kerry widened his lead to 9 points on understanding people's needs (up from a 4-point lead), tied Bush on honest and trustworthy (up from an 8-point deficit to Bush) and took a 5-point lead on having good judgment (up from a 4-point deficit to Bush). Kerry has even opened up a 5-point lead on being "likeable" (up from a 4-point deficit to Bush).

And, critically, both the Time poll and the new Gallup poll now show Kerry leading Bush—albeit by slim 1- to 2-point margins—on who has clear plans to solve the nation's problems.

The task for Kerry seems clear as he heads into the third debate and the final weeks of the campaign: Keep the heat on Bush's terrible record and keep telling voters—in the simplest possible terms—how he would do a better job. The voters, it would seem, are starting to listen.

[b][u]A Note on the [i]Washington Post/ABC News [/i]Tracking Poll[/u][/b]

Alan Abramowitz points out:

"The [i]Washington Post [/i]tracking poll http://www.washingtonpost.com... seems to be suffering from the same ailment that afflicted the Gallup tracking poll four years ago, albeit on a smaller scale so far. In the past few days we have seen Bush's lead among registered voters shrinking while his lead among likely voters has increased. This means that the likely voters and the unlikely voters are moving in the opposite direction, just as they frequently did in the Gallup tracking poll four years ago. This makes no sense, of course. With the WP tracking poll, as with the Gallup tracking poll, the registered voter results are probably a better indicator of the actual standing of the race."

Well said. It's also worth noting that, in 2000, the [i]ABC/Washington Post [/i]tracking poll missed the final vote pretty badly, having Bush up by 3 points at the very end and 3 to 4 points up on every night of the final week. Looks like they're poised to repeat their fine 2000 performance.

[b]Sources:[/b]

Ruy Teixeira is a joint fellow at the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation., http://www.americanprogress.o...

Knowledge Networks poll of 209 uncommitted voters for CBS News, released Sept. 30 (conducted Sept. 30), http://www.cbsnews.com/storie...

Gallup poll of 615 registered voters for CNN/USA Today, released Sept. 30 (conducted Sept. 30), http://www.usatoday.com/news/...

ABC News poll of 531 registered voters, released Oct. 1 (conducted Sept. 30), http://abcnews.go.com/section...

Knowledge Networks poll of 1,318 likely voters for Democracy Corps, released Oct. 1 (conducted Sept. 30), http://www.democracycorps.com...

Guy Molyneux, "The Big Five-Oh," http://www.prospect.org/web/p... The American Prospect Online, Oct. 1

Princeton Survey Research poll of 1,013 registered voters for Newsweek, released Oct. 2 (conducted Sept. 30–Oct. 2), http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi...+2,+20

Gallup poll of 1,016 adults for CNN/USA Today, released Oct. 4 (conducted Oct. 1–3), http://www.usatoday.com/news/...

SBRI poll of 1,211 adults for Time magazine, released Oct. 8 (conducted Oct. 6–7), http://www.srbi.com/time_poll...

ABC News poll of 515 registered voters, released Oct. 8 (conducted Oct. 8 ), http://abcnews.go.com/Politic...

Gallup poll of 515 registered voters for CNN/USA Today, released Oct. 9 (conducted Oct. 8 ), http://gallup.com/poll/conten...

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll of 1,155 likely voters for Democracy Corps, released Oct. 9 (conducted Oct. 8 ), http://www.democracycorps.com...

Gallup poll of 1,015 adults for CNN/USA Today, released Oct. 11 (conducted Oct. 9–10), http://www.usatoday.com/news/...

... Campaign for Women ...

10.13.04 (12:43 pm) [edit]

"Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open." - Emma Goldman

[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] must not be permitted to force their medieval superstitions upon women. A woman has the right to make her own medical choices and the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It is not up to the right-wing loonies to impose their private so-called "religious" [[i]sic[/i]] (i.e. hypocritical) beliefs upon the rest of us ...[/b]

[b]Some things are meant to be private.[/b]

Right now, the government is trying to force its way into the doctor's office, exposing private information and controlling the medical choices doctors and patients can make. It's happening with legal abortions today and could affect you or a woman you love.

And once we start down that road, who knows what could be next?

Decisions about your life should be made by you, and decisions about your health should be made between you and your doctor. Decisions about your sexual life, including whether or not to have an abortion, can be one of the most difficult and complex decisions a woman will ever make.

But it is [b]a woman [/b]who should make that choice, not the government. The privacy of everyone's sexual health is threatened when reproductive rights are threatened.

Threats to rights that women face have never been so systematic and coordinated, and the lives and health of women have never faced such peril.

Join the Campaign for Women's Lives http://www.yourbodyyourlife.o... . Events are coming to your community.

[b]Help organize. Spread the word: http://www.yourbodyyourlife.o... .[/b]

[b]Source:[/b]

Campaign for Women's Lives, http://www.yourbodyyourlife.o...

... Checking the Facts, in Advance of Tomorrow's Debate ...

10.12.04 (8:04 pm) [edit]

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election." Otto von Bismark

[b]"We the People" will be ruthlessly lied to by dishonest Bush tomorrow night as we have been in the previous debates and for the last four years ...[/b]

It's not hard to predict what President Bush, who sounds increasingly desperate, will say tomorrow. Here are eight lies or distortions you'll hear, and the truth about each:

[b]Jobs[/b]

Mr. Bush will talk about the 1.7 million jobs created since the summer of 2003, and will say that the economy is "strong and getting stronger." That's like boasting about getting a D on your final exam, when you flunked the midterm and needed at least a C to pass the course.

Mr. Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in payroll employment. That's worse than it sounds because the economy needs around 1.6 million new jobs each year just to keep up with population growth. The past year's job gains, while better news than earlier job losses, barely met this requirement, and they did little to close the huge gap between the number of jobs the country needs and the number actually available.

[b]Unemployment[/b]

Mr. Bush will boast about the decline in the unemployment rate from its June 2003 peak. But the employed fraction of the population didn't rise at all; unemployment declined only because some of those without jobs stopped actively looking for work, and therefore dropped out of the unemployment statistics. The labor force participation rate - the fraction of the population either working or actively looking for work - has fallen sharply under Mr. Bush; if it had stayed at its January 2001 level, the official unemployment rate would be 7.4 percent.

[b]The deficit[/b]

Mr. Bush will claim that the recession and 9/11 caused record budget deficits. Congressional Budget Office estimates show that tax cuts caused about two-thirds of the 2004 deficit.

[b]The tax cuts[/b]

Mr. Bush will claim that Senator John Kerry opposed "middle class" tax cuts. But budget office numbers show that most of Mr. Bush's tax cuts went to the best-off 10 percent of families, and more than a third went to the top 1 percent, whose average income is more than $1 million.

[b]The Kerry tax plan[/b]

Mr. Bush will claim, once again, that Mr. Kerry plans to raise taxes on many small businesses. In fact, only a tiny percentage would be affected. Moreover, as Mr. Kerry correctly pointed out last week, the administration's definition of a small-business owner is so broad that in 2001 it included Mr. Bush, who does indeed have a stake in a timber company - a business he's so little involved with that he apparently forgot about it.

[b]Fiscal responsibility[/b]

Mr. Bush will claim that Mr. Kerry proposes $2 trillion in new spending. That's a partisan number and is much higher than independent estimates. Meanwhile, as The Washington Post pointed out after the Republican convention, the administration's own numbers show that the cost of the agenda Mr. Bush laid out "is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion" and "far eclipses that of the Kerry plan."

[b]Spending[/b]

On Friday, Mr. Bush claimed that he had increased nondefense discretionary spending by only 1 percent per year. The actual number is 8 percent, even after adjusting for inflation. Mr. Bush seems to have confused his budget promises - which he keeps on breaking - with reality.

[b]Health care[/b]

Mr. Bush will claim that Mr. Kerry wants to take medical decisions away from individuals. The Kerry plan would expand Medicaid (which works like Medicare), ensuring that children, in particular, have health insurance. It would protect everyone against catastrophic medical expenses, a particular help to the chronically ill. It would do nothing to restrict patients' choices.

By singling out Mr. Bush's lies and misrepresentations, am I saying that Mr. Kerry isn't equally at fault? Yes.

Mr. Kerry sometimes uses verbal shorthand that offers nitpickers things to complain about. He talks of 1.6 million lost jobs; that's the private-sector loss, partly offset by increased government employment. But the job record is indeed awful. He talks of the $200 billion cost of the Iraq war; actual spending is only $120 billion so far. But nobody doubts that the war will cost at least another $80 billion. The point is that Mr. Kerry can, at most, be accused of using loose language; the thrust of his statements is correct.

Mr. Bush's statements, on the other hand, are fundamentally dishonest. He is insisting that black is white, and that failure is success. Journalists who play it safe by spending equal time exposing his lies and parsing Mr. Kerry's choice of words are betraying their readers.

[b]Source:[/b]

Dr. Paul Krugman, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

... National (In)Security: Bush is Losing International Support ...

10.12.04 (6:28 pm) [edit]

"In the context of the presidential campaign in the United States, this is undeniably a blow for George W. Bush, since it shows that a majority of Americans don't agree with the main justification for his policy in Iraq." - Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com...

[i]The New York Times[/i] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... reports that, around the world, President Bush's foreign policy style is increasingly described as "bullying, unreceptive, brazen. The result, critics of this administration contend, has been a disastrous loss of international support, damage to American credibility, the sullying of America's image and a devastating war that has already taken more than 1,000 American lives." This characterization was mirrored in a recent [i]AP/Ipsos[/i]poll: [i]AP[/i] reports http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... , "More than two-thirds of the people living in Australia, Britain and Italy – three countries allied with the United States in the Iraq war – believe the war has increased the threat of terrorism. Leaders of those countries – prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia and Premier Silvio Berlusconi of Italy – all get low marks from their people for their handling of the war on terrorism."

[b]"We the People" should demand a president who can work with our allies and deal with the rest of the world in an effective manner ... Bush has proved that he is incompetent to do so ... The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] insane, neo-con bully-boy approach is barbaric, dangerous and foolish ... Vote for John Kerry who has the intellect, experience and capability of dealing on the world stage as an effective and respected leader ...[/b]

... Risky Business ...

10.12.04 (5:01 pm) [edit]

"Tax relief left more money in the hands of American workers so they could save, spend, invest, and help drive this economy forward." - President Bush, 10/2/04, http://www.whitehouse.gov/new...

[i]VERSUS[/i]

"The Bush administration and Congress have scaled back programs that aid the poor to help pay for $600 billion in tax breaks that went primarily to those who earn more than $288,800 a year." - Detroit News, 9/26/04, http://www.detnews.com/2004/s...

[b]The current number of U.S. jobs that pay[i] less than poverty-level wages[/i] for a family of four: 1 in 5 http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... ... When a society becomes ruled by gluttonous plutocrats, corrupt corporate rapists, and greedy robber-barons-- it deteriorates into a sordid and squalid corporate fascist state ... "We the People" must rid ourselves of the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] before they completely turn us into a 3rd world military/slave state ...[/b]

A series of new reports makes clear that the fundamental safety net that long helped protect America's families has deteriorated dramatically during the past 25 years. According to a new Los Angeles Times report, over the past twenty-five years income in the United States has increasingly been subject to "wild leaps and plunges," leading to American families having to absorb more financial risk. In the 1970s, the income of most families "bobbed up and down no more than about $6,500 a year." These days, that's more than doubled: after adjusting for inflation, American families are looking at fluctuations of as much as $13,500 in a year. "The more a family's income fluctuates, the greater the chance it will be caught in a downdraft when a crisis – such as a layoff, divorce or illness – strikes." And the very programs Americans have relied upon to buffer them from economic turmoil have been slashed or killed altogether: "stable jobs, widely available health coverage, guaranteed pensions, short unemployment spells, long-lasting unemployment benefits and well-funded job programs" have all been under siege or have vanished.

[b]UNEMPLOYMENT BURDEN SHIFTED: [/b]Americans who lose their jobs are on their own. The LA Times reports that while in the mid-1970s, jobless workers could collect 15 months of unemployment, by last December, Congress pared the program back to just 6 months. What this means: "Of the 8 million people who were unemployed last month, only 2.9 million were collecting benefits."

[b]HEALTH CARE BURDEN SHIFTED:[/b] The LA Times reports the burden of health coverage is also shifting onto working Americans. The percentage of employers providing health coverage has plunged since 1987, leaving nearly 18 million people who would have been covered in the past struggling to find coverage on their own. And employers are shifting an increasing amount of the burden onto workers who are still covered; according to a recent study released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, this trend is getting worse: over the past four years, employers have raised the health insurance premiums workers must pay by an average of 50 percent.

[b]LOW WAGES EVEN LOWER:[/b] The minimum wage was created to make sure everyone who worked would make enough to live on. For much of the past century, the minimum wage was maintained at roughly half of the average hourly earnings in America. Today it is $5.15, only a third of average hourly earnings and the lowest level in 50 years. And according to a new study by the nonpartisan Working Poor Families Project, one out of every five U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level wage for a family of four. That means "39 million Americans, including 20 million children" barely have enough money to pay for basic necessities like housing, food and child care.

[b]PENSIONS DISAPPEARING:[/b] More Americans are at risk of losing their pensions. The Washington Post reports that in today's economy, traditional pensions face extinction, as does the guarantee of security after retirement. Twenty-five years ago, more than 40 percent of the workforce was covered by traditional pensions; today, less than 20 percent is. Instead, more Americans rely on plans like the 401(k), in which employers kick in some funds – about half of what they spent in the past – and "employees alone bear the burden of ensuring that they have enough money to retire on."

[b]UNDERFUNDED JOB TRAINING:[/b] Job training, a critical part of pulling Americans out of poverty, has been slashed. Twenty-five years ago, writes the LA Times, the federal government spent $27.3 billion on the federal job training program. Today, that's been cut by over 84 percent, to about $4.4 billion. And federal job training budgets have dropped $597 million since 2000, making it that much harder for Americans trapped in poverty to find work and get off government assistance.

[b]Sources:[/b]

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

What Economic Recovery???, http://www.tblog.com/template...

Bush is Dead Wrong, http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1320596,00.html

... War Crimes: Classified Abu Ghraib Documents ...

10.11.04 (7:17 pm) [edit]

"Currently, the U.S. government has detained thousands of individuals in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries suspected of ties to terrorism. Bush administration officials have suspended basic human rights protections, including provisions of the Geneva Conventions, and have detained U.S. citizens and other individuals and approved new harsh interrogation techniques. Incidents at Abu Ghraib and other locations have included sleep deprivation, hooding of prisoners, forced nudity and violent sexual abuse, the use of dogs on prisoners and beatings. Military intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency and other, unnamed agencies interrogating prisoners were found to be involved in prisoner abuse, but government investigations conducted so far—some of which have documented the similarity of abuses in different detention areas to the government's proposed interrogation techniques—have absolved high officials of direct responsibility." - The Center for Public Integrity, http://www.publicintegrity.or...

[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]is responsible for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, elsewhere in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay, etc. ... "We the People" should demand a thorough, fair and independent Congressional http://www.congress.org investigation into their heinous neo-con atrocities including murder, torture, rape, abuse and humiliation of men, women and children alike ... http://www.whatreallyhappened... ... This barbaric behaviour is unacceptable ... This neo-fascism is outrageous ... This lawless inhumanity is criminal ... Surely we deserve better than[i] this [/i]... [/b]

The Center for Public Integrity has just posted http://www.publicintegrity.or... the first of two installments of classified background materials that are culled from the Army report on Abu Ghraib. They describe in detail "attacks, prisoner riots, interrogation methods and the torture and death of detainees."

[b]Also refer to:[/b]

The Center for American Progress, Links on Abu Ghraib, http://www.americanprogress.o...%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&c=biJRJ8OVF &btnG=Search&imageField.x=9&client=cap_frontend&q =Abu+Ghraib&b=180521&imag eField.y=5&site=cap&oe=UTF-8&pro xystylesheet=cap_frontend &ip=172.16.36.20&sort=date%3AD%3AS%3Ad1

America Is Asking... About Donald Rumsfeld's Responsibility for the Abuses at Abu Ghraib, http://www.tblog.com/template...

"Brutality and Purposeless Sadism", http://www.tblog.com/template...

Failures at Abu Ghraib Go All The Way to the Top, http://www.tblog.com/template...

Abu Ghraib Cover-up Intensifies, http://www.tblog.com/template...

... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 280 vs. Bush 254 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.11.04 (5:22 pm) [edit]

[b]... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 280 vs. Bush 254 ...[/b]

[b]Oct. 11 New polls:[/b] AR MA MN

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (112)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (91)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (77)
White - Exactly tied (4)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (29)
Light Red - Weak Bush (77)
Red - Strong Bush (148)

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

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

Mondays are always quiet and today is no exception. An Opinion Research poll in Arkansas http://www.electoral-vote.com... breaks the tie there and puts Bush ahead by 9%. I don't think Kerry really has much of a chance in Arkansas. The south, except for Florida, looks pretty solid for Bush, although there might be surprises in one or two border states. Kerry edged ahead again in Minnesota.

Zogby did a large (N = 1216) telephone poll http://www.zogby.com/news/Rea... Oct. 7-9 (thus, after the second presidential debate) and found the race to be a statistical tie, with Kerry at 46%, Bush at 45%, Nader at 0.9%, Cobb at 0.2%, Peroutka at 0.2%, and Badnarik at 0.1%. The rest are still undecided. I guess they are waiting for the third debate, on Wednesday. Some people like to collect all the data before coming to a conclusion. Interestingly, Zogby also found that among newly registered voters, Kerry holds a 5% lead. Given the millions of people who registered for the first time this year, new voters (along with the millions of overseas voters) could be a serious factor.

After many attempts to turn the predicted map into something believable, I have concluded there are too many outliers, too much noise in the data, too many differences between the pollsters and too many voters who can't make up their minds, I have given up and removed the predicted map from the main page. Look at the state graphs http://www.electoral-vote.com... to see the nature of the problem. The data are not converging. There is no pattern here. I tried different time intervals and different weighting schemes, but nothing seems reasonable. The quality of the data just isn't good enough. I think the current map is a far better predictor than the 'predicted' map ever was. Chalk one up to experience. The predicted map will still be available but under its true file name. Today that is www.electoral-vote.com/fin/oct11p.html. Tomorrow it will be oct12p.html etc.

However, replacing the predicted map on the menu below the map is a new page called Compare the pollsters http://www.electoral-vote.com... . This page shows maps and charts per pollster so you can see how they differ. You be the judge who has their thumb on the scale. I will drop a polling firm only when a mainstream media outlet has caught them red-handed. Some people have asked for a method to make their own maps selecting only pollsters favorable to their candidate. While this is theoretically possible, the computing load it would place on the server would be too much. That could be reduced by my computing two maps in advance: one where Kerry wins and one where Bush wins, but I am not sure of the value of such maps. On the More data page http://www.electoral-vote.com... there are links to two sites where you can concoct your own data and make your own maps.

Also new is a menu item labeled Posters http://www.electoral-vote.com... . It contains several 8.5" x 11" posters you can print out and hang up on your office or school bulletin board to help attract new visitors. More posters are welcome. Thanks to Kelly Marks http://www.kellymarksinc.com/... for poster 1 and the people at SnapFood.com http://www.snapfood.com/ for poster 2.

There is now an easy way to send e-mail http://www.electoral-vote.com... to tell friends about this site. At the bottom of this page, just below the projected Senate, is a link to a little form where you can fill in a couple of fields and hit SEND E-MAIL. The e-mail address will be deleted instantly from the server after the mail has been sent. During testing, some mail to people with yahoo.com addresses got classified as bulk (spam). It is not clear why. Maybe Yahoo is sick of the election already. Other addresses work fine.

Finally, if you are new to this site, welcome. Please take a look at the Welcome page http://www.electoral-vote.com... . It explains a lot about the site. There is MUCH more about the election than just the map. Also, I am now getting 400-600 e-mails a day. It is overwhelming. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE read the FAQ http://www.electoral-vote.com... before sending mail. Many common questions are answered there (e.g., Which polls do you use? What happens if the electoral college is tied? How well did the pollsters do in 2000?)

[b]"We the People" cannot rely upon the poll results because the race is too close, and also due to factors that can swing the undecided voters' minds will change with events on the ground ... However, for those who think Bush will win in a landslide, there is much evidence to demonstrate otherwise ... Yet, [i]nothing[/i] will be more important than voter turnout, so please encourage your family members, friends and neighbors to get out and VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY!!! ...[/b]

... What Economic Recovery??? ...

10.11.04 (2:52 pm) [edit]

"In August, I joined nine other American Nobel prize winners in economics in signing an open letter to the public. We wrote: "President Bush and his administration have embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation ... The differences between President Bush and John Kerry with respect to leadership on the economy are wider than in any other presidential election in our experience. President Bush believes that tax cuts benefiting the most wealthy Americans are the answer to almost every economic problem." Here, as elsewhere, Bush is dead wrong, and too dogmatic to admit it." - Joseph Stiglitz is professor of economics at Columbia University and a Nobel prize winner, http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1320596,00.html

[b]"We the People" should listen closely to the Nobel Prize Winners in Economics http://www.commondreams.org/h... and other prestigious economists including James K. Galbraith http://www.washingtonmonthly.... who are warning us of the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] reckless, destructive and dangerously greedy economic policies ... [/b]

[b]James K. Galbraith is Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, and chair of Economists Allied For Arms Reduction (www.ecaar.org) and writes the following article ... [/b]

[b]The latest job figures show that Bush has bungled the economy as badly as he has Iraq.[/b]

Only 95,000 payroll jobs were created in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday morning - a chilling number released hours before the second presidential debate. Of these jobs, only 59,000 were in the private sector. Manufacturing employment declined by 18,000 jobs. Only 103,000 payroll jobs have been created on average in the past three months. Only 1.7 million new jobs were created in the past year - Bush's best year, but worse than in any year under Clinton. We remain almost a million payroll jobs below where we stood on the day George Bush took office. In the household survey, 201,000 jobs were lost last month. Truly, Bush is President No Jobs.

But the news does not merely confirm that grim narrative about Bush's presidential term. It also points to an ongoing reality. It's not just that job growth has been miserable in the past four years. It's that it continues to be miserable right now and has actually gotten worse since the spring. Job creation since June is 150,000 short of the minimum required to keep up with population growth. This isn't a "jobless recovery." It's jobless, yes. But is it a recovery?

Sandra Pianalto, president of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, typifies the view of the uncured optimists. Speaking Thursday, she offered two possibilities: "As the unemployment data arrives over the next several months, we may very well see the jobs numbers snap back if confidence in our economy is restored, economies around the world strengthen, and energy prices stabilize." And on the other hand? "But it may turn out that the process of job expansion will take more time ..."

Ostrich! Take your head out of the sand! There is, let me humbly suggest, a third possibility. To see what it might be, let's review a little bit of the evidence from recent days.

1. The GDP growth rate peaked a year ago. Since the first blush of excitement following the cakewalk to Baghdad, growth rates have been sliding almost all the way: 7.4, 4.2, 4.5, and 3.3 percent. And the second quarter of 2004 would have been below 3 percent, except for a large buildup in unsold inventory. That is leading to production cutbacks in the present quarter.

2. Predictably, we now have an actual decline in new orders for manufactured goods in August. We have an even larger decline in new orders for durable manufactures. The growth of new home construction in the past three months, through August, is well below what it had been in the previous four. The issuance of new construction permits has fallen quite sharply. The purchasing managers' index has fallen two months running, and in four of the past six months.

3. Personal income in each of the past three months grew at rates about half of those in each of the previous four. Auto sales declined in August, as did total retail sales. Chain store sales were up only 1.5 percent - their slowest monthly growth rate all year. New consumer credit declined in August, and consumer confidence has fallen two months in a row.

4. Meanwhile the oil price is above $50, and there is no sign that it will come down soon. Interest rates are rising, for reasons that remain carefully obscured, but probably have to do with deep fears and hidden pressures over the dollar. And the direct spending by government, including state and local government - remains hobbled by large deficits and financial crisis.

What then is the third possibility? It's that the burst of investment we got following the initial success of the Iraq invasion is petering out, with little to show and nothing coming online. It's that consumers, who supported the economy by spending and adding to debt all through the Bush years, are facing the inevitable and slowing down. It's that nowhere in the world do we see adequate growth to lift the U.S. economy out of the doldrums. And while oil prices may stabilize at $50 a barrel, does anyone believe the U.S. economy will do as well with $50 oil as we did when oil sold for $20 a barrel?

As of now, the Federal Reserve is forecasting a 4 percent growth rate for 2005. The National Association for Business Economists, that advertisers' auxiliary, is chirping 3.7 percent. These are not very good growth numbers for an expansion that has never seen a sustained burst of strong growth. But they still imply the continuation of the trends in the first half of this year - especially for consumer spending and business investment. At the moment, given developments in the past three months, the smart money has to be betting against that.

And, as Bloomberg News reported yesterday, the smart money is betting against it. A Business Council survey of 50 corporate chief executives revealed that they expect economic growth of only 2 percent next year - a further sharp deceleration compared with this year. Not a single leading businessman in the sample expected accelerating growth. Even more surprising, the bosses are bearish even though they expect oil prices to stabilize and their own profits to pick up. If they are wrong on those assumptions, well, Katie bar the door.

Why are the bosses so downbeat? Part of the answer is that they are executives. Unlike business economists who work for them, they aren't paid to talk up the market. Another part of the answer is that these gentlemen are realistic. They know that Team Bush has no plan in place, and none in prospect, to support growth next year. Nor will Bush, if he wins the election, have any incentive to develop such a plan. We already know what Bush's economic priorities are, and strong growth isn't among them.

And what if the voters throw out Bush in four weeks? Then it will be up to Kerry and Edwards to cope with the onrushing stagnation. While the false optimism surrounding Iraq will disappear with Bush and Cheney, false optimism on the economy has an institutional base, at the Federal Reserve and among the business economists. That's a problem still to be overcome.

If Kerry and Edwards are smart - and after two debates does anyone doubt it? - they will bypass the ostrich colony and the hallelujah choir. Instead, they'll sit down with the real leaders of business and labor and get serious about the real situation and what must be done.

[b]Sources:[/b]

The Plutocrats Go Wild, by James K. Galbraith, http://www.washingtonmonthly....

President Bush Ignoring Reality On Jobs, http://www.tblog.com/template...

The Buck Doesn't Have To Stop Here, http://www.tblog.com/template...

Fiscal Deterioration, http://www.tblog.com/template...

... Breaking Ranks ...

10.11.04 (1:05 pm) [edit]

"You realize that the people to blame for this are not the ones you are fighting." - After returning home to Pennsylvania, Mike Hoffman founded Iraq Veterans Against the War, http://www.ivaw.net/ . Military Families Speak Out, http://www.mfso.org/

[b]The real heros rising out of the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] illegal and immoral war in Iraq are U.S. Soldiers like Mike Hoffman who are speaking out against [i]and [/i]breaking ranks with the neo-cons' War Crimes and neo-fascists' Crimes Against Humanity ... Real heros are those who fight for what is right-- and some courageous patriots are fighting for the right to live and not be massacred or massacre other human beings in an insane war for oil and the ugly Bushies' Global Corporate Empire ... "We the People" should be thankful that such brave men and women speak out against and fight against the tyranny that has taken hold of the U.S.A. ...[/b]

MIKE HOFFMAN would not be the guy his buddies would expect to see leading a protest movement. The son of a steelworker and a high school janitor from Allentown, Pennsylvania, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1999 as an artilleryman to “blow things up.” His transformation into an activist came the hard way—on the streets of Baghdad.

When Hoffman arrived in Kuwait in February 2003, his unit’s highest-ranking enlisted man laid out the mission in stark terms. “You’re not going to make Iraq safe for democracy,” the sergeant said. “You are going for one reason alone: oil. But you’re still going to go, because you signed a contract. And you’re going to go to bring your friends home.” Hoffman, who had his own doubts about the war, was relieved—he’d never expected to hear such a candid assessment from a superior. But it was only when he had been in Iraq for several months that the full meaning of the sergeant’s words began to sink in.

“The reasons for war were wrong,” he says. “They were lies. There were no WMDs. Al Qaeda was not there. And it was evident we couldn’t force democracy on people by force of arms.”

When he returned home and got his honorable discharge in August 2003, Hoffman says, he knew what he had to do next. “After being in Iraq and seeing what this war is, I realized that the only way to support our troops is to demand the withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq.” He cofounded a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and soon found himself emerging as one of the most visible members of a small but growing movement of soldiers who openly oppose the war in Iraq.

Dissent on Iraq within the military is not entirely new. Even before the invasion, senior officers were questioning the optimistic projections of the Pentagon’s civilian leaders, and several retired generals have strongly criticized the war. But now, nearly two years after the first troops rolled across the desert, rank-and-file soldiers and their families are increasingly speaking up. Hoffman’s group was founded in July with 8 members and had grown to 40 by September. Another organization, Military Families Speak Out, began with 2 families two years ago and now represents more than 1,700 families. And soldier-advocacy groups are reporting a rising number of calls from military personnel who are upset about the war and are thinking about refusing to fight; a few soldiers have even fled to Canada rather than go to Iraq.

In a 2003 Gallup Poll, nearly one-fifth of the soldiers surveyed said they felt the situation in Iraq had not been worth going to war over. In another poll, in Pennsylvania last August, 54 percent of households with a member in the military said the war was the “wrong thing to do”; in the population as a whole, only 48 percent felt that way. Doubts about the war have contributed to the decline of troop morale over the past year—and may, some experts say, be a factor in the 40 percent increase in Army suicide rates in Iraq in the past year. “That’s the most basic tool a soldier needs on the battlefield—a reason to be there,” says Paul Rieckhoff, a platoon leader in the New York National Guard and former JPMorgan banker who served in Iraq. Rieckhoff has founded a group called Operation Truth, which provides a freewheeling forum for soldiers’ views on the war. “When you can’t articulate that in one sentence, it starts to affect morale. You had an initial rationale for war that was a moving target. [But] it was a shell game from the beginning, and you can only bullshit people for so long.”

... http://www.motherjones.com/ne... ...

Vietnam figures prominently in soldiers’ conversations about Iraq. Nearly every one of the Iraq veterans I spoke with has relatives who served in the military, and nearly every one told me the same story: When they grew cynical about the Iraq war, the Vietnam veterans in their family immediately recognized what was happening—that another generation of soldiers was grappling with the realization that they were being sent to carry out a policy determined by people who cared little for the grunts on the ground.

Resistance in the military “is in its infancy right now,” says Hoffman, whose cousins, uncle, and grandfather all did their time in uniform. “It’s growing, but it’s going to take a little while.

“There was a progression of thought that happened among soldiers in Vietnam. It started with a mission: Contain communism. That mission fell apart, just like it fell apart now—there are no weapons of mass destruction. Then you are left with just a survival instinct. That, unfortunately, turned to racism. That’s happening now, too. Guys are writing me saying, ‘I don’t know why I’m here, but I hate the Iraqis.’

“Now, you realize that the people to blame for this aren’t the ones you are fighting,” Hoffman continues. “It’s the people who put you in this situation in the first place. You realize you wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t been lied to. Soldiers are slowly coming to that conclusion. Once that becomes widespread, the resentment of the war is going to grow even more.”

[b]Read the entire article on http://www.motherjones.com/ne... [/b]

[b]Also, refer to "Breaking Ranks: An Interview with Mike Hoffman" on http://www.motherjones.com/ne... [/b]

... President Bush Ignoring Reality On Jobs ...

10.08.04 (8:32 pm) [edit]

"The economy is getting stronger and stronger."

- President Bush, 9/6/04, http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art...

[i]VERSUS[/i]

"September Job Growth Weaker Than Expected."

- CNN, 10/8/04, http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/...

[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]is the worst administration ever thrusted upon our nation, for they have created international chaos, distrust, danger and bloodshed; but also, here at home, they are reeking economic havoc ... Refer to "Bush is dead wrong" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1320596,00.html by Joseph Stiglitz, Professor of Economics at Columbia University and a Nobel Prize Winner ... [/b]

As with the situation in Iraq, President Bush continues to ignore reality on jobs and the economy here at home. The Labor Department reported today that only 96,000 new jobs were created in September – far less than expected and well below what is necessary to keep up with population changes and to erase years of job losses. The employed share of the population actually declined for the second month in a row as many Americans, disenchanted with the weak labor market, gave up looking for jobs altogether. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.4 percent in September, well above the 4.2 percent unemployment rate when Bush took office in 2001. Yet the president tells us this represents "progress."

[b]. The president's economic priorities have not worked: tax cuts for the wealthy have not produced real opportunities for the middle class.[/b] President Bush sold his trillions of dollars in tax cuts geared towards the top 2 percent of earners as a way to create jobs and increase wages for middle class workers. The results are undeniable: hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, flat wages, reduced government revenues, and soaring budget deficits.

[b]. More of the same on the economy will only make matters worse.[/b] The president and his conservative allies argue that permanently extending his tax cuts and cutting others will lead us towards economic paradise. With a $5 trillion projected budget deficit and continued job and wage stagnation, the economy can not take much more of conservatives' economic wisdom.

[b]. Nothing will change unless the president first admits economic problems exist and then corrects his policies to fit reality. [/b]The president's "optimism" on the economy won't create more jobs, raise wages, or erase massive budget deficits. He's already thrown all fiscal caution to the wind by promoting job creation through massive tax cuts for the wealthy. It has not worked. The president must face reality, restore fiscal responsibility, and pursue economic policies geared to the middle class.

[b]Sources:[/b]

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

[b]Also refer to "10 Questions About the Middle Class":[/b]

The candidates' plans for policies that [i]affect the middle class [/i]in America—and that's most of us—should be at the top of their lists while on the campaign trail. Tonight's town hall debate could be the perfect forum for President Bush and Senator Kerry to talk about how they plan to[i] create jobs, expand health care and help offset higher education costs[/i]—if they take advantage of it. The Drum Major Institute For Public Policy, http://www.themiddleclass.org... a nonpartisan think tank, has drawn up a list of questions the candidates should be able to answer about the middle class' future. SEE THE LIST: http://themiddleclass.org/mai...

... Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 280 vs. Bush 239 ... [Map of the USA] ...

10.08.04 (2:46 pm) [edit]

[b]Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 280 vs. Bush 239[/b]

[b]Oct. 8 New polls:[/b] AR AZ CO FL IA IL KY MD MI MN MO NC NH NJ NM NV OH OK OR PA TN VA WA WI WV

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue - Strong Kerry (112)
Light Blue - Weak Kerry (101)
Blue Outline - Barely Kerry (67)
White - Exactly tied (19)
Red Outline - Barely Bush (29)
Light Red - Weak Bush (62)
Red - Strong Bush (148)

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

[b]News from the Votemaster[/b]

There are 48 new polls today in a total of 25 states. The bottom line is that Kerry is continuing to surge. He now has more than the 270 votes in the electoral college needed to be elected president. However, his margin is razor thin in many states. Still, this is a remarkable comeback. From the electoral college graph http://www.electoral-vote.com... you can see how steep his rise has been. All of this gain is undoubtedly due to the first debate. Needless to say, tonight's debate will be extremely important for both candidates.

Salon.com http://www.salon.com/news/fea... reports that Bush had a radio receiver taped to his back during the first debate so he could receive messages via a tiny hearing-aid-like device in his ear. They back this up with a photo. I have no way of verifying the story, but the Commission on Presidential Debates has verified that one of the rules of engagement the Bush campaign insisted on was no camera shots of the candidates from behind (which one of the pool cameras did anyway). This story is either investigative journalism at its best or wishful thinking. If you are not a Salon.com subscriber, you have to sign up for a free day pass to read the full story.

I obtained a copy of the debate video and the Red Hawk image intensification software (developed for NASA), which combines multiple images into a sharper image and then had the contrast enhanced with Photoshop. Other than cropping and resizing of the image, no other manipulation was done. I stand 100% behind the fact that this image http://www.electoral-vote2.co... was taken from the debate video, independently confirming the Salon.com photo, but interpretation is up to you.

If you are interested in the site statistics, look at electoral-vote.com/stats http://www.electoral-vote.com... . The most relevant column is the Visitors, but you have to add about 50-60% to compensate for caching at ISPs. When AOL, comcast, etc. fetches a page for the first time, it saves the page so it does not have to fetch it next time it is requested (usually by a different user). Thus the server knows nothing about the second user, and the Webalizer stats are built from the server logs.

[b]"We the People" must be hopeful that we can rid ourselves of the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]... But we must be diligent and get out and VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY!!![/b]

... Time for a Checkmate ...

10.08.04 (1:33 pm) [edit]

"No escape, / No such thing; to dream of new dimensions, / Cheating checkmate by painting the king's robe / So that he slides like a queen." - Robert Graves

[b]Robert Dreyfuss makes an excellent point in the following article ... It is time for Kerry to deliver a body-blow to Bush ... The facts on the ground; CIA reports; U.S. Arms Inspection reports; and admissions/confessions from his own neo-con regime prove that Bush and Cheney committed a treasonous act of perpetrating lies, deceptions and falsehoods to lead us into the most serious act of aggression that our nation illegally and immorally under-took: invading a sovereign nation and waging warfare when we [i]were not threatened at all [/i]by Iraq ... "We the People" must demand a change of regime here at home ...[/b]

The pieces are arranged on the board in precise position for a checkmate tonight. Kerry is studying the board. Can he see the moves in time?

Let’s start with “fictionalized.” Yesterday, after the CIA report saying that Iraq had no WMDs and no plans to make WMDs, Kerry accused Bush of having “aggrandized and fictionalized” the Iraqi threat. Now, in my book, “fictionalized” means that Bush made it up. That goes to the heart of my work, and that of many others, on the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, the Feith-based intelligence unit that “fictionalized” intelligence about Iraq.

Then Bush said: “He accused me of deception. He’s claiming I misled America about weapons, when he himself cited the very same intelligence.”

That leaves Kerry no option but make his only countermove: Yes, I looked at the very same intelligence. The intelligence you faked. Fictionalized. Manufactured. Mr. President, you lied to the American people about why we needed to invade Iraq.

I don’t see any other move for Kerry. Bush is right that Kerry blathered on about Iraqi WMD in 2002-2003, even though cooler heads—from UN inspectors, to former U.S. intelligence people, to writers like me—had repeatedly pooh-poohed the charges. Kerry has to follow through on the meaning of the word “fictionalized.” By using it, he’s crossed a bridge that he hasn’t crossed before. It isn’t that Bush’s “judgment” was wrong. It isn’t that Bush didn’t “plan” well for Iraq. It is that Bush lied.

Before the first presidential debate, I wrote that the one thing we wouldn’t hear about was the OSP, the lies and the manufactured, phony intelligence. Now I’m not so sure. Kerry has a chance to make a breathtaking, slam-dunk accusation against Bush that could change the entire debate overnight. Time for a checkmate.

NOTE TO READERS: Thanks to everyone who’s written in with comments. I can’t answer them personally, but I read every one, and I use them for ideas. I like getting the feedback, so please keep it coming. Meanwhile, from one “mystified” reader, DFG, comes this missive:

“[i]I'm finally relieved to hear someone else mystified as to why Kerry won't go for the Clarke & O'Neill history of Bush/Cheney having their minds made up beforehand about the Iraq war … I'm also mystified as to why Kerry won't criticize Bush for 9/11. He doesn't have to argue that he, or Gore, could have absolutely prevented 9/11. But he can, and should argue that under the Democratic watch Bin Laden was under constant scrutiny, and because of that the 2000 scares never came off. Clinton did prevent mayhem. But, as is amply demonstrated, Bush deliberately took his national security eye off Bin Laden for the old cold war pipe dream of the Star Wars shield[/i].”

Both of DFG’s ideas are part of how Kerry needs to checkmate Bush tonight. He lied about intelligence on Iraq. But he also had his mind made up before 9/11 (Clarke and O’Neill) and he bungled the hunt for Osama bin Laden, missed the warnings and failed to stop the attack. Why don’t we hear more about that early August 2001, intelligence briefing to Bush: “Bin Laden determined to strike in United States”? Inquiring voters want to know.

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... Bush's Illegal War ...

10.07.04 (8:17 pm) [edit]

"In the councils of government, we must guard against unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." - President Dwight D. Eisenhower

[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]led our nation to war based upon heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods ... The traitorous Bushies are drunk with power and have placed us in dire peril in the world ... [/b]

It’s not just Kofi Annan who says, correctly, Bush’s war in Iraq was illegal. Kerry may have trouble citing Annan, but now he can rely on that paragon of international correctness, the Council on Foreign Relations’[i] Foreign Affairs[/i]. Here is an excerpt from the just-released current issue, in a piece called “The Sources of American Legitimacy http://www.foreignaffairs.org... ,” by Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson:

... "Throughout its history, the United States has made gaining international legitimacy a top priority of its foreign policy. The 18 months since the launch of the Iraq war, however, have left the country's hard-earned respect and credibility in tatters. In going to war without a legal basis or the backing of traditional U.S. allies, the Bush administration brazenly undermined Washington's long-held commitment to international law, its acceptance of consensual decision-making, its reputation for moderation, and its identification with the preservation of peace. The road back will be a long and hard one." ...

Note “without a legal basis.” Brilliantly, the piece takes on the illegal NATO war in Kosovo, too, which gave Bush-Cheney the precedent for the illegal Iraq war. And this:

... "Washington had acted illegally in going to war against Iraq, and events following the end of major combat operations (the absence of WMD, the growing anarchy) served to weaken rather than strengthen its case. It had gone far beyond the parameters of the 1990s debate over whether the United States should give the nod to the UN or to NATO, evidently deciding that it could dispense with both. It had confirmed the observation of Alexander Hamilton that the "spirit of moderation in a state of overbearing power is a phenomenon which has not yet appeared, and which no wise man will expect ever to see." And it had demonstrated by its every action that it had no plan to secure the peace. Peace was the furthest thing from the administration's agenda." ...

And this:

... "Such illegal uses of force are in fact unnecessary for U.S. security and actually imperil it. The Iraq war clearly illustrates both points: not only did containment and deterrence offer a perfectly workable method of dealing with Saddam's Iraq, but the consequences of the U.S. occupation have also made Americans much more insecure. Those consequences include daily attacks on American soldiers, the inflammation of opinion in the Muslim world (encouraging new recruits for al Qaeda), and the possibility of further wars arising from the potential disintegration of the Iraqi state." ...

Read the whole article. I don’t agree with everything in it. But it is a stunning, semi-official establishment verdict, not a leftie one.

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... FactCheck.org Strikes Back ...

10.07.04 (6:44 pm) [edit]

"How empty is theory in the presence of fact!" - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain

"For a forgotten fact is news when it comes again." - Following the Equator

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." - Rudyard Kipling in From Sea to Shining Sea

"After Democratic nominee John Edwards raised some nasty allegations about Halliburton Corp., the company Cheney once ran, Cheney angrily responded to the 'false' charges," http://www.washingtonpost.com... directing viewers to FactCheck.com for the details. Cheney had his, um, facts http://www.washingtonpost.com... wrong – the site he meant was FactCheck.org http://www.factcheck.org/arti... . But Factcheck.org may be no more helpful to Cheney's cause. "Cheney wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton," the Annenberg site wrote in a posting yesterday. "In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right." Click on http://www.factcheck.org/arti...

[b]The scales have fallen from the eyes of "We the People" ... Bush and Cheney are both ruthless liars perpetrating reckless frauds and dangerous crimes against our nation ...[/b]

... Bush/Cheney Inc. White House 'All Wrong' ...

10.07.04 (5:23 pm) [edit]

"There was a risk – a real risk – that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks." – President Bush, 10/6/04, http://www.whitehouse.gov/new...

[i]VERSUS[/i]

"[Charles] Duelfer said investigators also found no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so." – Los Angeles Times, 10/7/04, http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,7461163.story?coll=la-home-headli nes

[b]After roping in the major cable channels with the promise of a "major" policy speech http://slate.msn.com/id/21078... , President Bush yesterday failed to address the Duelfer report, Paul Bremer's criticism of troop levels in Iraq or Prime Minister Allawi's newly sobering assessment of the insurgency. Instead he gave a rote, campaign speech http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... ... "We the People" deserve better than[i] this unacceptable behaviour [/i]from Bush ... After all, Bush is not an Emperor; nor is he a King; nor is he a Dictator-- although he seems to mistake himself for one [i]and/or [/i]all of these tyrants ...[/b]

Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's illicit weapons stockpiles were destroyed more than a decade ago and Saddam was not making any active effort and had no formal plans to revive the program. The top American weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles A. Duelfer, yesterday released a 1,000-page report that also found Saddam's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction had "decayed" significantly due to the U.N. weapons inspection regime. The report is a devastating critique. Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) said, "The administration would like the American public to believe that Saddam's intention to build a weapons program, regardless of actual weapons or the capability to produce weapons, justified invading Iraq....In fact, we invaded a country, thousands of people have died, and Iraq never posed a grave or growing danger.'' Appearing before the Senate yesterday, Duelfer summed his findings: "we were almost all wrong" on Iraq.

[b]NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS:[/b] With a string of false claims, the White House played up the threat to justify the invasion of Iraq, warning of an armed and dangerous Saddam with his sights set on America. On 3/24/02, Vice President Cheney definitively stated, "[Saddam] is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." A year later, on 3/16/03, he charged, "We believe Saddam has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was equally as adamant: On 9/10/02, she said, "We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon." Duelfer's report showed these claims were flatly false.

[b]NO CHEMICAL OR BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS:[/b] The Duelfer report found "no indications" that Iraq was doing this. There was no staff, no infrastructure, and there even was "a complete absence of discussion or even interest" in biological weapons. The administration, however, used Saddam's supposed stockpiles of biological weapons as another justification for the invasion. In just one example, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provided the Senate Armed Services committee with a specific laundry list on 9/19/02: "[Saddam has] amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including Anthrax, botulism, toxins and possibly smallpox. He's amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, Sarin and mustard gas." President Bush also said on 10/5/02, "Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

[b]NO WEAPONS "PROGRAM":[/b] After the invasion, the White House changed its tune, stating the real reason for the war was that Saddam had a weapons program. On 7/11/03, Condoleezza Rice stated, "Iraqis were actively trying to pursue a nuclear weapons program." Mr. Duelfer said, "Saddam Hussein ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf War." American inspectors "found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program." In fact, one U.S. official briefing reporters on the report stated, "Over time, Hussein was getting further away from a nuclear program, not closer. In point of fact, he was much further away from a nuclear program in 2003 than he was in 1991."

[b]NO SHARING WITH TERRORISTS:[/b] The Duelfer report found "no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so." As the New York Times points out, "Even if Mr. Hussein had wanted to arm groups he could not control – a very dubious notion – he had nothing to give them." Yet yesterday, after the release of the report, he said, "There was a risk – a real risk – that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

[b]SADDAM WAS CONTAINED:[/b] Duelfer found U.N. sanctions provided an "economic strangle hold" which successfully worked to keep Saddam from rebuilding or developing any weapons for twelve years. And the Washington Post reminds readers, "the inspectors left not because Iraq kicked them out but because the United States said it was about to launch an invasion and their safety could not be guaranteed." But in a speech in Pennsylvania yesterday, President Bush said Saddam Hussein "chose defiance and war [and] our coalition enforced the just demands of the world." The report actually shows the opposite, that the power of nonviolent international sanctions was working.

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... Read 'Em and Weep, W. ...

10.07.04 (2:27 pm) [edit]

[b]For George W., the latest string of reports, comments and leaks is catastrophically bad news. They ensure that the Nov. 2 vote will be a referendum on Bush’s handling of Iraq.

"We the People" can only conclude that the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]lied to us, and thus, they not only deserve to be defeated in the November presidential election:-- The traitorous Bushies deserve to be impeached and put on trial for treason ...[/b]

The conclusive final report of the Iraq Survey Group puts the final nail in the coffin of the notion that Iraq somehow threatened the United States. Of course, the report is just the latest from the group, following preliminary reports, interviews and press accounts over the past year of the Survey Group’s work. But it’s a slam dunk. The Times editorial (called “The Verdict Is In”) says: “Sanctions worked. Weapons inspectors worked.” We now know, thanks to the report, that not only didn’t Iraq have WMD, but Saddam didn’t even have a plan to develop WMD—by 1991, they were all gone. Final total: zero weapons of mass destruction.

The Cheney-requested report on Zarqawi, which reportedly says that Iraq’s pre-war ties to Zarqawi were nonexistent, nails that coffin shut. Final answer: zero Iraq-Al Qaeda ties.

The off-the-record Paul Bremer remarks stating that the Bush administration didn’t have enough troops in Iraq to create order in the country in 2003 nails a third coffin shut: Bush and Cheney bungled the occupation. Final conclusion: zero planning.

And the continuing carnage in Iraq ensures that Americans won’t forget what is happening there. Kerry-Edwards have still shied away, though, from picking up on Paul O’Neill, Dick Clarke et al. to charge that Bush wanted to invade Iraq before 9/11. And they seem incapable of making the simple statement that Bush-Cheney deliberately distorted the intelligence to justify that end. I’m mystified as to why.

The question now is whether Kerry can carry out a sustained attack on Bush’s war as the “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.” It would be a mistake, in my opinion, for Kerry to try to refocus the campaign on domestic issues. The vote in November will be a vote about the war. Kerry is getting a boost from the CIA, already alarmed at the half-cocked plan to reorganizing intelligence proposed by the 9/11 Commission—the CIA has joined the Kerry campaign, in effect, led by Mike (Anonymous) Scheuer and Paul Pillar of the National Intelligence Council. The CIA is providing a steady stream of anti-Bush reports, simply by stating the truth.

The White House, which has attacked Kerry for demeaning our allies, seized clumsily on the Survey Group’s report that some other countries actually engaged in commerce with Iraq. The[i] Post [/i]account http://www.washingtonpost.com... :

... "Administration officials spent yesterday trying to refocus the attention of reporters on the disclosures in the report that many U.S. allies, top foreign officials and major international figures secretly helped Hussein generate more than $11 billion in illegal income in violation of U.N. sanctions. The report contains a long list of foreign officials and companies involved in helping Iraq —while the names of Americans were blacked out because of privacy considerations." ...

So when Cheney, in the hawk vs. hawk debate with Edwards, said that Kerry-Edwards can’t succeed in enticing France, Germany, Russia et al. into helping salvage Iraq, we now know that is because Bush-Cheney will continue to insult and embarrass those very allies we need.

[b]Source:[/b]

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

... The Buck Doesn't Have To Stop Here ...

10.06.04 (7:14 pm) [edit]

[b]One hundred sixty-nine tenured and emeriti business school professors from several of the nation's top universities have written an open letter http://openlettertothepre side... documenting the drastic failure of President Bush's economic policies and asking for a "dramatic reorientation of fiscal policy, including substantial reversals" of tax policy.[/b] The letter, addressed to the president, begins, "Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since you took office in January 2001… The data make clear that your policy of slashing taxes – primarily for those at the upper reaches of the income distribution – has not worked. The fiscal reversal that has taken place under your leadership is so extreme that it would have been unimaginable just a few years ago." http://openlettertothepre side... Bush's second term economic proposals, the professors say, "only promise to exacerbate the crisis by further narrowing the federal revenue base." Click here http://www.americanprogress.o... for American Progress's analysis of the worst fiscal deterioration in the last half century.

[b]"We the People" should be outraged at the largest gap in over 75 years between the Hyper-Rich Haves & the increasingly Impoverished Have-Nots ... The corrupt corporate-take-all Bushies are greedy, immoral and dangerously reckless in misleading us with their insane neo-fascist economic (foreign & domestic) policies-- damaging our fiscal health and well-being http://www.tblog.com/template... ... Treating working people like cannon-fodder for illegal and immoral neo-con wars [i]and[/i] for slave labor here at home is barbaric, foolhardy and bad management ...[/b]

It's been seven long years since the federal minimum wage got a boost. Since that time, housing, healthcare and commuting costs have eliminated any gains for low-income workers. It's time to raise the floor and make sure Americans are guaranteed a living wage. That's why 560 economists are calling to raise the wage to $7.00. Of course, we're jonesing for the UK's deal: a minimum wage at $8.46 and universal health care.

[b]Amy Chasanov is deputy policy director for the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC., writes as follows: http://www.tompaine.com/artic... [/b]

Most Americans believe it's wrong that a parent can work full time and still live and labor in poverty. In a recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 77 percent of all Americans agreed that increasing the minimum wage is an important priority.

Today, in a statement just released, more than 560 leading economists—including four winners of the Nobel Prize in economics and seven past presidents of the American Economic Association—are declaring that they agree. Noting that the decline in the real value of the minimum wage has been a hardship for low-wage workers and their families, these economists argue that the minimum wage is “an important tool in fighting poverty” and helping “to equalize the imbalance in the bargaining power that low-wage workers face in the labor market.”

It has been seven years since Congress last lifted the minimum wage—the second longest period without a boost since the minimum wage was enacted in 1938—and inflation has eroded the increase. Now, the minimum wage’s purchasing power is less than it has been in 46 out of the last 48 years. In fact, a single parent with two children who works a minimum-wage job earns only $10,700 a year—far below the poverty line of $15,670.

Some in Congress are trying to address the problem that many full-time workers in America can’t earn a living wage. Sen. Edward Kennedy's, D-Mass., Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2004 proposes increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.00. Some Republican leaders and employer-backed organizations have come up with a disingenuous explanation for their opposition to an increase, saying it would harm the working poor by costing low-wage workers their jobs. But would it help or hurt low-wage workers to put a few more dollars in their paychecks?

Fortunately, we don't have to rely on guesswork—we've got history to guide us. Let's look at what happened after the increase in the minimum wage that took effect in 1996 and 1997. Unemployment went down—not up—for workers across the board, including those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Wages and incomes increased for everyone—and, once again, low-wage workers were among the winners. Raising the minimum wage isn't the job killer that some conservatives claim.

Additionally, Sen. Kennedy's proposal would have less impact on the entire economy than the 1996-97 raise. Yes, his proposed increase from $5.15 to $7.00 is larger in dollar terms than the 1996-97 increase, which bumped the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15. However, it would help a smaller number of workers—7.4 million versus the last increase that helped 9.9 million workers. Because it would affect a smaller number of workers, it would have a smaller effect on the overall economy.

To support their dire job loss predictions, opponents often claim that economic opinion is settled against an increase. To the extent economists once believed that to be true, there’s been a recent sea change in their opinion and, today, a critical mass of economists voiced their solid support for an increase. In their statement, more than 560 economists unequivocally endorsed the Fair Minimum Wage Act’s proposed increase to $7.00 an hour. They agreed with a 1999 statement of the Council of Economic Advisers that solid economic research proves that past increases have had “very little or no effect on employment” and they believe “the benefits to the labor market, workers, and the overall economy would be positive.”

Another common myth spread by the opponents is that the minimum wage is poorly targeted, helping primarily teenagers and middle-income families who don't need the raise. Not true. While the minimum wage is not perfectly targeted on the poor, it is one of the best policy tools available to lift low-income families out of poverty. In their statement, these prominent economists confirm that “research has shown that most of the beneficiaries [of an increase in the minimum wage] are adults, most are female, and the vast majority are members of low-income working families.”

Twelve states and the District of Columbia have already addressed the inadequacy of the federal minimum wage by setting their state minimum above $5.15. While there is unfortunately little chance of passing a federal minimum wage increase in this Congress, there is still some hope that a few more states will increase their minimum wage. Fed up with congressional inaction, Florida, Nevada and New York are considering similar measures to help their low-wage workers. The citizens of Florida and Nevada will vote on ballot initiatives this November to increase their minimum wages to $6.15, and tie them to rise with inflation thereafter. The New York state assembly has already voted to override Governor Pataki’s veto of legislation to increase New York’s minimum wage to $7.15; the state senate is expected to hold an override vote when they return in November. In their statement, the economists explicitly endorsed these state efforts.

If measures in Florida, New York and Nevada are passed, more than 1 million workers will be helped directly. While that’s well below the 7.4 million who would see a pay raise if the federal level were increased, it’s definitely a big help to workers in those states.

In the face of growing support for a minimum wage increase, the self-interested opponents of a raise should stop crying wolf about alleged ill effects. And, from here on out, when politicians and the public demand an increase in the minimum wage, they’ll have hundreds of renowned economists on their side.

[b]Refer also to "An Analysis of the Recent Deterioration in the Fiscal Condition of the U.S. Government" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ...[/b]

... VP Debate: Attack, Deceive, Repeat ...

10.06.04 (2:11 pm) [edit]

"One hundred sixty-nine tenured and emeriti business school professors from several of the nation's top universities have written an open letter documenting the drastic failure of President Bush's economic policies and asking for a "dramatic reorientation of fiscal policy, including substantial reversals" of tax policy." - http://openlettertothepre side...

[b]What is truly pathetic, [i]is the cynicism [/i]with which the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] clearly feel that they can [i]vomit[/i] bold-faced lies, deceptions and falsehoods and [i]get-away [/i]with it ... Not all of "We the People" are[i] fooled [/i]however ...[/b]

At last night's debate, Vice President Cheney had a clear strategy: refuse to respond to tough questions, attack Edwards personally and, when necessary, deceive. Instead of taking responsibility for numerous errors in judgment over the last four years, Cheney reiterated his faith in failed policies. Instead of taking responsibility for his own voting record, Cheney engaged in petty attacks. Instead of coming clean with the American people, Cheney continued to play fast and loose with the facts.

[b]CHENEY DECEPTION #1: I'VE NEVER SUGGESTED A LINK BETWEEN IRAQ AND 9/11:[/b] Near the beginning of the debate, Cheney said, "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." That isn't true. On multiple occasions Cheney has suggested a connection, specifically emphasizing contacts between Iraqi officials and Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers. Appearing on Meet the Press on 12/9/01, Cheney said, it's "been pretty well confirmed, that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack." (The 9/11 Commission looked into this rumored meeting and found there was no evidence to suggest the meeting occurred. On the date of the supposed meeting, Atta's phone was used numerous times from Florida and there is no evidence Atta ever left the country.) Appearing again on Meet the Press on 9/14/03, Tim Russert mentioned that 69 percent of the public believed there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. Cheney replied, "I think it's not surprising that people make that connection." (The 9/11 Commission, after months of exhaustive study, found no evidence "indicating Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.")

[b]CHENEY DECEPTION #2: I'VE NEVER MET EDWARDS BEFORE TONIGHT:[/b] Cheney later said he was going back to the Halliburton issue but instead of addressing it, delivered a pre-packaged zinger: "I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." One problem: it's not true. Check out the photo http://www.americanprogressac...%7b65464111-BB20-4C7D-B1C 9-0B033DD31B63%7d/CHENEY_ EDWARDS.JPG , video http://www.americanprogressac...%7b65464111-BB20-4C7D-B1C 9-0B033DD31B63%7d/PRAYERB FAST.ASX and documentary http://64.233.161.104/search?...:S4X7WDzDUcoJ:static.highbeam.com/w/washingtontranscrip tservice/february012001/v icepresidentdickcheneyvic epresidentdickcheneydeli/ +%22+friends+from+across+ America,+and+distinguishe d+visitors+to+our+country +from+all+over+ evidence.

[b]CHENEY SAYS WE HAVE DONE "EXACTLY THE RIGHT THING" IN IRAQ:[/b] Cheney continued the administration's refusal that there have been any mistakes made in Iraq. He said, "What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the right same course of action." Cheney's comments came the same day former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator Paul Bremer said the U.S. "never had enough troops on the ground."

[b]CHENEY HAS NO RESPONSE TO ERROR IN JUDGMENT AT TORA BORA:[/b] Edwards stated that during the invasion of Afghanistan, "we had Osama bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora...This is the man who masterminded the greatest mass murder and terrorist attack in American history. And what did the administration decide to do? They gave the responsibility of capturing or killing...Osama bin Laden, to Afghan warlords, who just a few weeks before had been working with Osama bin Laden." Cheney responded by discussing John Kerry's congressional voting record in the 1970s.

[b]CHENEY HAS NO RESPONSE TO HALLIBURTON CHARGES:[/b] Edwards explained that he opposed no-bid contracts for Halliburton because, while Cheney was CEO, Halliburton provided false information to the government (conduct for which the company was later fined millions), did business with Iran and is under investigation for having bribed foreign officials in Nigeria. Cheney said he didn't have time to rebut the charge. So-called fact checkers from the New York Times said that Edwards stretched the truth because there is "no evidence Mr. Cheney has pulled strings on Halliburton's behalf since becoming vice president." But Edwards never made that charge. (Incidentally, there is evidence http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO... that Cheney has pulled strings for Halliburton while in office.)

[b]CHENEY REFUSES TO DEFEND HIS VOTING RECORD:[/b] Cheney, who spends much of his time on the campaign trail parsing the details of John Kerry's votes stretching back 30 years, refuses to defend his own record. Edwards noted, "he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors. He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa." Cheney's entire response: "Oh, I think his record speaks for itself and, frankly, it's not very distinguished."

[b]Sources:[/b]

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

"Cheney Was Road Kill", http://www.tblog.com/template...

Reality Check: Edwards Bested Cheney, http://www.tblog.com/template...

A Few of Tricky-Dicky-Boy's Many, Many Mendacities, http://www.tblog.com/template...

... "Cheney Was Road Kill" ...

10.06.04 (12:57 pm) [edit]

"IN BRIEF: Boy, was I ever wrong. If last Thursday night's debate was an assisted suicide for president Bush, this debate - just concluded - was a car wreck. And Cheney was road kill. There were times when it was so overwhelming a debate victory for Edwards that I had to look away. I have to do C-SPAN now, but stay tuned for more post-debate blogging in a little while." - Conservative Andrew Sullivan, http://www.andrewsullivan.com...

[b]"We the People" were witness to an embarrassing display of Cheney's continued BIG LIES about Iraq and US domestic policy in last night's vice-presidential debate ... Cheney is clearly [i]"smarter" (more clever)[/i] than Bush and as such, he is more effective at[i] getting-away [/i]with outright, bold-faced lies, deceptions and falsehoods ... However, his[i] skill [/i]at lying and betraying our nation with impunity should not cloak the fact that Cheney is unfit to serve our nation ... The Bush/Cheney tenure has been a miserable failure for our nation and the entire world community ...[/b]

[b]Cheney Checked Out[/b]

Considering he's tied up with two countries desperately in need of change, Vice President Cheney's dogged promises that he'd do the exact same thing if faced with the question of invading Iraq again made him look deluded, at best, and in utter disregard for the lives lost, at worst. And on kitchen-table issues like health care, jobs and taxes, Cheney's debate line was to promise more of the same—despite the fact that working families have seen a sharp decline in their standards of living in the past four years. Robert Borosage says the vice president has taken a long trip away from reality.

[b]Robert L. Borosage , a veteran strategist and institution builder, is co-director of the Campaign for America's Future http://www.tompaine.com/artic... , writes as follows:[/b]

[b]The invasion of Iraq, Vice President Cheney told us last night in the debate, was “exactly the right thing to do.” [/b]If he had to the make the same decision, he volunteered, he’d follow “exactly the same course of action.” Re-elect President Bush, he argued, for more of the same, at home and abroad. In contrast, Sen. John Edwards promised a “fresh start” with John Kerry, arguing “the country can’t take four more years of this kind of experience.”

Cheney’s implacable statement on Iraq is breathtaking in its utter disregard for the reality on the ground. It comes on the day that Prime Minister Allawi, the former CIA agent appointed interim head of Iraq, warned about the unstable security situation. It came on the day Paul Bremer, the administration’s main man in Iraq, admitted the catastrophic mistake of not having sufficient troops to secure Iraq after the invasion. It came after official confirmation that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, his army was in tatters, he was delusional and his regime was growing ever weaker. It came after the proof that there was no cooperation between Al Qaeda and Hussein, and the revelation that Mr. Bush’s own counterterrorist czar, Richard Clarke, had warned the invasion of Iraq would be a disastrous diversion from the war on terror.

This inescapable reality—the rising cost in lives and resources of the Iraq quagmire—does not inform the views or the policies of the president or Mr. Cheney. Cheney once more peddled the fiction that there was an ”established relationship” with Al Qaeda. He asserted once more that Hussein represented the major threat to give nuclear, biological or chemical weapons to terrorists, apparently forgetting that he possessed no such weapons to give (and never exhibited any such intent.)

Like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, Cheney was saying “in a rather scornful tone” that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” Truth has no claim on the president or vice president, Cheney seems to suggest, so long as they are the masters.

When the debate turned at long last to kitchen-table concerns, it was more of the same: trumpet success in purblind denial of reality and promise more of the same. On education, Cheney asserted No Child Left Behind is a grand success, ignoring the revolt of even Republican state legislatures, the distress of the teachers, the broken promise to fund the reforms by a total of $27 billion, much less the reality of the challenges facing our schools. On health care, he touted the prescription drug bill that actually prohibits Medicare from negotiating a better price for seniors. And of course, he ignored the conclusion of the independent Consumer’s Union that the sellout to drug companies will leave most seniors paying more for their drugs.

And on taxes, he asserted that the economy was in terrific shape, nothing need be changed, the tax cuts need only be made permanent. Ignore the worst job record since the Great Depression, the decline in family income, the rise in health care costs, the loss of more than two million manufacturing jobs. And of course, Cheney didn’t bother to explain how the Bush tax cut, cobbled together in 2000 when the country enjoyed prosperity and the budget was in surplus, could remain impervious to change as the country descended into recession, the attacks of 9/11 and record budget deficits. What once was a way to distribute the surplus was justified as a way to stimulate the economy. But since the package wasn’t designed for that, it is not surprising that it has not worked. Mr. Bush mortgaged the store, running up record deficits, but produced fewer jobs than his own economists predicted the economy would create without the tax cuts.

Edwards was effective at drawing the contrasts, even as Cheney was remorseless in his attack on the Democratic ticket. But what their clashes made clear was that while Kerry and Edwards offer the chance of a “fresh start,” Bush and Cheney offer only more of the same: the same policy and the same utter disregard for reality. The only question is “which is to be master—that’s all.”

... Fiscal Deterioration ...

10.05.04 (6:36 pm) [edit]

"The United States, land of gas-guzzling S.U.V.'s and air-conditioned McMansions, might do well to turn to the country some Americans love to hate for lessons on how to curb its reliance on imported oil: [b]France[/b]." - U.S. Slow Learner on Energy-Efficiency Front, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

[b]While other nations, including France, are leading the world in scientific endeavours and economic reforms to reduce their dependency upon crude oil-- the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] has squandered four years via ruthless recklessness, in failed and insane neo-con warfare, putting us in an irresponsible and dangerous debt situation, the highest deficit spending in our nation's history ... As our fiscal health and well-being is deteriorating rapidly, the traitorous Bushies and their corporate cronies [i]take-the-money-and-run [/i], and leave "We the People" to [i]bear the brunt-and-burden [/i]in destroyed lives and treasure wasted, and meanwhile dire problems of rising poverty; skyrocketing homelessness; lack of health care for tens of millions of our fellow citizens; increasing costs of energy; crumbling educational infrastructure; etc.-- still go unresolved and neglected ... This is outrageous, immoral and unconscionable ...[/b]

A new report by American Progress's Scott Lilly shows that "fiscal deterioration" http://www.americanprogress.o... over the last four years has been worse than at any time over the last half century. The FY 2004 budget deficit, announced at $422 billion, qualifies as the largest deficit in history. But "even more striking…is the speed with which the nation has developed [the deficit]. As recently as fiscal 2001, the federal budget was still in surplus, and as recently as fiscal 2000, the nation had the largest budget surplus in history." Lilly analyzes the various policies and events that have led to the deterioration. His number show "more than three quarters of the deterioration that occurred is attributable to [Bush administration] tax policy."

[b]Refer also to "Crude Oil: Co