Rather Lame Attempt at Deception

Joshua Micah Marshall points out that Bush Administration recent released information on what really happened at Tora Bora contradicts their own releases during the incident. More more doublethink from the Administration talks.

Indeed, not only is what the president's campaign is saying not true, but as the April 2002 WaPo piece, discussed here, makes clear, what Kerry is charging is backed up to the letter by the administration's own formal and informal after-action analysis and reports about the mistakes made at Tora Bora.

Incredible Incompetence

Ever wonder where all the explosives have come from that are being used against our troops in Iraq? Our incompetent Defense Department had no plan to secure all the weapons, much less anything else in Iraq after the invasion. Check out Joshua's great article.

Some 350 tons of high explosives (RDX and HMX), which were under IAEA seal while Saddam was in power, were looted during the early days of the US occupation. Like so much else, it was just left unguarded.

What Every Conservative Should Know about George Bush

Perhaps we are seeing a collapse of secular conservative support for Bush. I've never understood why they've been so quiet so long. But finally some are stepping up. Here one of the founders of the American Conservative magazine endorses Kerry while promising to oppose him as soon as he is elected. There are many deeply ideological reasons for doing so.

This is an outstanding article and a clear denunciation of the Bush Administration policies. Thanks to Ray for the link.

Kerry's the One

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation's children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing clich� about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal, Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can't be found to do it, and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.

Lack of Vigilance

It seems that America doesn't heed much of the information that comes their way. Kevin has a great post on a poll that examines the differing opinions between Bush and Kerry supporters. It seems that Bush supporters are pretty ignorant of the truth about Al Qaeda and WMDs in Iraq. One could assume that they are either totally ignorant or that they choose not to believe what the press reports, instead choose to buy the propaganda from the Administration. I think its the latter. It would to tough to believe that people who were so apathetic that they don't follow the news would even bother to vote.

This seems to support my thesis about a large part of American voters. They seem to vote for the guy they like. Presumably that also means they believe him. Its hero worship at its worst.

Recruits: Officials Fear Iraq's Lure for Muslims in Europe

Solid evidence that Iraq has become the new Afghanistan. Thousands more Iraqis will die while we attempt to clean up this mess. This mess is much worse than Afghanistan had ever been. There is a chance that this one can't be stopped without destroying whats left of the Country and killing tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.

The New York Times > Recruits: Officials Fear Iraq's Lure for Muslims in Europe

France's antiterrorist police on Friday identified a young Frenchman killed fighting the United States in Iraq, the first confirmed case of what is believed to be a growing stream of Muslims heading from Europe to fight what they regard as a new holy war.

Redouane el-Hakim, 19, the son of Tunisian immigrants, died during an American bombardment of insurgents in Falluja on July 17, according to an intelligence official close to the case.

Intelligence officials fear that for a new generation of disaffected European Muslims, Iraq could become what Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya were for European Islamic militants in past decades: a galvanizing cause that sends idealistic young men abroad, trains them and puts them in touch with a more radical global network of terrorists. In the past, many young Europeans who fought in those wars came back to Europe to plot terrorist attacks at home.

The Rationality of Voting

I was over visiting ratboy's anvil and noticed a great post. Its a great read. Here is the part I want to comment on:
ratboy's anvil: A Comment Brought Forward
People who subordinate reason to faith, and not faith to reason, are at least borderline psychotic. They are throwing away a gift from God, Reason, in an egomaniacal, delusional belief in their own ignorant fantasies and dim imaginings of an unreal world they picked up on in some misreading of a religious or philosophical text, or just in the general cognitive dissonance that surrounds us all. They are hearing things, and seeing things, that never have and never will exist. Unfortunately, not all of them show symptoms: They don't all wander around aimlessly, babbling at the top of their lungs. The ones that really scare me are the ones who appear rational, even making a success in society. But their brains are riddled with insane ideas and dangerous beliefs, like some secret syphillis.
Unfortunately both sides of the aisle think they are the rational one. The fact is neither side is.
Humans are inherantly irrational. Our rationality is phylogenically recent. Everyone looks at the facts, makes an emotional decision about the facts and then IF they don't acknowledge that emotional aspect, they make up an explanatory fiction to make it all sensible. The challenge is to have a level of self awareness that allows: irrationality + facts = intuition. That takes a level of intelligence and/or common sense not all of us share.
People in general vote for their heroes. Single issue voters vote on an heroic issue. Who and what they percieve as their heroes depends on their values, their fears, and their personal experience before it ever gets around to facts. It takes an well functioning human being to get a really good mix to produce a good vote. Unfortunately, there are those among us who just can't get there from here.
They are the one's who are hurt by a corrupt process of campaigning. They are the one's who are caught up into the Rovian tactics and manipulated into voting against his/her interests. Do you think the average blue collar worker thinks his votes were wasted on Reagan? Nope.
Somehow, we have to instill a level of health into the process. Otherwise, those that play the game best win. I don't know how to do that.
We shouldn't be voting for the best game players.

Grand Dragon Worship

Very funny image from a new PBA blogger Scrutiny Hooligans

Doublethink "Dubya"

Great post by Kevin:
Preemptive Karma: The Pork Barrel President

Bush is the first President ever to not veto a single piece of legislation. He talks on the campaign trail about the need to instill fiscal discipline in Congress. What kind of a spineless twerp can't locate his own damn cajones long enough to veto a single Pork Barrel Bill in nearly 4 years? George "Dubya" Bush, that's what kind. Today President Bush quietly signed the latest Corporate Tax Break that landed on his desk. Long-time opponent of Pork Barrel politics Senator John McCain called the measure, "the worst example of the influence of special interests that I have ever seen."

Another great example of how Dubya provides substantial meaning to where his politics are in his actions, and his words are often deceptive. Doublethink Dubya, ala Orwell's 1984.

Bush, the Empire Builder

Here's a passionately worded editoral. I've come to like Herbert's columns. He is a one man band pounding the drum of righteousness. He reviews some of the more incredible Bush quotes from past weeks.

NYT Opinion > Bush's Blinkers

Does President Bush even tip his hat to reality as he goes breezing by?

He often behaves as if he sees - or is in touch with - things that are inaccessible to those who are grounded in the reality most of us have come to know. For example, with more than 1,000 American troops and more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians dead, many people see the ongoing war in Iraq as a disaster, if not a catastrophe. Mr. Bush sees freedom on the march.

Many thoughtful analysts see a fiscal disaster developing here at home, with the president's tax cuts being the primary contributor to the radical transformation of a $236 billion budget surplus into a $415 billion deficit. The president sees, incredibly, a need for still more tax cuts.

The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The president responded by turning most of the nation's firepower on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. When Mr. Bush was asked by the journalist Bob Woodward if he had consulted with former President Bush about the decision to invade Iraq, the president replied: "He is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to."

Last week the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said in a report:

"During the past year Iraq has become a major distraction from the global war on terrorism. Iraq has now become a convenient arena for jihad, which has helped Al Qaeda to recover from the setback it suffered as a result of the war in Afghanistan. With the growing phenomenon of suicide bombing, the U.S. presence in Iraq now demands more and more assets that might have otherwise been deployed against various dimensions of the global terrorist threat."

Even an Israeli think tank is speaking of Iraq as a training and staging ground for Al Qaeda since the US created chaos in that country. As another very good article points out, Al Qaeda is metastisized.

Marc Sageman, a psychologist and former CIA case officer who studies the formation of jihadist cells, said the inspirational power of the Sept. 11 attacks -- and rage in the Islamic world against U.S. steps taken since -- has created a new phenomenon. Groups of young men gather in common outrage, he said, and a violent plan takes form without the need for an outside leader to identify, persuade or train those who carry it out.

The brutal challenge for U.S. intelligence, Sageman said, is that "you don't know who's going to be a terrorist" anymore. Citing the 15 men who killed 190 passengers on March 11 in synchronized bombings of the Spanish rail system, he said "if you had gone to those guys in Madrid six months prior, they'd say 'We're not terrorists,' and they weren't. Madrid took like five weeks from inception."

Much the same pattern, officials said, preceded deadly attacks in Indonesia, Turkey, Kenya, Morocco and elsewhere. There is no reason to believe, they said, that the phenomenon will remain overseas.

Jesse The Body Proves He Has a Brain Too!

Apparently realizing the stakes in this election, Jesse has put aside political expediency and prospects for future political posts by speaking by endorsing John Kerry. The announcement was made without comment. I'll be looking for further comments on his position in the near future.
Jesse Ventura endorses Kerry
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has officially endorsed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

A Must Read: Karl Rove in a Corner

This is a must read article about Karl Rove. Think about the worse dirty trick that can happen in a campaign. Thats what this man is known to do routinely. Thanks to The Agonist for the link.
The Atlantic Online | Karl Rove in a Corner
How Rove has conducted himself while winning campaigns is a subject of no small controversy in political circles. It is frequently said of him, in hushed tones when political folks are doing the talking, that he leaves a trail of damage in his wake, a reference to the substantial number of people who have been hurt, politically and personally, through their encounters with him. Rove's reputation for winning is eclipsed only by his reputation for ruthlessness, and examples abound of his apparent willingness to cross moral and ethical lines.

Support shrinking for Bush's anti-terrorism policies: poll

So this is why Bush is sounding more and more desperate.

Support shrinking for Bush's anti-terrorism policies: poll

President George W. Bush's 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 new poll.



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 estimated that Kerry's gains were linked more to "an improving personal image than to growing strength on the issues. "In particular," he said, "the Democratic challenger has virtually erased Bush's advantage for honesty and having good judgment in a crisis. Bush continues to lead by significant but narrowing margins as the stronger leader and as the candidate more willing to take an unpopular stand on the issues," he added. The poll, taken October 15-19, had a margin for error of three to 4.5 percentage points.

Pentagon Board Finds U.S. May Need More Troops

One has to wonder if something is coming apart in the Administration. Fellow Republicans, public supporters of the President, and now the Pentagon are releasing information contrary to the "official" line coming directly from the Whitehouse. Is some of the Administration's unequivocal support is crumbling in the face of the election? Perhaps people have heard the official line a few too many times to believe it anymore and are begining to speak honestly to retain their own credibility. Or is the Administration back peddling in an attempt to shore up waning support?
One can only hope.
Pentagon Board Finds U.S. May Need More Troops
The U.S. military lacks sufficient troops for post-combat "stability and reconstruction'' operations, and should consider adding "significant'' numbers, a review by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board found. The report lists four main options for addressing what it calls an "enduring shortfall'' of troops: enlarging the military, shifting combat troops to post-combat duties, turning to the United Nations or allies for assistance, or scaling back "the number and/or objectives of stabilization missions.''
"We simply don't have enough forces for our overseas commitments,'' said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst and vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Washington research center, who was briefed by the Pentagon on the report. "The implication is that money will have to be taken out of Navy and Air Force investment accounts to increase the size of the force.''

This Administration is Looking Wackier in its Desperation!

Seems like I'm using the word wacky a bit much. But it seems to apply to this Administration and its buddies. Now Cheney says Kerry can't protect us from a nuclear attack. And Ashcroft, Big Brother himself, says Bush rules by divine Providence! Its hard to believe serious politicians would dare push these buttons. But they apparently believe there is a paranoid lunatic fringe in American large enough to offset any loses created by such statements. And I'm afraid they are right. The most popular book in America advocates that we trigger a World War in the Middle East to precipitate Armageddon and the Rapture where all the true believers will be "lifted to heaven" prior to the final battle. The sooner the war starts, the sooner they get to heaven.
The New York Times > Opinion > Chiller Theater
As the election draws near, the Bush campaign grows ever more irresponsible in its effort to scare Americans into believing that voting for John Kerry will bring on another terrorist attack. In Ohio on Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Kerry was incapable of understanding, much less acting on, the specter of terrorists' creeping into our cities with nuclear bombs "to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans." Attorney General John Ashcroft was back in Washington, meanwhile, suggesting that God had spared America from an attack since 9/11 because President Bush's team was assisting "the hand of Providence."

The Power of Nightmares

Our dreams are indeed very powerful. Ever noticed how after sleeping on a particular emotional dilemna, you awaken with a new insight, a sense of intuitive understanding? My experiences have been intellectually baffling yet emotionally centering. Somehow, out of a good nights sleep I've found equilibrium without knowing how or why.

This TV documentary series I'd love to see is not referenced again as to when and where it will be broadcast. Maybe BBC 2? The website and Google are silent. Thanks to The Agonist for the link.

The Scotsman - S2 Thursday - Was Islamic extremism born in the USA?

COULD 9/11 have its roots in one man's visit to a dance in Colorado in 1949? Could the current terrorist threat stem from the same man's belief that gardening was a selfish Western pastime? Could the invasion of Iraq have its origins in the cowboy TV series, Gunsmoke?

Intriguing ideas, and they were thrown up by a new documentary series, The Power of Nightmares. Its central thesis was that politicians exaggerated the terrorist threat in order to retain power, and its starting-point was the observation that, instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise protection from nightmares. Thus far thus arguable.

The Boycott of Sinclair is Still On, Your Help is Needed.

As I suspected (Sinclair Bobbing and Weaving), Sinclair has managed to find a way to broadcast his smear and appease some of his advertisers. He's just calling it "News", that is the reason his DC News Director spoke publically and was fired. Stand up and make sure you've been heard.

Sinclair Advertiser Boycott

Grassroots Efforts Needed 'Now More than Ever' to Send Strong Message to Sinclair Broadcast Group: BoycottSBG.com founder Nick Davis urges citizens concerned with preserving free and fair press to 'take action now more than ever,' in the wake of Sinclair Broadcast Group's latest move: to air a news special incorporating excerpts of a controversial documentary -- 'Stolen Honor' -- alleging Sen. John F. Kerry betrayed American prisoners during the Vietnam War."

Reed Hundt former FCC chairman Comments on Sinclair Broadcasting

A former FCC Chairman is speaking out about the Sinclair controvery. It seems there is indeed a reason for Sinclair to be worried and for the FCC to act IF the program is unbalenced. But, he wonders outloud if a blatantly partisan chairman we have will actually find his role. Thanks to Josh.
Reed Hundt former FCC chairman Comments on Sinclair Broadcasting
Now we see that Sinclair is not going to run the smear "documentary" after all. Instead they are going to run something they label as news, but which according to its current description is transparently another criticism of the Kerry campaign. What are we to make of this new tactic?
First, by backing away from their previous plan, Sinclair is effectively admitting either that their advertisers want them to maintain the broadcaster tradition of providing balanced and neutrail coverage of elections ( because without that advertisers risk viewer unhappiness being directed at the advertisers), or that Sinclair in fact may face many regulatory problems in the event that it violates that tradition. That much at least is progress toward some recognition of reality at Sinclair.
Second, Sinclair calling their proposed new show news does not make it news. What in fact one may think of their broadcast can and should be judged after the fact. But since Sinclair's relationship to objectivity, as reflected in its press statements, is rather attenuated, one should suppose that Sinclair's new show may well be judged just as much a smear as the so-called documentary they apparently will no longer run. As a result, advertisers have just as much ground to be wary, and the FCC just as much basis to do its duty....

More believable stories about suppressing the black vote.

Republican officials are often racists it appear. Everywhere you turn you hear many of these stories. The local Republican Party in Philedelphia hasn't even thought through their excuse. Voters have been coming to the contested locations for years, but the Republicans had to wait for the latest location lists. Talk about lame! Thanks to Carla for the link.

Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/19/2004 | Accusations fly as GOP seeks to shift polling places

A last-minute Republican effort to relocate 63 Philadelphia polling places has sparked outrage from Democrat John Kerry's presidential campaign, which says the choice of locations in heavily African American neighborhoods shows that the GOP wants to suppress black voter turnout. But the Republicans said the real outrage is the state of the polling places they want to change - many of them in bars, homes or vacant buildings....

To Democrats, the fact that nearly all of the challenged locations are in heavily African American parts of North, West and South Philadelphia suggests a racial motivation. All but four of the voting divisions in question have black or Latino majorities, according to city records.

"I've never witnessed a more wanton example of an effort to discourage minority voters from participating in an election," Kerry campaign spokesman Mark Nevins said. "It's despicable."

Nevins said that a last-minute move could confuse voters accustomed to voting at the existing locations, thus suppressing turnout. Polls say Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes are up for grabs, meaning that anything that affects turnout could make a difference.

Nevins noted that many of the locations had housed polls for years, and he questioned the late timing of the GOP's effort.

But to Republicans, who held a news conference yesterday outside a South Philadelphia bar that serves as a polling place, the status quo is a system geared to help an entrenched Democratic majority. With so much national attention on Democratic complaints about voting practices, the effort is an opportunity for Republicans to air their own voting gripes.

"Why are they forcing any citizen of this city to vote in an area that is not accessible to the handicapped or disabled, where someone may feel intimidated?" asked Deborah Williams, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, who said she signed 28 of the challenge petitions after being asked to do so by representatives of the state GOP.

She said the timing stemmed from Republicans' trying to work with the most up-to-date list of locations.

Pat Robertson: When Bush has friends like this, who needs enemies?

Pat Robertson has always been on my list as a wacko evangelist. He has a way of speaking in ways that really doesn't serve himself well and sounding, well wacky. Comments like women's liberation is a lesbian conspiracy contribute to that view. He's one of the guys that preaches that the way to heaven is through a World War in the Middle East.

Well, now my buddy has spit on Dubya's shoes. Its really pretty funny!

Pat Robertson Said He Warned Bush About Iraq War (washingtonpost.com)

Robertson, in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night, said God had told him that the war would be messy and a disaster. When he met with Bush in Nashville before the war Bush did not listen to his advice, Robertson said, and believed Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant who needed to be removed.

"He was just sitting there, like, 'I'm on top of the world,' and I warned him about this war," Robertson said.

"I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties.' 'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.' 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going to be.' And so, it was messy. The lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster and, B, messy."

Have Doubts about the Possibility of Voter Fraud?

It seems the campaigns are taking very seriously the prospect of vote fraud or voter intimidation. They have hired teams of lawyers to try to head off the problem. What is going on in this country? Has it become accepted that everyone cheats? Why is it that I hear so little about this prospect? Perhaps the average voter doesn't believe it could happen in America?

Thanks to The Agonist for this link.

Legal Battle for Presidency Underway (washingtonpost.com)

The ballots have yet to be counted, much less recounted. But attorneys for President Bush and John F. Kerry are already engaged in an intense legal battle for the presidency that could once again give the courts a say in who is declared the winner.

With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, an unprecedented number of lawsuits challenging basic election rules are pending in many of the battleground states. Both sides are in the final stages of training thousands of lawyers who will descend on the polls on Nov. 2 to watch for voter fraud or intimidation.

Sinclair is Bobbing and Weaving

It appears Sinclair has dodged a bullet by revising his plans for airing "Stolen Honor" this Thursday evening. But one must wonder just how much he's cleaned up his act. He still intends to broadcast portions of the program along with balencing film supportive of Kerry. But one has to wonder if this is merely a ploy to appease advertisers and still do damage to the Kerry campaign. One way or another, he has created a bit of a media frenzy that's guarenteed to bring many viewers to his program. I know I will be watching just to see if he's truly reformed.

Sinclair stock rises after Kerry film droppped | Reuters.com

Shares of Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. (SBGI.O: Quote, Profile, Research) jumped nearly 9 percent on Wednesday, a day after the TV station owner backed away from plans to air a film critical of Sen. John Kerry that Democrats have said is a blatant political statement masquerading as news.

Sinclair said after Tuesday's market close that it would only run portions of the program "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, about the Democratic presidential candidate's anti-war activities 30 years ago as part of an hour-long special on Friday.

British Support for Iraq is Falling

Labour representatives in the Parliment who had supported the war in Iraq are now saying no to Bush's request for 600 more troops for Baghdad. It seems public support, which has never been great, has sparked a Labour revolt on the topic. Its likely that the opportunity to exploit this lack of British public support for Blair's government creates prospects of enhancing the power of Labour in future governments.

It appears that Bush is burning bridges everywhere but in Russia and Iran!?

Labour MPs round on Hoon as slip confirms UK troops deployment

Furious Labour politicians warned Tony Blair last night that they had drawn a line in the sand over the American request for the deployment of more British troops. Previously loyal MPs who had supported Mr Blair in the vote on the war in Iraq said: "This far, and no further." Government whips reported back to Mr Blair of their alarm at the change of mood on the Labour back benches. "The worm has turned," said one anti-war Labour MP.

Iran Endorses Bush

Talk about a kiss of death! Thanks to

Daily Kos for this one.

Bush Receives Endorsement From Iran

The head of Iran's security council said on Tuesday the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran's best interests, despite the administration's axis of evil label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions over the country's nuclear ambitions.

One more Republican Speaks Up!

I guess I spoke too soon. Hopefully, there are many more moderate Republicans who will speak up, or at least vote for the right choice. Its a great statement in that he speaks for many moderate Republicans who have been largely silent in past years.

Thanks to Cyndy.

Statement by Republican Governer of Michigan William G. Milliken

The truth is that President George W. Bush does not speak for me or for many other moderate Republicans on a very broad cross section of issues. Sen. John Kerry, on the other hand, has put forth a coherent, responsible platform of progressive initiatives that I believe would serve this country well. He wants to balance the budget, step up environmental protection efforts, rebuild our international relationships, support stem-cell research, protect choice and pursue a number of other progressive initiatives that moderates from both parties can support. As a result, despite my long record of active involvement in the Republican Party, and my intention still to stay in the Republican Party, when I cast my ballot November 2, I will be voting for John Kerry for President.

Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy

Academia from around the world is weighing in on this Administration's blunderings in Iraq. These folks are on ourside. There are smart Republicans out there. Why are so few standing up? Or perhaps the greed Bush has stoked with his tax cuts has bought their silence.

Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy

Over 725 foreign affairs specialists in the United States and allied countries have signed an open letter opposing the Bush administration's foreign policy and calling urgently for a change of course.

The letter was released by "Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy," a nonpartisan group of experts in the field of national security and international politics.

The letter asserts that current U.S. foreign policy harms the struggle against Islamist terrorists, pointing to a series of "blunders" by the Bush team in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. "We're advising the administration, which is already in a deep hole, to stop digging," said Professor Richard Samuels of M.I.T.

Gore Charges Bush With Prewar Deceit

Its tough to call the President a liar. People don't want to believe someone who they trusted with such an important responsibility would so exploit his position to lie to get a war started. Supressing information that was contrary to his views is unconscienable. The fact is this administration does that as a matter of course. Every day you hear the kind of distortion that has been a routine part of this Presidents method of operation. His reliance on Orwellian Doublethink depends on a naive electorate. Lets hope they are more informed than he thinks.
Gore Charges Bush With Prewar Deceit (washingtonpost.com)
Former vice president Al Gore finished a two-year series of policy addresses yesterday by accusing President Bush of deliberately suppressing information about Iraq that would have undermined his case for war. Gore said that he had previously resisted saying Bush intentionally deceived the public in the run-up to the invasion but that the evidence now shows "that in virtually every case the president chose to ignore -- and indeed often to suppress -- studies, reports, information, facts, that were directly contrary to the false impressions he was in the process of giving to the American people."

The Pressure is on Sinclair Broadcasting, Cracks are Showing.

In the past week, Sinclair Broadcasting has lost advertising revenues, stock prices have fallen 8% and its Washington DC correspondant has been fired to speaking out against the planned broadcast.

Now it appears the program content has begun to evolve into something closer to a balance. Rather than showing the entire "Stolen Honor" piece, a excerpt will show along with a Pro-Kerry piece. But even so, the DC correspondant says its not news, but blatant propaganda.

Sinclair Fires Journalist After Critical Comments

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. on Monday fired its Washington bureau chief after the newsman publicly protested plans for a program about Sen. John F. Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities that is scheduled to run this week on about 60 Sinclair-owned stations.

Jon Leiberman, who had worked for the TV broadcaster for nearly five years, called the upcoming program "blatant political propaganda, not objective journalism," because it was airing so close to election day. He added that he had told his boss that he refused to work on it.

General Reported Shortages In Iraq Threatened Troops

General Reported Shortages In Iraq (washingtonpost.com)

The top U.S. commander in Iraq complained to the Pentagon last winter that his supply situation was so poor that it threatened Army troops' ability to fight, according to an official document that has surfaced only now.

The next day Bush says the troops have all they need. The only way a democracy works is when the populous is informed. Republicans don't want the democracy to work.

'Oops. I Told the Truth.'

I don't know how I survived while Friedman was on vacation. But here again is a scintillating article about our increasingly perilous future. Few of our politicians will tells us the truth. Because no one will vote for a doomsayer. Just how bad will it get before we have someone with courage.

'Oops. I Told the Truth.'

The leading edge of the American baby boom generation is now just two presidential terms away from claiming its Social Security and Medicare benefits. "With unfunded entitlement liabilities at $74 trillion in today's dollars - an amount far exceeding the net worth of our entire national economy - and with payroll taxes needing to double to cover the projected costs of Social Security and Medicare, how can any serious person not call entitlement reform the transcendent domestic policy issue of our era?" asks former Commerce Secretary Peter G. Peterson, whose book on this subject, "Running on Empty," provides a blueprint for a bipartisan solution to this problem for any president daring to lead.

Social Security was a great system until Congress started spending the surpluses on war begining in WWII, then the Cold War under Reagan and now Bush's War. The Republican Party has single handedly squandered the future of the baby boomers, and now the futures of today's children. They will be so busy paying back the National Debt that they won't have much interest in much more than survival. And they'll have to do it in a competitive environment like America has never seen:

The second group of boomers barreling down the highway are the young people in India, China and Eastern Europe, who in this increasingly flat world will be able to compete with your kids and mine more directly than ever for high-value-added jobs. Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they'll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work....

Without some major damage control, the US may well be bumped from its current economic role of information brokers with a generational brain drain towards the East. We need to be subsidizing science and math scholarships, and creating incentives for our children to become engineers. We will need their skills to just stay even in the future world economy.

The third group of boomers our next president will have to deal with is from the Arab world. The Arab region has had the highest rate of population growth in the world in the last half century. It has among the highest unemployment rates in the world today. And one-third of the Arab population is under the age of 15 and will soon be entering both a barren job market and its child-bearing years. There are eight Saudis under age 15 for every one between ages 45 and 60.... The Arab world is not even close to educating its baby boomers with the skills needed to succeed in the 21st century. Left untended, this trend is a prescription for humiliation and suicide terrorism.

The theory goes that we can impose our style of government in Iraq as a beacon of hope to offset the hopelessness of the youth in the Arabic world. The plan seems to have been grandiose to say the least. Iraq appears to be headed down the road of Shiite Theocracy, there seems no way around it. One can only hope there will be some form of elected government, but that seems to be far from assured. We appear to be squandering our strength on this one hope. Failure guarentees things will get much worse for us. We will need independance from oil. And we will need engineers to do it.

Without major changes soon, America will soon be headed towards the decline Rome saw. But know one dares say anything because the sacrifices necessary to head off total disaster will be unacceptible. Someone must step forward and lead with honesty, that is our only hope. Otherwise, we may well decline into a huge unemployed underclass with a wealthy elite plutocracy. The rest of us privileged to have a job may be little more than migrant workers at the mercy of our employers.

Bush: Believes He Follows Commands From God

This man is so scary. I find it incredible that he could get into this powerful a position. Anyone who is so sure of himself, so sure God commands him to act, cannot use any level of reason in his decisions. Given that too many of his advisors are from a similar belief, this Administration is truly on a crusade.

The New York Times > Magazine > Without a Doubt

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them.

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''...

That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and talk about with George W. Bush. That's impossible now, he says. He is no longer invited to the White House. ''Faith can cut in so many ways,'' he said. ''If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness -- that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There's no reflection.

''Where people often get lost is on this very point,'' he said after a moment of thought. ''Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not -- not ever -- to the thing we as humans so very much want.''

And what is that?

''Easy certainty.''

Broad Use of Harsh Tactics Is Described at Cuba Base

Finally what was apparent to me by inference is coming out from witnesses of the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo. Despite the fact that most of those held were said to present no danger, they were treated abhorantly by our own soldiers under orders.

Broad Use of Harsh Tactics Is Described at Cuba Base

Many detainees at Guantanamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases. The people, military guards, intelligence agents and others, described in interviews with The New York Times a range of procedures that included treatment they said was highly abusive occurring over a long period of time, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators. One regular procedure that was described by people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility at the naval base in Cuba, was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels, said one military official who witnessed the procedure. The official said that was intended to make the detainees uncomfortable, as they were accustomed to high temperatures both in their native countries and their cells. Such sessions could last up to 14 hours with breaks, said the official, who described the treatment after being contacted by The Times. "It fried them,'' the official said, who said that anger over the treatment the prisoners endured was the reason for speaking with a reporter. Another person familiar with the procedure who was contacted by The Times said: "They were very wobbly. They came back to their cells and were just completely out of it.''...

David Sheffer, a senior State Department human rights official in the Clinton administration who teaches law at George Washington University, said the procedure of shackling prisoners to the floor in a state of undress while playing loud music - the Guant�namo sources said it included the bands Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine, and the rapper Eminem - and lights clearly constituted torture. "I don't think there's any question that treatment of that character satisfies the severe pain and suffering requirement, be it physical or mental, that is provided for in the Convention Against Torture,'' Mr. Sheffer said.

It appears that these prisoners by and large were the run of the mill "prisoners of war". The Administration misrepresented who theye were, created a catagory of "unlawful combatant" based on a dubious premise that they were engaging in unlawful war practice. They were held and mistreated to gather information perhaps more than to contain the "danger" that most don't represent.

Why this May Be the Most Important Election Since 1860

We are at a turning point in our nationhood. It all started with a grand experiment where in the spirit of liberty, 13 colonies set out to govern themselves "by the people and for the people." This administration seeks to entrench the overwhelming influence of the wealthy elite so that denying their will would be very difficult. The ideologically and intellectual vacant "masses" would then become the responsibility of the elite. And they would care with a sense of stewardship we've seen before with Native Americans and the citizens of Iraq.

Thanks to Ray Garraud for a link to this great article that I think says it all.

Why this May Be the Most Important Election Since 1860

A number of leading Democrats commented at their convention that this year's election is the most important one in their lifetime. They're right. In fact, this is the most significant election since that of 1860. Then, as now, the very survival of a republican form of government is at stake.

You Like Real TV?

With all the popularity of so-called real TV, have you noticed the "real" is replaced with an unreal scenario played out by people hiding who they really are? Its a sad commentary on America to realize that true genuine discourse has become infrequent on our most cherished media outlet. Even some "news" programs have begun to acquire a "spin" to them.

Cross Fire is a classic example of this phenomena. This week, a most unlikely source, Jon Stewart, fired both barrels at the co-hosts of Cross Fire for "hurting America". Thanks to Betsy at My Whim is Law for a the video link. There is also a transcript link there.

IFILM - Short Films: Jon Stewart's Brutal Exchange with CNN Host

Did you know the Grand Canyon was made during Noah's Flood?

Wow! I didn't even know that! Good thing we have Bush around to correct history and science once and for all!

Caught Lying -- Park Service Sticks With Biblical Explanation for Grand Canyon

The Bush Administration has decided that it will stand by its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah%u2019s flood rather than by geologic forces, according to internal documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Vietnamese Witnesses Confirm Kerry's Version of the Swift Boat Incident

I almost never miss Nightline, but this night I did. Aaarrrggghh! But fortunately, Carla caught it and posted a link. It seems that the Vietnamese interviewed directly contradicted statements made by Swift Boat Veteran John O'Neill in the infamous campaign propaganda film:

Preemptive Karma: Finding truth in the thorny Bush of lies

The Administration finally gets around to freezing Zarqawi's assets?

This news is incomprehensible. Just where has the Administration been? Zarqawi has been in the news everyday with the most heinous terrorist acts. Yet it takes the Administration over a year to get around to freezing his assets?? Who is in charge??
Yahoo! News - U.S. Orders Freeze on Zarqawi Network Assets
The United States on Friday ordered a freeze on assets of the militant group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq (news - web sites). The Treasury Department (news - web sites)'s Office of Foreign Assets Control added Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group to its list of suspected terrorists and terrorism financiers. The move, which came a day after Britain ordered banks to seek out and freeze any assets of the group, blocks any accounts, funds and assets of Tawhid and Jihad in the United States.

Our Allies May Not Be for Long

There are signs of a disturbing trend worldwide. Our traditional allies increasingly see us as a threat to world security and even to their own culture. This is not about jealousy, its about staggering distaste for Bush and increasing distaste for American culture normally associated with the French.
Guardian Unlimited > Poll reveals world anger at Bush
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 sizable 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....
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.
I think its particularly telling that only in Russia and Israel is American public opinion on the rise. Surely, in part this is a reflection of their common concern for terrorism, but it also is related to the Bush Administration increased tolerates, even imitation of their oppressive tactics of limiting civil rights and increasing tolerance of "collateral damage" in engaging terror.
Israel is increasingly concerned about becoming a pariah in Europe. One would think the US would have similar concerns.

Quote of the Election Season!

Leave it to Hillary! And this is a great article.
MSNBC - Try a Slice of Humble Pie
As Hillary Clinton put it, Kerry may sometimes change his positions to fit the facts. But Bush changes the facts to fit his positions

Infantryman writes of having to buy his own supplies for Iraq

Bush didn't want to wait on Iraq. And because of that, untold numbers of our sons and daughters died because he sent them into harms way without the tools they needed. Armor, ammo, virtually everything they needed was in short supply.

In the first debate, John Kerry pointed out that our soldiers are sent to Iraq without proper equipment, leaving their parents back home searching the Web for proper body armor. "Humvees' 10,000 out of 12,000 Humvees that are over there aren't armored," Kerry said, as Bush Junior smirked. "And you go visit some of those kids in hospitals today who were maimed because they don't have the armament." That's the half of it. Here's a recent e-mail from a Marine infantryman, part of the original invasion force, who recently returned from combat in Iraq:

The Village Voice: Bring Your Own Boots by James Ridgeway

Sinclair Broadcasting Violating the Public Trust

I'm sure you've all heard about Sinclair Broadcastings decision to show a blatantly political special on its affliates in swing states. This is violating of the public trust a broadcaster takes on when getting into the television business.
If not, here is a short summar and a link to an article:
CNN.com - Programming protest - Oct 12, 2004
Sinclair Broadcast Group plans to have its stations air the show commercial-free. The Democrats charge that the broadcast group's plan amounts to an "illegal in-kind contribution to the Bush-Cheney campaign." McAuliffe says this is the first time the DNC has ever filed an FEC complaint against a media organization.
Sinclair Broadcast Group operates 62 local stations around the country, including stations in battleground states such as Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin. It insists there's nothing wrong with airing the program, "Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal."...
In April, Sinclair Broadcast Group made news when it ordered its seven ABC affiliates not to air a "Nightline" segment that featured Ted Koppel reading the names of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. At the time, a Sinclair executive called the broadcast "contrary to the public interest."
Tell their sponsors about your disappointment.
Sinclair Broadcast Group Advertisers

City, county spar over ballot supply

Perhaps I simply haven't been following previous elections as closely, but I've never heard such strong accusations about voter and ballot fraud until this election. Now in Milwaukee, it appears the local Republicans intend to make sure there isn't enough ballots in Democratic dominated Milwaukee.

Milwaukee Journal: City, county spar over ballot supply

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, citing vote-fraud concerns, is publicly balking at a City of Milwaukee request for almost 260,000 additional ballots in anticipation of high turnout for the Nov. 2 presidential election.

Mayor Tom Barrett blasted Walker's stance, and Common Council President Willie Hines Jr. immediately joined in, saying it was an attempt to suppress the central-city vote. "I'm going to lay this at the footsteps of the county if there aren't enough ballots in the city," said Barrett.

Barrett said that the 679,000 ballots the county had agreed to print were less than the amount prepared for the presidential election in 2000 as well as for the the gubernatorial race in 2002. He and the city's top election official said that the city requested 938,000 ballots from the county, which, by law, pays for and prints ballots.

The pattern seems to be the Republicans accuse Democrats of voter fraud without producing evidence and Democrats complain of documented evidence of Republicans creating obstacles for voters to get to the ballots. I'd say the lack of evidence in the accusations of voter fraud tells us what's really going on.

Debate Blues

I don't think I can watch this debate anymore.... I haven't heard a new idea yet. Its all been covered before. But someone out there hasn't seen the others. So it serves a purpose. But this is boring.... even annoying. I'll live.

Christian Right are the New Pharisees

I found a page where ALL the Presidential hopefuls are listed. Its a whole page full! I found this little known party with a very interesting message.

Christian Freedom Party-Minnesota

Thomas J. Harens (Christian Freedom Party-Minnesota) for President

and

Jennifer A. Ryan (Christian Freedom Party-Minnesota) for Vice President

Tom Harens, 50, is a liberal former Democratic state legislator (1981-83) and environmental activist. He is also a Harvard grad, was a 1997 candidate for St. Paul Mayor, and works as a public relations executive. Harens and his VP runningmate, Jennifer Ryan, qualified for a spot on the Minnesota ballot under the label of a new entity entitled the "Christian Freedom Party." Republicans quickly complained, saying that Harens is running simply to help Kerry in that key battleground state by attempting to draw Religious Right votes away from President Bush (much like the Dems complain about Ralph Nader's candidacy). Harens denies the claims, saying he is entirely independent of the Kerry campaign and that he left the Democratic Party several years ago to join former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura's Independence Party. In fact, Harens was the IP's candidate in his 1997 mayoral race and is still a registered member of that party. He collected his ballot petition signatures almost entirely by targeting 50 socially liberal churches, many with predominantly black congregations. Harens -- a self-described "progressive Christian [and] forever-practicing Catholic" -- agrees his party "technically" doesn't have any members, and that he is likely to draw votes from Bush ("If that’s the practical effect, I can’t do anything about it"). Harens argues today that both major parties are "morally bankrupted" and that "a true Christian" cannot vote for either Kerry or Bush. On his website, Harens notes that voting for Kerry could be viewed as a "venial sin" (of ignorance and rationalization) but voting for Bush could be a much more serious "mortal sin" (of greed, intolerance, and indifference to the plight of the poor). Harens explains: "Republicanism cares about one thing only -- taking care of Big Money family and friends ... the Christian Right Wing and their allies of Republicanism are the new Pharisees, the ones Jesus chased out of the temple." Harens -- who describes his Presidential campaign as a "Politics of Love" effort to "Send Christ's Love to the 'Christian Right'" -- is pro-living wage, pro-gay rights, pro-life, against the Iraq war, and pro-environmental protection laws.

Corporate Welfare Advances

Our ecomony is a wreck, our children in Iraq are dying daily because they don't have the resources they need to secure the country, and our Corporate dynasties stand up to the feeding trough to eat up more of our Country's resources. Special interests always seems to come before the national interest. Our great Country is surely in decline. Our future is tainted by the short-sighted excess of our elected leaders. Surely, we get what we deserve.
Senate Passes Corporate Tax Bill (washingtonpost.com)
"On issue after issue, page after page, [the bill] puts the interest of the big corporations above the public interests, above the hopes and dreams and everyday needs of the American middle class," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Grassley accused such critics of grandstanding yesterday, since he said virtually every senator had approached him for a pet tax break. "Nearly every member raised narrow interest provisions," he said. "So if there's some fault, we all share it. We all do it."

UN: Iraqi Nuclear-Related Materials Have Vanished

Of course we have enough troops in Iraq, Dubya says so. And he's doing all he can to make sure nuclear bombs don't end up in the hands of terrorists. Ya Betcha!

UN: Iraqi Nuclear-Related Materials Have Vanished

Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons are disappearing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington appears to have noticed, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported on Monday. Satellite imagery shows that entire buildings in Iraq have been dismantled. They once housed high-precision equipment that could help a government or terror group make nuclear bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report to the U.N. Security Council. Equipment and materials helpful in making bombs also have been removed from open storage areas in Iraq and disappeared without a trace, according to the satellite pictures, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said. While some military goods that disappeared from Iraq after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, including missile engines, later turned up in scrap yards in the Middle East and Europe, none of the equipment or material known to the IAEA as potentially useful in making nuclear bombs has turned up yet, ElBaradei said.

Spreading democracy and freedom through the barrel of a gun

Bush Says Kerry Wants 'Acceptable' Level of Terror

HOBBS, N.M. (Reuters) - President Bush stepped up his attack on Democratic rival John Kerry on Monday by saying the Massachusetts senator would prefer to reduce terror to an "acceptable level" rather than eradicate it. Two days before their final debate showdown in Arizona, Bush accused Kerry of failing to understand the U.S. war on terrorism while warning a Republican rally in New Mexico that the Democratic presidential nominee could shift directions like a western wildfire. "Now just this weekend, Senator Kerry talked of reducing terrorism to quote -- nuisance -- end-quote, and compared it to prostitution and illegal gambling. I couldn't disagree more," said the Republican incumbent, referring to a comment Kerry made in an interview with The New York Times Magazine. "Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance," Bush said. "Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive, destroying terrorist networks and spreading freedom and liberty around the world."

Simple solutions for complex problems have unpredictable results. Bush says it himself, we wants to stay on the offensive, place your children in harms way to spreading freedom and liberty around the world through a barrel of a gun.

His bellicose remarks tells you his heart. He and his administration knows best, so he's going to remake the world with the lives of your children. Sounds a bit grandiose doesn't it?

Clearly the Bush administration is attempting to make something of the NY Times article I commented on last night. Does he really think the American people are so ignorant that he can scare them into voting for him? If he makes things simple and emotional enough, will he carry the election? If so, America is in real trouble. If the majority of the electorate can be manipulated with simplistic scare tactics, then our "Great Experiment in Democracy" may just fail. Or at best, our Al Qaeda will have succeeded in radicalizing the US populous and provoked a fascistic backlash that will curtail our civil liberties in the interests of security. We've already seen just what that can mean for visitors to this country.

Will the day come that a person in your neighhood point at you and say "terrorist" and you will find yourself having to prove that you are not? Guilty unless proven innocent is already the rule for visitors to the US. A unknown number of American citizens have been treated that way as well. Take for example the Portland lawyer who was locked up for two weeks for a mistaken fingerprint in Madrid.

New York Times: Walking a Beat With Officer Muhammed

As Bush said in the debates, the US is training police officers. This is wholely inadequate and an accident waiting to happen. These police officers are being set up as canon fodder.
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Walking a Beat With Officer Muhammed
So even if Mr. Bush's numbers are correct, to claim 125,000 Iraqis will be "fully trained" for the Iraqi Army, National Guard, police and security services by year's end is to redefine the term so far downward as to be meaningless. Adnan Muhammed, in fact, is among the best trained police officers, one of only about 8,000 raw recruits who completed the full eight-week academy course. Thousands more were simply handed a badge and blue shirt on their first day.
The blame does not lie with Mr. Burke or the other civilians and American soldiers running the academies and advising Iraqi commanders. Rather, the Iraqi security forces are in such dreary shape for the same reason the rest of the country is a spiraling disaster: the Bush administration ignored the advice of its own people and tried to do the job on the cheap.

The Battle of the Pump

Thomas Friedman is a bright man, willing to think outside of the box. I don't agree with his position on Iraq or Israel, but he is smart enough to research his opinions and misses very little. In his column this week, he lashes out at the Administration's Energy policy. He calls it, "...the Bush energy policy should be called No Mullah Left Behind" because it supports the regimes in the Middle East who resist change towards democracy and modern economies: Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria, all major oil exporters.

Well worth the read. Also worth thinking about as you go to the polls.

NY Times Opinion > The Battle of the Pump

Building a decent Iraq is necessary to help reverse such trends, but it is not sufficient. We need a much more comprehensive approach, particularly if we fail in Iraq. The Bush team does not offer one. It has treated the Arab-Israeli issue with benign neglect, failed to find any way to communicate with the Arab world and adopted an energy policy that is supporting the worst Arab oil regimes and the worst trends. Phil Verleger, one of the nation's top energy consultants and a longtime advocate of a gas tax, puts it succinctly: "U.S. energy policy today is in support of terrorism - not the war on terrorism."

We need to dramatically cut our consumption of oil and bring the price back down to $20 a barrel. Nothing would do more to stimulate reform in the Arab-Muslim world. Oil regimes do not have to modernize or govern well. They just buy off their people and their mullahs. Governments without oil have to reform to create jobs. People do not change when you tell them they should - they change when they tell themselves they must.

The Arab-Muslim world is in a must-change human development crisis, "but oil is like a narcotic that kills a lot of the pain for them and prevents real change,'' says David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Where is all the innovation in the Arab world today? In the places with little or no oil: Bahrain is working on labor reform, just signed a free-trade agreement with the U.S. and held the first elections in the Arab gulf, allowing women to run and vote. Dubai has made itself into a regional service center. And Jordan has a free-trade agreement with the U.S. and is trying to transform itself into a knowledge economy. Who is paralyzed or rolling back reforms? Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, all now awash in oil money.

A Kerry Administration Foreign Policy

Here is a good article that outlines what a Kerry foreign policy might look like. Unfortunately, it was written for NY Times Magazine. It is way too long, meandering and finally gets to the meat of the topic in the last few pages. Below are relevant excerpts. The permalink has the whole article for those purests and for those who want concrete comparisons with Bush's policies...there are good ones.

Kerry has a much more reassuring view of the world. There are sound pragmatic reasons for that. Terrorism works by scaring a lot of people. Responding to terrorism with a Jihad of our own simply played into Al Qaeda hands. His recruiting depends upon convincing Muslims that America in on a new crusade with Israel to dominate and impose a Judeo-Christian culture on the Middle East. Bush's actions have played right into that view.

We are not in a war between countries or between civilizations as the Christian Right-wing fanatics suggest. We have a loose network of political criminals who have been emboldened by the events of the last few years to believe a new Muslim empire will rise from the ashes of Iraq. And they may well be right. An Iranian dominated Iraq will stiffle any hope of democracy in the Middle East.

Clearly Sistani is set to come to power in the election, if not in person, by surrogate. We have no idea what he will do. We do know his ties to Iran are strong. For all we know, Sadr may be his surrogate, acting as a foil to counter balence the power of the US and the flegling Iraqi government and to build his own stature in Iraq.

We are in a war of ideology. We can't win without changing the minds of millions of Muslims worldwide. We have been changing minds alright, but in the wrong direction. Bush's policies have enboldened Iran, pushed our Arab friends as far away as they have been in 40 years. We are no longer seen as a beacon of Democracy worldwide. How can we win a ideological war? Only with new leadership.

The New York Times > Magazine > Kerry's Undeclared War

''I think we can do a better job,'' Kerry said, ''of cutting off financing, of exposing groups, of working cooperatively across the globe, of improving our intelligence capabilities nationally and internationally, of training our military and deploying them differently, of specializing in special forces and special ops, of working with allies, and most importantly -- and I mean most importantly -- of restoring America's reputation as a country that listens, is sensitive, brings people to our side, is the seeker of peace, not war, and that uses our high moral ground and high-level values to augment us in the war on terror, not to diminish us.''...

More senior members of the foreign-relations committee, like Joe Biden and Richard Lugar, were far more visible and vocal on the emerging threat of Islamic terrorism. But through his BCCI investigation, Kerry did discover that a wide array of international criminals -- Latin American drug lords, Palestinian terrorists, arms dealers -- had one thing in common: they were able to move money around through the same illicit channels. And he worked hard, and with little credit, to shut those channels down.

In 1988, Kerry successfully proposed an amendment that forced the Treasury Department to negotiate so-called Kerry Agreements with foreign countries. Under these agreements, foreign governments had to promise to keep a close watch on their banks for potential money laundering or they risked losing their access to U.S. markets. Other measures Kerry tried to pass throughout the 90's, virtually all of them blocked by Republican senators on the banking committee, would end up, in the wake of 9/11, in the USA Patriot Act; among other things, these measures subject banks to fines or loss of license if they don't take steps to verify the identities of their customers and to avoid being used for money laundering....

In other words, Kerry was among the first policy makers in Washington to begin mapping out a strategy to combat an entirely new kind of enemy. Americans were conditioned, by two world wars and a long standoff with a rival superpower, to see foreign policy as a mix of cooperation and tension between civilized states. Kerry came to believe, however, that Americans were in greater danger from the more shadowy groups he had been investigating -- nonstate actors, armed with cellphones and laptops -- who might detonate suitcase bombs or release lethal chemicals into the subway just to make a point. They lived in remote regions and exploited weak governments. Their goal wasn't to govern states but to destabilize them.

The challenge of beating back these nonstate actors -- not just Islamic terrorists but all kinds of rogue forces -- is what Kerry meant by ''the dark side of globalization.'' He came closest to articulating this as an actual foreign-policy vision in a speech he gave at U.C.L.A. last February. ''The war on terror is not a clash of civilizations,'' he said then. ''It is a clash of civilization against chaos, of the best hopes of humanity against dogmatic fears of progress and the future.''...

Kerry's view, on the other hand, suggests that it is the very premise of civilized states, rather than any one ideology, that is under attack. And no one state, acting alone, can possibly have much impact on the threat, because terrorists will always be able to move around, shelter their money and connect in cyberspace; there are no capitals for a superpower like the United States to bomb, no ambassadors to recall, no economies to sanction. The U.S. military searches for bin Laden, the Russians hunt for the Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev and the Israelis fire missiles at Hamas bomb makers; in Kerry's world, these disparate terrorist elements make up a loosely affiliated network of diabolical villains, more connected to one another by tactics and ideology than they are to any one state sponsor. The conflict, in Kerry's formulation, pits the forces of order versus the forces of chaos, and only a unified community of nations can ensure that order prevails....

One can infer from this that if Kerry were able to speak less guardedly, in a less treacherous atmosphere than a political campaign, he might say, as some of his advisers do, that we are not in an actual war on terror. Wars are fought between states or between factions vying for control of a state; Al Qaeda and its many offspring are neither. If Kerry's foreign-policy frame is correct, then law enforcement probably is the most important, though not the only, strategy you can employ against such forces, who need passports and bank accounts and weapons in order to survive and flourish. Such a theory suggests that, in our grief and fury, we have overrated the military threat posed by Al Qaeda, paradoxically elevating what was essentially a criminal enterprise, albeit a devastatingly sophisticated and global one, into the ideological successor to Hitler and Stalin -- and thus conferring on the jihadists a kind of stature that might actually work in their favor, enabling them to attract more donations and more recruits....

This critical difference between the two men running for the presidency, over what kind of enemy we are fighting and how best to defeat it, is at the core of a larger debate over how the United States should involve itself in the Muslim world. Bush and Kerry are in agreement, as is just about every expert on Islamic culture you can find, that in order for Americans to live and travel securely, the United States must change the widespread perception among many Muslims worldwide that America is morally corrupt and economically exploitative. It is this resentment, felt especially strongly among Arab Muslims, that makes heroes of suicide bombers. The question vexing the foreign-policy establishment in W
ashington is how you market freedom. Is the establishment of a single, functioning democracy in the Middle East enough to win the ''hearts and minds'' of ordinary Muslims, by convincing them that America is in fact the model for a free, more open society? Or do you need to somehow strike at the underlying conditions -- despotism, hopelessness, economic and social repression -- that breed fundamentalism and violence in the first place?...

Biden, who is perhaps Kerry's closest friend in the Senate, suggests that Kerry sees Bush's advisers as beholden to the same grand and misguided theories. ''John and I never believed that, if you were successful in Iraq, you'd have governments falling like dominoes in the Middle East,'' he told me. ''The neo-cons of today are 'the best and the brightest' who brought us Vietnam. They have taken a construct that's flawed and applied it to a world that isn't relevant.''

In fact, Kerry and his advisers contend that the occupation of Iraq is creating a reverse contagion in the region; they say the fighting -- with its heavy civilian casualties and its pictures, beamed throughout the Arab world, of American aggression -- has been a boon to Al Qaeda recruiters. They frequently cite a Pentagon memo, leaked to the media last year, in which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wondered whether Al Qaeda was recruiting new terrorists faster than the U.S. military could capture or kill them. ''God help us if we damage the shrine in Najaf,'' Richard Holbrooke told me on a day when marines surrounded insurgent Shiites inside the shrine, ''and we create a new group of Shiites who some years from now blow up the Statue of Liberty or something like that, all because we destroyed the holiest site in Shiism.''...

If forced democracy is ultimately Bush's panacea for the ills that haunt the world, as Kerry suggests it is, then Kerry's is diplomacy. Kerry mentions the importance of cooperating with the world community so often that some of his strongest supporters wish he would ease up a bit. (''When people hear multilateral, they think multi-mush,'' Biden despaired.) But multilateralism is not an abstraction to Kerry, whose father served as a career diplomat during the years after World War II. The only time I saw Kerry truly animated during two hours of conversation was when he talked about the ability of a president to build relationships with other leaders.

''We need to engage more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans and the old forces they remember from the colonial days,'' Kerry told me during a rare break from campaigning, in Seattle at the end of August. ''And that's all about your diplomacy.''

When I suggested that effecting such changes could take many years, Kerry shook his head vehemently and waved me off.

''Yeah, it is long-term, but it can be dramatically effective in the short term. It really can be. I promise you.'' He leaned his head back and slapped his thighs. ''A new presidency with the right moves, the right language, the right outreach, the right initiatives, can dramatically alter the world's perception of us very, very quickly.

''I know Mubarak well enough to know what I think I could achieve in the messaging and in the press in Egypt,'' Kerry went on. ''And, similarly, with Jordan and with King Abdullah, and what we can do in terms of transformation in the economics of the region by getting American businesspeople involved, getting some stability and really beginning to proactively move in those ways. We just haven't been doing any of this stuff. We've been stunningly disengaged, with the exception of Iraq.

''I mean, you ever hear anything about the 'road map' anymore?'' he asked, referring to the international plan for phasing in peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which Kerry supports. ''No. You ever hear anything about anything anymore? No. Do you hear anything about this greater Middle East initiative, the concepts or anything? No. I think we're fighting a very narrow, myopic kind of war.''

It is not a coincidence that Kerry's greatest success in the Senate came not during his long run of investigations but in the realm of diplomacy. He and John McCain worked for several years to settle the controversy over P.O.W.-M.I.A.'s and to normalize relations with Vietnam -- an achievement that Kerry's Senate colleagues consider his finest moment. ''He should talk about it more,'' Bob Kerrey said. ''He transformed the region.'' In the same way, John Kerry sees himself as a kind of ambassador-president, shuttling to world capitals and reintegrating America, by force of personality, into the world community.

He would begin, if sworn into office, by going immediately to the United Nations to deliver a speech recasting American foreign policy. Whereas Bush has branded North Korea ''evil'' and refuses to negotiate head on with its authoritarian regime, Kerry would open bilateral talks over its burgeoning nuclear program. Similarly, he has said he would rally other nations behind sanctions against Iran if that country refuses to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Kerry envisions appointing a top-level envoy to restart the Middle East peace process, and he's intent on getting India and Pakistan to adopt key provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. (One place where Kerry vows to take a harder line than Bush is Pakistan, where Bush has embraced the military ruler Pervez Musharraf, and where Kerry sees a haven for chaos in the vast and lawless region on the border with Afghanistan.) In all of this, Kerry intends to use as leverage America's considerable capacity for economic aid; a Kerry adviser told me, only slightly in jest, that Kerry's most tempting fantasy is to attend the G-8 summit.

erry's view, that the 21st century will be defined by the organized world's struggle against agents of chaos and lawlessness, might be the beginning of a compelling vision. The idea that America and its allies, sharing resources and using the latest technologies, could track the movements of terrorists, seize their bank accounts and carry out targeted military strikes to eliminate them, seems more optimistic and more practical than the notion that the conventional armies of the United States will inevitably have to punish or even invade every Islamic country that might abet radicalism.

And yet, you can understand why Kerry has been so tentative in advancing this idea. It's comforting to think that Al Qaeda might be as easily marginalized as a bunch of drug-running thugs, that an ''effective'' assault on its bank accounts might cripple its twisted campaign against Americans. But Americans are frightened -- an emotion that has benefited Bush, and one that he has done little to dissuade -- and many of them perceive a far more existential threat to their lives than the one Kerry describes. In this climate, Kerry's rather dry recitations about money-laundering laws and intelligence-sharing agreements can sound oddly discordant. We are living at a time that feels historically consequential, where people seem to expect -- and perhaps deserve -- a theory of the world that matches the scope of their insecurity.

Theoretically, Kerry could still find a way to wrap his ideas into some bold and cohesive construct for the next half-century -- a Kerry Doctrine, perhaps, or a campaign against chaos, rather than a war on terror -- that people will understand and relate to. But he has always been a man who prides himself on appreciating the subtleties of public policy, and everything in his experience has conditioned him to avoid unsubtle constructs and grand designs. His aversion to Big Think has resulted in one of the campaign's oddities: it is Bush, the man vilified by liberals as intellectually vapid, who has emerged as the de facto visionary in the campaign, trying to impose some long-term thematic order on a dangerous and disord
erly world, while Kerry carves the globe into a series of discrete problems with specific solutions.

When Kerry first told me that Sept. 11 had not changed him, I was surprised. I assumed everyone in America -- and certainly in Washington -- had been changed by that day. I assumed he was being overly cautious, afraid of providing his opponents with yet another cheap opportunity to call him a flip-flopper. What I came to understand was that, in fact, the attacks really had not changed the way Kerry viewed or talked about terrorism -- which is exactly why he has come across, to some voters, as less of a leader than he could be. He may well have understood the threat from Al Qaeda long before the rest of us. And he may well be right, despite the ridicule from Cheney and others, when he says that a multinational, law-enforcement-like approach can be more effective in fighting terrorists. But his less lofty vision might have seemed more satisfying -- and would have been easier to talk about in a political campaign -- in a world where the twin towers still stood.

Why America Leans Right

George Will, despite his obvious conservatism, is a man for whom I have great respect. He is a brilliant man with a gift for both writing and speaking. I really enjoyed his political commentary on TV. Now I look foreward to his columns in the Washington Post.
George and I probably disagree about most things. But this man is both a realist and a pragmatist. We share a style of seeing the world. So, we agree about a surprising number of things. This article includes a perspective of history with which I agree.
Why America Leans Right
Liberalism's apogee came with Lyndon Johnson, who while campaigning against Goldwater proclaimed, "We're in favor of a lot of things, and we're against mighty few." Johnson's landslide win produced a ruinous opportunity -- a large liberal majority in Congress and incontinent legislating. Forty years later, only one-third of Democrats call themselves liberal, whereas two-thirds of Republicans call themselves conservative. Which explains this Micklethwait and Wooldridge observation on the Clinton presidency:
"Left-wing America was given the answer to all its prayers -- the most talented politician in a generation, a long period of peace and prosperity, and a series of Republican blunders -- and the agenda was still set by the right. Clinton's big achievements -- welfare reform, a balanced budget, a booming stock market and cutting 350,000 people from the federal payroll -- would have delighted Ronald Reagan. Whenever Clinton veered to the left -- over gays in the military, over health care -- he was slapped down."...
America, say Micklethwait and Wooldridge, is among the oldest countries in the sense that it has one of the oldest constitutional regimes. Yet it is "the only developed country in the world never to have had a left-wing government." And given the country's broad and deep conservatism, it will not soon.
Its amazing how when ideology is involved, two people can look at the same data, see the same connections, and then draw totally different perspectives. Here is an article I wrote back in August with amazing parallels with Will's:Watchful Vigilance
Upon, review I had a momentary thought that maybe he stole my thesis. I quickly disabused myself of that grandiose thought.
I do think he's missed a point. While he says the word "liberal" had great appeal in the 1920's, by the 1970's it had fallen out of favor. Then at the end of the article, he comments on how deep our conservatism is and how long it will be so.
I won't try to guess how long it will be. But if Nader gets his wish, Bush is re-elected and the middle class becomes radicalized, it maybe sooner than later. I think Centrism runs deep. Americans as a majority are moderate in their views. I suspect that most of those who don't vote are moderate in their views. They simply are turned off by the excess in the extremes of right and left, don't see how their little ol' vote can make a difference and so don't vote.
I think politics swing on a pendulum. LBJ's excesses enabled by a Democratic dominated Congress began the swing to the right. Excess brings on a rebellious response. Americans "threw the bums out" of DC.
Now we have a Republican President enabled by a Republican Congress driving the process far to the right, well into undermining our Bill of Rights, our values, and civil rights. When will the backlash come? When the silent majority realize what's happening. I hope for America's sake, its sooner than later.

Choosing Your Battles

I read through the editorial article written by Ralph Nader Complacency Is Not Democracy (see permalink for complete article), I was struck by the fact this man says he wants to make Kerry a better candidate by running against him. Then he lists off a number of issues that he wants Kerry to adopt as his own.

Frankly I'd bet Kerry would privately endorse most of this list, but Nadar wants to make it a public forum. I can't help but believe Nadar also wants the limelight too, but we won't go there now.

I remembered a quote I read that I thought came from Saul Alinsky in his Rules for Radicals. So I began searching the Internet looking for referance to that quote. I couldn't find one for Alinsky, but I did find a couple of interesting articles from the environmental movement relating to what I was thinking about.

I found this one particularly interesting:

Andy Kerr: It's not Either/Or—It's All or Nothing

The environmental movement is made up of radicals, idealists, and realists. Let's briefly examine each type:

Radicals seek fundamental change of the system. They believe environmental goals cannot be realized without deep socio-economic-political changes, and thus tend to be anti-corporate. Winning individual short-term battles is less important to them than changing the world in the long term. Many feel that the ends justify the means. The best radicals suppress emotion to implement their strategy.

Idealists are usually altruistic. They view the world from a very moral and/or ethical perspective, with individual responsibility and example paramount. They are emotionally involved and believe the ends never justify the means.

Realists view the world as a poker game--the cards are dealt and you do the best you can with your hand. Their actions focus on the short term. Although they believe the ends can often justify the means, they prefer to work within the system. They can live with trade-offs and do not seek radical change, if for no other reason than they see it as unobtainable....

To stretch the “boat-rocking” analogy, realists want to help steer the boat, however small the change of course; idealists would rather the boat not move at all if it doesn't turn far enough in the right direction; and radicals would just as soon capsize the boat.

After reading this, I realized that Nadar is a radical. He wishes to bring about rapid radical change. He fully understands that he is doing damage in the short run to the hopes of Democrats. His hope is to further polarize the nation. He wants to push people to the extremes in hopes of more people joining his left end of the spectrum. He's trading short-term gains for long-term radical change. He wants to promote a radical remaking of the political spectrum in hopes the middle class, pushed economically by the dominance of the right, becomes radicalized and pushed left far enough to adopt his agenda. Of course, the consequences are also extreme: many more people will fall out the middle class due to unemployment and shrinking buying power.

Most of the positions he wants Kerry to adopt are controversial. The others denying him significant campaign dollars. There are significant emotional concerns on both sides of each issue. There are good arguments supporting either side as well. For example, one of the most startling issues might be how voting rights of minorities are suppressed. The Right argues that there are thousands of Floridians who vote absentee from New York. They allege without evidence that they also vote Democratic in New York. So requirements to show ID or prove citizenship or whatever that limits access to the polls by the poor and ignorant merely balence the playing field. These sorts of debates bring out the darkside of humanity: prejudice, paranoia, etc. Neither candidate seem to want to touch these issues. I suspect they do so for pragmatic reasons. When things get too ugly, voters have a way of rejecting the mudslinger. I suspect the average voter doesn't want to believe there could be voter fraud in America.

The redistricting issue is a two sided coin. Since the GOP has been on top, they have been systematically redrawing congressional boundaries to favor their voters. Again, disenfranchising the poor. This tactic has been used for a long time. Since Reconstruction days, boundaries have shifted regularly toward electing one party or another. Can one make a persuasive case that one side benefited more than the other? Or can we expect the old "helping the victim" argument has a chance since Reagan days? Again, this is not an issue the average person can get a good grasp on.

So, yes, I'm a realist. The damage done in the short run by a second term by Bush is something we can do something about. Further polarizing and radicalizing this Country will create even more ugliness and pain than we have now.

We need to choose our battles wisely and get Kerry elected. The role of the press and increasingly the bloggers is to educate the public about what really goes on. Until sufficient people are educated on these issues, they can't be part of an election campaign without doing significant damage to the candidate. Look what's happened to Nader.

Yes, after the conventions, all candidates make a move towards the center. There is a reason for that. It works. The vast majority of Americans including those who never vote occupy the center of the political spectrum. The candidate who activates the complacent to vote, wins. That's Democracy.

An Inexplicable Vote for Death

This article is mind boggling. Who do you trust to appoint judges?
An Inexplicable Vote for Death
aul Gregory House was convicted of murdering a neighbor in 1985, before the era of DNA typing. The Tennessee jury that found him guilty was told that the semen found on the body of the neighbor, Carolyn Muncey, matched his blood type. The jury, citing the fact that Mrs. Muncey had been raped, said Mr. House should be sentenced to death.
It's hard to believe that the jurors would have come to that conclusion if they had known that the semen's DNA matched that of Mrs. Muncey's husband, Hubert, not the defendant. A 15-judge United States Court of Appeals panel in Cincinnati that heard a request to reopen the case knew that. Yet the judges recently voted, 8 to 7, that Mr. House should neither be freed nor given a new trial. They were not swayed by six witnesses implicating Mr. Muncey. Two said Mr. Muncey had told them he had killed his wife while he was drunk.
That eight judges would condemn a man to be executed under these circumstances is shocking. What's worse is that the judges divided along partisan lines. The eight judges appointed by a Republican president voted to keep Mr. House on the road to the death penalty. Six judges appointed by a Democrat wanted to free him, and the seventh called for a new trial. It's hard to dismiss the thought that the Republicans voted as a show of support for capital punishment, not on the merits of the case.
For Mr. House, the next stop is the Supreme Court. For the rest of us, his case should serve as a reminder that when we elect a president, we are also deciding the makeup of our courts.