Let's Get Paranoid: Rhetorical, Unanswerable Question of the Day

A lot of races were awfully close. Could it be an issue of e-voting machines being programmed (um, hacked, I mean) to mis-register, so to speak, so as to add GOP votes when cast for Dems -- and the hacking being predicated on a misestimate of anticipated Dem votes? What seemed to be enough of a hack to create a GOP majority still fell short? Could it be?

They Love Him, They Really Love Him

Wall Street Journal Readers, of all radical unreconstructed Maoists, Bolsheviks and Shining Path groupies:

New Portrait of Leadership: We're Proud of Our Leaders (Even the One who Cut and Ran)

Link.

Whiny Idiot

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit: The Democrats now have a chance to govern....

Link.

With a president who repeatedly states that he will not enforce laws passed by a Republican-controlled Congress, he's really going to enforce any laws passed by a Dem Congress??

Really, I really, really don't quite understand how people can repeatedly lie like this, knowing that they are completely full of crap....

And here's more idiocy, from Our Leader, unsurprisingly:

George W. Bush is getting a lot of credit this morning from talking heads who say that he's ready to work across the aisle with the newly empowered Democrats.

Link.

As. If.

The next two years is going to be all about setting up the GOP for 2008 by making their hostility for and hatred of America and Americans clear by refusing to go along with simple Dem policies such as a modest increase in the minimum wage and maybe even some fixing of Medicare D (The Big Pharma profit-enhancement program).

Watch. Wait.

Whatever happens, it'll all be a set-up.... All "rope-a-dope"....

I Voted and Here's My Proof!

[No link, found it with Google.]

First to vote in my district, no less :)

It's Not a Boycott When You Refuse to Give Business to People who Hate You

And the story is here.

Karl Rove Wishes that, Crazy as He is, He Could have Run an Ad Like this

Link.

Our Leaders' Success in the Middle East

The blunders by Israel and the United States have left Iran as the undisputed leader in the Muslim world. These blunders have empowered the radical Islamic groups allied with Iran and have indeed ushered in the birth of a new Middle East, one that understands that the days of Israel and Washington’s hegemony in the region are doomed.

Link.

So? 2008 Sarts NOW!!!!

We won? Or they lost?

And how much will things change?

Well, damn little, but still....

Or maybe it's a ramp-up to '08. With a GOP Senate, there's a limit to what can be done -- but no matter how little, it'll only be good.

And it will be prep for 2008 -- an opportunity to sell the party.

Meanwhile, let's see how Our Leaders spread democracy and free election, a brief reminder during our 1996, of their scumminess:

Our leader speaks:

President George W. Bush: "If I thought we were going to lose, would I tell you. We're not going to lose, in my heart of hearts."

Link.

But the question for Our Leader is: Did God not tell him about this? How in God's name could God not tell Our Leader about this? Or even Joe Lieberman?

A profile of a nutjob who lost and a clear description of his nuttiness. Really, all pols are nutjobs but, come on, the GOP pols are really deranged even by that low standard....

Hey, where were the evangelicals and other Christofascists? How in God's name did they drop the ball? Is their God going to be pissed?? Well, he can do no worse than overturning the results -- and there's a lot of them to overturn....

Anyway.

God knows Our Leaders tried to make it difficult to vote -- their means for free elections. (In the GOP democracy, nothing's free, not even -- especially -- elections.)

Wait, maybe here's a clue where God was....

And here's some idiocy:

Why Some People Shouldn't Vote
By N. Gregory Mankiw
October 2000

As election day gets close, get ready to hear the usual exhortations about voting. Whether Bush or Gore is the better choice is debatable, but responsible people all agree that everyone should be encouraged to vote. It's a national disgrace, the hand-wringers say, that millions of eligible voters fail to turn out in presidential elections. Voting is a civic responsibility, they tell us, because democracy works best when everyone participates.

The problem is, this isn't true. Sometimes the most responsible thing a person can do on election day is stay at home.

Before we're too hard on people who don't vote, we should ask why they don't. It is tempting for us voters to view abstainers as lazy free riders who aren't holding up their end of the democratic bargain. But is it really this simple? Not according to economists Timothy Feddersen and Wolfgang Pesendorfer. They wrote a 1996 article in the American Economic Review that is now on the cutting edge of explaining why people don't vote.

Feddersen and Pesendorfer suggest that nonvoting has to be understood together with a related phenomenon--the decision of voters to skip some items listed on the ballot. This behavior, which political scientists call roll off, is common. Feddersen and Pesendorfer give an example of a 1994 Illinois gubernatorial race in which about 3 million citizens showed up at the polls, but only 2 million voted on a proposed amendment to the state constitution.

Anyone who has ever entered a polling booth can easily see why roll off occurs. You come ready to vote for your favorite candidate in some race you've been following closely, but then you face a whole list of races and ballot questions, most of which you know little or nothing about. What do you do? You could quickly make a decision based on your scant knowledge. But what if the contest is very close? Do you really want the outcome based on your almost random vote?

So you choose another course: You skip the item. In practice, this means that you are relying on your fellow citizens to make the right choice. But this can be perfectly rational. If you really don't know enough to cast an intelligent vote, you should be eager to let your more informed neighbors make the decision.

Feddersen and Pesendorfer suggest that not showing up to vote is motivated by the same reasoning as roll off. Eligible voters who are less informed about the candidates than their fellow citizens choose to stay at home, knowing the outcome will be more reliable without their participation. By not voting, they are doing themselves and everyone else a favor. If the ill-informed were all induced to vote, they would merely add random noise to the outcome.

What's the evidence that this theory is right, that nonvoters are less informed than voters? Studies of voter turnout have found that education is the single best predictor of who votes: The highly educated turn out more often than less educated. A classic argument for why democracies need widespread public education is that education makes people better voters. If this is true, then the less educated should show up at the polls less often. They are rationally delegating the decision to their better educated neighbors.

So the next time a friend of yours tells you he's not voting, don't try to change his mind. It's a good bet that if he's not voting, he's not been following the election closely anyway. Maybe he watched a baseball game instead of the debates. Maybe he is bored silly with all the talk of targeted tax cuts, privatized social security, and campaign finance reform. Maybe he's as ignorant about public policy as those focus groups of undecided voters that are the media's latest darling.

So rather than pushing your friend to the polls, perhaps you should thank him for staying at home. He's making your vote count just a little bit more.

Why should insufficiently informed people be allowed to vote (besides the obvious Really, how do you decide who can and cannot?)?

Who else can judge Our Leaders other than their peers? People with vested interests only??

Well, in one sense that's all of us.

But here's one difficult example.

Should this person be allowed to vote?

An imbecilic Yale graduate.

How Elections Get Stolen in a Mature Democracy

The whole HBO special is here thanks to Google.

We Knew Since 1999 Toppling Saddam Would be a Disaster: But of Course That Was During the Clinton Administration

Link. That's the raw data, as it were, the full story is here.

Only the GOP Can Make US Secure, Not the Liberal Democratic Appeasers

So how are Our Leaders doing?

Before They Vote, Tell Your Friends Just How Bad Republicans Are at National Security - They'll Say "WTF!"
by RJ Eskow | Nov 6 2006

Wherever you are, this can be your last-minute campaign effort: tell your undecided friends and co-workers about the Republicans' stunning record of incompetence in managing our national security. They don't know the truth, so lay it on 'em. I promise you - they'll say "WTF!"*

WTF! "Homeland Security estimates that the detonation (of a rail-based) chlorine container would kill 17,500 and injure 100,000.

Yet despite its own calamitous assessment of the risk ... DHS continues to rely on the voluntary cooperation of the rail industry ..." (The Next Attack, by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon)

WTF! The investigative unit that was uncovering outrageous cost overruns and contract failures - failures that put our troops in danger - was just shut down by the Republicans in Congress.

WTF! Several studies have shown that airport screeners are no more effective at preventing weapons from getting on planes than they were before 9/11.

WTF! In another sign of lousy postwar planning, they failed to secure the arms depots in Iraq: "In the fall of 2004, U.S. intelligence estimated that at least 4,000 missiles from Iraq's arsenal could not be accounted for ... The RAND Corporation ... determined that if a single aircraft were destroyed by a missile, the direct economic cost to the United States would be $1 billion. The indirect cost ... would reach $50 billion." (The Next Attack)

Guess they were too busy stealing missiles to welcome us with flowers.

WTF! The missile defense system they keep bragging about is just a boondoggle for their rich contractor friends. It just keeps failing and failing.

WTF! Generals, defense experts, and even the Army Times have called for Rumsfeld's resignation, but they keep him in place anyway. If bullshit was bullets, his name would be Winchester. Talk is cheap and Rummy's the cheapest guy the've got. He's an amateur. Lose him.

WTF! They place politics over our national defense, time and time again: "A number of key appointments to White House posts involving career civil servants with vital experience have been held up because of concerns about the political loyalties of the individuals ... candidates report being flummoxed in their interviews by questions from White House staff about who they voted for in the last election." (The Next Attack )

WTF! The cost of bomb-detection machines at airports has skyrocketed, although the machines are so inefficient that their usefulness is being questioned altogether. Still, somebody's getting rich. (Funny how that keeps happening.)

WTF! There still has been no coordinated effort to create countermeasures against the use of private planes and/or ultralights in a terrorist attack. But did you hear that Michael Chertoff was just given a medal? Unbelievable. Must have had something to do with New Orleans.

Link.

On Way to Make Recruitment Numbers: Lie, Lie, Lie

Only the lies change, of course; lying to kids has been S.O.P. since, like, forever.

Out on the campaign trail, the president likes to remind voters that we're a nation at war. At a rally in Florida today, he used the W-word 15 times. "I wish I could tell you we weren't at war, but we are," he said. It's a "different kind of war"; Iraq is the "central front in the war"; Osama bin Laden thinks this is the "third world war"; Americans have to decide "which group of folks can best win the war."

"And as you go the polls," the president said today, "remember, we're at war."

It would be hard to forget -- unless you're an Army recruiter, it seems.

ABC News sent kids armed with hidden video cameras into Army recruiting centers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to see what recruiters are telling people about Iraq. Among the "misleading" comments the students caught on tape: A recruiter telling a would-be soldier: "We're not at war. War ended a long time ago."

When a student asked another recruiter about the odds that he'd be sent to Iraq, the recruiter said "slim to none." A third recruiter told a student that the United States isn't sending troops to Iraq anymore. "No," he said, "we're bringing them back."

An Army official tells ABC that recruiters who tell lies are the exception rather than the rule. But after watching video clips recorded by the students, the official acknowledged that he found it "hard to believe some of the things" his people were telling potential recruits.

Link. And more here.

Free Elections: What a Concept! Our Leaders Hate Them!

Democratic Reps. John Conyers and John Dingell are demanding that the Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission and the Federal Communications Commission investigate misleading and harassing robo-calls paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo has been tracking the calls. In them, a pre-recorded voice tells voters that they're about to receive important information about a Democratic candidate. If the voter stays on the line, he or she hears negative information about the Democrat. If the voter hangs up, a computer dialer redials the same number repeatedly, misleading voters into thinking that they're being besieged by calls by a Democratic candidate.

Link.

Another Great Success for Our Leaders!!

Iranian Military Tests Ballistic Missiles By CHRISTINE HAUSER

Published: November 2, 2006

Iran fired several missiles with a range of more than 1,000 miles during a military maneuver today, apparently to send a message to the United States and several of its allies in the Persian Gulf after they conducted naval exercises in the same area this week.

Link.

The Republicans love helping Iran, this going back to the Nixon/Kissinger administration -- correction: The Eisenhower administration.

So this is part of a Republican tradition.

The Farce that is the Republican Department of Homeland Security Continues to Fails Us

Link.

And then there's this:

Los Alamos computer disk was 'traded for meth'

Election Prep: Our Leaders' Scandals; an Overview

Science: An Inconvenient Truth

The scandal: The clear and present dangers of global warming haven't just met with a cold shoulder at the White House -- Bush officials have ordered a freeze on the facts. The White House kept a grip on scientists at federal agencies, limiting their contact with the media and issuing reminders to "stay on message" in interviews, according to government e-mails obtained by Salon this year through a Freedom of Information Act request. Employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have said that administration officials "chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether." The White House also blocked publication of research by NOAA scientists linking global warming with escalating hurricanes, according to a September 2006 article in the journal Nature.

The problem: An overwhelming majority of scientists, scholars -- and heck, even some policymakers -- believe that when it comes to safeguarding the planet's future, we should seek truth, not truthiness.

The outcome: In September, a group of 14 senators raised the problem with the inspectors general of NASA and the U.S. Commerce Department (which oversees NOAA), who have since launched formal investigations into the alleged coercion.

Further reading: "Climate-controlled White House"; "Brownout at the EPA"; "The Know-nothings"; "Does George Bush Even Know What Science Is?"

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Trumped-up Terror Busts

The scandal: It wasn't just the "Lackawanna Six" who got the Kafka treatment after 9/11. In February 2006 director of national intelligence John Negroponte warned Congress about "a network of Islamic extremists" in Lodi, Calif. Two men there were charged -- Umer Hayat, an ice cream truck driver, and his son, Hamid -- but the cases, riddled with faulty intelligence and coerced testimony, crumbled in court. FBI agents had pushed the two men into separate accounts about a training camp in Pakistan, but the confessions didn't square. "You can hear the agents literally dictate to [Hayat] what it is that they thought he was involved in," James Weddick, a 35-year FBI veteran who reviewed the interrogation tapes, told "Frontline" this fall. "And then he mimics back to them what he thinks that they want to hear."

Then there was the highly publicized bust by the feds in Miami this summer: A group calling itself the "Seas of David" stupidly dreamed out loud of blowing up the Sears Tower -- but lacked weapons, means of transportation and the al-Qaida "uniforms" they hoped to purchase from a terrorist-cum-FBI operative. FBI deputy director John Pistole admitted the group was "aspirational" rather than "operational." And then there were the three Arab-Americans locked up this year for the menacing act of buying a bunch of cheap cellphones at Wal-Mart.

The problem: You may be starting to sense a pattern here -- has the Bush administration been exploiting fear of terrorism as a political weapon? (Is the pope Catholic?)

The outcome: In the Lodi case, Hamid Hayat was convicted for attending a training camp and lying to the FBI, though the FBI never did any follow-up investigation in Pakistan; the defense has filed an appeal. Umer Hayat's case led to a mistrial. The seven "Seas of David" members await trial in March. Due to lack of evidence, terrorism charges against the cellphone buyers were swapped out for conspiracy and money-laundering charges -- which were later tossed out by a federal judge.

Further reading: "Real Threat or Fake Terror?"; "Is the U.K. Better Than the U.S. at Stopping Terror?"; "Be Very Afraid"

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Pat Tillman: The Hero Myth, the Ugly Truth

The scandal: Attempting to deceive the American public about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was nothing new from the P.R. department of Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon -- think back to the Jessica Lynch fable or the various Pentagon efforts to hide U.S. casualties -- but the Pat Tillman affair perhaps stands as the Bush administration's most craven and cynical attempt to bury a painful truth while maximizing political spin. When the former football star and Army Ranger was killed in Afghanistan in 2004, the Pentagon put out a press release implying that he'd died while courageously taking "the fight to the enemy forces." It wasn't until long after Tillman was awarded a Silver Star and his memorial service was televised nationally that the truth came out: He'd accidentally been killed by his fellow soldiers. In June 2005, columnist Robert Scheer reported that files from an internal military investigation given to him by Tillman's mother made it "unmistakably clear that the true cause of Tillman's death was known in the field shortly after he was killed and reported as fratricide up through the military command. Yet those facts were systematically kept from the family -- including Pat's brother and fellow Army Ranger, Kevin Tillman, who was serving in the same unit in Afghanistan -- while a markedly inaccurate story played itself out in the world's media."

The problem: The campaign of deception went all the way to the heart of the White House. According to a memo included in the Army's investigation, in late April 2004 -- right as the Abu Ghraib torture scandal was sending shock waves around the world -- a White House speechwriter requested information on Tillman ahead of the president's appearance at the upcoming White House correspondents dinner. There, Bush declared: "Corporal Tillman asked for no special attention. He was modest because he knew there were many like him, making their own sacrifices." By then the White House had already told the press that Tillman was among those who had "made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror."

The outcome: The ugly charade -- which the Army later absurdly blamed on "an administrative error" -- remains under investigation by the inspector general of the Defense Department and the Army Criminal Investigation Command. Last month, Kevin Tillman published a scathing criticism of the "illegal" war in Iraq.

Further reading: "The Truth About Tillman"; "The Army's Not-So-Heroic Damage Control"; "The Invisible Wounded"

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A Black Hole for Terrorist Suspects

The scandal: In November 2005, the Washington Post exposed an international web of secret CIA-run prisons chillingly referred to as "black sites." In unknown locations from the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to Eastern Europe and Asia, terrorist suspects were imprisoned indefinitely without charge, and subjected to brutal interrogation techniques including simulated drownings. The revelation of the prison network sparked international outrage, including from European allies, and further stained America's already Abu-Ghraib-blackened global reputation.

The problem: We all want the Khalid Sheik Mohammeds of the world to be brought to justice. We also want to protect the American principles that distinguish us from the terrorists -- secret kidnappings, torture and kangaroo courts not being among them.

The outcome: The White House refused to confirm the existence of the CIA-run prisons until the landmark 2006 Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld determined that the Geneva Conventions apply to all prisoners, including so-called enemy combatants. Following the ruling, Bush announced the transfer of 14 highly touted prisoners to the U.S. facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, another contemporaneous icon of American abuse. With a relentless Dick Cheney leading the way, the administration has continued battling for legal cover that would allow them to conduct military tribunals and harsh interrogations.

Further reading: "Tortured Justice"; "The Supreme Court Clips Bush's War Wings"; "The Bush Code of Secrecy"; "Wrong About Rights"; "America Can't Take It Anymore"

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Hurricane Katrina: One Heck of a Betrayal

The scandal: As one of our treasured cities came under siege from the worst natural disaster in modern U.S. history, where the hell was the federal government? Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff apparently was asleep on the job -- more than a day and a half went by before he deemed it "an incident of national significance." Bush didn't bother to interrupt his vacation in Crawford. Leadership in the Gulf Coast's time of peril was left in the hands of dithering FEMA chief Michael Brown, aka "Brownie," whose qualifications for the job amounted to falsified emergency-management experience listed on his résumé.

The problem: America watched unthinkable horror unfold beneath astounding political indifference and bureaucratic failure. For thousands stranded in New Orleans, hope and human dignity washed away as food, water and medicine ran out, and violence, sickness and death spread. It was four days before the National Guard showed up. Hundreds of firefighters marshaled from elsewhere to help were diverted to Atlanta for days of training. Months later, as evacuees had to begin vacating temporary residences, more than 10,000 FEMA trailers sat unused because of restrictions against use in floodplains. Nearly $1.4 billion in federal aid was fraudulently distributed, paying for everything from "Girls Gone Wild" videos to a two-month-long Hawaiian vacation.

The outcome: Two FEMA officials and a quality assurance rep for the Army Corps of Engineers were convicted in 2006 on bribery charges. While "Brownie" resigned as FEMA chief in the wake of the catastrophe, no federal leaders have been held accountable. Rep. Henry Waxman of California, who would likely serve as a next Democratic head of the House Committee on Government Reform, has vowed at least to review "waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayers' money" in connection with Katrina.

Further reading: "Timeline to Disaster"; "Halliburton's Gulf Coast Slaves"; "Cry for Katrina's Kids"; "No Direction Home"; Salon's complete Katrina archive.

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Iraq: The Central Front for Global Insecurity

The scandal: The Iraq war has poured fuel on the fire of Islamic radicalism and swelled the ranks of militants across the globe, according to the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, whose findings were leaked in September to the New York Times. Days later, Bush declassified portions of the report that showed that the war in Iraq was indeed a "cause célèbre" for jihadists. “If this trend continues," the report concluded, "threats to U.S. interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide."

The problem: Where to begin? How about: The Iraq war has poured fuel on the fire of Islamic radicalism and swelled the ranks of militants across the globe. The latest NIE, which is the highest amalgamation of findings from various U.S. intelligence agencies, is directly at odds with Bush’s long-running refrain that we're winning the war on terror. It also undercuts findings released by the Bush administration on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks claiming that "America and its allies are safer" and that much has been done "to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism."

The outcome: Never mind those pesky security concerns abroad -- time to focus on a witch hunt at home! Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, launched an investigation of minority staff members, hoping to string up anyone involved in the leak of the NIE's contents to the press. Meanwhile, Bush vowed just last week that Rumsfeld will continue to run the show at the Pentagon through 2008. Maybe Bush hasn't noticed that a growing number of active-duty members of the military, who've experienced the Iraq abyss firsthand, are calling on Congress for a major change of plan. And they've got some generals backing them up.

Further reading: "At War, in Denial"; "How the War in Iraq Has Damaged the War on Terrorism"

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Bush's Unethical Judges

The scandal: With the appointment of Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court got most of the attention over the last year -- but the White House has also worked to stack the nation's appellate courts with right-wing, corporate-friendly judges, some of them a little too corporate-friendly. As Salon and the Center for Investigative Reporting uncovered earlier this year, two Bush nominees to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge James H. Payne and Judge Terrence W. Boyle, broke federal ethics law by ruling in numerous cases involving corporations in which they owned stock. Meanwhile, a Salon/CIR exposé published just last week revealed that at least two dozen federal judges confirmed under Bush made political contributions to leading Republicans who were influential in their appointments, or to the president himself, while under consideration for their judgeships.

The problem: Federal judges receive lifetime appointments. Discovering that Bush has picked judges who may be in good company with the DeLay-Abramoff gang doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the integrity of the nation's courts.

The outcome: Following Salon's report, Bush withdrew his nomination of Payne, who subsequently had told the president that, among other reasons, he felt obligated to remain at his district court post in Oklahoma to see through an overhaul of that court's filing system. Bush has not withdrawn his nomination of Boyle; his fate still hangs with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Further reading: Money Trails Lead to Bush Judges; "Controversial Bush Judge Broke Ethics Law"; "Bush Judge Under Ethics Cloud"; the full Salon/CIR investigative series scrutinizing the federal judiciary under Bush.

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Iraq Budget Blown to Smithereens

The scandal: Thanks to a morass of murky contracts and failed oversight, more than half of the budget for some Iraq reconstruction projects -- and we're talking in the hundreds of millions here -- has been burned on overhead costs, according to a report released in October by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The overhead costs in some cases were as much as 10 times the expected amount. Sure, security in Iraq is expensive (see above) -- but according to the report, the most money was wasted, incredibly, on idle time. ''The government blew the whistle for these guys to go to Iraq and the meter ran," Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the inspector general's office, told the New York Times. "The government was billed for sometimes nine months before work began.'' Meanwhile, any guess as to who's leading the pack here? Yep, you got it -- Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc., with its various oil-facility contracts, tallied the highest level of overhead costs.

The problem: As columnist Paul Krugman noted last week, Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity in October, and much of Iraq’s population currently lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. If you're still having trouble doing the math here, Stephen Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense added it up recently: "These contracts were to design and build important items for oil infrastructure, hospitals and education, but in some cases more than half of the money padded corporate coffers instead."

The outcome: Soon enough, it will be anyone's guess. Last month President Bush signed the FY2007 Defense Authorization Act, which includes the termination of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the funding watchdog. The SIGIR will disappear by October 2007, regardless of the status of funds it was designed to oversee. Sen. Russ Feingold, who helped create the watchdog office, is indeed troubled: "American taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going in this costly war," he said last month. "This termination plan means that billions of dollars will go without proper oversight and auditing."

Further reading: "Accounting for $108 Million in Overcharges"; "The Buck Stops Where?"; "Halliburton's Iraq Gravy Train"; "Fill 'er Up -- With Taxpayer Dollars"

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Uncle Sam Goes Big Brother

The scandal: "Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity," the New York Times reported in a Page One bombshell on Dec. 15, 2005. According to "nearly a dozen current and former officials," the report said, the top-secret program was carried out without the court-approved warrants required by law for spying inside the U.S. In the three years since 9/11, the Bush government had secretly monitored the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of "hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people," according to the Times. This spring, USA Today reported the existence of a massive database at the NSA, containing phone call records of tens of millions of Americans provided to the government by major telecom companies. And in June, Salon uncovered evidence pointing to government surveillance of U.S. Internet traffic.

The problem: Bush has plunged America back into Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover territory, and perhaps beyond.

The outcome: In what promises to be a long legal saga, two federal district court judges have so far ruled against Bush: Judge Vaughn R. Walker in San Francisco, and Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit. In July, rebuking a mind-bending state-secrets claim by Bush administration lawyers, Vaughn allowed a suit to go forward against AT&T for allegedly collaborating with the NSA. In August, Diggs ruled that "The President of the United States, a creature of the same Constitution which gave us these Amendments," had "undisputedly violated" the First and Fourth Amendments, as well as the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. No doubt the Supreme Court will eventually have the last word. Until that time comes, the domestic spying presumably continues.

Further reading: "Is the NSA Spying on U.S. Internet Traffic?”; "The Bush Doctrine Under Surveillance"; "Uncle Sam Is Listening"; "Bush's Illegal Spying"

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The House That Corruption Built

The scandal: The Jack Abramoff influence-peddling ring began to unravel in 2004, but it was over the last couple of years that the scope of GOP corruption came into view. Among the dozens of players with fingers in the pie: Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana, Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio and David H. Safavian, former chief of staff of the General Services Administration. Perks that politicians and staffers enjoyed ranged from campaign contributions to prime sporting events tickets to luxurious vacations to high-end wining and dining. Meanwhile, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a GOP representative from San Diego on the House defense appropriations subcommittee, earned investigators' interest in 2005 for dealings with his own circle of friends in the defense contracting industry. Trafficking in cash-stuffed envelopes, luxury houses and yachts, Cunningham was exposed for taking upward of $24 million in bribes in exchange for securing government contracts.

The problem: Anyone who knows politics knows that corruption is part of the game on both sides of the aisle. But this has been a veritable epidemic of sleaze and criminality among the current ruling party.

The outcome: Cunningham pleaded guilty to bribery charges and resigned in November 2005. Abramoff pleaded guilty to charges of federal conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion in January 2006. Safavian was convicted in October of lying to investigators and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Ney pleaded guilty in mid-October to charges of conspiracy and making false statements -- and late Friday, finally resigned. DeLay was indicted on a conspiracy charge back in 2005 and resigned this June, but he has not been convicted of a crime.

Further reading: "Abramoff's 'Rock Star'"; "Abramoff-Scanlon School of Sleaze"; "The Hammer Falls"; "The GOP's Spreading Plague"

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Hushed Up About Corporate Media

The scandal: In September 2006, the L.A. Times reported that during Michael Powell's tenure as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, two internal draft reports exposing the ill effects of corporate media consolidation were quashed. What the agency prevented from getting any airtime: A 2004 report that found locally owned TV stations did a better job covering local news and issues, and a 2003 report pointing out a decrease in the number of radio station owners.

The problem: Powell and his aides denied knowing about the studies -- but clearly his corporate-friendly agenda would necessitate flipping the channel on such troublesome findings. Both Powell and his successor, Kevin J. Martin, supported reduced restrictions on television station ownership and the lifting of a ban preventing companies from owning a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same market.

The outcome: The looser FCC rules backed by Powell and Martin have been put on hold since 2004, after an appeals court said the FCC failed to sufficiently justify them. After getting ahold of the two suppressed reports, California Sen. Barbara Boxer blasted the FCC for "destroying every piece of a document they didn't like." The FCC's inspector general is investigating.

Further reading: "Indecency Wars"; "Last Stop Before the Media Monopoly"

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Republican Hypocrisy, in All Its Naked Glory

The scandal: Former Florida congressman Mark Foley's sexually predatory instant-message and e-mail exchanges with underage congressional pages were exposed by ABC News in late September. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert first claimed to have learned of Foley's behavior only after the story broke -- but later admitted that he had "no reason to dispute" statements by other Republican congressmen that they'd informed Hastert about the Foley problem beginning nearly a year before.

The problem: Could there be anything that strips bare Republican sanctimony more than this story? Foley was in charge of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus in the House, for God's sake. The notion that the Republican leadership had no clue about his behavior looked laughable within hours of the initial news. In the words of one former page Foley had in his online sights: "sick sick sick sick sick."

The outcome: Foley resigned the day the story broke, then ducked into alcohol rehab and had his lawyer announce that he was molested by a priest as a youth. ("I'm a victim, not a perp, see?") The House Ethics Committee and the FBI are conducting separate probes. Hastert has refused to resign, with Bush backing him up. Meanwhile, there's little more than a fig leaf left to cover up the truth about the hard-line antigay wing of the GOP. On Friday, another figurehead of antigay politics was exposed: Evangelical heavyweight and anti-gay marriage campaigner Rev. Ted Haggard admitted to receiving massages and buying crystal meth from a gay prostitute. He resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, though he denied the prostitute's claims that the two partook in a drug-laced sexual affair for the last three years.

Further reading: "The GOP's Dwindling Anti-gay Parade"; "The Glass Closet"; "Paging the Ethics Committee"; "Foley's Angels"; "It's the Coverup, Stupid"

Link; there's more there and live links....

The Kerry Joke

Of course, if he had so much trouble articulating -- which would be news to everyone -- he could have made his point directly....

Anyway, for prosperity:

According to Kerry he intended to critique President Bush:

Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.

But what he said was:

You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq.

Link.

2006 Election Guide: Message to Send Our Mis-Leaders

Link.

Our Leaders: Protecting Us by Spreading Nuclear Bomb-Building Secrets

You may have seen the New York Times story about recently declassified Iraqi documents that the Bush Administration put on a Web site as a result of pressure from Congressional Republicans, including Rick Santorum. It turns out some of those hastily declassified documents contained information about nuclear research that basically laid out how to create a nuclear bomb.

In light of those facts, we thought you might like to see the video of Rick's announcement of the web site, in which he takes credit for getting the documents made public and says he's not concerned that any of the information is sensitive, even though he admits to having "no idea" what's contained in the documents. Brilliant! Here's the video (partial transcript below).

Link.

Josh Marshall Wants to Know

[S]hould lightning strike and Dems take over, what will happen to those DC worthies whose career has been based on fellating the Republican power structure?

Link.

Josh asks rhetorically even though I'm certain he knows the answer; apparently he's ben under the weather.

But the answer to the obvious is this:

Those such as lobbyists will keep getting the big bucks. Appointees who lose jibs will be taken care of. Pundits will keep spewing the same old crap while of course dodging how they got it wrong.

Assuming of course the ruling party fails to hold on to power, if you know what I mean....

Our Leaders: Clueless but Still Leading....

This purports to represent a lot of second-guessing ad doubts among the chickenhawks and nutjobs who lead us. Me, I'm not sure they even know what they think. This whole fandango was based on, well, desire, and a complete absence of any detached analysis.

But then there's always schadenfreude. And it's great watching these guys sweat -- it's about the best we'll ever see. God knows there will be no punishment for them, the monied rightist establishment will make sure they're well taken care -- they're just doing their jobs....

Vanity Fair Exclusive:
Now They Tell Us Neo Culpa

As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.

by David Rose VF.COM November 3, 2006

I remember sitting with Richard Perle in his suite at London's Grosvenor House hotel and receiving a private lecture on the importance of securing victory in Iraq. "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform," he said. "It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding." Perle seemed to exude the scent of liberation, as well as a whiff of gunpowder. It was February 2003, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the culmination of his long campaign on behalf of regime change in Iraq, was less than a month away.

Three years later, Perle and I meet again at his home outside Washington, D.C. It is October, the worst month for U.S. casualties in Iraq in almost two years, and Republicans are bracing for losses in the upcoming midterm elections. As he looks into my eyes, speaking slowly and with obvious deliberation, Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat—an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"—is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating."

According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."

Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."

Having spoken with Perle, I wonder: What do the rest of the pro-war neoconservatives think? If the much caricatured "Prince of Darkness" is now plagued with doubt, how do his comrades-in-arms feel? I am particularly interested in finding out because I interviewed many neocons before the invasion and, like many people, found much to admire in their vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East.

I expect to encounter disappointment. What I find instead is despair, and fury at the incompetence of the Bush administration the neoconservatives once saw as their brightest hope.

To David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who co-wrote Bush's 2002 State of the Union address that accused Iraq of being part of an "axis of evil," it now looks as if defeat may be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them." This situation, he says, must ultimately be blamed on "failure at the center"—starting with President Bush.

Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Fearing that worse is still to come, Adelman believes that neoconservatism itself—what he defines as "the idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world"—is dead, at least for a generation. After Iraq, he says, "it's not going to sell." And if he, too, had his time over, Adelman says, "I would write an article that would be skeptical over whether there would be a performance that would be good enough to implement our policy. The policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can't execute it, it's useless, just useless. I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked can't do. And that's very different from let's go."

I spend the better part of two weeks in conversations with some of the most respected voices among the neoconservative elite. What I discover is that none of them is optimistic. All of them have regrets, not only about what has happened but also, in many cases, about the roles they played. Their dismay extends beyond the tactical issues of whether America did right or wrong, to the underlying question of whether exporting democracy is something America knows how to do.

I will present my findings in full in the January issue of Vanity Fair, which will reach newsstands in New York and L.A. on December 6 and nationally by December 12. In the meantime, here is a brief survey of some of what I heard from the war's remorseful proponents.

Richard Perle: "In the administration that I served [Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan], there was a one-sentence description of the decision-making process when consensus could not be reached among disputatious departments: 'The president makes the decision.' [Bush] did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him. The National Security Council was not serving [Bush] properly. He regarded [then National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice] as part of the family."

Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: "Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."

Frank Gaffney, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and founder of the Center for Security Policy: "[Bush] doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home. It also creates the sense that you can take him on with impunity."

Kenneth Adelman: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer—three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."

David Frum: "I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."

Michael Rubin, former Pentagon Office of Special Plans and Coalition Provisional Authority staffer: "Where I most blame George Bush is that through his rhetoric people trusted him, people believed him. Reformists came out of the woodwork and exposed themselves." By failing to match his rhetoric with action, Rubin adds, Bush has betrayed Iraqi reformers in a way that is "not much different from what his father did on February 15, 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up, and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did."
Richard Perle: "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I'm getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, 'Go design the campaign to do that.' I had no responsibility for that."

Kenneth Adelman: "The problem here is not a selling job. The problem is a performance job.… Rumsfeld has said that the war could never be lost in Iraq, it could only be lost in Washington. I don't think that's true at all. We're losing in Iraq.… I've worked with [Rumsfeld] three times in my life. I've been to each of his houses, in Chicago, Taos, Santa Fe, Santo Domingo, and Las Vegas. I'm very, very fond of him, but I'm crushed by his performance. Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me."

Eliot Cohen, director of the strategic-studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and member of the Defense Policy Board: "I wouldn't be surprised if what we end up drifting toward is some sort of withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the place in a pretty ghastly mess.… I do think it's going to end up encouraging various strands of Islamism, both Shia and Sunni, and probably will bring de-stabilization of some regimes of a more traditional kind, which already have their problems.… The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together. Unfortunately, it will probably take another big hit. And a very different quality of leadership. Maybe we'll get it."

Link.

2008: Another Potential Candidate to Forget

I refuse to engage in a pre-postmortem on why the election 2006 results won't make us as happy as a lot of press is predicting, if you know what I mean.

But when we do as poorly as I expect, I will give much credit for the last-minute turning-of-backs on the Dems on Kerry. He proved ultimately to run a true loser's campaign in 2004, has failed to show that he learned anything, and then that brilliant, unnecessary, stupid remark -- and as discussed here recently, he was also simply dead wrong.

Our Leaders: Freedom Means Ignorance; Continuing Down the Slippery Slope

The single lesson the wingnuts learned from Vietnam (and it's the wrong one): Keep us in the dark:

US stops audit of Iraq rebuilding

A US government agency that has exposed corruption in Iraqi reconstruction projects will close in 2007.

Washington lawmakers have reacted with shock at the discovery that an obscure clause in a military spending bill will terminate the work of the auditor.

Link.

And this proves one of the foremost reasons the 'publicans in Congress have to be kicked out: they rubber stamp everything this historically inept and arguably treasonous administration wants. They either voted for this bill thoughtlessly or knew that it was shutting down the agency and agreed with keeping voters ignorant. Neither is acceptable.

Who needs these enablers? Not us. They've done no good....

Olbermann: Our Leader Disses His Troops

Bush owes troops apology, not Kerry
Olbermann: Bush ‘appearing to be stupid’ about Kerry’s joke
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
Countdown
Updated: 4:55 p.m. CT Nov 2, 2006

On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political system veered toward the edge of the cliff, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked for the familiar figure of the prominent senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.

Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.

The congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in midair and smashed its metal point across the senator’s head.

Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Sen. Sumner somehow got to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him and delivered untold blows to Sumner’s head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him only because his cane finally broke.

Others will cite John Brown’s attack on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.

In point of fact, it might have been the moment, not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Sen. Sumner — but when voters in Brooks’ district started sending him new canes.

Tonight, we almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next new cane.

There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.

There is no line this president has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party in power.

He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.

And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or laughably transparent.

Sen. John Kerry called him out Monday.

He did it two years too late.

He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000, just as millions of us have been too cordial ever since.

Sen. Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.

He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that “if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

The senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.

The context was unmistakable: Texas; the state of denial; stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.

And Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.

They demanded Kerry apologize to the troops in Iraq.

And so he now has.

That phrase — “appearing to be too stupid” — is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.

Because there are only three possibilities here.

One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.

This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not “make the most of it,” who do not “study hard,” who do not “do their homework,” and who do not “make an effort to be smart” might still just be stupid, but honest.

No, the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.

The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Sen. Kerry said to fit your political template; that you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops or even on the nation itself.

The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario: that the first two options are in some way conflated.

That it is both politically convenient for you and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.

A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America.

You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn’t about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, in fact, is you.

So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans’ deliberate distortions.

Thus, the president will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right?

This president must apologize to the troops for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, “look like just a comma.”

This president must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong.

This president must apologize to the troops for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in harm’s way.

This president must apologize to the troops because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators.

This president must apologize to the troops because his administration ran out of “plan” after barely two months.

This president must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed.

This president must apologize to the troops for getting this country into a war without a clue.

And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.

We will not receive them, of course.

This president never apologizes.

Not to the troops.

Not to the people.

Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.

In calling him a “stuffed suit,” Sen. Kerry was wrong about the press secretary.

Mr. Snow’s words and conduct, falsely earnest and earnestly false, suggest he is not “stuffed,” he is inflated.

And in leaving him out of the equation, Sen. Kerry gave an unwarranted pass to his old friend Sen. John McCain, who should be ashamed of himself tonight.

He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not.

Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry’s head came in a context even more disturbing.

Mr. McCain demanded the apology while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois.

He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how “many of them have lost limbs.”

He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there, Tammy Duckworth.

Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one.

And exploit all the veterans and all the still-serving personnel in a cheap and tawdry political trick to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the president had been stupid.

And to continue this slander as late as this morning — as biased or gullible or lazy newscasters nodded in sleep-walking assent.

Sen. McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats — one of them his friend, another his fellow veteran, legless, for whom he should weep and applaud or at minimum about whom he should stay quiet.

That was beneath the senator from Arizona.

And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured out of a desperation and a futility as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Sen. Sumner.

This is our beloved country now as you have redefined it, Mr. Bush.

Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran in defense of military personnel whom that decorated veteran did not insult.

Or, get your henchmen to take advantage of the evil lingering dregs of the fear of miscegenation in Tennessee, in your party’s advertisements against Harold Ford.

Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness — and the bipartisanship — of Michael J. Fox. Yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple.

Oh, and sir, don’t forget to drag your own wife into it.

“It’s always easy,” she said of Mr. Fox’s commercials — and she used this phrase twice — “to manipulate people’s feelings.”

Where on earth might the first lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President?

From your endless manipulation of people’s feelings about terrorism?

“However they put it,” you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq, “their approach comes down to this: The terrorists win, and America loses.”

No manipulation of feelings there.

No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers.

No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn’t; no subtle smile as the first lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox’s back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning.

Winning in Iraq, sir.

Winning in America, sir.

There we have chaos — joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoints at Sadr City, the base of the radical Shiite militias, and the Americans have been ordered out by the prime minister of Iraq … and our secretary of defense doesn’t even know about it!

And here we have deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing — a code of deceit that somehow permits a president to say, “If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don’t have one.”

Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam.

Instead of “declare victory and get out” we now have “declare victory and stay indefinitely.”

And also here — we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition.

True domestic terror:

Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.

Braying newspapers applaud or laugh or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation.

A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published “national security information” that was openly available on the Internet.

One radio critic receives a letter threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun.

And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the senator’s supporters and thrown to the floor in full view of television cameras as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent — and the rage — of the day Preston Brooks found Sen. Charles Sumner.

Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things.

You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax, nor undermine the FBI’s case, nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times, nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller, nor beat up a man yelling at Sen. George Allen, nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox, nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.

No, you did not.

And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry’s rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

All you have to do, sir, is hand out enough new canes.

Link.

But Kerry's still wrong. All I know, which puts me one up on just about every pol, is what I know: The only Iraqi vet I know is a practicing attorney. Whatever one might want to say about lawyers, you can't drop out of school and become a lawyer.

That said, doesn't mean our leaders aren't a bunch of despicable scumbags, one more disgusting than the next. And each and every one an America-hating traitor.

Thank God We Live in a One Party GOP State; They're Making US More Secure, Like Liberal Democrats Would Not!

A former nuclear weapons lab contract worker took home not only classified information on a portable computer storage drive, but also about 200 pages of printed documents, her lawyer said Thursday.

The confirmation of the papers follows a watchdog group's report that an internal memo from the Los Alamos National Laboratory indicates the amount of classified information found at the woman's home is substantially larger than first thought.

Link.

And then this makes one feel safe and grateful for Our Leaders:

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: November 3, 2006

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Link.

Maher

New Rule: Now that we've sent "stay the course" down the memory hole, where Big Brother erases things, we've also got to retire: "The world is safer with Saddam Hussein out of power." "Don't you want America to win?" and "Wouldn't you torture someone if they knew where to find an atomic time bomb?"

One: The world isn't safer with Saddam out of power. The only people who are safer are the dead. A number which has, admittedly, increased. Saddam didn't have weapons, that he wouldn't give to Al-Qaeda, whose guts he hated. He might have changed his mind, built weapons he didn't have, and given them to people he hated, but then, so could Dairy Queen.

Two: Don't I want America to win? Are we talking about a war between Sunnis and Shiites, or the Winter Olympics? I thought we wanted democracy to win. 103 Americans died in Iraq last month. Was that winning? Would 1000 be a blow out? Also, didn't we already win? I remember reading about it on an aircraft carrier.

Three: The atomic time bomb that justifies torture. The Constitution specifically says you can't torture people, and we can assume they meant: Even if you really, really want to. Because you wouldn't make a rule against something people didn't want to do. The Eighth Amendment protects terrorists. The same way the First Amendment protects Dixie Chicks. The Framers thought protecting people from the government was more important than anything - even than protecting them from a mythical bomb. You can disagree, but that's not what our Constitution says.

Beyond the fact that it's, like, "illegal," the next problem with the pro-torture argument is that no one - in human history -- has ever been seconds away from defusing an atomic time bomb. You're not thinking of life on earth. You're thinking of "Goldfinger."

You can't make a reasoned argument against a law based on the most outlandish possible hypothetical counter-example you just pulled out of your ass. This is called the Fallacy of Accident. A twist on the old dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid. Like I have to tell you.

Link.

The Stealing of the Election 2006

Ain't freedom great? Certainly was back when we had it.

But that was then and this is now.

Goodbye, democracy, hello one party rule! All hail Our Leaders!

Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

That's exactly the kind of problem that sends conspiracy theorists into high gear -- especially in South Florida, where a history of problems at the polls have made voters particularly skittish.

A poll worker then helped Rudolf, but it took three tries to get it right, Reed said.

''I'm shocked because I really want . . . to trust that the issues with irregularities with voting machines have been resolved,'' said Reed, a paralegal. ``It worries me because the races are so close.''

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

Link.

And:

During the primary, memory cards were misplaced or lost and some poll workers were not adequately trained to operate the machines, the Associated Press reported. Approximately 18,000 absentee ballots had to be counted by hand because the machinery could not scan them, prompting a six-day delay in the final vote tally.

***

In Bexar County, there have been two major recounts since the installation of the ES&S system: the Congressional District 28 race in 2004 and the County Court-at-Law No. 9 race earlier this year.

In both cases, only the paper ballots were recounted. The electronic votes were not. That's problematic for a growing number of people who argue that without a paper record of the electronically cast votes, a meaningful recount is impossible.

Some states now require a VVPAT, or voter-verified paper audit trail. This system essentially takes the electronic ballot cast by a voter and creates a paper version for a voter to verify. The paper version is then held by the state and can be used as a backup in the case of a recount.

Texas has not certified a printer system, said Scott Haywood, spokesman for Secretary of State Williams.

"We have not seen a system yet that we feel comfortable certifying," Haywood said. He noted that some of the printer systems have issues with standards, ballot secrecy and accessibility.

***

In Cuyahoga County, a study done by the Election Science Institute found that problems with the attached printers and poll worker training on how to operate the printers had an impact on election day.
In addition, jurisdictions would have to take up the sticky issue of authenticity. If an electronic vote count and a paper ballot vote count differ, which one is the "real" result?

Link.

Our Leaders: Thank God, George W. Bush is President, He's Making Us Safer!

Screeners at Newark fail to find 'weapons'
Agents got 20 of 22 'devices' past staff

Anyone Interested in a Survey of Our Leader's (More Recent) Lies?

Not me but if the reader is... here.

Simple Solution to a Simple Problem: Pentagon Lies

The US defence department has set up a new unit to better promote its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet.

The Pentagon said the move would boost its ability to counter "inaccurate" news stories and exploit new media.

Link. (The shame! This story comes from the BBC! Where's our American Big Media on this??)

Actual problem: The lies are not coming through to the satisfaction of the delusional wingnuts in charge.

Solution: Every journalist must correctly parrot the Pentagon line, making it clear that what they report are not facts, just what the Pentagon claims. The story is not what the Pentagon claims, the story is the Pentagon's claims.

Scum at the Top -- But What Else is New?

It's Vietnam all over again after all.

At campaign rallies in Georgia and Texas Monday -- hey, what ever happened to swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania? -- George W. Bush said that the Democrats' plan for Iraq means "the terrorists win and America loses."

Link to this wisdom.

Sorry, George; anything to weaken you and "your" administration can only help America. You lose, we, the people, win.

But wait a minute, here is exactly how voting GOP helps and enables the terrorists! A vote for the GOP is a vote for all enemies of America!

Twelve Years Later, Things are Different, Except They're Not: Pathological Liars Keep Lying

1994: The Contract with (or was that "On"? Turned out that way...) America:

I then pointed out that we're now 12 years past 2004, when the Republicans all signed the Contract with America, whose 10th plank was the Citizen Legislature Act, a proposed Constitutional amendment limiting all Congressional service to, you guessed it, 12 years.

[Link.] (And the Contract is here too.)

So for the record, here's how my Rep, Sue Kelly, stands on the matter:

Limit punitive damages; term limits on Congress.

Kelly signed the Contract with America:

[As part of the Contract with America, within 100 days we pledge to bring to the House Floor the following bills]:

The Common Sense Legal Reforms Act:
“Loser pays” laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages, and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.

The Citizen Legislature Act:A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.

Link.

And here's her stand today -- with no explanation for her change:

Sue Kelly is trying desperately to be viewed as ANYTHING BUT A REPUBLICAN.

She even went so far as to get an endorsement from the "Independence Party of New York." This is not to be confused with "independent" voters, who are unaffiliated with any political party.

But, there is a problem here. Doesn't a candidate of a party run on the platform of that party?

Uh, oh!, one of the planks of the NY State Independence Party's platform is twelve-year term limits for House members. That's right, and Sue Kelly is completing her twelfth year in office! You would think that Kelly devoutly believed in this plank because she also signed Newt Gingrich's so-called "Contract With America", which was gung-ho about twelve-year term limits. That is, until she and her buddies got elected and dropped the idea altogether...

Link. (And see this too.)

Flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop, flip, flop,.....

And as a bonus, her goose-stepping, enabling record on important issues is here.

Just Another Big Media Dishonest, Dissembling, Crock-a-Crap

Republicans See Edge
From Early Voting

By JOHN D. MCKINNON and ERIKA LOVLEY
October 31, 2006; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- Down in the polls and with their majorities in Congress at risk, Republicans say they have some good news in early-voting statistics that suggest their voter-turnout machine is providing an edge in some tight races.

What's missing from this prominently placed article in the Wall Street Journal ($ sub. reqd.) is this: All the edge is is that apparently most or at least many of those to whom the GOP ops send absentee ballots have allegedly submitted them, in a greater percentage than the Dems. From this, one hopes, the assumption is that these were votes for the enablers of the destruction of our American democracy (that, as opposed to actually counting te votes).

In other words, there is nor clue whatsoever how any of these people voted.

In even fewer words: a prominently played non-story. Til the votes are counted.

Portraits of Our Leader

Our Leader loves dressing in uniform. Helps his supporters forget he was a draft-dodging chickenhawk and is still a draft-dodger at heart. Besides, unwarranted and inappropriate wearing of uniforms is a fascist thing....



Our Leader deep in presidential leadership thought. "What piece of the Constitution can we trash now? What more can I do to trash the great nation I twice swore to lead?"

Meet the Idiots who Lead Us

Meet one of Our Leader's Brains, the genius that is Karen Hughes, without whom W would be... well, not Our Leader.

A Thought for the Day, a Reminder

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke

Cleanliness and Godliness

Remember, President Cheney, cleanliness is only next to Godliness; it is not Godliness itself.

Like so many other people involved in politics these days, Mrs. Ryun has become obsessive about using hand sanitizer and ensuring that others do, too. She squirted Purell, the antiseptic goop of choice on the stump and self-proclaimed killer of “99.99 percent of most common germs that may cause illness,” on people lined up to meet Vice President Dick Cheney this month at a fund-raiser in Topeka.

When Mr. Cheney was done meeting and greeting, he, too, rubbed his hands vigorously with the stuff, dispensed in dollops by an aide when the vice president was out of public view.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/28/us/politics/28dirty.html?ex=1162699200&en=882219dc897c078b&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Today's Arts and Crafts Project

Print out two-sided. Read and memorize. Carry with you. Remember: Worse president (and administration) ever.

(From http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/sites/hightowerlowdown.civicactions.net/files/2006_AugustPoster_letter.pdf)

Another Great Enabler of the Disaster that is Current American Leadership

[W]hile Shays may want his constituents to know about his first--and most daring--trip to Iraq, he apparently doesn't want them to know how he got there. Shays's moment of triumph in Iraq came about because he happened to already be in the Middle East--attending the third Qatar-American Conference on Free Markets and Democracy in the tiny oil-rich nation of Qatar. Shays's visit was paid for by The Islamic Free Market Institute, a nonprofit group founded by GOP ally Grover Norquist and run by a protégé of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to help bring Muslims into the Republican fold. Days before he snuck across the border to cheer on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Shays was at the Doha Ritz Carlton, comparing Connecticut, a centuries-old, economically diverse democracy, to Qatar, a monarchy ruled by a single family since its independence in 1971. "This nation, like my small state, has always played a large role in advancing participatory democracy, civil discourse, and stable commerce," Shays told a well-heeled audience of Qatari politicians and businessmen over lunch.

Shays has been a strong advocate for public-disclosure rules over the years. "As public servants, we have a responsibility to uphold the ethics process, not weaken it," he told The Houston Chronicle in 2005, objecting to an effort to defang House ethics rules in the wake of revelations about Tom DeLay's overseas travels and ties to Abramoff. Those travel rules require members of Congress to file forms revealing all travel expenses paid by outside sources. But, despite his record of pushing for meticulous record-keeping, Shays's privately sponsored trip to Qatar was notably absent from his own annual federal financial disclosure form, filed in May 2004, in violation of House rules. Nor did he submit an amendment disclosing the sponsor of his Qatar trip until confronted in mid-October 2006 by The New Republic with internal Islamic Institute receipts for his plane tickets, which were provided by an Arab American source upset with Shays's foreign policy positions. Given his reputation and perennially contested district, it was a particularly foolhardy move.

From http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20061106&s=franke-ruta110606

Supporters of Values UPDATED

It turns out that the Republican National Committee is a regular recipient of political contributions from Nicholas T. Boyias, the owner and CEO of Marina Pacific Distributors, one of the largest producers and distributors of gay porn in the United States.

***

FEC.gov lists Boyias as contributing to the RNC three times in 2004 and two times in 2005. The NRCC got a little too. But only $250.

From http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010647.php

Update:

There's a moment in the Republican National Committee's Harold Ford Jr. attack ad -- it comes smack-dab in the middle of the two bimbo eruptions -- when a sleazy-looking fellow eyes the camera from behind his sunglasses and says, "So he took money from porn movie producers. I mean, who hasn't?"

Who hasn't? Well, it turns out that the RNC has. As Josh Marshall reports, the RNC has accepted a number of campaign contributions from Nicholas T. Boyias, whom Marshall describes as the owner and CEO of one of the largest producers and distributors of gay porn in the United States.

Now, surely there must be a difference between the porn money Ford took and the porn money the RNC is taking, right? There is: Ford gave his back.

Link.

Such beautiful minds....

Gore Speaks

In describing the state of the union, Gore quoted German philosopher Theodor Adorno on the rise of the Nazis.

Adorno conducted a kind of autopsy on the Third Reich and he said the first sign of this descent to hell was when this happened, and these are his words: All questions of fact became questions of power.
...

And I'm not drawing an analogy to what happened there. I'm not. But it's dangerous when we allow questions of fact to become questions of power.

Gore said questions of fact become questions of power, though, when Republicans "censor the scientific reports and when they ... allow themselves to believe that they can create their own reality.

Aldous Huxley once said, "All governments lie. But when they start smoking the same hashish that they're giving out to others, disaster lies.
This crowd has apparently begun to believe its own lies.

From http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/index.html#012742

Of course, he couldn't talk like this if he was actually running....

A Tribute

Link.

Not Staying the Course is Per Se Cutting and Running; If You're not Staying, You're Going

Bush: U.S. Will Not Cut and Run in Iraq

The headline isn't funny but the link (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,103216,00.html -- Blogger's bouncing embedded links these days) is. Have a laff!

GOP Love that Doesn't Speaks it Name -- Only Shows it

Her daddy is happy to run really slimy ads against Harold Ford. So if the ads weren't sufficient proof of his unfitness maybe issues regarding child-rearing (Mark Foley's specialty apparently) might do the trick.

But let me elaborate: If the daughter's actually gay, not an issue. Issue is allowing a young child at a party with free drinking.

But the photo isn't even as slimy as the ads run on behalf of daddy.

Link (yes, there's a real story to this.)

Down the Slippery Slope: Now Easier for Our Leader to Declare Martial Law

This whole piece is essential reading. And tell me again why we shouldn't punish the guys who passed the bill in the first place. Here's the opening, read the rest:

Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
Written by Frank Morales
Thursday, 26 October 2006

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."

A Rhetorical Question

If Our Leader will never say "Stay the course" again, does it change policy? Are we staying the course or not? And if we are, how is one to say it without saying "Saty the course"?