Someone Else Who Saw The Lies

It's been an amazing new year so far in relation to the war in Iraq. It seems now that all of the major premises laid out in my paper, This War is About So Much More, are being verified at what can only be seen as the highest levels. With the release of An End to Evil by Richard Perle and David Frum the anti-UN and anti-EU motivations behind the war in Iraq were acknowledged. They also boldly admitted that the discussion with the UN were merely a distraction ploy while America built up its military presence near Iraq. Now, ex-Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, by far the most moderate of the original cabinet members, has come out acknowledging that there was a plan to invade Iraq within the Bush administration from day one. At this point I am considering the major points of my paper to have been validated. The war in Iraq was planned prior to the Bush administration's entry into office, and the war in Iraq was part of a larger program to disrupt the European Union and United Nations in order to promote American global preeminence. At this point, these facts have been substantiated from extremely high level sources.

The Truth About the Reagan Deficits

The ability to recover from the 1980s deficits was the result of three historical "flukes" that happened at the same time: a huge demographic bulge, an extremely strong dollar and a sudden peace dividend.

The contrast with the upcoming 20 years is stark. By 2020 the over-65 percentage of the population will have grown to more than 16 percent while the working-age population will have declined. The fastest growth is among the very elderly (those over 85). Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs (such as veterans' benefits) already account for more than half of federal spending. On top of this, the Bush administration has added a hugely expensive prescription drug benefit for the elderly. If no changes are made to eligibility for the programs, they will, by 2020, gobble up virtually all federal tax revenue.

With short-term interest rates lower than they have been in a half-century, the dollar is weak and getting weaker. At the same time the Treasury will have to find buyers for an ever-increasing supply of bonds to fund the deficit.

Conventional calculations of the budget deficit include the money being paid into Social Security today. Because there are currently more working-age contributors than claimants, the Social Security account is in "surplus." Strip that out and the true underlying deficit is more like $720 billion than the $521 billion quoted in this week's speeches.

el - She doesn't mention the Reagan tax increases that followed his first huge cut. Recognizing that the 1981 tax cut was excessive, the Reagan administration scaled back the cuts through tax increases, primarily the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. Most people don't recognize this because he did reduce the income tax rate, being very generous to the high brackets, twice. In 1981 the top personal rate was cut from 70% to 50%. Again tax rates were cut in 1986 to a 28% top rate. All of Reagan tax cuts benefitted the top 1% of taxpayers hugely. The Bush tax cuts have similar benefit ratios.

More on trickle down economics and tax cuts.

Today the over 50% of the national income goes to the wealthiest 20% of Americans. In 1980 the top 1% of tax filers received 8.45% of American AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) and in 2000 that figure had risen to 20.81% of the national AGI. Likewise in 1980 the average rate of federal income taxes that was actually paid by filers in the top 1% was 34.47% of income and by 2000 that figure had dropped to 27.45% of income. This is the first time since 1935 that such a large portion of the national income has gone to such a small portion of the population. In 1967 the wealthiest 20% only accounted for 43% of the nation?s income. The trend began in 1982. Between 1967 and 1982 middle-income households were gaining a larger share of the economy. What this means is that between 1982 and 2001 the bottom 80% of Americans have lost share in the nation?s economy. This was the inevitable result of Reaganomics. It was an intended result. Political control and economic control go hand in hand.

'War President'

Bush is so focused on being our "war president" that he seems to lack passion when he talks about health care or any other domestic issue except tax cuts.

Do not for an instant underestimate the capacity of Bush and Rove to find ingenious ways of focusing our minds on terrorism by the last three weeks of the campaign. They played Democrats for chumps on security issues in 2002. They're certain they can do it again.

But in the past month, Bush reached a tipping point. His credibility -- a huge asset since the days after Sept. 11 -- is in jeopardy. Three years of job losses and wage stagnation are taking a toll on middle-class confidence. I think Bush really does see himself as a war president.

If that's what he's betting the election on, he risks repeating the very experience he has devoted his administration to avoiding -- his father's. By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas

I used to have to create headlines like that - now the newspapers do it for me.

The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said Monday.

The Washington Post covers the same story but adds Republican businessmen quotes.

"These guys just don't get it, period," said Paul Kennedy, a self-described Republican and president of Kennedy Die Castings Inc. in Worcester, Mass.

Laurie S. Moncrieff, chief executive of Schmald Tool & Die Inc. in Burton, Mich., met with Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the front-running Democratic candidate for president. Yesterday, the lifelong Republican declared, "I'm starting to get on the bandwagon of, 'Whoever can beat Bush, I'm voting for him,' and I'm not the only one."

Gary Henderson, purchasing manager of Aircraft Precision Products Inc. in Ithaca, Mich., who has worked for Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and in Lansing, said, "Let's put it this way. The Bush/Cheney yard sign that was in front of my house may just stay behind the Oldsmobile this fall."

Homo Hobbit Erotica and Reaction

Could be a fake. Link is from boing-boing.

Feds End Search for More Mad Cow Cases

The Agriculture Department is ending its search for additional cases of mad cow disease, even though officials have not found several animals suspected of having eaten the potentially infectious feed believed to have caused the lone known case in the United States.

The end of the search does not close the books on the mad cow case. Officials do not know the source of the feed thought to have sickened the Holstein, and they cannot be certain that all 95 million head of cattle in the United States are free of mad cow disease. The international review panel warned of the probability of other cases.

Also unknown is what happened to all 10,410 pounds of meat that was recalled from the slaughterhouse that processed the Holstein and mixed its meat with that of 19 other animals. Officials theorize people may have eaten some of that meat.

About 50 countries have banned American beef, its byproducts or live cattle; among them are Japan and Mexico, the United States' best customers.

Widespread Computer Spying by GOP on the Hill

Senate Democrats who were briefed Monday about an investigation into how Democratic strategy memorandums dealing with judicial nominations ended up in the hands of Republican staff members said they now believed the problem was far more extensive than previously thought.

"The extent and duration of the improper access was both remarkably longer and more widespread than I had ever imagined," Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois said.

Democratic staff aides who were briefed on Mr. Pickle's presentation said senators were stunned to learn that more than 3,000 documents had been improperly read by Republicans. In addition, one aide said Mr. Pickle said the breach in security was the result of a person "hacking," or working to gain entry into the Democrats' files. After that initial hacking, the documents were easily available on the network.

el - Computer hacking is a federal crime. Even using computer information you do not have authorized access to is a crime.

Top Bush Aide Is Questioned in C.I.A. Leak

The Plame Game also Page One at the New York Times.

Getting ready for that big economic boom?

Dubya's new Economic Report for the Nation says that White House economic policies will create 2.6 million jobs in the US during 2004. Of course, this is the same report that said there'd be 1.7 million new jobs last year — when the actual figures show the year ending with a net loss of 53,000 jobs.

Personally, we think that buying lottery tickets is a more dependable personal financial strategy than waiting for Dubya's economic miracle to deliver us a new job. -- Magpie at Pacific Views

el - I couldn't say it better or more succinctly than Magpie so I gobbled the whole thing.

Chinese Workers Pay for Wal-Mart's Low Prices

Retailer Squeezes Its Asian Suppliers to Cut Costs

Bush credited for Guard drills

But time frame leaves questions

Bob Fertig of Democrats.com now is feeding the Boston Globe which is slowly releasing or realizing the story.

Fight Fight Fight

Very seldom do issues get resolved so that fairness rules the day. More often, the powerful throw a concession or two and call upon the rest of them for worship them for their magnamity.

Americans are unhappy, I believe, because we don't express our emotions well. We fear anger. We believe that there can only be one of two outcomes to a verbal duel: either you get all the chips or s/he gets all the chips. Violence and emotional banditry characterize our fights. We dread them because there is too strong a chance that we will lose. And losing means everything.

The partisanship among Democrats who base their votes on who they think can beat Bush is but another symptom of this malaise. They who ride the winds of opinion polls when choosing a candidate fear losing too much. So they end up selecting candidates who champion the status quo. In our lust for a win over the Republicans, we lose our principles and, even worse, our goals.

Much was made of Howard Dean being "too angry" for the presidency. I have found that those who claim to like anger the least often do the most to provoke it and to hide their own insecurities behind accusations of "boat rocking". I think we can stand more anger, more outing of the manipulators among us, more frank talk about the state of the economy, the war in Iraq, and the banal, undifferentiated conservatism of the corporate media. We need to be permitted to be angry, to fight for resolutions with others, for new agreements. We need to rethink how we fight and for what ends. If we pay better attention to the means, avoid name-calling, work on the immediate situation, and join in a search for the best cure -- the greatest good for the greatest possible number -- our fights will yield better results. - Pax Nortona

Plame Game Slamming White House

Bush aides testify - logs show several officials talked to Novak the day of the leak.

A federal grand jury has questioned one current and two former aides to President Bush, and investigators have interviewed several others, in an effort to discover who revealed the name of an undercover CIA officer to a newspaper columnist, sources involved in the case said yesterday.

The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to columnist Robert D. Novak shortly before July 14, when he published a column quoting "two senior administration officials" saying that Plame, "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," had suggested her husband for a mission to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to acquire uranium there as part of an effort to develop nuclear weapons.

White House witnesses have been asked about cell phone calls and have been shown handwritten, diary-style notes from colleagues, as well as e-mails from reporters to administration officials. In at least a few cases, the FBI questioning was portrayed as very aggressive, with agents homing in on specific conversations with journalists. "Even witnesses that they describe as being potentially helpful are being treated as adversaries," a source close to the investigation said.

A parallel FBI investigation into the apparent forgery of documents suggesting that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger is "at a critical stage," according to a senior law enforcement official who declined to elaborate. That probe, conducted by FBI counterintelligence agents, was launched last spring after U.N. officials pronounced the documents crude forgeries. - Washington Post Page One.

Hijacked for God

An American Airlines pilot terrified passengers when he asked Christians to identify themselves and allegedly went on to call non-Christians "crazy".

The pilot, whose name was not released, asked Christians on Friday's flight to raise their hands.

He then suggested non-Christians talk to the Christians about their faith.

He went on to say that "everyone who doesn't have their hand raised is crazy", passenger Amanda Nelligan told CBS news.

The pilot also told passengers he would be available for discussion at the end of the flight.

Global Warming Cooling Shrinking Upper Atmosphere

The average density of the air in the region more than 60 miles up — just a trillionth of that near the surface — has dropped 10 percent over the last 36 years, and it could decline by a total of 50 percent by the end of the century, scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington report.

The link between carbon dioxide and high-altitude cooling is much clearer than the gas's link to warming near the surface, scientists said, because the highest atmospheric layer, barely more than a scattering of ions and molecules, sees no confounding influence from clouds, weather systems and oceans.

Bush's records: Still AWOL

Salon - Watch the ad, get 24 hour access to all articles including comics, music and audiobook downloads and archives. The ad for me was a subscription deal. Or skip the link and read my digest.

Eric Boehlert - There is no indication Bush has ever authorized that all his military records, including those considered personal under provisions of the Privacy Act, be made public.

Bush's medical military records, for instance, have never been released to the general public. Nor have any disciplinary reviews, pay stubs, tax records, or personal letters, which would help determine his exact whereabouts in 1972-73. According to the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act, those documents remain under seal unless the military personnel in question (or the next of kin) authorize their release. But NARA offers veterans a sample form to approve that release.

If Bush had given his permission in 2000 for private information from his military files to be released, his signed authorization would be on file. But there is no evidence yet produced that he did.

When asked about the president's offer to release "everything," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters during Monday's daily press briefing, "We made everything we had available during the 2000 campaign."

el - Note that exact phrasing and how an aide could use it.

Some of the other Salon new articles:

Kerry's army invades Bush country Virginia might seem redder than red, but the Democratic front-runner hopes his military service will give him a beachhead in states like this, where Bush's support suddenly seems shaky
By Josh Benson

The partisan "mastermind" in charge of Bush's intel probe Whenever there's a vast right-wing conspiracy, Judge Laurence Silberman keeps turning up
By Michelle Goldberg

George W. Bush, the doubleplusgood doublespeaker! In his interview on "Meet the Press," the president proved he has mastered the Orwellian art of duckspeak
By Christopher Ketcham

Voting machine showdown A leading maker of computer election equipment defends itself in court against charges that it overreached itself in trying to stifle critics
By Farhad Manjoo

Building a better Bush How an Andover-Yale preppy, scion of one of our nation's most powerful families, was reinvented as a straight-shootin' Texan with "regular guy" values. An excerpt from "Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You"
By Paul Waldman

"Feminine Persuasion"
From depicting petting to coitus to childbirth, art about sex is different if it's made by women.
By David Bowman

A delicious voice speaks of abominable things
Tim Curry's hambone audio recordings of the Lemony Snicket books make these classics of mock-serious children's literature even more delightful.

To listen to a sample of "A Series of Unfortunate Events #9: The Carnivorous Carnival," click here.

The anti-war sampler of mp3s

Here's one: Ani DiFranco: "Self Evident"
Download: MP3(from righteousbabe.com)

Salon - well worth paying for unless you are unemployed. Take the free look around for a day. Do it again next week and then pay to eliminate the advertising.

I receive no compensation of any kind for this shilling. I like them.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Krugman -- the payroll numbers tell a dismal story. Since the recovery officially began in November 2001, employment has actually fallen by half a percent, while the working-age population has increased about 2.4 percent. By this measure, jobs are becoming ever scarcer.

The household survey, on which the official unemployment rate is based, tells a less dismal but far from happy story. (Why the discrepancy? We don't know.) The number of people who say they have jobs has risen since the recovery began — but has still lagged behind population growth.

The only seemingly favorable statistic is the unemployment rate, which has recently fallen to 5.6 percent, the same as in November 2001. But how is that possible, when employment has grown more slowly than the population, or even declined? The answer is that people aren't counted as unemployed unless they're looking for work, and a growing fraction of the population isn't even looking. It's hard to see how this is good news.

Other indicators continue to suggest a grim job picture. In the last three months, more than 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work more than 15 weeks. That's the worst number since 1983, and a sign that jobs remain very hard to find — which is what anyone who has lost a job will tell you.

One last statistic — not about jobs, but about wages. Since the last quarter of 2001, real G.D.P. has risen 7.2 percent. But wage and salary income, after adjusting for inflation, is up only 0.6 percent. This matches what the employer survey is telling us: America's workers have seen very little benefit from this recovery.

In the light of these dreary statistics, President Bush's recent cheerfulness seems almost surreal.

Kerry Must Start Winning Bigger To Avoid Convention Fight

He needs more Virginia's where he seems likely to get two-thirds of the delegates and fewer Tennesee's where he may get half.

Just my observation.

Civ Alert: Hiati in Anarchy

How Bush Lied To America About His Missing Records

Russert: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?

Bush: Yes, absolutely. We did so in 2000, by the way.

el - NO. A flat out lie, the meaning of the documents that are available, none released by Bush BTW, is not immediately obvious because of what is missing. The records strongly imply a disciplinary hearing, a transfer to the Air Reserve Forces subject to active duty if needed and six months added to his length of service.

In 2000 - Bob Kerrey (D-NE) stressed Bush's aggressive use of the "character" issue against Al Gore, and the questions the Bush campaign raised about the details of Gore's service in Vietnam. "If you're going to make a commitment to join the Guard when a lot of us were given special privilege and special opportunities to go to college and given deferments while we did and didn't have to go into the service at the time, you've got to keep that commitment. Especially, if you're going to make character an issue in this campaign. So, I call on Governor Bush to tell us where you were and to release your records, as John McCain did, and let the American people decide. If you're going to be Commander In Chief, you may have to discipline people who did the same thing you did, and it may be difficult as a consequence."

Daniel Inouye (D-HI) went even further, raising the question of how Bush avoided court-martial for his apparent AWOL. "The question is where were you, Governor Bush? What about your commitment? What would you do as Commander In Chief if someone in the Guard or in another service did the same thing? During my service, if I missed training for two years, at the least, I would have been court-martialed. I would have been placed in prison."

What Records Do We Need to Learn the Truth?

George W. Bush promised Tim Russert he would provide "everything." In order to learn the truth, we truly need everything in all of his files, including his service records, tax records, medical records, and disciplinary records.

Some of these records appear to be unavailable because they were removed from Bush's files, perhaps criminally. In these cases, Bush should order anyone who handled his documents to provide sworn affidavits about their activities.

Other records have been withheld for privacy reasons. In these cases, Mr. Bush should issue a formal waiver of his privacy rights to all record-keeping branches of the National Guard, including federal and all state branches.

On Meet the Press (2-8-2004), Tim Russert asked Mr. Bush three times if he would release his military records. Each time, Mr. Bush said he would.

Latest fantastic work by Bob Fertik posted on Democrats.com.

Martin Hedt has been closing in on the Bush AWOL coverup since 2000

You can't just walk away - June 2, 2000.

Online Journal has the Bush Military Info articles.

Here is my own summary from last year. My easiest page to navigate with digests of much of the information is here. Some of the links are expired and you need to use the internet wayback machine to read them.

My AWOL post from yesterday is another place to start.

Bill Burkett's Story

Internet archive - What do you say?

By Bill Burkett
Online Journal Contributing Writer

March 19, 2003—I've sat in total grief for the past three years, watching the institutions of America being spent as if they were lottery winnings.

I don't want to say it, "But I told you so."

In January of 1998 and what seems like a full lifetime ago, I was stricken by a deadly case of meningoencephalitis. I was returning from a short duty trip to Panama as a team chief to inspect the hand over of Ft. Clayton to the Panamanians. I had been 'loaned' from the senior staff and state planning officer of the Texas National Guard to the Department of the Army for a series of these special projects after angering George W. Bush by refusing to falsify readiness information and reports; confronting a fraudulent funding scheme which kept 'ghost' soldiers on the books for additional funding, and refusing to alter official personnel records [of George W. Bush].

George W. Bush and his lieutenants were mad. They ordered that I not be accessed to emergency medical care services, healthcare benefits I earned by my official duty; and I was withheld from medical care for 154 days before I was withdrawn from Texas responsibility by the Department of the Army, by order of the White House.

I was a pawn then caught in a struggle for right and wrong, but also caught within a political struggle between a man who would do anything to be 'king' of America and an institution of laws that we knew as America.

Captain Maureen A. Griswold, RN (ret), whose brother was KIA in Vietnam, is pursueing ABC to cover the Bush AWOL story and provides the evidence and contacts for them. She points out that Col. Burkett and none of the documents have been on American TV.

None of the above assignments require a great deal of time to complete. Indeed, many Americans, including veterans, have already done their homework and know the "real deal" on their Deserter-in-Chief, GW Bush.

I might suggest it would be a nice thing, once ABC News and Mr. Jennings complete the above homework on "the facts," to issue an apology to Michael Moore for their own "reckless" characterization. That mischaracterization was immediately followed in lockstep, with Moore discredited as a "liberal" and "propagandist" by our brilliant bevy of celebrity multimillionaire broadcast media talkng heads, the majority of whom have never heard a shot fired in anger themselves.

Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name

Scientists have found homosexual behavior throughout the animal world.

This growing body of science has been increasingly drawn into charged debates about homosexuality in American society, on subjects from gay marriage to sodomy laws, despite reluctance from experts in the field to extrapolate from animals to humans. Gay groups argue that if homosexual behavior occurs in animals, it is natural, and therefore the rights of homosexuals should be protected. On the other hand, some conservative religious groups have condemned the same practices in the past, calling them "animalistic."

But if homosexuality occurs among animals, does that necessarily mean that it is natural for humans, too? And that raises a familiar question: if homosexuality is not a choice, but a result of natural forces that cannot be controlled, can it be immoral?

The open discussion of homosexual behavior in animals is relatively new. "There has been a certain cultural shyness about admitting it," said Frans de Waal, whose 1997 book, "Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape" (University of California Press), unleashed a torrent of discussion about animal sexuality. Bonobos, apes closely related to humans, are wildly energetic sexually. Studies show that whether observed in the wild or in captivity, nearly all are bisexual, and nearly half their sexual interactions are with the same sex. Female bonobos have been observed to engage in homosexual activity almost hourly.

Maine Caucus Report and the untold story

The thing to remember about the caucus is that every candidate with over 15% gets a delegate if possible. In case of ties a coin toss will decide. It looks like Kucinich may get at least one delegate in Maine with 16% of the vote. If so it hasn't shown up in CNN's count.

The Untold story - right now Dean has 40% of Maine and Washington delegates.

Jon Carroll Thanks Dean

So now we've had 2.5 rounds of primaries (Iowa is its own thing, a quasi- democratic photo op of limited significance), and Howard Dean seems to be pretty much out of it. I do not pretend to understand the reasons; it is my guess that people who say they understand the reasons probably don't either.

Was it the Scream? The Wife? The Warmth Issue? The Impatience Problem? I dunno. Maybe it's just hard for a truly obscure and inexperienced candidate to endure the ritual bear-baiting we call an election. Would you want to run for office? Yes, please, dig up something stupid I said in 1987 and confront me with it on national television -- that sounds like fun.

Nor do I have any particular opinion about John Kerry. I'm glad he's bringing up the chickenhawk issue because it really is maddening that various folks who spent the Vietnam War in undisclosed locations are now sending 20- year-olds to die and kill for unclear or bogus reasons. These are the guys who think that four-star Gen. Colin Powell, the man who was in charge of Operation Desert Storm, is a wimpy little appeaser who is too soft on Saddam Hussein.

Excuse me, but: How dare they?

I'm also glad that Kerry brought Max Cleland back from political obscurity. This triple amputee and standard bearer for veterans' rights was savaged and slandered by Republican operatives working for the Rove machine; I'm glad he's getting a chance to return fire.

And I'm glad Wesley Clark got in the race because it's not possible to out-patriotic him. Clark has made speeches about the dangerous nature of the Patriot Act and its dreadful little brother, the PROTECT Act. John Ashcroft, who used his family connections to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War, seems to have forgotten that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are fighting for freedom, not for a police state.

And it's all because Dean made it possible. You were around a year ago -- you remember how hopeless it seemed, how many people were saying that Bush could not be beaten. You were looking into Canadian real estate, and Howard Dean was deciding to run for president. See what I'm saying?

Now people believe that Bush can be beaten. His popularity rating has dipped below 50 percent for the first time since the election (when it was also below 50 percent but, hey, let's not go there again). Now people are voting for John Kerry on the interesting thesis that he has the best chance of beating Bush. Imagine that.

Meanwhile, Bush is getting careless. His latest budget will put a $100, 000 debt burden on every man, woman and child in the United States. I didn't say that, David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, said that. Sometime, this unwieldy construction of lies is bound to fail.

Maybe Abe Lincoln was right after all: You can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Whoever the Democratic nominee is, he should thank Howard Dean for leading his party out of the darkness.

Bush Fatigue

From Media Whores Online:

Eschaton:

I have to say I'm a bit puzzled. Bush is the same person he was last year. The budget outlook is the essentially the same as it was last year, for those of us who were paying attention. The only "new" thing is the Medicare drug bill, but Bush had supported that so that wasn't anything really new either. I suppose the excellent Iraq adventure didn't give them the healthy post-coital glow they thought it would, but none of them will really admit to that. So, what's the deal?

Not much has changed, except for the relentlessness and duration of Bush's failures, which has led to a widespread sense of Bush Fatigue.

Although the syndrome first struck in the blue states, like New York, California, and Florida, it is now affecting Americans all across the ideological and political spectrum.

Bush Fatigue. It's exhausting for a liberal to fight the Bush regime's policy failures on all fronts, its secrecy, and its retaliation against dissenters. But it's equally exhausting for a conservative to continue defending it, with the knowledge hat ultimately they will ending up looking like a faith-based dupe. (It was once much easier before, when there was no accountability because the public and media had been terrorized into a state of unprecedented gullibility and obedience.)

The only people still happy about the Bush White House occupation are the major contributors/friends of Poppy who have reaped handsome financial rewards: war profiteers like Halliburton and corrupt corporate criminals.

Is this man too angry to be president?

His voice rising to a shout, President Bush lashed out at Democratic rivals who want to roll back his tax cuts as he defended his economic priorities Monday in a presidential primary state where his record has been harshly criticized.

The Democrats running for president say they would repeal all or portions of Bush's tax cuts, and Bush seemed to step more forcefully into his re-election campaign as he defended his tax policies.

On the campaign stump, Democratic Sen. John Kerry said Bush had the worst jobs record of the last 11 presidents.

The rosy view of the economy presented in the new report was probably "prepared by the same people who brought us the intelligence on Iraq," Kerry said.

Democratic Missouri Gov. Bob Holden, reacting to Bush's visit, said the state had gained more than 27,000 jobs in 2003, but "we have done this in spite of President Bush, not because of him."

Bush offers yet another justification for war - Only 44% now trust him

President Bush on Sunday offered a shifting rationale for the Iraq war -- that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to develop unconventional arms if not the actual weapons.

el - This was not the case the administration offered to the American people and Congress for the war.

A Time/CNN poll released on Sunday said 55 percent of Americans have "doubts and reservations" about Bush and less than half, 44 percent, said he is a leader they can trust.

Democrats Abroad Caucus - Want Bush Gone

"We had about 40 people show up for our caucuses in 1996 and 2000," said John McCreery, vice chairman of Democrats Abroad and a 24-year resident of Japan. "We knew there was more interest this year, so we thought we'd get 80 people."

Instead, 156 eager, percolating Democrats showed up Sunday at the meeting room of Tokyo's Foreign Correspondents Club, the great majority of them attending their first overseas caucus and many voting in their first presidential election.

Final Result from Japan - 69 for Dr. Dean, 51 for Mr. Kerry and 29 uncommitted. Each group got one delegate for Edinburgh, which will be the next round to get down to 9 overseas delegates.

Nice description of caucus process.

Gore gives a great speech

Chris Suellentrop messes his pants.

MSNBC - How Kerry is running away with it

Four architects of Kerry’s victory deserve special mention.

First, and in an unexpected way, Howard Dean. He made it possible for Kerry to disregard campaign limits.

The second architect of Kerry’s victory was someone who isn't a nationally known figure: John Norris, Kerry’s formidable field marshal in Iowa.

The third architect of victory was Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, the party's elder statesman, who flew to Iowa to deliver rousing speeches calling on Iowa Democrats to support Kerry.

The fourth architect of victory was Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, who had designed a compressed primary schedule that concentrated contests in Arizona, Missouri and five other states on Feb. 3. McAuliffe’s front-loaded schedule meant that an unexpected loser in Iowa and New Hampshire would have no time to catch his breath and climb back on his feet before having to fight in the Feb. 3 round of contests.

Thanks to McAuliffe and the DNC, time is now working very much in Kerry's favor.

Only 39% say Mr Bush fulfilled his duty during Vietnam

A devasting poll result for Bush and his numbers will decline.This is why this issue is important. It resonates particularly among the GOP base and swing-voters. Us liberals knew what he was from the beginning.

MIXED NEWS FROM BURLINGTON, VT

The bad news for Dean: the large AFSCME union withdrew its endorsement of Dean. The union's endorsement of Dean last November was a major coup for his insurgent campaign, as it (along with SEIU's endorsement) ensured Dean had enough votes to deny the AFL-CIO endorsement to then-rival Dick Gephardt. In some good news, SEIU -- the largest individual labor union in the nation -- indicated Saturday it was prepared to stick with Dean for as long as he remains in the race. The Painter's union (IUPAT) is also sticking with Dean. In some good news for Dean, his campaign quickly raised over $1.1 million online over the past two days -- money largely earmarked for TV spots and more staffing in Wisconsin. And -- in an interesting twist -- Dean told reporters Saturday that he would be willing to accept the VP spot on the ticket this year. "Obviously, I'm running for president, but whatever's best is what I'll do. Anything," said Dean. "Let me say that if John Kerry is the nominee I'm going to support him. Second of all, if John Kerry were the nominee, I'd advise him not to pick me [for VP] because you don't need two people from New England on the ticket [but] I will do whatever I can to beat George Bush.

el - This is obvious. What is remarkable is that reporters sense a story out of it because here is a candidate telling the truth. I hadn't linked to Politics1 News before and I see no permalink yet.

Brad DeLong posts the follow-ups Tim forgot to ask

Activists subpoenaed over anti-war demonstration

In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists.

In addition to records about who attended the forum, the subpoena orders the university to divulge all records relating to the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a New York-based legal activist organization that sponsored the forum.

"The law is clear that the use of the grand jury to investigate protected political activities or to intimidate protesters exceeds its authority,'' guild President Michael Ayers said in a statement.

Representatives of the Lawyer's Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union said they had not heard of such a subpoena being served on any U.S. university in decades.

Those served subpoenas include the leader of the Catholic Peace Ministry, the former coordinator of the Iowa Peace Network, a member of the Catholic Worker House, and an anti-war activist who visited Iraq in 2002.

Desperately seeking electability

Some Democrats cheated and looked into their hearts, where they found Howard Dean. But he was so appealing that he scared them. This is no moment to vote for a guy just because he inspires you, they thought. If he inspires me, there must be something wrong with him. So, Democrats looked around and rediscovered John Kerry. He'd been there all along, inspiring almost no one. You're not going to find John Kerry inspiring unless you're married to him or he literally saved your life. Obviously neither of those is a strategy that can be rolled out on a national level. But he's got the résumé. And gosh, he sure looks like a president (an "animatronic Lincoln," as my Slate colleague Mickey Kaus uncharitably described him).

el - A little late but I liked it and noticed I hadn't posted it.

You Can Make It With Plato - Bush's difficult relationship with reality

William Saletan has a good explanation of Bush lying.

Plato believed that what's real isn't the things you can touch and see: your computer, your desk, those empty barrels in Iraq that Bush thought were full of chemical weapons. What's real is the general idea of these things. The idea of a computer. The idea of a desk. The idea of an Iraqi threat to the United States. Whether you actually have a computer or a desk, or whether Saddam Hussein actually had chemical weapons, is less important than the larger truth. The abstraction is the reality.

Plato's successor, Aristotle, took a different view. He thought reality was measured by what you could touch and see. That's the definition of reality on which modern science was founded. It's the definition Colin Powell used when he told the world Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. It's the definition David Kay used when he set out to find the weapons. Kay and Powell are dismayed by our inability to see and touch the weapons. But Bush isn't. He isn't going to let Aristotle's reality distract him from Plato's.

In Bush's Platonic reality, the world is dangerous, threats exist, and the evidence of our senses must be interpreted to fit that larger truth.

Bush accomplished exactly what he set out to do in this interview: He showed you how his mind works. Republicans used to observe derisively that Clinton had a difficult relationship with the truth. Bush has a difficult relationship with the truth, too. It's just a different—and perhaps more grave—kind of difficulty.

Al Franken Body-Slamming the NY Post now

Franken has launched a full-scale war against the New York Post, accusing the money-losing tabloid - and Post political reporter Vincent Morris - of lying about his role in subduing a heckler at a Howard Dean rally in Manchester, N.H., two weeks ago.

In a Jan. 27 story mysteriously datelined "Exeter, N.H.," Morris wrote that Franken "body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down" the former Vermont governor. Morris' story failed to mention that the Dean rally took place at the Palace Theater in Manchester, about 30 miles west of Exeter.

Franken told me: "I didn't body-slam anyone to the floor. The Post's story makes me look like a nut, and it has been circulated all over the world by the right-wing echo chamber."

Franken said that Dean aides and security staffers accepted his offer to help subdue the screaming protester after nearly 10 minutes of disruption.

Scott Ritter on John Kerry

"Where is the leadership?"

Two years later, in the buildup toward war that took place in the summer of 2002, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Kerry sits, convened a hearing on Iraq. At that hearing a parade of witnesses appeared, testifying to the existence of WMD in Iraq. Featured prominently was Khidir Hamza, the self-proclaimed "bombmaker to Saddam," who gave stirring first-hand testimony to the existence of not only nuclear weapons capability, but also chemical and biological weapons as well. Every word of Hamza's testimony has since been proved false. Despite receiving thousands of phone calls, letters and e-mails demanding that dissenting expert opinion, including my own, be aired at the hearing, Sen. Kerry apparently did nothing, allowing a sham hearing to conclude with the finding that there was "no doubt" Saddam Hussein had WMD.

The Press Let's Your Government Repeatedly Lie To You

"One question worth asking," John Walcott of Knight Ridder says, "is whether we in journalism have become too reliant on high-level officials instead of cultivating less glamorous people in the bowels of the bureaucracy. "In the case of Iraq, he added, the political appointees "really closed ranks. So if you relied exclusively on traditional news sources—assistant secretaries and above—you would not have heard things we heard." What Walcott calls "the blue collar" employees of the agencies—the working analysts or former analysts—were drawn on extensively by Knight Ridder, but by few others.

The nearer the war drew, and the more determined the administration seemed to wage it, the less editors were willing to ask tough questions. The occasional critical stories that did appear were, like Pincus's at the Washington Post, tucked well out of sight.

The contrast between the press's feistiness since the end of the war and its meekness before it highlights one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality. Editors and reporters don't like to diverge too sharply from what everyone else is writing. When a president is popular and a consensus prevails, journalists shrink from challenging him. Even now, papers like the Times and the Post seem loath to give prominent play to stories that make the administration look too bad.

Conservatives Pile On

CalPundit checked out the National Review commenting:

Rod Dreher: I'm afraid I have to side with Michael on the Bush interview. I kept wincing as the president bobbled his answers....He had better get his act together....

John Derbyshire: Just got through watching the President on Meet the Press. I thought it was a pretty dismal performance. I'll be voting for GWB in November, but let's face it, the Great Communicator he ain't. The tongue-tied blather was coming thick and fast. At times, he looked like Al Sharpton on the Federal Reserve.

el - This performance from a soft Tim Russert unwilling to ask the tough followup's as I expected.

Remember...

Make the Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish
Can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

A poem made up of Bush quotes.

Press Turning Thumbs Down on Interview

At the outset of the show, Bush's body language was relaxed, his tone welcoming. He chuckled when NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert cited Republican Senator Charles Grassley's belief that the United States will capture Osama bin Laden before the November election. He also called several inquiries "legitimate questions," while at the same time invoking his status as a wartime president confronting terrorists and "rogue nations." As the hour continued, however, Bush became more tentative and his posture increasingly pinched. He was unlikely to have allayed serious public concerns in his interview yesterday, as he failed to answer with consistency Russert's questions definitively or even all that directly.

The few tough queries produced the predictable replies from Bush. And then Russert did not come back with the obvious follow-ups. He was not his usual self: a polite but aggressive quizzer who sticks to specifics, wielding quotes and source material to force his subjects to address previous statements and past actions. Instead, Russert allowed Bush to dish out the all-too familiar, White House-approved rhetoric. It pains me to say, he was more enabler than interrogator.

Thirty Years Ago

Normally, something that happened 30 years ago isn't important. The problems are Bush lied about it, his party campaigned on getting rid of the last remnants of that lying Clinton, Bush committed us to an aggressive war based on lies, and Bush likes to act like the patriot hero dressing up in a flight suit.

Perception and timing and framing is everything. Clinton wags his finger at America and says he did not have sex with that woman, Bush says on national TV the evidence might come in the form of a mushroom cloud, Howard Dean yells during a 3,000 person campaign rally and they can't hear him but a microphone blocking crowd noise can all too clearly. The majority of the American public gets its news from ten-second TV bytes.

With the American public starting to doubt Bush on tax breaks for the rich, the budget lies, the resaons for war, the ties to special interests, this story will crystalize those doubts into the perception that Bush is a decieving politician you can't believe.

This will be important and will not die and go away with explanations that don't add up like before.

Out of Gas in the New York Times

The fact that last year the world oil production probably peaked and we will run out this century is hinted at in this book review.

Even if we substitute coal and natural gas for some of the oil, we will start to run out of fossil fuels by the end of the century. ''And by the time we have burned up all that fuel,'' he writes, ''we may well have rendered the planet unfit for human life. Even if human life does go on, civilization as we know it will not survive.''

''The best, most conservative bet for ameliorating the coming fuel crisis is the gradual improvement of existing technologies,'' he writes. We can improve the efficiency of lights, tap solar power with cheap photoelectric cells and turn to nuclear power. The problem is that we have not made a national or global commitment to do so. ''Unfortunately, our present national and international leadership is reluctant even to acknowledge that there is a problem. The crisis will occur, and it will be painful.''

Someone else having problems with Google

How to Save the World asks O Google, Why have you forsaken me?

Quack and Awe

President forced to defend Iraq and his own military record

Dana Milbank Page 1 Washington Post - Bush, in an hour-long interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," allowed that he had been surprised by the lack of weapons in Iraq. "I expected to find the weapons," he said in the session, taped Saturday and broadcast yesterday. But he said he did not take the nation to war under false pretense, adding: "I based my decision on the best intelligence possible."

In the Sunday talk-show interview, the first of his presidency in such a format, Bush also defended as honorable his Vietnam-era service in the National Guard and committed to the release of additional records to quell a renewed controversy over whether he fulfilled his military obligation.

He said his "biggest disappointment" in office is that he is perceived as dividing the country rather than uniting it. Using many of the same lines he employs in stump speeches, Bush repeated earlier assertions that the Iraq war was justified regardless of what weapons are found there.

Bush said it was unlikely those records still exist. Asked whether he would allow their release, he replied: "Yeah, if we still have them. But, you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records."

el - they sure did, the Bush campaign was there in 1999 and before.

Bloggers Uncover the Truth - AWOL Bush Disciplined

As I have been writing for a year now the mysterious 2-year gap in Bush's records could be due to overzealous scrubbing of records by Bush associates to remove the evidence of Bush getting into trouble.

I also noted the ARF heading on the scrap of evidence presented in Bush's defense. Another copy of the original document surfaces and shows a paper transfer to a unit subject to being called up to active duty if needed. A punishment that is not a punishment.

Bob Fertik and others have been pursuing this story for years. They do a much better job than any paper in this country. From Kevin Drum -

To make a long story short, Bush apparently blew off drills beginning in May 1972, failed to show up for his physical, and was then grounded and transferred to ARF as a disciplinary measure. He didn't return to his original Texas Guard unit and cram in 36 days of active duty in 1973 — as Time magazine and others continue to assert based on a mistaken interpretation of Bush's 1973-74 ARF record — but rather accumulated only ARF points during that period. In fact, it's unclear even what the points on the ARF record are for, but what is clear is that Bush's official records from Texas show no actual duty after May 1972, as his Form 712 Master Personnel Record from the Texas Air National Guard clearly indicates.

From the comments - Tomorrow at the White House:

Scott, Could you please tell us if the President was transferred to the Air Reserve Forces for disciplinary reasons?

el - I see that this site was referred to in the comments, a big Texas welcome to visitors! Howdy Yall!

More comments:

Why doesn't someone ask the two people whose name appear on those documents:

Roger W Bivens, 1st Lt. and Willie J Hooper,Jr. Captain.

~~~
It may be impossible to prove whether Bush was transferred to ARF as a punitive measure or whether it was done as a pre-emptive protective measure (does it matter?).

Regardless, Bush appears to have lied today on MTP and he appears to have lied in his book, when he claimed that he continued flying.

For me, Clinton's low point was neither his ambushed Paula Jones deposition nor his evasive (but thoroughly understandable) grand jury testimony. It was the moment he looked America in the eye, wagged his finger, and tried to bullshit us all.

Bush may have just out-Clintoned Clinton.

~~~

I understand that if I am unable to satisfactorily participate in the ANG, and I have an unfulfilled military service obligation, that I may be discharged from the State ANG, and assigned to the Obligated Reserve Section (ORS), AF Reserve, Denver, Colorado, and subject to active duty . . .

And that is just what happened to young 1st lieutenant George W. Bush.

This was digested from Calpundit - now read the original.

Here is a good place to start for in looking into the Bush AWOL controversy. This from my site - October 5th of last year.

I would say to do an AWOL search in Atomz but that seems not working right now and Google is only picking up a few of my pages. I need to check how blogspot is handling my daily archives again. I had done this once before and it helped. I'll come up with some fix for this.

LATER - Google - no answers. Other bloggers are noting recent poor spidering by Google robots. My Atomz search is exceeding it's free 500 page limit and searches will be incomplete for some recent entries. I will require donations to upgrade to a paid search engine. I may also look for one that handles multiple words much better.

Try Bush awol - 466. - Try awol - 31.

It is not obviously that you must put in Bush +awol to get an AND result.

If you're on a witch hunt every broom in a closet is evidence

- Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix

Bush on Meat the Press - 'evasive, incoherent and out of touch'

The issue, I think, is that right now the president doesn't have a particularly good story to tell or a particularly good explanation for why almost nothing he's said would happen (budget, Iraq, etc.) hasn't happened. That's a problem.

So when he goes on an hour-long interview he doesn't sound very good. And since he's not willing to confront the debacle of the weapons search, the fiscal mess, or what's happening on the ground in Iraq he comes off sounding evasive, incoherent and out of touch with what's happening on his watch.

-- Josh Marshall

Kerry Wins Washington

With 97 percent of the state's 6,552 precincts reporting, Kerry was rolling up 49 percent of the pledged delegates elected to county conventions. That was well ahead of Dean, who had 30 percent.

Dennis Kucinich was third at 8 percent and John Edwards was close behind at 7 percent. Wesley Clark and an uncommitted slate had 3 percent apiece. Al Sharpton barely registered.

An Associated Press projection showed that Kerry should get 47 national convention delegates and Dean 29. Others failed to meet a 15 percent threshold in Washington's nine congressional districts.

Kerry swept past Dean in eight of the state's nine congressional districts. Dean had a narrow edge in Seattle's 7th District, where Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash, was an early supporter.

Washington called off its presidential primaries this year, and both parties are using Iowa-style caucuses.

Typically, caucuses attract only the most politically active, with perhaps 20,000 people attending. A state party spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, estimated the turnout for Saturday's caucuses could top the 100,000 mark for the first time.

Democrats began the process of electing 76 national convention delegates. The state has 17 "superdelegates," including officeholders and party leaders and two add-on delegates will be chosen at the state convention.

Limited Posts Recently

I have a flu-like virus going around and have been at a convention on the Rice University campus.

White House Smeared My Wife

Wilson says his wife was smeared because of his Iraq stance

Not long ago, Wilson was contributing to Republican causes and leading the life of a circumspect public servant. Only in 2003, after traveling to Africa at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney to investigate reports that Saddam was buying uranium for nuclear weapons, did the former ambassador begin to speak out. The weapons rumors, he found, were baseless. This week, CIA Director George Tenet and former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay reiterated the same thing.

But President Bush in his State of the Union address last year rallied support for a war in Iraq by insisting that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction and referring to the findings of an "unnamed envoy" -- who turned out to be Wilson -- as evidence.

Wilson published an opinion piece in The New York Times debunking the president's assertion and days later, unnamed staff members in the Bush administration told a columnist that the former ambassador's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent.

Through 25 years in public service, Wilson, a California native who once worked as a carpenter in Sequim, has long considered himself a moderate. He contributed to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000, and the first President Bush described him as "a true American hero."

CNN Says It Overplayed Dean's Iowa Scream

Yahoo! News -- [ABC Executive] Slavin said his only regret was not airing an intriguing Diane Sawyer report on the coverage earlier. Sawyer reported that Dean was using a special microphone that night that filters out crowd noise to heighten his voice; other videotapes taken illustrate that his "scream" was barely audible to his live audience.

To Trippi, Sawyer's report felt like a Super Bowl referee admitting — after the game — that he blew a call that decided the outcome.

"Unfortunately, no one ran that 633 times," he said. "ABC, to its credit, did it once."

Only 39 percent of Dean's coverage on the network evening news was positive during the week after Iowa, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Public Affairs. By contrast, rival John Edwards' coverage was 86 percent positive during the same period, and new front-runner John Kerry's was 71 percent positive, the center said.

Greens split on whether to support a Democrat

The Seattle Times

Unpredictable Washington now gets say

The Seattle Times -- I perhaps would place my eggs in this basket if I was Dean. They love outsiders and political endorsements are split Dean/Kerry. They have very low caucus turnout normally.

There is a straw poll here but this just means internet browsers support Dean.

Does the outcome of last night's primary tally affect who you'll support in this Saturday's caucus?

Yes, I'm changing my vote to the current leader, John Kerry - 8%

I always supported Kerry - 14%

I'm sticking with Wesley Clark - 17%

I'm sticking with Howard Dean - 39%

I'm sticking with John Edwards - 7%

I'm sticking with Dennis Kucinich - 4%

I'm sticking with Al Sharpton - 0%

I support George Bush - 7%

I support another candidate - 0%

What's a caucus? - 3%

More Questions for Tim to Ask Bush

-- "How many American troops will be in Iraq on election day in November? And why did you describe this question from Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times as a 'trick' question: 'Can you promise a year from now that you will have reduced the number of troops in Iraq?'"?

-- "And why did you describe this question from Stretch as a 'trick' question: 'Can you rule out the possibility of further tax cut proposals next year?'?"

-- "Besides tax cuts, what is the Bush plan for restoring manufacturing jobs to states such as Michigan?"

-- "At the end of your term, how many Americans will lack health insurance, and how does that compared to the number who lacked health insurance when you took office?"

-- "Tell us in as much detail as you recall how you spent your weekends in 1972 and 1973."

-- "Do you know who the Valerie Plame leakers are? Have you thought much about it? Will you keep your word to hold accountable those responsible for the leak, no matter how high their post?"

-- "What is the difference between your view of civil unions for same-sex couples and the views of Howard Dean and John Kerry?"

-- "Michael Powell, your chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has announced there will be an investigation into the Super Bowl halftime show. You have said you didn't see the show -- didn't see the nudity or the other parts of the performance that raised concerns-- but you heard about what happened. Should this be a priority for the FCC? And what kind of punishment do you think would be appropriate for CBS?"

-- "A strong majority of Americans believe the federal deficit is a 'very serious' or 'somewhat serious' problem. And members of your own party are increasingly angry about your budget spending proposals and the historic deficits your Administration is posting. Economists say that your often-repeated claim to cut the deficit in half is, in fact, impossible. How do you answer those critics?"

Polls - not looking good for Dean

Daily Kos -- You want polls? I've got polls

University of Wisconsin Badger Poll (PDF). MoE 4%. 1/27-2/3.
Kerry 35
Clark 11
Edwards 9
Dean 8

This is Dean's must-win state. To make matters worse, Dean's favorable/unfavorable/don't know numbers are 18/34/46. Kerry's are 42/18/39. Dean's high unfavorables everywhere give him little room to manouver.

the Elway Poll tries to poll the WA caucuses. MoE 5%. 1/27-29.

Kerry 40
Dean 13
Edwards 11
Clark 8

Mich. EPIC/MRA poll. MoE 4.9%. 2/4-5. (1/20-25)

Kerry 62 (37)
Dean 13 (14)
Edwards 11 (14)
Clark 5 (10)

AWOL Story Won't Die

(washingtonpost.com - White House Briefing blog)

Thursday Political Jokes

"The cable news channel MSNBC has hired Howard Dean's former campaign manager ... to be a political analyst. Is that a good idea? ... Wait two weeks you can hire Howard Dean."

"One critic in the L.A. Times said the problem with John Kerry is he looks like he's thinking too much. Well this is one place that President Bush has got him beat."

"Kerry is saying that Bush never showed up for his national guard duty ... and now Bush is on the attack. He's accusing John Kerry of ducking time in the national guard by hiding out in the jungles of Vietnam."

Jay Leno

Veterans Lose Overtime Pay Under Bush Scheme

America's 26 million veterans are on the list of those who could be hurt by the Bush overtime pay take-away.

Buried in one paragraph in the middle of the proposed new overtime rules is a change that explicitly mandates "training in the armed forces" could be the basis for an employer to decide some workers shouldn't get overtime pay.

Bush Labor Department officials so far have either talked around or out-right lied about how the overtime pay take-away would impact America's military veterans. But Bush's campaign contributors are celebrating this insult to the men and women who defended our freedom as one-time members of our armed forces. Several big corporations with ties to Bush wrote letters supporting the overtime pay take-away for veterans.


How does the overtime pay take-away target veterans? Here is the exact quote from the Bush overtime pay take-away proposal: "Exemption [from overtime pay rights] is also available to employees in such professions who have substantially the same knowledge level as the degreed employees, but who attained such knowledge through a combination of work experience, training in the armed forces, attending a technical school, attending a community college or other intellectual instruction." (Federal Register Vol. 68, No. 61. 541.301.d)

Even in the technical jargon of employment law, the intention and impact is clear: If you received training in the military (or, really, any training) you could lose your right to earn overtime pay.

Canadians to Bush: 'Hope You Lose, Eh'

According to a new poll, only 15 per cent would vote for the US President.

Scalia's Trip With Cheney Raises Questions of Impartiality

Of course, since half the judges are fervent Republicans with lots of contacts and/or relatives employed by the Bush team should they have recused themselves from the Florida recount case?

yes.

Bush Approval Rating, Re-election Chances Drop

Bush's 47 percent approval rating is the same as his father's at this stage in his presidency 12 years ago before he lost to Bill Clinton.

Just under four in 10, 37 percent, said they would definitely vote to re-elect Bush as president, while 43 percent said they would definitely vote for someone else, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs. Another 18 percent said they would consider voting for someone else.

Democrats are now as intensely opposed to Bush as Republicans are intensely supporting him. By a 2-1 margin, political independents were more likely to say they would definitely vote against him than definitely support him.

U.S. Adds 200,000 Fewer New Jobs Than Normal; Jobless Rate Falls

The GOP is spinning this as more proof that Bush economic policies are working.

The Lie Factory

Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence—it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials⠔including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President
Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.

The story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.

The reports, virtually all false, of Iraqi weapons and terrorism ties emanated from an apparatus that began to gestate almost as soon as the Bush administration took power. In the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team, one day after President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according to one of the participants in the meeting.

The unofficial, off-site recruitment office for Feith and Rhode was the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank whose 12th-floor conference room in Washington is named for the dean of neoconservative defense strategists, the late Albert Wohlstetter, an influential RAND analyst and University of Chicago mathematician.

Daniel Benjamin, co-author of The Age of Sacred Terror, was director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council in the late 1990s. "In 1998, we went through every piece of intelligence we could find to see if there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq," he says. "We came to the conclusion that our intelligence agencies had it right: There was no noteworthy relationship between
Al Qaeda and Iraq. I know that for a fact." Indeed, that was the consensus among virtually all anti-terrorism specialists.

According to Lt. Colonel Kwiatkowski, Luti and Shulsky ran NESA and the Office of Special Plans with brutal efficiency, purging people they disagreed with and enforcing the party line. "It was organized like a machine," she says. "The people working on the neocon agenda had a narrow, well-defined political agenda. They had a sense of mission." At NESA, Shulsky, she says, began "hot-desking," or taking an office wherever he could find one, working with Feith and Luti, before formally taking the reins of the newly created OSP. Together, she says, Luti and Shulsky turned cherry-picked pieces of uncorroborated, anti-Iraq intelligence into talking points, on issues like Iraq's WMD and its links to Al Qaeda. Shulsky constantly updated these papers, drawing on the intelligence unit, and circulated them to Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld, and to Vice President Cheney. "Of course, we never thought they'd go directly to the White House," she adds.

Although Feith insists that the OSP did not seek to gather its own intelligence, Kwiatkowski and others sharply disagree. Staff working for Luti and Shulsky in NESA/OSP churned out propaganda-style intelligence, she says.

"People were being pulled aside [and being told], 'We saw your last piece and it's not what we're looking for,'" he says. "It was pretty blatant." Two State Department intelligence officials, Greg Thielmann and Christian Westermann, have both charged that pressure was being put on them to shape intelligence to fit policy, in particular from Bolton's office. "The Al Qaeda connection and nuclear weapons issue were the only two ways that you could link Iraq to an imminent security threat to the U.S.," Thielmann told the New York Times. "And the administration was grossly distorting the intelligence on both things."

According to multiple sources, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress sent a steady stream of misleading and often faked intelligence reports into U.S. intelligence channels.

Edward Luttwak, a neoconservative scholar and author, says flatly that the Bush administration lied about the intelligence it had because it was afraid to go to the American people and say that the war was simply about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Instead, says Luttwak, the White House was groping for a rationale to satisfy the United Nations' criteria for war. "Cheney was forced into this fake posture of worrying about weapons of mass destruction," he says. "The ties to Al Qaeda? That's complete nonsense."

Too much more to digest - go to Mother Jones here. This is the one major article on the Office of Special Plans propaganda for war factory.

U.S. Image Abroad Will Take Years to Repair, Official Testifies

The findings were the result of an extensive bipartisan study led by Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and Syria. The panel asserted that American prestige had dwindled, that much of its charity was overlooked and that its overall approach lacked strategic direction.

"The bottom has indeed fallen out of support for the United States," Mr. Djerejian, speaking after Ms. Tutwiler, told the subcommittee in his first public presentation of the report.

el - even coverups, which this committee was, can jab congressmen with the truth.

Will Cheney Provide the Margin of Victory? For Democrats?

Cheney is the Democrats' best -- though sorely underutilized -- weapon. A loose-lipped loose cannon who threatens to torpedo the Bushie ship of state every time he half-opens his mouth. If only we start paying attention - Arianna Huffington.

Voters noticing Bush slipping out of control

What seems to be unsettling to large numbers of voters (not just hard-core anti-Bush Democrats) is the notion that events are slipping — or have slipped — out of control, that there is no endgame in Iraq, no plan to rein in runaway deficits, no strategy to put Americans back to work, and no limit to the Bush administration's willingness to shower its friends with favors and public dollars.

The Democratic primaries and caucuses have drawn record turnouts and sparked genuine excitement. Republicans are expressing concern that the administration has been thrown on the defensive. Already there is an attempt by the G.O.P. to divert attention from the real issues by chanting incessantly about gay marriages and the fact that John Kerry is — uh-oh — a liberal from Massachusetts. - Bob Herbert

Reasons Bush and media can't claim they were 'misled'

"I bear personal witness through seven years as a chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations to both the scope of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and the effectiveness of the U.N. weapons inspectors in ultimately eliminating them," Ritter explained.

My number one reason why the Bush administration and the "liberal” media should not be given a you-were-duped-pass is because a marginal "out of the intelligence loop" columnist like myself was writing about the lack of WMD in Iraq before the war.

It's amazing what you can discover if you pay attention to what our political and opinion leaders choose to ignore.

el - and a blogger like myself. it was painfully obvious there were no WMDs which anyone with internet access could have found out before the war.

Confronting the Theocracy of Evil

The Chair of the Select Committee on Defense, Bruce George, listened patiently as I took apart Tony Blair's case for Iraq's retention of WMD, piece by piece, in the back of the Member's cafeteria. When I finished, George shrugged his shoulders. "I still believe that this war was justified over the issue of WMD," he said, "if for no other reason than Saddam's ongoing intent to acquire them in the face of UN inspections."

"Intent?" I asked, incredulously. "What intent? No one has made a case that Saddam was attempting to either hold on the hidden WMD, or reacquire new capabilities."

George was taken aback by my words. "Certainly you can't be saying you don't believe Saddam wanted WMD?" he asked.

"What I believe and what I know are two different things," I replied. "Our two nations went to war because our respective leaders said they knew Iraq possessed WMD, that they knew Saddam intended to acquire WMD. It has turned out that there has been no WMD found in Iraq, and no hard evidence to sustain any ongoing acquisition of WMD by Saddam."

"Yes, we know that," George repeated. "But we also know that Saddam intended to get these weapons in defiance of the UN, and for that reason he had to be removed."

"How do you know this?" I asked. "On what basis can you back this up?"

"Because," George said, with a smile, "Saddam is evil."

And with that, the discussion ended. - more from Scott Ritter.

Now the whole world knows there was nothing to preempt

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

Right now America is going through an Orwellian moment.

Krugman - Get Me Rewrite!

In Salon - That Bush lied about Iraq is old news, Democrats wonder who can beat him?

Salon looks at Washington Democrats

As long as you have a free daypass to Salon to look at the above there are many other articles.

Here are 5 question for Tim Russert to ask Bush.

1. Given the controversy about your attendance record during your National Guard service, Mr. President, perhaps the best way to resolve matters would be to authorize the release of all of your military records, including pay stubs, Social Security records and so-called retirement-points records. Will you do that? If not, why not, and how can the American people believe that you actually fulfilled your service obligations as everyone else in the Guard was required to do?

2. Mr. President, on page 54 of your autobiography, "A Charge to Keep," you wrote: "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years." But the truth is that you quit flying after less than two years, despite fighter training that cost the taxpayers almost a million dollars. Did your superiors approve your decision to quit flying, or did you just quit on your own? Weren't you suspended from flying in August 1972 after you failed to take a required physical exam? Why didn't you take that physical?

3. Mr. President, I'd like to ask you about the now-famous "mission accomplished" speech you gave on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln outside San Diego last May. You landed on the carrier in a flight suit -- a piece of videotape shown around the world. [Roll tape.] A lot of your critics were appalled by that image. Here's a man who never fought in a war, never saw the danger and horrors of real combat, dressing up like a soldier and proclaiming a victory that, as it turned out, we were far from accomplishing. As you look back on it, has it ever occurred to you, that Eisenhower, who won D-day, never dressed in uniform when he was president; John F. Kennedy, who was a genuine war hero, never dressed in uniform either. Was there something disrespectful to the military in a costume stunt like that? Your thoughts, sir.

4. You have blamed the rapidly rising, unsustainable federal deficits on "out-of-control" domestic spending. But Mr. President, the plain fact, according to every nonpartisan analyst, is that your tax cuts are responsible for a far greater percentage of present and future deficits than spending. Your current budget proposal cuts billions in programs for children and veterans. Wouldn't it be more compassionate -- and more responsible -- to rescind some of the tax breaks for the very wealthiest Americans?

5. Sir, with respect, most economists say that the tax cuts are responsible for no more than 20 percent of the recent economic growth, and that the recession could have been addressed with a short-term stimulus primarily aimed at middle- and working-class tax payers, rather than long-term tax cuts tilted toward the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers. These long-term tax cuts for the wealthy are the major cause for these massive structural deficits that we now have and the complete inability to fund some of these programs for children, the elderly and veterans. How does that reflect responsible Republicanism or compassionate conservatism?

More on Bush AWOL, and here (but no new ground) and other stories.

Dems should look to Ohio

The eight closest states the Democrats (plus Greens) won in 2000 and will have to defend in 2004 are Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Using the same comparison, here are the eight closest states the Democrats lost in 2000, some of which they will obviously have to win in 2004: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Tennessee. By these rankings, only two out of 16 states critical to Democratic chances are in the South.

Heavily unionized Ohio (37 percent of voters are in union households, including 35 percent of white voters) has lost one-sixth of its manufacturing jobs since Bush took office, including a stunning 81,000 since November 2001, the official beginning of the current economic recovery. A strong critique of the Bush administration's economic record should fall on receptive ears. It's also worth noting that the Gore campaign basically abandoned Ohio in early October of 2000, shifting resources elsewhere; so, arguably, just having a candidate who competes in the state may get Democrats much of the additional support they need.

The non-southern strategy is not about running as if every state were California. It's more about running as if every state were Ohio -- true to the Democratic principles and priorities cherished by the base but attentive to the concerns of the moderate swing voters who can put you over the top.

Run like every state is Ohio, pursue opportunities in the South selectively as they arise and let southern Democrats be southern Democrats. Let's hope the Democrats get these details right, because electoral arithmetic will dictate a non-southern strategy in 2004 no matter what objections some in the party may have. In other words, it's no longer whether but how. The latter is a proper subject for debate; the former, at this point, should not be.

Dean and the DLC

What I find most strange is what made Dean the demon to the DLC? When I look at the four candidates remaining he is clearly the conservative choice, not the liberal choice.

Since it wasn't his health platform or trade platform or his balance-the-budget platform that New Democrats opposed, I am left to conclude it was the fact he was an outsider and ran against special interests. How much of the Washington Democratic establishment that was against Dean was due to a fear of loss of influence?

As a 49-year-old Dean supporter I see his flaws, since December he has run a terrible mass media campaign, but the New Democrats embracing further left candidates as long as they are establishment or large-donor-group left candidates (unions and lawyers) to me says it is all about power and money.

The Dean campaign was about bringing power back to the people sick of what is happening to our country. The campaign was about telling the Democratic establishment to put up, fight back or get out.

As I note former DLC leaders contributing to Bush or campaigning for Bush it appears some have done the later.

Edwards is a second good choice as he run a positive campaign, has struck a good populist theme in the two America?s and appears great in debate, speeches and on TV. I am unsure if I will do anything more than vote for Kerry if he is the nominee because of his phone dirty tricks campaign against Dean and his lack of a serious record in the Senate. Dean's major flaw has been he is not a good politician, Kerry's flaw may be that he is nothing but a politician.

Dean's Lobbyists Are Me and You

Dean is on track for over $750,000 raised today. Kerry still owes millions in money he loaned to himself.

Dean team is happy:

It's already your best fundraising day of the year. You beat the record set during the September to Remember. You broke all kinds of records, too, setting the record for the second biggest fundraising day of the year, bringing in new people, showing your deep, powerful will. And you re-energized all of us to work harder, do more, stay later and fight harder -- to dig down to our deepest reserves and fight for the future of the country.

You just put $700,000 on the air in Wisconsin, the state the Governor must and will win.

Kerry and his supporters meanwhile are talking about why he is not Dukakis.

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, argued that Mr. Kerry's background as a decorated veteran and a tough prosecutor also come into play.

"It is hard to demonize as an irresponsible leftist a man who has locked up criminals and shot communists," Mr. Frank said. "That's John Kerry's record. Kerry's cast a couple specific votes that are unpopular, but so has Bush. In general, I like our ground better."

Donkey Rising notes that the DLC has made peace with all the other frontrunners adopting an Anyone but Dean Democratic unity.

About that torn document

All the news organizations ignore it, they accept it without describing it or disregard it saying Bush missed a year - from Daily Howler. Are they now following the direction of the White House which now appears is wanting to ignore the document.

Orcinus has more on AWOL Bush.

25 Current Rules For Being A Republican

#24 You have to believe that what Clinton did in the 1960's is of vital national interest but what Bush did decades later is "stale news" and "irrelevant".

Naked Solitaire

Two online solitaire card games with some flashy flesh.

More on AWOL Bush

Coldfeet documents - Also proves that Bush has another arrest besides the DUI he has admitted to. Note in his service record that he has an unearned promotion to officer (none of the required courses OCS) and a one year assignment in Georgia, all other duty was in Texas. This document shows no service in Alabama.

George W.'s Missing Year

CalPundit cuts Bush some slack but agrees the answer is for Bush to release the records. Also here.

Josh continues with records are available if Bush wants to release them.

Unfutz has been tracking google news mentions of Bush AWOL and deserter since January 26.

Bill Hobbs has the sanest GOP arguments. The problem is there are no records from Alabama and no evidence he just didn't blow off duty.

There is some support of my theory of an overzealous scrubbing of Bush records in Salon.

Bill Moyer's Pressing For LBJ killed JFK Investigation

In a book published last fall and again in a television documentary, one of President Lyndon B. Johnson's personal lawyers asserts that Vice President Johnson was complicit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

"Simply stated, L.B.J. killed J.F.K.," Barr McClellan wrote in his book, "Blood, Money and Power: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K." He repeated the accusation in the documentary "The Guilty Men," which was shown in November on the History Channel.

Now, Bill Moyers and other powerful men who worked for President Johnson and who are outraged by the book and the film are pressuring the History Channel to conduct an internal examination of the documentary and televise the results.

In addition to Mr. Moyers, those who visited the History Channel yesterday included W. Thomas Johnson Jr., former publisher of The Los Angeles Times and former chief executive of CNN, who is chairman of the L.B.J. Foundation; Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, who in 1963 was a consultant to Vice President Johnson and, along with Mr. Moyers, was on Air Force One for Johnson's swearing-in as president; and Larry Temple, a lawyer in Austin, Tex., who was Johnson's special counsel and is now president of the L.B.J. Foundation.

There was no failure of intelligence

The truth is that much of the intelligence community did not fail, but presented correct assessments and warnings, that were overridden and suppressed. On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.

Precisely because of the qualms the administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to the president.

Senior intelligence officers were kept in the dark about the OSP. "I didn't know about its existence," said Thielman. "They were cherry picking intelligence and packaging it for Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's the kind of rogue operation that peer review is intended to prevent."
- Sidney Blumenthal

Comedians on the political campaign

"President Bush released his new $2.4 trillion federal budget. It has two parts. I believe they are smoke and mirrors."

"President Bush's approval rating is down below 50%. So now, what he's got to do is let Saddam (Hussein) go and catch him again."

"This Iraqi intelligence scandal is growing. American are asking: What did President Bush not know and when did he mispronounce it?"

Condoleezza Rice was on every network morning show blaming this whole mess on 'flawed intelligence.' Now, afterward, the President took her into his office and he said, 'You weren't talkin' about me, were you?'

Match to the commedian - Letterman, Leno, Maher, and Kilborn.