I miss us

- Michael 10:39 PM - [PermaLink] -

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I'm quoting this in full; screw it:

Beating Specialist Baker
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: June 5, 2004

The prison abuse scandal refuses to die because soothing White House explanations keep colliding with revelations about dead prisoners and further connivance by senior military officers — and newly discovered victims, like Sean Baker.

If Sean Baker doesn't sound like an Iraqi name, it isn't. Specialist Baker, 37, is an American, and he was a proud U.S. soldier. An Air Force veteran and member of the Kentucky National Guard, he served in the first gulf war and more recently was a military policeman in Guantánamo Bay.

Then in January 2003, an officer in Guantánamo asked him to pretend to be a prisoner in a training drill. As instructed, Mr. Baker put on an orange prison jumpsuit over his uniform, and then crawled under a bunk in a cell so an "internal reaction force" could practice extracting an uncooperative inmate. The five U.S. soldiers in the reaction force were told that he was a genuine detainee who had already assaulted a sergeant.

Despite more than a week of coaxing, I haven't been able to get Mr. Baker to give an interview. But he earlier told a Kentucky television station what happened next:

"They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and unfortunately one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he — the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn't breathe. When I couldn't breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was `red.' . . . That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: `I'm a U.S. soldier. I'm a U.S. soldier.' "

Then the soldiers noticed that he was wearing a U.S. battle dress uniform under the jumpsuit. Mr. Baker was taken to a military hospital for treatment of his head injuries, then flown to a Navy hospital in Portsmouth, Va. After a six-day hospitalization there, he was given a two-week discharge to rest.

But Mr. Baker began suffering seizures, so the military sent him to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment of a traumatic brain injury. He stayed at the hospital for 48 days, was transferred to light duty in an honor burial detail at Fort Dix, N.J., and was finally given a medical discharge two months ago.

Meanwhile, a military investigation concluded that there had been no misconduct involved in Mr. Baker's injury. Hmm. The military also says it can't find a videotape that is believed to have been made of the incident.

Most appalling, when Mr. Baker told his story to a Kentucky reporter, the military lied in a disgraceful effort to undermine his credibility. Maj. Laurie Arellano, a spokeswoman for the Southern Command, questioned the extent of Mr. Baker's injuries and told reporters that his medical discharge was unrelated to the injuries he had suffered in the training drill.

In fact, however, the Physical Evaluation Board of the Army stated in a document dated Sept. 29, 2003: "The TBI [traumatic brain injury] was due to soldier playing role of detainee who was non-cooperative and was being extracted from detention cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a training exercise."

Major Arellano acknowledges that she misstated the facts and says she had been misinformed herself by medical personnel. She now says the medical discharge was related in part — but only in part, she says — to the "accident."

Mr. Baker, who is married and has a 14-year-old son, is now unemployed, taking nine prescription medications and still suffering frequent seizures. His lawyer, Bruce Simpson, has been told that Mr. Baker may not begin to get disability payments for up to 18 months. If he is judged 100 percent disabled, he will then get a maximum of $2,100 a month.

If the U.S. military treats one of its own soldiers this way — allowing him to be battered, and lying to cover it up — then imagine what happens to Afghans and Iraqis.

President Bush attributed the problems uncovered at Abu Ghraib to "a few American troops who dishonored our country." Mr. Bush, the problems go deeper than a few bad apples.

- Michael 12:31 AM - [PermaLink] -

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The one stop for all your
Fake Diebold Ads



(c)2004 Rand Careaga/salamander.eps

- rob 5:44 PM - [PermaLink] -

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How About We Separate the Church from Its Money?

Why didn't I think of that? Not gonna let a little U.S. Constitutional bedrock get in the way of a campaign, no sir, and if you don't believe that you're not a good Christian. Several extraordinarily concerned religious leaders have a big problem with it, though:

WASHINGTON, June 2 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Today, The Interfaith Alliance denounced an initiative from the Bush-Cheney campaign seeking to enlist campaign support in 1600 "friendly congregations" in Pennsylvania.


"Whether or not this is legal, this is an astonishing abuse of religion," said the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance. "It is the rawest form of manipulation of religion for partisan gain."

"If ever there were a question about the real intent of expanding faith-based initiatives and promoting a presence of religion in government, this tactic puts it to rest," Rabbi Moline said. "The Bush-Cheney campaign has dropped any pretense of honoring the separation of church and state mandated by the Constitution, and puts in jeopardy the non-profit status of 1600 houses of worship by asking them to engage in partisan politics. The President should repudiate this initiative immediately. 1600 Pennsylvania churches for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. How clever. How reprehensible."

Reprehensible -- that's a quaint word for someone who's never recognized specific provisions in the Constitution he took an oath before God to uphold and protect -- but why stop at one, when you can trample them all?

"Sadly, the Bush campaign is willing to jeopardize churches' tax exempt status, by asking them to endorse his candidacy," said Rabbi Gregory S. Marx, Congregation Beth Or, and treasurer of the Southeast Pennsylvania Interfaith Alliance (SEPIA). "This is one further step, way past Bush's 'Faith Based Initiatives' towards blurring the necessary and historic lines separating church and state."

The president just met with the Pope; maybe Bush and Cheney can start selling Indulgences at $100,000 a plate (you have to give back the plate though).

- Michael 10:29 AM - [PermaLink] -

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It's the Porn, Stupid!

Good stuff from Frank Rich that echoes some earlier posts about Americans, torture, and George "Round and Round She Goes, Where the Buck Stops, Nobody Knows" Bush:

To blame every American transgression on the culture, whether the transgression is as grievous as Abu Ghraib or the shootings at Columbine or as trivial as lubricious teenage fashions, is to absolve Americans of any responsibility for anything. It used to be that liberals pinned all American sins on the military-industrial complex; now it's conservatives who pin them all on the Viacom-Time Warner complex. It used to be liberals that found criminals victims of "root causes"; now it's conservatives who find criminals victims of X-rated causes. Since it's conservatives who are now in power, we've reached the absurd state where we have an attorney general who arrived in Washington placing a higher priority on stamping out porn than terrorism; we have a Federal Communications Commission that is ready to sacrifice a bedrock American value (the First Amendment) to the cause of spanking Bono for using a four-letter word on TV. As Congress threatens to police cable TV as well, we face the prospect that the history in "Deadwood" may yet be airbrushed by the government until it resembles "Little Women."

All of this is at odds with one of President Bush's most persistent campaign themes. He has repeatedly vowed to introduce "a culture of responsibility in America" in which "each of us understands we are responsible for the decisions we make in life." Up to a point. Now he talks about how the Abu Ghraib pictures are not "the America I know." (Maybe he should get out more.) If he really practiced "a culture of responsibility" he would take responsibility for his own government's actions rather than plead ignorance and express dismay. He might, for instance, explain how his own White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, came to write a January 2002 memo that labeled the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete" for dealing with prisoners in the war on terrorism (of which Iraq, we're told, is a part). The dissemination of that memo's legal wisdom through the Defense Department and the military command over the past 26 months may tell us more about what led to Abu Ghraib than anything else we've heard so far from the administration, let alone any Heritage Foundation press release that finds the genesis of torture in the sexual innuendos of prime-time television.

In his speech last Monday night, the president, reeling in the polls and seeking a life raft, seemed to be well on his way to adopting the cultural defense being pushed by his political allies. He called Abu Ghraib a symbol of "death and torture" under Saddam Hussein and then said that the same prison also "became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops." The idea, it seemed, was to concede American fallibility, if not exactly error. But by reducing the charge to "disgraceful conduct," he was performing a verbal sleight-of-hand that acquitted those troops of torture and found them guilty instead of the lesser crime of pornographic horseplay. (He was also trying to confine culpability to a "few" troops.) Perhaps he hopes that we will believe that what happened at Abu Ghraib is the work of just a handful of porn-addled freaks ....

Yeah, "A Few Good Men." Maybe the sequel should be "And Three Bad Apples." The idea being that if you spin the torture and murder of Iraqis fast enough, it really does begin to look like America -- the one from 1863. Here's an idea: Hang Jeff Davis!

- Michael 9:35 AM - [PermaLink] -

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- rob 5:21 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush has reduced America to the errand boy of Iran

Seriously, look at it this way. You can't beat Saddam in a horrible war that lasts years, so what do you do, you have America do it for you.

Iran goes to Chalabi, Chalabi goes to Cheney and Wolfowitz and Perle, and they go to Bush. Boom! America's soldiers doing Iran's dirty work.

Wait for it... it'll break any day now.... it's just starting to come out....

Tip of the Iceberg?
The probe into alleged Chalabi leaks to the Iranians may widen

June 2 - The Iraqi exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi—formerly a key ally of the Bush administration—is suspected of leaking confidential information about U.S. war plans for Iraq to the government of Iran before last year’s invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, government sources told NEWSWEEK.

The allegation that Chalabi may have supplied the Iranians information about U.S. military plans comes on the heels of recent disclosures that Chalabi or others in his organization may have compromised more recent U.S. intelligence operations by leaking what officials initially described as “extremely sensitive” and “highly classified” information to Iranian officials—information which could “get people killed” if abused by the Iranians.

Ohh... looks bad for Chalabi... but don't worry the Washington Times is there to leap to his defense:

FBI probes charge of Chalabi leak to Iran

U.S. officials yesterday confirmed the FBI is investigating whether a government employee provided Iraqi political leader Ahmed Chalabi intelligence he is accused of giving Iran, but several said the prominent member of Iraq's now-dissolved Governing Council is the target of a disinformation campaign.

One official said Mr. Chalabi, who until recently had been on the payroll of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was set up by his enemies in Iraq, Iran or the Central Intelligence Agency, which views him with suspicion.

What? The CIA doesn't trust a thief?

- rob 4:43 PM - [PermaLink] -

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An excellent post up on Atrios:

Flopped

He had Thanksgiving in Iraq with him, he had him sit behind his wife in the State of the Union Address, he talked to the press about how he had met with him. Who is he? Bush. Who is him? Chalabi

And what does Bush say about the man now?
My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the rope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.

Oh, poor Chalabi, given the old "never had relations with that man" statement - Bush style. Just like how poor Kenny boy became Ken Lay who?

- rob 4:28 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Separation of Church and State - that's just old thinking!

Pennsylvania political push for Bush could cost churches tax break

An e-mail from the campaign's Pennsylvania office, obtained by The Associated Press, urges churchgoers to help organize "Friendly Congregations" where supporters can meet regularly to sign up voters and spread the Bush word.

"I'd like to ask if you would like to serve as a coordinator in your place of worship," says the e-mail, adorned with the Bush-Cheney logo, from Luke Bernstein, who runs the state campaign's coalitions operation and is a former staffer to Sen. Rick Santorum, the president's Pennsylvania chairman.

"We plan to undertake activities such as distributing general information/updates or voter registration materials in a place accessible to the congregation," the e-mail says.

- rob 4:23 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Want to win a Pulitzer prize?

Follow up on these stories that seem to have disappeared:

Iraq uranium row spreads to Italy

But on Wednesday, the left-wing Italian paper La Repubblica published details of what it said were documents obtained by Italy and passed to MI6 in London.

The paper said that the documents, reportedly obtained by Italian secret services from an African diplomat, contained huge inconsistencies which suggested they were forgeries.

One, for example, was a letter both addressed to and signed by the president of Niger. Another referred to an event which had not happened at the time the letter was dated.

The US has already retracted its uranium claims against Iraq, apologising for accepting as true documents which have since turned out to be forgeries.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna has confirmed that documents which it has seen are forgeries.

Okay the uranium claim was one of the biggest claims in getting people concerned about Iraq, and they were based on forgeries... really bad forgeries.

So don't you think looking into who made the forgeries would be a big story?

I mean, I don't think it was the CIA, they'd do a better job (I'd hope)
But how about some zealous American Neocons?
Chalabi? Someone from the Iraqi National Congress?

or how about Iranian intelligence. (I'll get back to that later).

Now here is another story that screams the need to go big time:

Iraqis fail to regain control of oil revenue

The latest Iraqi attempts to recover control of the country's oil revenues from the United States appear to have hit a dead end with a special delegation being rebuffed in its bid to secure UN help.
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Daylight robbery

Muzhir al-Dulaymi, spokesman for the League for the Defence of Iraqi Peoples' Rights, told Aljazeera the US was systematically milking Iraq of its oil.

"A daylight robbery is going in Iraq. I have first hand information from sources in al-Bakr port in southern Iraq, and in the Turkish port of Jihan, confirming that three million oil barrels are being taken out of Iraq on a daily basis" al-Dulaymi said.

"Oil sale contracts only go to the Iraqi oil ministry for signing. They cannot say a word about them; not to mention the fact that there are many sealed contracts which the Iraqi ministry of oil is not notified of."

Al-Dulaymi says the Bush administration is benefiting from the process.

Is this true? How much money are we talking about? Where is it going? Is it being rerouted to help rebuild Iraq or are the pools of the board of Chevron getting gold plated tileing?

- rob 4:02 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Watch it now:

Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer

- rob 3:27 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Trying to save the lives of our troops is big no-no

Vest Request Has Local Soldier in Hot Water

A call for help from a local soldier serving in Iraq has him feeling the heat. First Sergeant Fred Chisolm is a Marion County Deputy and serves with the 351st Military Police Company based out of Ocala.

Chisholm asked his boss, Sheriff Ed Dean, to donate bulletproof vests to line troop transports in Iraq. Now just a few days later, Chisholm says his superiors are harassing him. And a local politician is criticizing Dean -- saying it's his fault.

"I think they're making a mountain out of a molehill," says Sergeant Hugh Baugus with the Army's 351st Military Police Company.

According to the letter from First Sgt. Chisholm, his unit needed extra armoring for some of their humvee's to protect against small, makeshift explosives. Dean's office collected more than 1,000 old bulletproof vests, but in an e-mail, Chisholm told Dean he's now getting, "quite a bit of harassment from (his) higher command." And, "this may resort in (his) being relieved."

Thanks to Atrios or DailyKos or someone.

- rob 3:26 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Tenet leaves for "personal" reasons

Well, I might say about damn time. Bush has strangely hung with Tenet through thick and thin, makes one wonder what Tenet and his CIA pals have on the Chimper. But apparently Bush really thinks Tenet is a "strong" man, from a
Yahoo article:

"He's been a strong and able leader at the agency and I will miss him," Bush said
The president added "He's strong, he's resolute....He has been a strong and able leader at the agency. He's been a strong leader in the war on terror."

Yeah. I get it. Hey Dubya, do you know any modifiers other than "strong." Or is it that you are completely incapable of speaking when you don't have a script to work from?

- B 12:02 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Infidels

Well there's two ways to treat them: lock 'em up or blow 'em up. Either way is good. What exactly are we at war with? This is a follow-up to a question I asked (not rhetorical) two days ago about Saudi Arabia, Middle Eastern oil, and crashing jets into skyscrapers. There's a serious piece of this story that needs some sort of qualifier or explanation. This is what NYTimes apologist Thomas Friedman says about it:

Over the last year or so, Hamza Qablan al-Mozainy, an Arabic professor at King Saud University, published two articles in the Saudi daily Al Watan about "the culture of death in our schools" and the role that Saudi teachers are playing in promoting discussions on how bodies are prepared for burial and how the kind of life a person has led — righteous or decadent — can be read from the condition of the person's dead body. This effort to use death to get young people to abstain from the attractions of life, he said, only ends up making some Saudi youth easy targets for extremists trying to recruit young people for "jihad" operations. "Does the Education Ministry really know about the activities taking place in its schools?" Mr. al-Mozainy asked.

As the saying goes, "Denial is not just a river in Egypt" — and Saudi leaders have been in denial for too long. They need to wake up — and we need an energy policy that reduces our dependence on Saudi oil. I don't want the difference between a good day and bad day to be whether Saudi Arabia reforms its education system.

Okay, true and fair, you say. It's a cult of death we Westerners are facing. So how do we fight it? Friedman gives us the old saw:

A few years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed those of us who advocate energy conservation as dreamy do-gooders. Had he spent the last three years using his bully pulpit to push for conservation and alternative energies, rather than dismissing them, we'd be a lot less dependent today on foreign oil. Oh, that is so naïve, says the oil crowd. Well, what would you call a Bush energy policy that keeps America dependent on a medieval monarchy with a king who has lost most of his faculties, where there is virtually no transparency about what's happening, where corruption is rampant, where we have asked all Americans to leave and where the education system is so narrow that its own people are decrying it as a factory for extremism? Now that's what I'd call naïve. I'd also call it reckless and dangerous.

So all we Westerners have to do is come up with a different energy strategy and suddenly everything will be okay and those crazy religious people will for some unexplained reason stop blowing themselves up next to you and me. The part about "a medieval monarchy with a king who has lost most of his faculties, where there is virtually no transparency about what's happening, where corruption is rampant, ... and where the education system is so narrow that its own people are decrying it as a factory for extremism" is particularly edifying; just whom is he referring to here? Kind of hard to tell out of context, since you can pretty much apply it to everyone on the planet. More American exceptionalism anyone? As though most of our fundamentally Christian nation don't have their feet planted firmly on the ground with their eyes fixed heavenward, waiting with baited breath for that wonderful Armageddon they've been promised, where the warrior Jesus returns in his rage and his wrath and lays waste to all the sinners -- you and more particularly ME? Who's scaring me more, anyway, which is more the point? And just exactly who's got his finger on the Armeggedon button right now? And who's swearing vengeance and divine justice in this war?

Who's holier than thou?

Not me brother.

- Michael 11:30 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Please read Michael's comment about advertising before voting on the below poll.

- rob 9:42 AM - [PermaLink] -

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- rob 5:27 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has an Iraq War poetry contest. Here's mine:

Water cedes itself
to unremitting ground
where it pools in wells

Fabled quicksand
salacious deepening mud
quickening abyss

Stanch allegiance and
stem the rush of local bones
fealty turns to dust

The dead don't discuss
Locking eyes remembering
their unspoken words

I wrote this in 1992 and it wasn't about Iraq.

- Michael 2:37 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Making Hay Out of Straw Men

For President Bush, this is the season of the straw man.

It is an ancient debating technique: Caricature your opponent's argument, then knock down the straw man you created. In the 2004 campaign, Bush has been knocking down such phantoms on subjects from Iraq to free trade.
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In a speech on May 21 mentioning the importance of integrity in government, business and the military, Bush veered into a challenge to unidentified "people" who practice moral relativism. "It may seem generous and open-minded to say that everybody, on every moral issue, is equally right," Bush said, at Louisiana State University. "But that attitude can also be an excuse for sidestepping life's most important questions."

No doubt. But who's made such arguments? Hannibal Lecter? The White House declined to name names.

On May 19, Bush was asked about a plan by his Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), to halt shipments that are replenishing emergency petroleum reserves. Bush replied by saying we should not empty the reserves -- something nobody in a responsible position has proposed. "The idea of emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would put America in a dangerous position in the war on terror," Bush said. "We're at war."

- rob 1:10 PM - [PermaLink] -

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A Conservative Columnist Slowly Awakens to Reality

THE BUCK STOPS -- WHERE?

WASHINGTON -- The spirit that characterized the successful Truman presidency has long been encoded in the simple phrase "The Buck Stops Here." President Harry had it right in the middle of his office, where no one could mistake his mood or what he meant.
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Given the historical popularity among Americans about Harry's little sign, it is not unfair, when you look at the Bush administration today, to realize that not only does the buck not stop in the Oval Office, but that it stops way, way out there.

Americans involved in the most heinous and sexually perverted torture of Iraqis in Baghdad? The buck went into a virtual tailspin; like a tornado, it whirled around the Oval Office, through the secretive lair of the secretary of defense, across the hoary offices of the U.S. Joint Chiefs -- and then landed in the lap of Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq, who was suddenly replaced in what was deceptively described as a "normal rotation."
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President Bush's speech the other night did not clarify things all that much, either. He spoke of "absolute sovereignty" and "full sovereignty" for the Iraqi people after June 30. Apparently, he would have us believe that "the buck" is really about to be transferred to Baghdad from the super-secretive Pentagon civilians around Donald Rumsfeld, rather like passing a mace from monarch to monarch in olden times to embody the passing of power. (Will they perhaps carry the buck aboard a troop plane, or by caravan across the desert from Jordan to Baghdad? Will the country's new "president" place it prominently in his "sovereign" office, as did our Harry?)

But as analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski asks: "How can the Iraqi government have 'full sovereignty' with an American proconsul in a fortress in Baghdad and our military in charge? How long do we stay, and with what intent? With this language, we are again undermining the credibility upon which we depend. The most we can ask is a modern, reasonably stable Iraq that will not escalate into a 'national liberation struggle' against us.

"Using this Aesopian language is perhaps good for those converted in the U.S., but not for the international community."

So the buck does not stop with language, either. In fact, the language of this administration, especially among the authors of this war, such as Pentagon civilians Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, has become almost Soviet-like in the repetition of its obvious untruths and in its clear intent to deceive, or at least now mollify, the American people.

- rob 1:06 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Enron Traders Caught On Tape

"He just f---s California," says one Enron employee. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million."

"Will you rephrase that?" asks a second employee.

"OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," replies the first.

The tapes, from Enron's West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS reported years ago: that in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down.

"If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?" an Enron worker is heard saying.

"Oh, it's not something you want to just be turning on and off every hour. Let's put it that way," another says.

"Well, why don't you just go ahead and shut her down."
...

Before the 2000 election, Enron employees pondered the possibilities of a Bush win.

"It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy," says one Enron worker.

That didn't happen, but they were sure President Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices.

"When this election comes Bush will f------g whack this s--t, man. He won't play this price-cap b------t."

Crude, but true.

"We will not take any action that makes California's problems worse and that's why I oppose price caps," said Mr. Bush on May 29, 2001.

Both the Justice Department and Enron tried to prevent the release of these tapes.

Umm... did Ashcroft want to prevent the release of the tapes because there was swearing? Surely it wasn't because it made a powerful energy company that was extremely friendly with the White House (and Cheney) look bad. It must have been the bad words, Ashcroft hates bad words more than he hates terrorists (but less than he hates breasts).

- rob 12:57 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Our* Man in Iraq: Chalabi, Iranian Spy

*by 'Our' I mean Cheney, Pearle, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz's

Reports: Chalabi tipped Iran about codes

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ahmad Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile who recently lost his standing as a special friend of the Bush administration, told Iran that the United States had broken the code of its intelligence service, according to broadcast and published reports.

Rove was pissed: "Leaking Intelligence Information is My Job!"

- rob 12:52 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The Lying Liars Are Lying About Their Lies

So now that Bush's campaign is lying about the Washington Post reporters that put together the article on Bush's negative and false advertising and calling them liars, will they come right out and call the Bush campaign a bunch of liars like they should have in the first place?

Bush's campaign released this statement on Monday rebutting the Washington Post article. It's absolutely brilliant. What the campaign does here is they take multiple assertions from the article and meticulously show through a series of quotes and references how the Washington Post was exactly right in calling the statements misleading.

Read it all. It is sad.

- rob 12:46 PM - [PermaLink] -

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A platform of lies

Revisiting the 2000 GOP Platform: 20 Outrageous Assertions, Shameless Lies and Broken Promises

The article has great backup but the platform items themselves are enought to provoke laughter:

Item 1: The 2000 GOP platform denounced rigged elections
"Gerrymandered congressional districts are an affront to democracy and an insult to the voters. We oppose that and any other attempt to rig the electoral process."
Item 2: The 2000 GOP platform accused the Clinton administration of alienating America's allies
Item 3: The 2000 GOP platform chided the Clinton administration for not supporting the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmad Chalabi
Ha!
Item 5: The 2000 GOP platform blamed the Clinton administration for America’s low standing in the Middle East -- and for high gas prices
Item 6: The 2000 GOP platform vowed that the Bush administration would honor America’s intelligence community
Item 8: The 2000 GOP platform promised a new era of honor, purpose and accountability

HaHaHa Snort! I'm sorry I can't go on... too funny. Ha Ha what lies! What idiots! Oh, they're in charge? Dang, that's just sad.

- rob 12:44 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Powerful People

No links this time, just pure rant: driving to the train station I was forced onto the wrong side of the road by a huge truck parked on the wrong side of the street facing the wrong direction, with its motor on and wheels pointed directly at me. In order to be where it was, the truck had to angle in backwards from the opposite side of a narrow two-way city street. In other words, everything about the vehicle and how it was situated in traffic was illegal. If that were me, in my vehicle, I would've been immediately arrested, and properly so. Which brings me to George Bush.

What disturbs and frightens me about this particular administration more than any of their actual crimes is that they commit them with impunity, and not only that, shove your face in it at the same time, laughing. Because they know they are above the law. What stopped Richard Nixon? Eventually, the law. What isn't stopping George Bush, and never did? The same law that applies to you and me. The law of the land, with which none of the Bushes ever were acquainted, not even in passing. Representing the law and skirting it happens all the time; how many cops have we seen roaring through red lights in blind intersections for no reason at all, or writing you tickets for things you didn't do? I'm not talking about that. George Bush is not the law. His job description (if you can call it that) does not involve the tasks of law enforcement or matters regarding the police. A national army should never be confused with law enforcement. Soldiers are not cops. As commander in chief, the president's job is to marshal troops and fight wars, which is the opposite of observing the law. All bets are off in a war. Wars are the definition of the breakdown of the social contract a society has with itself and other societies, especially if they are another country. So when we observe that no law exists in Iraq, for instance, we can pretty much conclude that it's a free for all, that anybody with a weapon can do anything they want to anybody else -- and sure enough, that's exactly what's going on. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. Fuck the Geneva convention, right? I know if it were me with rocket grenades whizzing inches from my head from a treeline, Geneva would be the last thing I'd be thinking about. All of which is to say that war is war and laws don't exist in countries where there isn't any government, obviously.

What isn't obvious, though, is that when the head of state -- the one whose social contract promises that if you drive on the wrong side of the street going the wrong way in traffic, you represent a common threat and must be dealt with, either by putting your ass in jail or impounding your vehicle and taking your license -- brazenly flouts every law, foreign and domestic, simply because he shall never face a single consequence and thus has no fear of ever facing one, that law becomes moot and society breaks down, like a fatal crack in marble. The fact that none of the perpetrators -- of the crimes committed since this adminstration usurped Washington and demolished its founding institutions by suspending the law and taking a sledgehammer to them -- have even been held accountable will come back to bite us in the ass, hard. Imagine driving the I-95 at 80 miles and hour and seeing three cars coming right at you.

That's what's at stake when a president rules without law.

- Michael 11:36 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Reprinted on Atrios: a stirring letter from a Mom

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?
...

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.

You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

- rob 2:03 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Krugman: Dooh Nibor Economics

That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year.

I can't back that assertion with official numbers, because under Mr. Bush the Treasury Department has stopped releasing information on the distribution of tax cuts by income level. Estimates by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which now provides the numbers the administration doesn't want you to know, reveal why. This year, the average tax reduction per family due to Bush-era cuts was $1,448. But this average reflects huge cuts for a few affluent families, with most families receiving much less (which helps explain why most people, according to polls, don't believe their taxes have been cut). In fact, the 257,000 taxpayers with incomes of more than $1 million received a bigger combined tax cut than the 85 million taxpayers who make up the bottom 60 percent of the population.

Still, won't most families gain something? No — because the tax cuts must eventually be offset with spending cuts.

Three years ago George Bush claimed that he was cutting taxes to return a budget surplus to the public. Instead, he presided over a move to huge deficits. As a result, the modest tax cuts received by the great majority of Americans are, in a fundamental sense, fraudulent. It's as if someone expected gratitude for giving you a gift, when he actually bought it using your credit card.

Actually he bought it with your child's credit card, so maybe you won't feel as bad about it.

- rob 1:55 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Pick Appears to Catch Bush Administration Off Guard

The Bush administration appeared to be caught off guard and somewhat confused yesterday after the Iraqi Governing Council nominated a physician with longtime CIA ties as the post-occupation prime minister. Officials in Washington scrambled to respond after the Iraqis took the public lead in a process that was supposed to be run by a U.N. envoy.

It is kind of hard to call Bush "an occupier" because he really isn't in charge, nor is cheney, nor is Rice, nor is Rumsfeld, its just some guy, Sargent Rock, making all the decisions about Iraq from his tent while waiting for the line in front of the mess tent to get shorter.

- rob 1:52 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Changing the tone: From Bad to Toxic

From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity
Scholars Say Campaign Is Making History With Often-Misleading Attacks

Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

The assault on Kerry is multi-tiered: It involves television ads, news releases, Web sites and e-mail, and statements by Bush spokesmen and surrogates -- all coordinated to drive home the message that Kerry has equivocated and "flip-flopped" on Iraq, support for the military, taxes, education and other matters.

"There is more attack now on the Bush side against Kerry than you've historically had in the general-election period against either candidate," said University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an authority on political communication. "This is a very high level of attack, particularly for an incumbent."

Scurrying for anything to take down Kerry because there is nothing good to say for Bush. Little rats sniffing at garbage.

- rob 1:49 PM - [PermaLink] -

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a public service from mcsweeney's

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush

- rob 1:28 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The past is so bright they gotta wear shades

- rob 1:26 PM - [PermaLink] -

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This smells.

I thought a few bin Ladens were escorted out; but hundreds of Saudis? WTF?

[N]ew evidence shows that the evacuation involved more than the departure of 142 Saudis on six charter flights that the commission is investigating. According to newly released documents, 160 Saudis left the United States on 55 flights immediately after 9/11 — making a total of about 300 people who left with the apparent approval of the Bush administration, far more than has been reported before. The records were released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative, nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington.

The vast majority of the newly disclosed flights were commercial airline flights, not charters, often carrying just two or three Saudi passengers. They originated from more than 20 cities, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Houston. One Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left Kennedy Airport on Sept. 13 with 46 Saudis. The next day, another Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left with 13 Saudis.

The panel has indicated that it has yet to find any evidence that the F.B.I. checked the manifests of departing flights against its terror watch list. The departures of additional Saudis raise more questions for the panel. Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, told The Hill newspaper recently that he took full responsibility for approving some flights. But we don't know if other Bush administration officials participated in the decision.

The passengers should have been questioned about any links to Osama bin Laden, or his financing. We have long known that some faction of the Saudi elite has helped funnel money to Islamist terrorists —inadvertently at least. Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who has been accused of being an intermediary between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud, boarded one of the evacuation planes in Kentucky. Was he interrogated by the F.B.I. before he left?

Has it occurred to anybody reading this that the same people who ordered two jets loaded with passengers and fuel into New York skyscrapers own more than a fourth of the U.S. economy? What's wrong with this picture? Somebody explain it to me -- and don't give me "we're too dependent on Middle East oil," because that doesn't explain shit.

- Michael 10:14 AM - [PermaLink] -

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