Two things stand out to me about the debate.

First, for most of the 90 minutes Kerry kept the initiative and kept the president on the defensive. The president was able to parry many of those challenges, at least in a way that would be convincing to his supporters or those inclined to support his policies. But I was surprised how few times President Bush brought the debate to Kerry or got him on the defensive. The standard bludgeon lines the president and his surrogates have been using against Kerry for months only barely got into play. When they did, Kerry came back quickly.

My point isn't that Kerry clobbered the president or anything. But for most of the 90 minutes I thought Kerry held the initiative, keeping the energy of the debate on questions about the president's record.

It's the second point however that is, I think, the really big deal about this debate.

If you look at the dynamics of this race and the small but durable lead President Bush has built up over the last month, it comes less from people becoming more enamored of President Bush or his policies as it has from a steep decline in confidence in Sen. Kerry.

To put it bluntly, the Bush campaign has created an image of Kerry as a weak and indecisive man, someone that -- whatever you think of President Bush -- just can't be trusted to keep the country safe in these dangerous times.

Often they've made him into an object of contempt.

Whatever else you can say about this debate, though, whatever you think of his policies, I don't think that's how Kerry came off. I think he came off as forceful and direct. And I suspect that most people who were at all genuinely undecided came away from the 90 minutes with that impression.

If President Bush's current lead is built not upon confidence in him or his policies but in a simple belief that Kerry isn't solid enough to be president, then I think this performance could help Kerry a good deal.

The networks' polls that I've seen show a consensus that Kerry won. ABC News reports:

Among a random sample of 531 registered voters who watched the debate, 45 percent called Kerry the winner, 36 percent said it was Bush, and 17 percent called it a tie. It was a clean win for Kerry: Independents by a 20-point margin said he prevailed.

Moreover, while 70 percent of Bush's supporters said Bush was the winner, considerably more Kerry supporters — 89 percent — said their man won.

Here's CBS:

A poll of 200 uncommitted voters conducted immediately after the debate by CBS News and Knowledge Networks gave the edge to John Kerry. Forty-four percent of those polled said Kerry won, 26 percent said the president won and 30 percent called the debate a tie.

In one of the more bizarre moments of the evening, Scalia mentioned—in passing—that he thought the 17th Amendment was "a bad idea."

The 17th Amendment provides for the direct election of senators.

And others with former Illinois Republican senatorial candidate Jack Ryan:

"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged," Scalia said.

Somehow that is not a statement I expected to hear from Scalia. Clarence Thomas, maybe, but not Scalia. (link via Atrios) But Senor Burt, commenting on Atrios' post, explained it:

It makes sense. Scalia did screw hundreds of millions of Americans at the same time.

Indeed.

Georgia Mason is a retired Vietnam Veteran NASCAR driver an security mom who as a single parent must juggle raisin her family with her career as captain of a pirate ship. She has voted for Ronald Reagan an Bill Clinton an George Bush an a genetic chimera of Ross Perot an Ralph Nader. But although she calls herself a lifelong Republican she may vote for John Kerry this year! "I don't trust John Kerry on the war," she says. "But I'm worried about my job in this economy. How can I feed a family looting, raping, and pillaging if everyone I try to loot, rape, and pillage is unemployed?" But she also has her doubts about John Kerry. "John Kerry's a flip-flopper," she says. "What if he decides to flip-flop on terror and have American troops fighting alongside Osama bin Laden in a bloody jihad against the west just because it's popular in the polls?" Georgia is one of many voters who says she may wait up until the last few days, or preferably the last few seconds, of the election to decide. "I just don't know enough about this president and his policies after only four years of his presidency and his policies," she points out. Convincin urban professional gay Hispanic Jews like her may be the key to carryin the population centers.

Meanwhile, Giblets is outraged at Congressional Republicans' plans to outsource torture, and urges you to write your Congressman today to say that you want those torture jobs to stay right here in the U.S. of A.! (link via Atrios)

We don't need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don't get done.

JERUSALEM -- Greek Orthodox and Franciscan priests got into a fistfight Monday at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christianity's holiest shrine, after arguing over whether a door in the basilica should be closed during a procession.

Dozens of people, including several Israeli police officers, were slightly hurt in the brawl at the shrine, built over the spot where tradition says Jesus was crucified and buried.

Four priests were detained, police said.

Custody of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is shared by several denominations that jealously guard territory and responsibilities under a fragile deal hammered out over the last centuries. Any perceived encroachment on one group's turf can lead to vicious feuds, sometimes lasting hundreds of years.

Monday's fight broke out during a procession of hundreds of Greek Orthodox worshippers commemorating the 4th century pilgrimage by Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, to Jerusalem. Tradition says that during the trip, Helena found the cross on which Jesus had been crucified.

Church officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that at one point, the procession passed a Roman Catholic chapel, and priests from both sides started arguing over whether the door to the chapel should be open or closed.

Club-wielding Israeli police broke up the fight, witnesses said. Afterward, the procession continued.

Instead of partisan ideology - which increasingly has led moderates to leave the party - what’s needed is a speedy return to the pragmatic, problem-solving mainstream. Here’s how the President and Republican-majority Congress can send that clear signal to the nation:

Stop weakening environmental law - and once again protect our air, water and public lands as Teddy Roosevelt and other great Republican leaders intended;

Restore fiscal responsibility - with "pay-as-you-go" budget discipline to end record deficits that jeopardize economic growth;

Put the health of millions first - and clear the way for embryonic stem cell research;

Appoint mainstream federal judges - and respect the Constitution;

Make America safer - and protect cities and towns, still vulnerable three years after 9/11, by securing chemical and nuclear plants and shipping containers;

Rebuild our alliances - with real partnerships and restore America’s standing in the world.

By returning to the mainstream in these ways, our party can regain the trust of a divided nation and earn a vote of confidence in November.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, similar registration drives have been mounted in them as well, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.

. . . .

The precise impact of the swell in registration is difficult to predict, as there is no reliable gauge of how many of these new voters will actually vote. Some experts, though, say that the spike has not been accurately captured by political polls and could confound prognostications in closely contested states.

What is clear is that each side has deployed huge numbers of workers and devoted millions of dollars to the effort. Much of it is being directed by civil rights and community groups, as well as soft-money organizations allied with the Democrats. One such Democratic umbrella group, America Votes, says its constituents - labor unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, community organizations - will spend $300 million on registration and turnout in swing states, a sum that dwarfs the $150 million in public financing the two candidates together will receive for the entire fall campaign.

The registration drives are just the first step in a campaign by each side to get more Americans to vote by using personal contact. As registration winds down, with early October cutoffs in many states, efforts will shift to staying in touch through Election Day with repeated phone calls and visits, and, on Nov. 2, ferrying people to the polls.

In Ohio - no Republican presidential candidate has ever been elected without carrying the state - the campaign has been especially exhaustive. Canvassers ride public transportation, visit coin laundries, and trudge the sidewalks and parking lots at the job centers, housing agencies and community colleges.

In Columbus, Akume Green has haunted the Franklin County Courthouse for months, working the sidewalk between the entrance and the nearby bus stop. Ms. Green says she has signed up more than 700 voters since March here and elsewhere in the city. But it is getting harder to do so, she said. On a recent day, the first 12 people she asked said they had already registered.

"I get about 30 new voters or changes of address in six hours," said Ms. Green, who was hired by Project Vote, the nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. "I used to get 16 in 45 minutes, but now everyone's registered."

Studies have shown that calling voters and showing up at their houses before and on Election Day substantially increases turnout - and is cheaper per vote than buying a television advertisement. Republicans used the strategy with great success in the 2002 elections.

. . . .

Steve Rosenthal, the chief executive of Americans Coming Together, or ACT, a soft-money group that is trying to register Democrats, said he believed [newly registered voters] would [turn out]. "I think what's happening on the streets, below the radar, is what's going to make the big difference on Election Day," said Mr. Rosenthal, who said his organization and the other groups would register two and a half million new Democratic voters nationwide.

. . . .

Ms. Green is typical of the army of registrars who have been working the streets here, some of them since last September. Their persistence has produced results. Franklin County had 650,000 registered voters in the 2000 election. "Now we're over 800,000," said Matt Damschroder, the director of the Board of Elections. "If you look at the pure census numbers, you'd think we are close to registering the entire voting-age population."

Project Vote says it has registered 147,000 new voters in Ohio. Americans Coming Together said that, together with allied groups that are part of America Votes, it had registered 300,000 new voters. America Votes and ACT are openly Democratic, although they cannot legally coordinate with the party or the Kerry campaign.

. . . .

[A]n examination of county registration records shows that the groups have added thousands of new Democrats to the rolls and have far outnumbered new registrations in Republican areas. In a 300-square-block area east of the courthouse in downtown Columbus that voted nine to one against Mr. Bush in 2000, for instance, 3,000 new voters have registered this year. That is three times as many as in each of the last two presidential election years. The number of registered voters in the area is up 18 percent since January.

By comparison, in a prosperous area north of downtown with a similar number of voters who are overwhelmingly Republican, just 1,100 new voters have been added this year, increasing registration rolls by 7 percent.

These numbers are similar across Ohio. The Times examined registration from Jan. 1 to July 31 in a sample of counties that included seven of the state's nine largest, along with some smaller rural and suburban counties. Voters do not give a party affiliation when they register in Ohio, but The Times looked at the voting history of ZIP codes to gauge the political inclinations of the new voters.

In rock-ribbed Republican areas - 103 ZIP codes, many of them rural and suburban areas, that voted by two to one or better for George W. Bush in 2000 - 35,000 new voters have registered, a substantial increase over the 28,000 that registered in those areas in the first seven months of 2000. . . . .

. . . .

But in heavily Democratic areas - 60 ZIP codes mostly in the core of big cities like Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown that voted two to one or better against Mr. Bush - new registrations have more than tripled over 2000, to 63,000 from 17,000.

In Florida, where The Times was able to analyze data from 60 of the state's 67 counties, new registrations this year also are running far ahead of the 2000 pace, with Republican areas trailing Democratic ones. In the 150 ZIP codes that voted most heavily for Mr. Bush, 96,000 new voters have registered this year, up from 86,000 in 2000, an increase of about 12 percent.

But in the heaviest of Democratic areas, 110 ZIP codes that gave two-thirds or more of their votes to Al Gore, new registrations have increased to 125, 000 from 77,000, a jump of more than 60 percent.

In Duval County, where a confusing ballot design in 2000 helped disqualify thousands of ballots in black precincts, new registrations by black voters are up 150 percent over the pace of 2000.

. . . .

The groups are building nationwide databases of voters and have committed millions of dollars for continued contact with them before and on Election Day.

"If every Democrat showed up at the polls, you'd win, no question," said James Koehler, a precinct organizer in Columbus working for MoveOn.org, another soft-money group. Mr. Koehler said MoveOn hoped to have a volunteer in every precinct to call neighbors on Nov. 2.

. . . .

Even before Election Day, the new voters may be having an impact on the campaign, because they may not be accurately reflected in the political polls.

"The people who are new voters are disengaged; they're less likely to respond to a poll question," said Philip Klinkner, a government professor at Hamilton College. (link via Daily Kos)

The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass mailings to residents of two states warning that "liberals" seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for President Bush.

The mailings include images of the Bible labeled "banned" and of a gay marriage proposal labeled "allowed." A mailing to Arkansas residents warns: "This will be Arkansas if you don't vote." A similar mailing was sent to West Virginians.

. . . .

In an e-mail message, Christine Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, confirmed that the party had sent the mailings.

"When the Massachusetts Supreme Court sanctioned same-sex marriage and people in other states realized they could be compelled to recognize those laws, same-sex marriage became an issue,'' Ms. Iverson said. "These same activist judges also want to remove the words 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance." (link via Wonkette)

And who are these liberals trying to ban the Bible, Ms. Iverson? They don't exist. Atrios has a picture of the mailing to Arkansans, complete with Republican National Committee return address, here.

God, these people are despicable, lying bastards. One wonders if the media will get as exercised over the RNC's lies as they did over Dan Rather's unknowing use of forged (albeit substantively accurate) documents. Somehow I doubt it.

On a related note, Publius of Legal Fiction gets shrill over the Rethuglicans' sleazy claims that terrorists are rooting for Kerry. Have I mentioned that I hate these bastards?

RABAT, Morocco — Authorities have made little progress worldwide in defeating Islamic extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda despite thwarting attacks and arresting high-profile figures, according to interviews with intelligence and law enforcement officials and outside experts.

On the contrary, officials warn that the Bush administration's upbeat assessment of its successes is overly optimistic and masks its strategic failure to understand and combat Al Qaeda's evolution.

Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda was a loosely organized network, but core leaders exercised considerable control over its operations. Since the loss of its base in Afghanistan and many of those leaders, the organization has dispersed its operatives and reemerged as a lethal ideological movement.

Osama bin Laden might now serve more as an inspirational figure than a CEO, and the war in Iraq is helping focus militants' anger, according to dozens of interviews in recent weeks on several continents. European and moderate Islamic countries have become targets. And instead of undergoing lengthy training at camps in Afghanistan, recruits have been quickly indoctrinated at home and deployed on attacks.

The United States remains a target, but counter-terrorism officials and experts are alarmed by Al Qaeda's switch from spectacular attacks that require years of planning to smaller, more numerous strikes on softer targets that can be carried out swiftly with little money or outside help.

The impact of these smaller attacks can be enormous. Bombings in Casablanca in May 2003 shook Morocco's budding democracy, leading to mass arrests and claims of abuse. The bombing of four commuter trains in Madrid in March contributed to the ouster of Spain's government and the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq.

Officials say the terrorist movement has benefited from the rapid spread of radical Islam's message among potential recruits worldwide who are motivated by Al Qaeda's anti-Western doctrine, the continuing Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the insurgency in Iraq.

The Iraq war, which President Bush says is necessary to build a safer world, has emerged as a new front in the battle against terrorism and a rallying point for a seemingly endless supply of young extremists willing to die wherever they wage jihad, or holy war. (link via Legal Fiction)

Two thirds of America's combat brigades are now tied down in this war which, under present conditions, is categorically unwinnable. Having alienated virtually every major ally who might help, our troops are simply targets. If Bush is re-elected, there are only two possible outcomes in Iraq:

• Four years from now, America will have 5,000 dead servicemen and women and an untold number of dead Iraqis at a cost of about $1 trillion, yet still be no closer to success than we are right now, or
• The U.S. will be gone, and we will witness the birth of a violent breeding ground for Shiite terrorists posing a far greater threat to Americans than a contained Saddam.

To discern the truth about Iraq, Americans must simply look beyond the spin. This war is not some noble endeavor, some great struggle of good against evil as the Bush administration would have us believe. We in the military have heard these grand pronouncements many times before by men who have neither served nor sacrificed. This war is an exercise in colossal stupidity and hubris which has now cost more than 1,000 American military lives, which has empowered Al Qaeda beyond anything those butchers might have engineered on their own and which has diverted America's attention and precious resources from the real threat at the worst possible time. And now, in a supreme act of truly breathtaking gall, this administration insists the only way to fix Iraq is to leave in power the very ones who created the nightmare.

Absent an unequivocal plan from Kerry, the Bush administration's "stay the course" strategy has become the de facto solution. Yet this is a recipe for even greater tragedy, setting the stage for far more crippling attacks on Americans. It means adhering to a plan that may very soon make it impossible for the U.S. to respond to significant threats from elsewhere against its vital strategic interests. The administration's policies are tearing down America's military readiness worldwide, while ignoring the real war on terror. (link via Dohiyi Mir)

Relying on Free Republic losers to "fact-check" the media is like relying on the proverbial roomful of typing monkeys, except with somewhat more feral howling and feces-flinging.

In today's breakfast-cereal age, there are two types of people in the world, those who like to look into their bowl at a sea of desiccated marshmallows, and those who prefer an unsweetened alternative made from whole-grain oats. I call them the Lucky Charmers and the Cheerioians.

This link via Crooked Timber, which notes Brooksie's latest dichotomy: the Iraqis you can win over, and those you kill. Lovely.

The war, illegal and founded on a vast lie, has produced two tragedies of equal magnitude: an embryonic civil war in the world's oldest country, and a triumph for those in the Bush administration who, without a trace of shame, act as if the truth does not matter. Lying until the lie became true, the administration pursued a course of action that guaranteed large sections of Iraq would become havens for jihadis and radical Islamists. That is the logic promoted by people who take for themselves divine infallibility -- a righteousness that blinds and destroys. Like credulous Weimar Germans who were so delighted by rigged wrestling matches, millions of Americans have accepted Bush's assertions that the war in Iraq has made the United States and the rest of the world a safer place to live. Of course, this is false.

But it is a useful fiction because it is a happy one. All we need to know, according to the administration, is that America is a good country, full of good people and therefore cannot make bloody mistakes when it comes to its own security. The bitter consequence of succumbing to such happy talk is that the government of the most powerful nation in the world now operates unchecked and unmoored from reality; leaving us teetering on the brink of another presidential term where abuse of authority has been recast as virtue.

The logic the administration uses to promote its actions -- preemptive war, indefinite detention, torture of prisoners, the abandonment of the Geneva Convention abroad and the Bill of Rights at home -- is simple, faith-based and therefore empty of reason. The worsening war is the creation of the Bush administration, which is simultaneously holding Americans and Iraqis hostage to a bloody conflict that cannot be won, only stalemated.

Over the last three years, practicing a philosophy of deliberate deception, fear-mongering and abuse of authority, the Bush administration has done more to undermine the republic of Lincoln and Jefferson than the cells of al-Qaida. It has willfully ignored our fundamental laws and squandered the nation's wealth in bloody, open-ended pursuits. Corporations like Halliburton, with close ties to government officials, are profiting greatly from the war while thousands of American soldiers undertake the dangerous work of patrolling the streets of Iraqi cities. We have arrived at a moment of national crisis.

At home, the United States, under the Bush administration, is rapidly drifting toward a security state whose principal currency is fear. Abroad, it has used fear to justify the invasion of Iraq -- fear of weapons of mass destruction, of terrorist attacks, of Iraq itself. The administration, under false premises, invaded a country that it barely understood. We entered a country in shambles, a population divided against itself. The U.S. invasion was a catalyst of violence and religious hatred, and the continuing presence of American troops has only made matters worse. Iraq today bears no resemblance to the president's vision of a fledgling democracy. On its way to national elections in January, Iraq has already slipped into chaos. (link via Atrios)

Juan Cole looks at what America would be like if it were Iraq. (link via Daily Kos)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - Putting aside efforts to control the federal deficit before the elections, Republican and Democratic leaders agreed Wednesday to extend $145 billion worth of tax cuts sought by President Bush without trying to pay for them.

This is no longer an interesting coincidence. It is an unmistakable message from God. I hope everyone is listening.

I couldn't help but think about something Senator John McCain had said back in October. Iraq, he said, is "a huge pot of honey that's attracting a lot of flies." The flies McCain was referring to were the Halliburtons and Bechtels, as well as the venture capitalists who flocked to Iraq in the path cleared by Bradley Fighting Vehicles and laser-guided bombs. The honey that drew them was not just no-bid contracts and Iraq's famed oil wealth but the myriad investment opportunities offered by a country that had just been cracked wide open after decades of being sealed off, first by the nationalist economic policies of Saddam Hussein, then by asphyxiating United Nations sanctions.

Looking at the honey billboard, I was also reminded of the most common explanation for what has gone wrong in Iraq, a complaint echoed by everyone from John Kerry to Pat Buchanan: Iraq is mired in blood and deprivation because George W. Bush didn't have "a postwar plan." The only problem with this theory is that it isn't true. The Bush Administration did have a plan for what it would do after the war; put simply, it was to lay out as much honey as possible, then sit back and wait for the flies.

The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished belief of the war's ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bush's Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists.

Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.

The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based.

Go read the rest. (Thanks, Josh.)

How can a President start a war based upon falsehoods, kill tens of thousands, commit torture and offer no exit plan for Iraq yet still poll at around 50%? 9/11 can happen on his watch, not-since-Hoover employment numbers are produced, the deficit skyrockets to $422 billion, the trade balance continues to worsen, environmental progress is a disaster, wealth disparity widens…the list goes on and on, yet there Bush is at 50%, when he should be around 15%.

Go read the rest.

Every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90’s. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn’t used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80’s used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old …. This should be pursued aggressively.

Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal[.]

. . . .

Reached by telephone today, MacDougald, 46, confirmed that he is Buckhead, but declined to answer questions about his political background or how he knew so much about the CBS documents so fast.  [link via Political Animal]

Gee, I wonder why? Robert Sam Anson wrote of Buckhead in the New York Observer:

[T]here’s the extraordinary, yeah, boggling, knowledge of typewriting arcana. More remarkable still are the circumstances under which discernment occurred. Namely, viewing the document on a TV screen from a presumed distance of six to a dozen feet. Folks who make their living at this sort of thing rely on magnifying glasses, if not microscopes. And they don’t venture opinions unless the document’s in their puss.

Then there’s the warp speed with which Buckhead discerned monkey business. The last big document mess was the trove that conned Seymour Hersh into believing Jack Kennedy signed a contract with Marilyn Monroe agreeing to pay a hundred grand in consideration of her shutting up about their adventures between the sheets, as well as his pillow talk of owing the 1960 election to the good offices of Chicago mob boss Sam (Momo) Giancana. Their exposure (in which your correspondent had a walk-on) took weeks. And those documents were nutso on their face.

Another timing oddity which may or may not be related to the mysterious Buckhead, depending on your choice of villain, is the Pentagon’s release of allegedly newly-discovered records of Mr. Bush’s flight hours and middling piloting abilities one day almost to the minute before Mr. Rather’s report—following four months of insisting there were no more documents to disgorge. Second coincidence: The Pentagon release came hours after the Boston Globe, poring through yet other records, reported that Mr. Bush "fell well short of meeting his military obligation" by failing to report to a Boston-area Guard unit after he enrolled in the Harvard Business School, and by earlier ducking out on required training and drills for a total of nine months. Either could have landed Mr. Bush on full-time active duty for two years, potentially in Vietnam. But he received no punishment whatsoever.

Finally, there’s a detail that appears to have escaped press notice: The Web site where Buckhead’s posting appeared also happens to be the repository for anti-Jew, anti-Catholic, anti-homosexual, anti-John Kerry rants by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. And whom, you ask, is Dr. Corsi? Co-author of the best-selling Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, that’s who. [link via xymphora]

Anson wrote the above without realizing that the L.A. Times had already outed Buckhead. Anson would doubtless be even more suspicious if he'd known that Buckhead was a 46-year-old lawyer and Republican activist with no apparent expertise regarding typography.

So how did Buckhead and the other right-wing bloggers suddenly become instant experts on typography? PR Week sheds some light on the subject:

Creative Response Concepts (CRC), the VA-based agency promoting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, used right-wing blogs and news sites to turn a CBS report casting doubt on President George W. Bush's National Guard service into a potential black eye for both the network and the Democrats.

A CRC client, the Cybercast News Service (CNS), was among the first to voice suspicion that documents suggesting Bush had received preferential treatment in the Guard were forgeries.

"After the CBS story aired, [CNS] called typographical experts, got them on the record that these papers were fishy, and posted a story by 3pm Thursday," said CRC SVP Keith Appell. "We were immediately in contact with [Matt] Drudge, who loved the story."

CRC worked with CNS and the Media Research Center, another media watchdog client, to push the story into the mainstream press.

"We've been communicating with bloggers and news websites to make sure they know it isn't just Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge who are raising questions," added CRC president Greg Mueller. [emphasis added; link via xymphora]

Xymphora writes:

After someone probably pointed out that the Official Story is that populist bloggers did the CBS story all by their lonesomes, and that PR firms are paid to stick to the Official Story and not blow their own horns, CRC issued a sort of retraction:

Please understand, we never meant to imply that the blogosphere is something we did, or even could, control or direct. No one controls the bloggers. The extraordinary depth and breadth of their talent and resources only breeds one thing: a fierce independence much needed in the country. They are a force the PR industry and news media need to pay greater attention to.

In the interview with PR Week, we tried to communicate that the bloggers, and then CNS www.cnsnews.com, were moving this story, which we then began pushing to conservative media, news websites and 'mainstream' press.

If anything, we're just proud that our client, CNS News, provided some hard news reporting to add some gasoline to the already rampant wildfire that the bloggers had started. Do we deserve credit for that? Not nearly as much as the guys at PowerLine, Instapundit, LittleGreenFootballs, INDCJournal, Allahpundit, and so many others deserve.

The conspiracy is starting to unravel. CBS was attacked, not by bloggers, but by swift boats. As I wrote a few days ago on what I called the 'quick blogger response team', the coordinated way in which the bloggers worked, together with their amazing speed and instant expertise on old typewriters and fonts, not to mention the way their postings were seamlessly integrated into the mainstream media, indicates that the attack on the CBS memos was not the bottom-up populist unorganized campaign that has been depicted by the right-wing media, but nothing less than a propaganda blitz by the Republican Party to deflect attention from some very embarrassing material by attacking the messenger. It should not be a surprise that PR firms would fasten on blogging as a method of disguising the fact that the message is coming from a partisan source. After all, deceiving people is their job. However, from now on Americans should never assume that just because information is coming from bloggers that it is not part of an organized campaign of disinformation.

Dee Delancy of WCHS news in Charleston reported on the incident, and interviewed several people who were there. One of them was Phil Parlock, who said, "I think this is definitely, definitely an act that was by an extremist kind of thing."

[T]his is how campaigns get mired in utterly mindless trivialities. Instead of discussing the upswell of catastrophic violence in Iraq, we get to hear about poor Phil and his crying daughter. There are important matters to discuss, matters central to the future of the country, but media tricks like this blow the whole show off-track. That's bad.

. . . .

This could all be a series of strange coincidences. Parlock could simply be an unlucky guy who always seems to be around when Democrats do something wretched, who took abuse in 1996, 2000 and 2004 for supporting Republicans, who happened to have the same newspaper on hand to report his story each time, and who also happened to be on the scene of a shooting incident that made Democrats look like frightening would-be assassins.

This could be a series of coincidences, but someone should take a long look at this fellow regardless. Manufacturing a few sign-ripping incidents isn't a terribly big deal. But he appears to be hell-bent on making Democrats look like thugs, and there has been a shooting incident involving him on top of everything else. The media, which may well have been repeatedly scammed by Parlock, might want to do some further checking.

Kerry's up by 1 in the Harris poll, Kerry and Bush are neck-and-neck in the Pew poll, Bush is up by 1 (likely voters) or 2 (registered voters) in the American Research Group poll ... and (scroll down) Bush is up by 14 in the Gallup poll?

Screwy. But no screwier than 2000, when Gallup had Gore up by 10 on September 20 and Fox had the race dead even a day later. This pattern persisted: On October 26, Reuters/MSNBC had Gore up by 2 and Gallup had Bush up by 13. So take 'em all with a grain of salt.

I'm treating the Gallup result as a joke until further notice. At MyDD, Chris Bowers rips into Gallup, which he says has been producing outlier results all year, almost always favoring Bush.

Like Publius, I'm starting to feel good about the election for the first time in quite a while. Bush's convention bounce has finally dissipated, Kerry is on the attack, and some ass-kicking ads are coming out. And I hate to say it, but Iraq is exploding before our eyes. September is already a horrible month, and October will probably be even worse. Vietnam ended LBJ's political career; Bush's Vietnam will end his political career. Mission accomplished -- albeit at an obscene cost.

"Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then, 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day, in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how he is "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.

But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."

W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there - said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency". According to Terrill, the anti-US insurgency, centred in the Sunni triangle, and holding several cities and towns - including Fallujah - is expanding and becoming more capable as a consequence of US policy.

"We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."

. . . .

General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies." [link via reef the dog at Daily Kos]

The classified National Intelligence Estimate given to Bush in July also sounds grim:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document.

The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence. Such estimates can be requested by the White House or Congress, but this one was initiated by the intelligence council under George J. Tenet, who stepped down as director of central intelligence on July 9, the government officials said.

As described by the officials, the pessimistic tone of the new estimate stands in contrast to recent statements by Bush administration officials, including comments on Wednesday by Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, who asserted that progress was being made.

"You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and hand-wringers who said it can't be done," Mr. McClellan said at a news briefing. "And every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future."

President Bush, who was briefed on the new intelligence estimate, has not significantly changed the tenor of his public remarks on the war's course over the summer, consistently emphasizing progress while acknowledging the difficulties.

Mr. Bush's opponent, Senator John Kerry, criticized the administration's optimistic public position on Iraq on Wednesday and questioned whether it would be possible to hold elections there in January.

"I think it is very difficult to see today how you're going to distribute ballots in places like Falluja, and Ramadi and Najaf and other parts of the country, without having established the security,'' Mr. Kerry said in a call-in phone call to Don Imus, the radio talk show host. "I know that the people who are supposed to run that election believe that they need a longer period of time and greater security before they can even begin to do it, and they just can't do it at this point in time. So I'm not sure the president is being honest with the American people about that situation either at this point.''

The situation in Iraq prompted harsh comments from Republicans and Democrats at a hearing into the shift of spending from reconstruction to security. Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called it "exasperating for anybody look at this from any vantage point," and Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said of the overall lack of spending: "It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous."

. . . .

The committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, one of the harshest critics of the Iraq policies, was far more outspoken. "The president has frequently described Iraq as, quote, 'the central front of the war on terror,' " Mr. Biden went on. "Well by that definition, success in Iraq is a key standard by which to measure the war on terror. And by that measure, I think the war on terror is in trouble."

The number of American soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq are both rising sharply. What an absolute fucking disaster. And about half of the sheeple actually want to return the idiot who got us into the quagmire to office?

The ad starts with Bush and his September 14, 2001, bullhorn. This time, though, it's a Kerry commercial that reminds swing-state Americans of Bush's blood vow—precisely three years ago—that "the people who knocked down these buildings" would "hear all of us soon." The cowboy soundbites that we would "smoke 'em out" track across the screen with any network's footage of the "wanted dead or alive" culprits: Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar.

Then the camera moves on to anchors reporting that bin Laden was cornered at Tora Bora, picked up on cell-phone intercepts commanding the surrounded 2,000 Al Qaeda troops, but that U.S. commanders were allowing mercenary Pashtuns to lead the fighting and Pakistanis to seal the backside border. Next, news headlines blare that Special Forces and key CIA operatives were prematurely pulled out of Afghanistan to prepare for the war on Iraq. The last visual is of Bush momentarily forced at a March 2002 press conference to discuss bin Laden: "I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with ya."

The voice-over is Monica Gabrielle's, a 9-11 widow and leader. "My husband died in tower two and the people who killed him have not heard from us three years later. The president will not even talk about these murderers. Sometimes he claims his administration has captured two-thirds of Al Qaeda's lesser leaders; sometimes, three-quarters. The 9-11 Commission says one-quarter. Terrorists killed more people—625—in 2003 than in any year other than 2001. They wounded more than ever—3,646 people. Even the president concedes that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attack that changed my life forever. Why have we expended hundreds of times the resources and troops in Iraq than we have in pursuit of the mass murderers who vow to hit us again? Anybody could accept a good-faith effort that failed. But we cannot accept a so-called war on terror that has never aggressively targeted the number one terrorists."

With all its metered focus groups, the Kerry campaign remains blind to the core weakness of the Bush campaign. It is not Iraq, still a 50-50 proposition with American voters. The economy is backdrop when life-and-death fear grips us. It is the abject failure of the Bush team to make America safer—either by corralling the killers or raising the defenses. Three times as many Americans died in two hours on 9-11 than have died in 18 months in Iraq, and the country trembles with belief that many more could die tomorrow. No one better embodies the dismal three-year Bush record on terror than bin Laden and Zawahiri, who resurfaced in a new tape just last week looking healthy and threatening, an ace in a card deck the White House has yet to deal.

It makes all the sense in the world that the Bush convention—with a hundred references in major speeches to terror and 69 to Iraq or Hussein—mentioned Osama just once, and then only to blame him on Bill Clinton. What makes no sense is that bin Laden was never mentioned in Kerry's Boston show. With cable and the networks also blocking on Osama, he may take a back seat to Ho Chi Minh in the 2004 presidential election. What also makes no sense is that bin Laden's never been featured in a Kerry commercial and, if he is mentioned at all in Kerry speeches, he is an afterthought, with Iraq or the economy dominant. Does anyone doubt that if Al Gore was in the White House and had the same record on bin Laden, he would be the drumbeat of the perpetually riveted, on-message, Republican campaign?

Kerry has begun using Osama in the laundry list of his complaints about the Iraq war. He's got it backwards. Osama's escape cannot be reduced to just one more consequence of the Iraq miscalculation, a postscript to a war critique. Instead, one of the reasons the real terrorists still threaten us—the number one issue to Americans—is because Bush got diverted into Iraq. That's where the emphasis belongs. Tommy Franks's book—American Soldier—inadvertently makes the case: He's forced to trek to Crawford to deliver an Iraq war plan months before his troops have even fought their first major Afghan battle in the Shah-I-Kot Valley, where he still hoped to find bin Laden. Indeed, American troops were used then precisely because of the catastrophe at Tora Bora, which The Washington Post branded "the gravest error in the war against al Qaeda." [link via Talk Left]

Yes, yes, yes. One can see why the Republicans don't want to talk about "Osama bin Forgotten." Why the hell isn't our side talking about him? We should be hammering Bush with his abandonment of bin Laden.

A few days after September 11, Cowboy George vowed to get bin Laden "dead or alive." He repeated that pledge three months later. But three months after that, on March 13, 2002, he said:

I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. . . .

. . . . I truly am not that concerned about him.

This is the ultimate flip-flop: Bush doesn't care about the mastermind of 9/11. Absolutely unbelievable -- but I'll bet that 95% of the electorate doesn't know about this statement. (The links to all three Bush statements are at my August 12, 2004 post.) The Kerry campaign should be pounding Bush with this. If they aren't willing to do so, the 527's should.

it's a doozy. Throughout its pages are fornication (the heroine with her late sister's husband), incest (half brother knocks up half sister), adultery (the heroine, with her first husband's friend), contraception (by the wed and the unwed) and lesbian couplings (the heroine's sister and an older woman). And incidentally, lynchings, dogicide, cattle theft and robber-baronism.

Whitehouse.org has excerpted some of the juicy bits, including:

Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. . . . There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl.

Not exactly consistent with "Republican family values," which apparently required Dick and Lynne Cheney to keep their lesbian daughter Mary off the stage with them at the Republican National Convention. Imagine how Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and company would froth about lesbians and "feminazis" and such if a prominent Democratic woman had written this book. Contemporary Republican mores being what they are (with Bush calling for an amendment banning gay marriage and Alan Keyes calling all gays "selfish hedonists") you can see why Lynne now seems to find "Sisters" a tad embarrassing. It's almost like Eva Braun having written a novel celebrating Judaism.

When Lynne put the kibosh on the book's re-release in April, her lawyer Robert Barnett reportedly said:

If there is a serious demand for this 25-year-old book, I am confident that America's used bookstores will be able to satisfy it.

Sadly, no! (Sue me, Seb.) As Morrison noted, the book is actually quite rare and expensive. The last copy sold on eBay (an autographed paperback) went for $755. You can buy an unsigned paperback copy through amazon.com for a mere $1,000.

Anyway, the point of this long-winded introduction is to let you know that someone has begun posting "Sisters" on the Web. Chapter 1 is here, and chapters 2-6 are here. No word when we'll see the rest. (link via World O'Crap)

UPDATE: Anyone who's interested can buy the book for $117.65 on half.com. That's probably not a bad price, although it still seems a lot to spend for a yellowing paperback.

Why do half of all Americans embrace our most incompetent and most reckless president, our most hated president overseas?

By Gerald Rellick

If we were truly in the age of reason, if the Enlightenment spawned by the likes of Galileo, Shakespeare, and Newton had really made the impact we like to believe, and if there were justice, then George W. Bush would already have been impeached, tried, and found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors against the people of the United States. He would have been shipped in chains to The Hague to stand trial before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, found guilty, and summarily hanged by the neck until dead. And the evil and vile Dick Cheney would just suddenly disappear--like Jimmy Hoffa.
OK, so this is a little unrealistic. How about Bush’s approval ratings hovering near 2 percent with rioting in the streets? Is that too much to ask as an appropriate reaction to this president?

For those of us who have tried to capture in words the grim reality of George Bush, the man’s "unrelenting and unremitting awfulness," to use the words of political cartoonist Joe Sacco, I dare say the mood has to be one of frustration when we see the race between Kerry and Bush to be about even at this point. How is it, we ask, that the most incompetent, most reckless president of the modern era, probably the worst president in the history of the Republic, may actually win a second term? Doesn’t everyone realize by now that everything George Bush touches turns rotten? This was true when he was a young man, and it’s true now.

The question is, of course, rhetorical because we know the answer: fear. George Bush’s entire reelection campaign hinges on this one human emotion--and Bush, Karl Rove, and the entire GOP know it. The Republican national convention was all about what Bush & company want Americans to get in the habit of calling the "war on terror." In his acceptance speech, Bush read through a list of domestic issues like it was a boring grocery list. From then on it was all about terror, terror, terror, and how he is the man to deal with this terror.

But George Bush is also asking the country to forget. Forget that 9/11 happened on his watch and after his administration had been warned in detail by the outgoing Clinton administration of the threat that Al Qaeda posed to the U.S. homeland. Forget that after the attack our commander-in-chief showed himself to be the Barney Fife of lawmen, sitting dazed, stunned, and paralyzed in a Florida schoolroom, waiting for somebody to tell him what to do. Forget that he gave up on Al Qaeda and hurried out of Afghanistan to punch out a weakling middle eastern desert dictator--just to show he could do it. Forget that after three years Osama bin Laden still remains a free man. And if it’s within you, forget that more than 1000 American servicemen and women have died in Iraq since George Bush lied to the country and to the world about the need to invade Iraq. They died so George Bush could brag about how tough he is. And in New York last week, it was almost as if this very small man was standing on their coffins just so he could be seen.

At times it is almost too much to bear. As good ol’ Charley Brown was fond of saying, "I just can’t stand it." [link via katieweb]

I'm hoping that Kerry's a seven on a scale of 10, but I'm afraid maybe he's just a five. But Kerry's running against a zero. So my choice is clear.

You should read the whole article, which is a delight. Phillips, whom I heard speak when he came through Chicago on his book tour, is an old-school Republican who detests the whole Bush clan:

LITCHFIELD, Conn. -- Utter three words -- George Walker Bush -- and watch eminent author Kevin Phillips, a longtime Republican, a former Nixon aide and past party theoretician, pucker like he has inhaled a pickle.

"I've never understood why we take Bush and his family seriously," he says. "They come from the investment-inherited-money wing of the Republican Party. They display no real empathy for anyone who is not of their class."

He pauses a few seconds as his fingers execute a tap dance on his picnic table.

"They aren't supply-siders; they're crony-siders. As far as I'm concerned, I would put Bush on a slow boat to China with all full warning to the Chinese submarine fleet."

Silence again. Phillips sits on his back porch and looks at you from under hooded eyes, with only the vaguest hint of a chipmunk smile. He's a curious cat, this 63-year-old Nixon-era Republican populist. . . .

Phillips's bottom line is unsparing. He describes the Bushes as second-tier New England monied types who made the strategic move from Greenwich, Conn., to Midland, Tex., just as the nation's power pendulum took a southern swing. This was not a particularly daring strike into the interior. Rather, like proper Wall Street capitalists, the Bushes and many other financier families had sniffed the scent of sweet cash and sent a relative or two to investigate.

Texas, Phillips writes, "represented one of the century's great American wealth opportunities."

. . . .

As it happens, this state and that family have come to embody everything that Phillips can't stand about turn-of-the-century America. Texas is wealthy and obsessed with the accumulation of more. It's economically polarized and ranks 42nd in per-capita state spending. Its Republican elite seem splendidly immune to guilt.

"Texas civic culture," Phillips writes, "more akin to that of Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil, has accepted wealth and its benefits with minimal distraction by guilt and noblesse oblige."

Phillips elaborates on this critique during an interview. "George W. is the first president to come directly out of the oil industry, even if he was a failure at the actual business of looking for it," he says. "And who did he pick as his vice president? Another man from the oil industry. It's astonishing that nobody really questions the implications of this."

It's a righteous rap, and the sort of angry and richly detailed critique that one might expect from any number of left-liberal luminaries working the Bush-Just-Might-Signal-the-End-of-the-World circuit. These authors and filmmakers are the toast of Santa Monica and Madison and Cambridge and Montclair and Burlington, and they fire up the Democratic faithful. Except that Phillips doesn't remotely hail from there.

He's a New Yorker, yes, but also a Republican born and bred, a kid who couldn't stand that liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller. He penned "The Emerging Republican Majority" in 1969, one of the first books to argue that the Sunbelt could catapult the Republicans to national power. And he locates the source of his populist scorn for Bush not in the polemics of the left but in the politics of his hero, Dwight Eisenhower. The former general was a politician who embraced a top marginal tax rate of 90 percent, who warned of the abuses of the military-industrial complex and who -- in Phillips's telling -- had little use for the country club Republican set.

"The Republicans I respected really cared about the meatloaf crowd," Phillips says. "The Bush crowd can call me a pinko if they want, but that really doesn't go down well with people who know anything about politics."

. . . .

It's a strange business, this notion that Phillips is beyond the conservative pale and that Richard Nixon was a closet liberal and lover of the welfare state. Except that perhaps there's some truth to this. Nixon endorsed a 50 percent tax rate on the wealthy, courted labor unions and had an instinctive feel for lower-middle-class economic resentments. And far from destroying the welfare state, he proposed a guaranteed minimum income.

Several prominent old Nixon hands, from Patrick Buchanan to former Treasury secretary Peter Peterson, have enunciated tough critiques of Bush's foreign policy and his tax cuts. (Asked recently by Bill Moyers if he needed the Bush tax cuts, Peterson replied: "I'm really almost embarrassed by the idea . . . that I'm going to be getting tax cuts so that my 6-year-old . . . grandchildren can pay bigger taxes in the future.") [link via Just a Bump in the Beltway]

My lefty grandparents detested Nixon, but the current crop of Republicans is far to his right. Karl Rove, "Bush's Brain," is a great admirer of William McKinley. These people don't just want to repeal the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, and put Reagan on the dime in his stead. Even Republican Theodore Roosevelt, as a trust-buster and conservationist, is way too far left for the Bushies. They literally want to bring back the days of the robber barons -- and they're doing a hell of a job of it so far.

Even so vociferous a critic of the unelected Bush, Cheney, the Neocons, and the religious right as myself could not bring himself to imagine in that horrific week with the smell of the smoking ruins literally polluting the sky above my house, that America’s president, its vice-president and their advisers would be capable of the following:

• Bush and company specifically ignored multiple warnings of just such an attack.
  
• Bush and company lied to the heroes of 9/11 about the health and safety implications of breathing the air down at Ground Zero—my own family included.
  
• Bush and company immediately sought to manipulate the grief and anger of the attacks to launch an unnecessary and counterproductive war against Iraq which has resulted in over a thousand needless American military deaths and U.S. soldiers turning into occupiers and in some case torturers.
  
• Bush and company lied to the nation about the responsibility for the attack, trying to pin it on Saddam Hussein who had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
  
• Bush and company allowed its friends in the Saudi royal family to hide its relationship to the killers.
  
• Bush and company made only a lackluster effort to capture the killers, allowing many to escape at Tora Bora and pulling agents and resources out of Afghanistan to feed its obsession with Iraq.
  
• Bush and company did everything they could to prevent and later, undermine an investigation of why 9/11 was allowed to happen.
  
• Bush and company continue to ignore their responsibility to protect the nation from another attack, failing to protect its ports, nuclear and chemical plants, and its most vulnerable urban targets and instead, have actually gone out of their way to inspire more such attacks, despite intelligence warnings  on this very topic.
  
• Bush and company have destroyed the sympathy our nation enjoyed (and deserved) in the immediate aftermath of the attack and have instead turned that sympathy into global hatred and disgust, further endangering our citizens.
  
• Bush and company have repeatedly manipulated the powerful imagery of the attacks for their own partisan political purposes.
  
• Bush and company have repeatedly cowed the media into ignoring, and when that’s impossible, apologizing for, much of the above.

For all of the above, the men and women who people this administration deserved not merely to be repudiated politically but held accountable both morally and legally.  Instead it is they who attack and impugn patriots like lifetime public servants Richard Clarke and Anthony Zinni, whose only crimes were to call them honestly to account for their catastrophic dishonesty, incompetence, and ideological fanaticism.  Since September 11, President Bush and company have accomplished what the terrorists could not; they have divided us against ourselves.  That so much of the mainstream media have proven ineffective-or worse—cooperative with their deceptive efforts give one cause for an even deeper pessimism.  One’s only solace, I suppose, is that we have, as a nation, been through worse—though never, it must be added, under quite such feckless leadership. [via The Mahablog]

If we ask how far we have come since 9/11 in terms of safety planning the evidence is not encouraging.

Homeland security funds are flowing, but not to the right places. Since 9/11, Congress has distributed $13 billion to state governments with a formula only Washington could concoct: 40 percent was split evenly, regardless of a state's population, targets or vulnerability to terrorist attack. The result: Safe places got safer. Rural states with fewer potential targets and low populations, such as Alaska and Wyoming, received more than $55 per resident. Target-rich and densely populated states like New York and California received $25 and $14 per person respectively. Osama bin Laden, beware: Wyoming is well fortified.

It gets worse. Over the past three years, the federal government has spent 20 times more on aviation security than on protecting America's seaports, even though more than 90 percent of U.S. foreign trade moves by ship, but less than 5 percent of all shipping containers entering the country are inspected. One recent study showed the odds of detecting a nuclear bomb inside a heavy machinery container were close to zero. As the 9/11 Commission concluded, such a lopsided transportation strategy makes sense only if you intend to fight the last war.

Then there is our intelligence system, a dysfunctional family of agencies that have proven uniquely adept at resisting reform, getting the wrong information into the right hands and the right information into the wrong hands. The past three years have witnessed the two greatest intelligence failures since Pearl Harbor. Yet Bush has held no one accountable for these results, and has avoided leading the charge for reform. [link via Dan Drezner]

A doctor who has performed abortions wants there to be the death penalty for those who perform them. He also sterilized a 20 year old woman without her consent, and then illegally billed Medicaid for the procedure. He said "That ["the gay"] agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today." He criticized NBC for showing "Schindler's List," saying that it promoted "irresponsible sexual behavior."

Oh, and he's the Republican candidate for Senate from Oklahoma.

is squaring off against Democratic Rep. Brad Carson, who succeeded Coburn in the House in 2000.

 

. . . .

 

Local political observers say the likely result of the Oklahoma Senate race is a tossup, with a possible slight advantage to Coburn because of Bush's overwhelming support in the state. The latest poll, conducted Sept. 1 and 2 by the Democratic firm Westhill Partners, had the race within the margin of error, with Carson leading 44 to 42 percent.

 

. . . .

 

Carson . . . is in almost every respect Coburn's opposite. Unlike Coburn, Carson has fought hard to win federal funding for his district -- for transportation, rural healthcare, education and environmental cleanup. For his efforts, he was reelected by 74 percent in 2002.

Carson is a sixth-generation Oklahoman whose mother's family came to the state on the Cherokee Nation's Trail of Tears. His father worked for the Indian Bureau. Carson attended Baylor University, a conservative Baptist university in Texas, becoming its first graduate to win a Rhodes scholarship in 75 years. After finishing at the top of his class at the University of Oklahoma law school, he joined a major law firm, where he devoted one-third of his time to pro bono work. In 1997, he was a White House Fellow serving as a special assistant to the secretary of defense. A member of the Cherokee Nation, Carson helped establish a Native American Museum in Oklahoma City.

"This is a guy who knows how to wear cowboy boots with his Brooks Brothers suit, and he sounds like he's from here," says Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. "He's trying to thread the needle that all Democrats have to thread, and that is simultaneously satisfy this very extreme religious and social conservatism of Oklahomans but also make an appeal to the strong populism of the state."

Although the candidates are from the same district in eastern Oklahoma, Coburn may have the advantage in building a statewide majority. "Tom Coburn delivered 4,000 babies over his career in the Second District," one Democrat familiar with state politics said. "It may sound very naive for me to say this, but I really think it's going to help him [there] a bunch."

It remains a persistent problem for the Carson campaign that Coburn's views don't seem too far out of the mainstream to many Oklahomans. "A lot of positions that they're going to try to make out as extremist are kind of semi-mainstream in Oklahoma," says V. Burns Hargis, chairman of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and a political commentator on television. "It's just a hard sell to try to run to the left of the guy in Oklahoma."

"It's a great challenge," Carson said in an interview with Salon. "We rarely point out the things that are truly wacky ... We point out that [Coburn] treats politics like a game, as if it weren't important, that you can go up to Washington and try to howl into the void and make points that make you feel a little better but never do anything for the people back home who are desperate for your help."

According to Hicks, Carson is running a two-level campaign. "He's on the air right now, and he's trying to prove that he's got Oklahoma values and is a conservative," Hicks said. "Below the radar they're doing a lot of GOTV [get out the vote], and they're spending a lot of time talking about Coburn's radical libertarianism on fiscal issues and his conservatism on social issues. They're trying to say to individual voters, 'This guy is really not in line with Oklahoma values. You may be a conservative, but he's a radical.'"

You may want to consider sending Carson some money. Apart from striking a blow for sanity and against wingnuttery, you'll be helping Democrats take back the Senate.

Q But, Scott, the Democrats found not responding quickly in August to the swift boat ads hurt them. Are you afraid the same thing, if you don't respond quickly to the National Guard ads --

MR. McCLELLAN: They're talking about continuing to flail away and engage in baseless attacks. The President is focused on the future and what his agenda is for leading this country forward for the next four years, and he's talking about the highest priorities of winning the war on terrorism and how you lead in the war on terrorism. And they're resorting to old, recycled attacks because they can't talk about their out-of-the-mainstream views.

Unfortunately, this sound bite crap plays with much of the American electorate, so Kerry and company have to start spouting some effective sound bites of their own, and fast. Here are some suggestions:

• "A miserable failure" and/or "a failed presidency"
• Over 1,000,000 jobs lost
• The first president to lose jobs since Herbert Hoover
• Bush sat in the classroom for seven minutes reading "My Pet Goat" while he knew that America was under attack -- what kind of leader is that?
• Bush fled on Air Force One to keep himself safe without ordering the remaining hijacked planes shot down -- what kind of leader is that?
• Bush told us after 9/11 he'd get Osama bin Laden dead or alive; six months later he said he didn't particularly care about him -- and he talks about "flip-flopping"?
• Bush ignored Osama bin Laden to go after Saddam, whom he admits had nothing to do with 9/11
• Bush misled us into Iraq
• Failed to plan the aftermath of the war
• 1,000 American lives lost and $200 billion spent so far
• Americans being killed at an ever increasing rate
• Quagmire
• Has taken us from the largest budget surpluses in history to the largest budget deficits in history
• Added $1.5 trillion [or whatever it is] to the national debt
• "Borrow and spend" Republicans.

There is a hell of a lot of powerful ammunition to throw at Bush. Kerry also has to articulate what he will do as president, and he is. But he and Edwards should also be attacking Bush's record of incompetence day in, day out.

Last February, White House spokesman Scott McClellan held aloft sections of President Bush's military record, declaring to the waiting press that the files "clearly document the president fulfilling his duties in the National Guard." Case closed, he said.

But last week the controversy reared up once again, as several news outlets, including U.S. News, disclosed new information casting doubt on White House claims.

A review of the regulations governing Bush's Guard service during the Vietnam War shows that the White House used an inappropriate--and less stringent--Air Force standard in determining that he had fulfilled his duty. Because Bush signed a six-year "military service obligation," he was required to attend at least 44 inactive-duty training drills each fiscal year beginning July 1. But Bush's own records show that he fell short of that requirement, attending only 36 drills in the 1972-73 period, and only 12 in the 1973-74 period. The White House has said that Bush's service should be calculated using 12-month periods beginning on his induction date in May 1968. Using this time frame, however, Bush still fails the Air Force obligation standard.

Moreover, White House officials say, Bush should be judged on whether he attended enough drills to count toward retirement. They say he accumulated sufficient points under this grading system. Yet, even using their method, which some military experts say is incorrect, U.S. News's analysis shows that Bush once again fell short. His military records reveal that he failed to attend enough active-duty training and weekend drills to gain the 50 points necessary to count his final year toward retirement.

The U.S. News analysis also showed that during the final two years of his obligation, Bush did not comply with Air Force regulations that impose a time limit on making up missed drills. What's more, he apparently never made up five months of drills he missed in 1972, contrary to assertions by the administration. White House officials did not respond to the analysis last week but emphasized that Bush had "served honorably."

Some experts say they remain mystified as to how Bush obtained an honorable discharge. Lawrence Korb, a former top Defense Department official in the Reagan administration, says the military records clearly show that Bush "had not fulfilled his obligation" and "should have been called to active duty." [link via AMERICAblog]

Let me save everyone a whole lot of time. They are genuine. How do I know? Because the internet is currently awash in wingnuts claiming the memos are fakes. Ergo, they are for real. Q.E.D.

Some people may feel that I'm just being flip here. Is that so, some people? Tell me: how rich would you be right now if, every time something was posted on a right-wing message board, or everytime Drudge had an exclusive, or any time Rush Limbaugh revealed a secret truth that the liberal media won't tell you, you called up your bookie and put down $20 even money on "bullshit"? The correct answer is: "pretty fucking rich". The correct answer is: "I would never, never lose." So, if anyone doubts my methodology, I have a crisp new $20 bill that just told me that I'm 100% right and you're just too dumb to see it. If any of you champs out there think me and Andrew Jackson are both wrong, well then, today's your lucky day, because we're paying 2:1. If you need us, we'll be on the couch playing ESPN NHL 2K5. Peace.

In countries like the United States it's perfectly legal for members of the public to own certain types of firearms. If you live in such a country obtain an assault rifle legally, preferably an AK-47 or variations.

If Bush gave a damn about "homeland security," as opposed to posturing on the subject in order to try to get elected, he would get Congress to extend the ban on assault weapons. As John Kerry said Friday in St. Louis:

If Bush is serious about fighting terrorism, the Democratic presidential candidate said, he would extend the 10-year ban on sales of 19 kinds of semiautomatic assault weapons, due to expire Monday.

"In the al-Qaida manual on terror, they were telling people to go out and buy assault weapons, to come to America and buy assault weapons," Kerry said. "Every law enforcement officer in America doesn't want us selling assault weapons in the streets of America. But George Bush, he says, 'Well, I'm for that.' "

Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt said the president has said he would sign the assault weapons ban extension into law if Congress passed it.

But Kerry pointed out that the president has not pressured Congress to pass the measure. He said Bush was caving in to the NRA, and "America's streets will not be as safe because of a choice that George Bush is making."

The following is stolen from pie at eschaton:

Another American nightmare.

Under a 10-year ban enacted in 1994, weapons such as AK-47s, TEC-9s, and Uzis were outlawed, as were high capacity ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds. That law expires on Monday and Congress does not plan to extend it.

Dianne Feinstein last night on Newshour:

Now, let me tell you what I think is going to happen: There is a shipment of AK-47s that was picked up in Italy by customs that was on its way from a port in Romania of 8,000 AK-47s due to go into the port of New York into a gun store in Georgia. It was a $7 million shipment. You can multiply that tenfold. And you will see these weapons begin to spring up all over and the big clips which add the firepower and the ability to kill substantial numbers of people before you can get to the gunner to disarm him.

Does America really want these kinds of weapons coming into our unsecured ports?

Click here to view Stop the NRA's latest ad, "Terrorists of 9/11 Can Hardly Wait for 9/13." Click here to donate to Stop the NRA.

As Republicans gather in New York City, the Bush campaign will undergo a drastic makeover, camouflaging gutter tactics with a veneer of moderation calculated to help the President win another four-year term. But the hard truth of this campaign is that George W. Bush, while attempting to impose an extremist right-wing agenda on this country and the world, has compiled a record of staggering failure.

The debacle in Iraq has already claimed close to 1,000 American and 10,000 Iraqi lives. Far from making America safer or the Middle East more democratic, it has turned out to be what this magazine warned it would be: a reckless abuse of power that has damaged US security, destabilized the region and undercut America's position in the world. The high cost of the war is evident not just in the number of deaths but also in burgeoning federal budget deficits (the war has cost more than $200 billion) and in the record gasoline prices Americans now pay. It is also evident in the reported swelling of the ranks of Al Qaeda-inspired groups and in the rising hatred of America reflected in public opinion polls which show that even among traditional allies like Jordan and Egypt, as much as 95 percent of the population view the United States with disfavor. Meanwhile, the war has diverted resources from urgent international problems ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the widening AIDS pandemic.

And there's no end in sight. The US occupation grinds on with both Bush and his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, ignoring the only intelligent alternative: a phased US withdrawal. Iraqi opposition to the occupation remains fierce-expressed even by Iraqi soccer players at the Olympics-while the country's appointed leaders display authoritarian tendencies that undermine the democracy Bush and his aides claim is being built.

If the war were Bush's only failure, it would be enough to require his departure. But it is not. By withdrawing the United States from international treaties and conventions, mishandling crises in the Middle East and North Korea and diverting resources from the pursuit of al Qaeda, Bush has left America more isolated and less secure. And the detention camps made infamous by the crimes of Abu Ghraib have stripped America of the pride we once had in our country and the role it played, however imperfectly, as a champion of human rights, economic opportunity and the rule of law.

At home, Bush's failures are equally manifest. He has amassed the worst jobs record of any President since the Great Depression, the worst budget deficits ever and the most precipitous decline in America's fiscal position-from $5 trillion in projected surplus to $4 trillion in projected deficit. Bush's Administration responds to a corporate crime wave with calls for more regulation, embraces the flight of jobs abroad as good for the economy, and exacerbates, with top-end tax cuts, the greatest inequality since the Gilded Age.

This Administration has also undermined the rights and policies that social movements labored for a century to achieve. Bush has nominated to the federal bench ideologues with a history of antiunion and antichoice decisions. He signed into law the blatantly unconstitutional "partial-birth" abortion ban, and then watched as his Attorney General sought access to women's private medical records to defend the ban in court. He imposed the policy known as the global gag rule, which forbids foreign groups receiving US aid from even mentioning abortion, and vastly expanded a misinformation campaign about the dangers of sex that has been shown to encourage risky behavior among young people. And to secure his place forever in the hearts of cultural conservatives, he endorsed the gay-baiting federal marriage amendment, framing it as a response to the activism of liberal judges rather than what it was: an attempt to deny civil rights to millions of Americans and to enshrine that discrimination in the Constitution. Civil liberties, too, have suffered, as the "war on terror" has been used to justify acts ranging from detention without trial to snooping into citizens' library records.

The list of failures goes on. The Bush years have seen a steady increase in the number of Americans without healthcare while drug company profits have soared. Bush's prescription drug bill prohibits Medicare from negotiating a better price for seniors and bars importing cheaper drugs-with the result, according to Consumer's Union, that most older Americans will end up paying more for drugs.

Bush's vaunted No Child Left Behind education law actually leaves most children behind. Not only has the law earned the ire of educators; Bush's failure to provide promised funding for his "reforms" has prompted rebuke even from Republican state legislatures from Utah to Virginia. Bush also broke his promise to increase the amount of money eligible students could receive in college scholarship grants, even as soaring tuition puts college out of the reach of ever more families. His post-election budget calls for yet more cuts to education funding.

The Bush Administration has also failed to protect the environment, giving us new laws written by polluters, oil lobbyists and Enron executives. And it has politicized and distorted basic scientific and medical research.

But this President does not admit error. When asked at a press conference whether he had ever made a mistake in office, he couldn't think of one.

If Bush wins in November, given this record of misfeasance, American democracy is in much greater trouble than even the most alienated citizens imagine. A President so out of step with the needs of the American people can only rule by sowing division and fear. Americans have one recourse: to ignore the costume ball in New York City and fire the worst President in modern history on November 2.

This entire election, thus far, has been about television. All the issues widely discussed stem from television advertisements. For the television news media, this is like free money falling from the sky. They cover to the hilt any story stemming from a television advertisement - which they can show, and then talk about, and then show, and then talk about, lather, rinse, repeat - and so the campaigns make this garbage the focus of their whole act. It's like a Mobius Loop for really dumb computers.

The entire Presidential debate thus far, performed in 30 seconds:

The Swifties! Denounce the ad! I denounce all ads! But denounce that ad! I denounce all ads! He didn't denounce the ad! I like eggs! 527s! Response ads! The ad said you lied in Vietnam! How dare that ad say such things! You must react more strongly to the ads! He's not responding strongly to the ads! Shakeup because of the response to the ads! Guard duty scandal revived to respond to the Vietnam angle in the ads! The documents are forged! No they aren't! Yes they are! Vote Bush or die! We need another ad!

. . . .

Issues we are not hearing about because we have spent so much time talking about television advertisements:

Millions of jobs lost in the last four years;

Unbearably expensive health care;

A total loss of confidence within the international community in our moral leadership;

The underfunded farce that is the Department of Homeland Security;

The underfunded farce that is the No Child Left Behind bill;

The fact that military assault weapons will soon be making a perfectly legal return to a neighborhood near you;

The deeply illegal outing of a deep-cover CIA agent by Bush administration officials, who did it because they wanted to silence a critic;

The rape and torture of men, women and children in the Abu Ghraib prison, horrors that were sanctioned in writing by Bush's own lawyer and the Secretary of Defense;

The allegation by Senator Bob Graham of Florida that Bush torpedoed any aspect of the 9/11 investigation that came within spitting distance of his friends in the Saudi royal family;

The allegations by several generals that Bush's people started stripping necessary troops and resources from Afghanistan to bolster their ill-conceived charge into Iraq;

The myriad accusations by a dozen insiders that Bush and his people ignored the terror threat until the Towers fell, and then used the attacks to scare the American people into an unnecessary war in Iraq and a mammoth payday for their friends in the weapons and oil business;

The fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq;

The fact that no connections between Hussein, bin Laden and 9/11 have been established beyond the bloviating hyperbole of a few senior Bush officials who haven't yet gotten the memo;

Does anyone even remember Enron?

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of September 11th. We deserve better than this.

Indeed.

After CBS News on Wednesday trumpeted newly discovered documents that referred to a 1973 effort to ''sugar coat" President Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard, the network almost immediately faced charges that the documents were forgeries, with typography that was not available on typewriters used at that time.

But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when Bush was a first lieutenant.

Philip D. Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the documents in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, one in a wave of similar media reports. But Bouffard told the Globe yesterday that after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.

Analysts who have examined the documents focus on several facets of their typography, among them the use of a curved apostrophe, a raised, or superscript, ''th," and the proportional spacing between the characters -- spacing which varies with the width of the letters. In older typewriters, each letter was alloted the same space.

Those who doubt the documents say those typographical elements would not have been commonly available at the time of Bush's service. But such characters were common features on electric typewriters of that era, the Globe determined through interviews with specialists and examination of documents from the period. In fact, one such raised ''th," used to describe a Guard unit, the 187th, appears in a document in Bush's official record that the White House made public earlier this year. [link via MeanBoneII at Daily Kos]

Here's the New York Times:

Experts on documents said the veracity of the CBS memos might never be known because they had been copied so many times. CBS News officials said that its papers were copies, too, and that it did not have the originals. The network said it would not identify its original source.

Mr. [Dan] Rather said, "We worked long and hard and became convinced that, yes, this person had the capacity to get the documents, and, yes, this person was truthful."

Mr. [Marcel B. Matley], the documents expert, said in an interview after the program, that he had examined documents and handwriting since 1985 and had testified in 65 trials. Mr. Matley said the documents the network sent him were so deteriorated from copying that it was impossible to identify the typeface.

"It's sheer speculation to say that you couldn't have done that until a computer came along,'' he said.

As a result, he said, he focused on the signatures. CBS sent him the four newfound documents, as well as others that have been verified as signed by Colonel Killian. "There were significant similarities and the differences were insignificant," he said in the configuration of letters and the angle of the writing. [link via World O'Crap]

David Corn reminds us that all of this is a tempest in a teapot:

No doubt, the debate over the memos will continue. But as it continues, the point should not be lost that even without the new information, Bush's account of his Guard service does not withstand scrutiny--that he still has not fully explained his missing year in the Air National Guard, that he has not presented any evidence that he engaged in training activity in Alabama (while commanders at the Guard unit there say they do not recall he ever reported for duty), that he has offered various misleading and false explanations for his failure to take a flight exam, that he has not addressed why he left his unit in Houston before his transfer to another unit in Alabama was approved, that he has misrepresented his Guard service in his autobiography, and that he has not explained why his annual performance review from May 1973 said he had not been seen at his unit for a year (when he claimed he was only in Alabama for a few months). All of these questions about his Guard service are backed up by official records that are unquestionably authentic.

And of course Bush's less-than-diligent National Guard service is only one of 1,500+ reaspons to vote against him, many of which are much more significant.

Missouri (11 EV)

SurveyUSA (PDF). 9/7-9. MoE 3.9%. (8/18 results)

Bush 48 (48)
Kerry 46 (47)

Pennsylvania (21 EV)

SurveyUSA (PDF). 9/7-9. MoE 3.8%. (8/3 results)

Kerry 49 (53)
Bush 47 (41)

North Carolina (15 EV)

SurveyUSA (PDF). 9/6-8. MoE 4.2%. (8/16 results)

Bush 50 (51)
Kerry 46 (45)

Ohio (20 EV)

SurveyUSA (PDF). 9/6-8. MoE 3.8%. (No trend lines)

Bush 50
Kerry 47

So, for anyone still willing to consider that these documents are anything other than cheap, childish forgeries, I am offering $10,000 right now to anyone who can find for me a typewriter from 1972 that could have reasonably made those documents. Payment will be made in the form of a cashiers check to the first individual who can do this. The typewriter must be using the same proportionally spaced font as the CBS documents, the same curly-quotation marks, the same impossible superscripted "th"s, the same 13-point line spacing, and create a document that looks as much (or more) like the alleged forgeries than does a Microsoft Word document with default fonts and margins.

If you think you can do this, email defeatjohnjohn@hotmail.com and collect your reward. And yes, I am serious.

Sounds like free money for someone with an old IBM Selectric.

In this season of political disunity and destructive campaigning, one diverse group of Americans is coming together on a campaign subject that ought to be of greatest importance to us all – the financial stability of the nation.

Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and a Republican, says we face a 75 percent chance of a financial crisis within five years. Robert Rubin, former economic chief under President Clinton, says we are confronting "a day of serious reckoning" and that "the traditional immunity of advanced countries like America to a Third World-style crisis isn't a birthright."

But perhaps Peter Peterson, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, chairman of The Blackstone Group and a moderate Republican, put it most succinctly. "We are not paying our own way," he says. "As a nation, we are running on empty. If the ultimate test of a moral society is the heritage it leaves to its grandchildren, I would say we are failing that test."

In short, these men – our best and brightest – are telling us that, while the nation is fixated on delusions of empire in the Near East and illusions of omnipotence, we are simply going broke.

How can anyone read that and not have his or her hair stand on end? How can anyone even think about voting for the president whose borrow and spend policies have put us in this situation? Wake up, America, before it's too late.

Mr. Cheney is back as Terrifier in Chief.

He finally simply spit out what the Bush team has been more subtly trying to convey for months: A vote for John Kerry is a vote for the terrorists.

"Because if we make the wrong choice,'' Mr. Cheney said in Des Moines in that calm baritone, "then the danger is that we'll get hit again. That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war.''

. . . .

The vice president and president did not even mention Osama at the convention because of the inconvenient fact that the fiend is still out there, plotting. Yet they denigrate Mr. Kerry as too weak to battle Osama, and treat him as a greater threat.

Mr. Cheney implies that John Kerry couldn't protect us from an attack like 9/11, blithely ignoring the fact that he and President Bush didn't protect us from the real 9/11. Think of what brass-knuckled Republicans could have made of a 9/11 tape of an uncertain Democratic president giving a shaky statement that looked like a hostage tape and flying randomly from air base to air base, as the veep ordered that planes be shot down.

Mr. Cheney warns against falling back "into the pre-9/11 mind-set,'' when, in fact, the Bush team's pre-9/11 mind-set was all about being stuck in the cold war and reviving "Star Wars" - which doesn't work and is useless against terrorist tactics. The Bush crowd played down terrorism because Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger had told their successors that Osama was a priority, and the Bushies scorned all things Clinton. The president shrugged off intelligence briefings with such headlines as "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States'' because there was brush to be cleared and unaffordable tax-cutting to be done.

. . . .

For a time, it seemed that Americans were realizing they'd been flimflammed by the Bushies. But at the convention, the swaggering Bush juggernaut brazenly went back to boasting about its pre-emption doctrine, tracing imaginary connections between 9/11 and Saddam, and calling all our foes terrorists.

Why should the same group that managed to paint a flextime guardsman as a heroic commander - and a war hero as a war criminal - bother rebutting or engaging with critics?

As the deaths of American men and women fighting in Iraq topped 1,000, and with insurgents controlling parts of central Iraq, the White House trotted out the same old discredited line, assuming it can wear - and scare - everyone down by November. [link via Atrios]

New Rule: You can't run on a mistake. Franklin Roosevelt didn't run for re-election claiming Pearl Harbor was his finest hour. Abe Lincoln was a great president, but the high point of his second term wasn't theater security. 9/11 wasn't a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuck-up by a guy on vacation.

Now, don't get me wrong, Mr. President. I'm not blaming you for 9/11. We have blue-ribbon commissions to do that. And I'm not saying there was anything improper about your immediate response to the attacks. Someone had to stay in that classroom and protect those kids from Chechen rebels.

But by the looks of your convention, you'd think that the worst thing that ever happened to us was the best thing that ever happened to you. You just can't keep celebrating the deadliest attack ever as if it's your personal rendezvous with greatness. You don't see old men who were shot down during World War II jumping out of a plane every year. I mean, other than your dad.

But even your dad didn't run for re-election based on a recession and his propensity to barf on the Japanese. . . .

So I say, if you absolutely must win an election on the backs of dead people, do it like they do in Chicago, and have them actually vote for you. [link via Atrios]

In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush's military records, White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service -- first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School -- Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.

He didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show. The 1973 document has been overlooked in news media accounts. The 1968 document has received scant notice.

. . . .

The reexamination of Bush's records by the Globe, along with interviews with military specialists who have reviewed regulations from that era, show that Bush's attendance at required training drills was so irregular that his superiors could have disciplined him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973, or 1974. But they did neither. In fact, Bush's unit certified in late 1973 that his service had been ''satisfactory" -- just four months after Bush's commanding officer wrote that Bush had not been seen at his unit for the previous 12 months.

. . . .

''He broke his contract with the United States government -- without any adverse consequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this to happen," [retired Army Colonel Gerald A.] Lechliter said in an interview yesterday. ''He was a pilot. It cost the government a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to an even higher standard."

Even retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel chief who vouched for Bush at the White House's request in February, agreed that Bush walked away from his obligation to join a reserve unit in the Boston area when he moved to Cambridge in September 1973. By not joining a unit in Massachusetts, Lloyd said in an interview last month, Bush ''took a chance that he could be called up for active duty. But the war was winding down, and he probably knew that the Air Force was not enforcing the penalty."

. . . .

Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense for manpower and reserve affairs in the Reagan administration, said after studying many of the documents that it is clear to him that Bush ''gamed the system." And he agreed with Lloyd that Bush was not alone in doing so. ''If I cheat on my income tax and don't get caught, I'm still cheating on my income tax," Korb said.

After his own review, Korb said Bush could have been ordered to active duty for missing more than 10 percent of his required drills in any given year. Bush, according to the records, fell shy of that obligation in two successive fiscal years.

Korb said Bush also made a commitment to complete his six-year obligation when he moved to Cambridge, a transfer the Guard often allowed to accommodate Guardsmen who had to move elsewhere. ''He had a responsibility to find a unit in Boston and attend drills," said Korb, who is now affiliated with a liberal Washington think tank. ''I see no evidence or indication in the documents that he was given permission to forgo training before the end of his obligation. If he signed that document, he should have fulfilled his obligation."

The documents Bush signed only add to evidence that the future president -- then the son of Houston's congressman -- received favorable treatment when he joined the Guard after graduating from Yale in 1968. Ben Barnes, who was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives in 1968, said in a deposition in 2000 that he placed a call to get young Bush a coveted slot in the Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.

. . . .

And even that service is in doubt. Since the Globe first reported Bush's spotty attendance record in May 2000, no one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973. While Bush was in Alabama, he was removed from flight status for failing to take his annual flight physical in July 1972. On May 1, 1973, Bush's superior officers wrote that they could not complete his annual performance review because he had not been observed at the Houston base during the prior 12 months.

. . . .

Lechliter said the records push him to conclude that Bush had little interest in fulfilling his obligation, and his superiors preferred to look the other way. Others agree. ''It appears that no one wanted to hold him accountable," said retired Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., who retired in 2002 as the Pentagon's director of the Air National Guard. [link via The Daily Mis-Lead]

To Whom it May Concern,

I found out that my brother, Sergeant Ryan M. Campbell, was dead during a graduate seminar at Emory University on April 29, 2004. Immediately after a uniformed officer knocked at my mother's door to deliver the message that broke her heart, she called me on my cell phone. She could say nothing but "He's gone." I could say nothing but "No." Over and over again we chanted this refrain to each other over the phone as I made my way across the country to hold her as she wept.

I had made the very same trip in February, cutting classes to spend my brother's two weeks' leave from Baghdad with him. Little did I know then that the next time I saw him would be at Arlington National Cemetery. During those days in February, my brother shared with me his fear, his disillusionment, and his anger. "We had all been led to believe that Iraq posed a serious threat to America as well as its surrounding nations," he said. "We invaded expecting to find weapons of mass destruction and a much more prepared and well-trained Republican Guard waiting for us. It is now a year later, and alas, no weapons of mass destruction or any other real threat, for that matter."

Ryan was scheduled to complete his one-year assignment to Iraq on April 25. But on April 11, he emailed me to let me know not to expect him in Atlanta for a May visit, because his tour of duty had been involuntarily extended. "Just do me one big favor, ok?" he wrote. "Don't vote for Bush. No. Just don't do it. I would not be happy with you."

Last night, I listened to George W. Bush's live, televised speech at the Republican National Convention. He spoke to me and my family when he announced, "I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved. I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers and to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride? It is because they know their loved one was last seen doing good. Because they know that liberty was precious to the one they lost. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation: decent, and idealistic, and strong."

This is my reply: Mr. President, I know that you probably still "don't do body counts," so you may not know that almost one thousand U.S. troops have died doing what you told them they had to do to protect America. Ryan was Number 832. Liberty was, indeed, precious to the one I lost-- so precious that he would rather have gone to prison than back to Iraq in February. Like you, I don't know where the strength for "such pride" on the part of people "so burdened with sorrow" comes from; maybe I spent it all holding my mother as she wept. I last saw my loved one at the Kansas City airport, staring after me as I walked away. I could see April 29 written on his sad, sand-chapped and sunburned face. I could see that he desperately wanted to believe that if he died, it would be while "doing good," as you put it. He wanted us to be able to be proud of him. Mr. President, you gave me and my mother a folded flag instead of the beautiful boy who called us "Moms" and "Brookster." But worse than that, you sold my little brother a bill of goods. Not only did you cheat him of a long meaningful life, but you cheated him of a meaningful death. You are in my prayers, Mr. President, because I think that you need them more than anyone on the face of the planet. But you will never get my vote.

So to whom it may concern: Don't vote for Bush. No. Just don't do it. I would not be happy with you.

Sincerely,
Brooke M. Campbell
Atlanta, GA

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — The Bush administration illegally withheld data from Congress on the cost of the new Medicare law, and as a penalty, the former head of the Medicare agency, Thomas A. Scully, must repay seven months of his salary to the government, federal investigators said today.

The investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said that Mr. Scully had threatened to fire the chief Medicare actuary in violation of an explicit provision of federal appropriations law.

Accordingly, they said, federal money could not be used to pay Mr. Scully's salary after he began making the threats to the actuary in May 2003.

The conclusion was reached in a formal legal opinion by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress formerly known as the General Accounting Office.

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, one of 18 Democratic senators who had requested the legal opinion, reflected partisan reaction in his remarks about the finding. "The Bush administration went so far as to break the law in order to hide information about its flawed Medicare plan," he asserted today. "This was a corruption of the process at the highest levels."

President Bush signed the Medicare law, widely seen as one of his major domestic achievements, on Dec. 8. Less than two months later, the White House said the law would cost much more than Congress had assumed — $534 billion over 10 years, as against $400 billion.

Lawmakers of both parties said the law would not have passed in its current form if Congress had known of the higher cost estimate, prepared by the chief actuary, Richard S. Foster, a career civil servant.

The finding is the latest development raising questions about the new law, which offers drug benefits to all 41 million Medicare recipients and provides private insurers with a huge new role in the program. The changes represent the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation in 1965.

The law under which Mr. Scully is being penalized says that no federal money can be used to pay the salary of any federal employee who "prohibits or prevents, or attempts or threatens to prohibit or prevent, any other officer or employee of the federal government" from communicating with Congress. Similar laws have been on the books since 1912, when Senator Robert M. La Follette, a progressive Republican from Wisconsin, inveighed against "gag rules" imposed by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

It is not immediately clear whether the Bush administration will try to recover the money, or whether Mr. Scully will resist a demand for repayment.

The Government Accountability Office said the Department of Health and Human Services should try to recover the money, just as it would try to secure payment of any other debt owed to the department.

The Times also notes that "lawyers at the Health Department and the Justice Department contended it would be unconstitutional for Congress to compel the disclosure of data over objections from the executive branch." The GAO of course rejected that argument.

This is yet another example of the Bush administration arguing that the president is above the law -- as with the torture memos, in which administration lawyers argued that the Constitution entitled the president to authorize torture even though the Geneva Conventions and federal statutes forbid it. Actually, this may even go farther -- as the Times describes it (I have not read the legal briefs), the Bush administration contended that "the executive branch" (not even the president himself) has a constitutional right to withhold information that Congress has requested bearing on the cost of proposed legislation. You will search the Constitution in vain for that principle.

As with so many things the Bush administration does, I don't see why this isn't an enormous scandal. Scully, the top Medicare official in the Bush administration, forbade his subordinate to tell Congress the truth, on pain of firing if he disobeyed. It is very hard to believe that Scully did this on his own -- the prescription drug bill was a key piece of legislation for the Bush administration, and heavily pushed by it. Congress, misled due to Scully's threats into thinking that a controversial program would cost $134 billion less than the actual projection, passed the bill by an extremely narrow margin (and that only after an unprecedented, rule-flouting three-hour-long roll-call vote in the House, during which time the Bush administration twisted legislators' arms, and someone even offered a bribe to Rep. Nick Smith -- a huge non-scandal within a huge non-scandal). Shortly after Bush signed the bill into law, Scully resigned to take a highly paid job as a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, the chief beneficiary of the law. The administration apparently then argued to the GAO that the executive branch has some sort of constitutional right to lie to Congress. What the hell?

Scandal? What scandal? It's just business as usual for the Bush regime. But what do I know? My view is just "partisan reaction," as the Times would have it. And $134 billion stolen from American taxpayers is way less interesting than a stained blue dress. Could someone please wake me up from this nightmare?

If that guy doesn't make the [Top 10 Conservative Idiots] list every time between now and Election Day, there's no justice in the world.

I would like to personally thank Alan Keyes for not only making my job much easier, but for also literally defining the term "conservative idiot."

We know that nobody ever came forward to claim the $10,000 reward offered "If you personally witnessed George W. Bush reporting for drills at Dannelly Air National Guard Base between the months of May and November of 1972". But how come no one has ever asked GW himself if he can name one person he trained with? That’s what Texans for Truth wants to know. And they have a slick ad featuring Robert Mintz, who served in Alabama’s 187th Air National Guard during the period that Lt. Bush perfected the art of invisibility.

I can name people I worked with in summer jobs 20 years ago (30 years ago I was in high school — I can probably name just about everyone in my 100 person class, but that’s hardly a fair comparison)—can’t GW name just one or two he trained with?

This is a devastating point, particularly in Bush's case. George W. Bush is in many respects not a smart man. But everyone agrees that he has one great skill: an extraordinary memory for names and faces. (Earl Warren, a very different sort of Republican governor, had the same gift.) It is inconceivable, had Bush actually served in Alabama, that he would be unable to come up with the name of a single fellow guardsman who served with him. (links via Atrios)

Kos has more. Josh Marshall notes that former Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes will appear on "60 Minutes" on Wednesday to discuss how he helped Dubya get into the Texas Air National Guard to avoid Vietnam. Josh says he also hears from several sources that "60 Minutes" will reveal various previously unreported documents shedding light on Bush's Guard service or lack thereof.

Author Kitty Kelley, in her biography The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, is citing sources as saying President Bush used cocaine at Camp David during his father's presidency, according to London's Daily Mirror.

The book also alleges Laura Bush tried marijuana in her youth.

Kelley quotes Bush's former sister-in-law Sharon Bush, who claims: ''Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was president, and not just once either.''

Others told Kelley that as a 26-year-old member of the National Guard, Bush ''liked to sneak out back for a joint or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine.''

Kelley claims Bush started drinking before college and continued at Yale to overcome shyness.

Former student Torbery George says in the book: ''Poor Georgie. He couldn't relate to women unless he was loaded.''

Another says: ''It's amazing someone you held in such low esteem later became president.'' [link via Daily Kos]

Robert Silvey has a nice discussion of the Time poll that shows Bush way ahead, and Chris Bowers has a good takedown on the Newsweek poll that seems to confirm it. Personally, I think we'd have fewer panicky Democrats right now if more of them read Ruy Teixeira's poll analyses -- here's his take on the Time poll. Check out mattb25's thoughts as well.

By deciding to invade Iraq, the Bush Administration decided not to do many other things: not to reconstruct Afghanistan, not to deal with the threats posed by North Korea and Iran, and not to wage an effective war on terror.

Go read DeLong's excerpt, or better yet buy the magazine. If you're an Atlantic Monthly subscriber, go here to see the whole article.

WASHINGTON - Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote.

And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The [Miami] Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.

Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa with Franks, then head of Central Command, who was "looking troubled'':

"Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.''

''Excuse me?'' I asked.

''Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,'' he continued.

. . . .

Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against al Qaeda terrorism. [link via Atrios]

How many people have to write books saying Bush is clueless and incompetent before Americans start taking them seriously? The seemingly unvarying pattern for these books is that::

• The author goes on "60 Minutes" to talk about his book (e.g., Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill).
• The author's charges make a big splash (Author says Bush is clueless and incompetent! Stop the presses!).
• The White House responds that the author (a) is insane, (b) has an ax to grind, (c) doesn't know what he's talking about, (d) is just trying to sell his book, (e) is working for John Kerry, and (f) is a partisan Democrat. (Omit e and f if palpably ridiculous).
• The author's charges die out after a day or two (George W. Bush clueless and incompetent?! Nah, couldn't be.)

BAGHDAD, Sept. 4 -- About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and Marines were wounded in Iraq during August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas.

U.S. medical commanders say the sharp rise in battlefield injuries reflects more than three weeks of fighting by two Army and one Marine battalion in the southern city of Najaf. At the same time, U.S. units frequently faced combat in a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum in Baghdad and in the Sunni cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra, all of which remain under the control of insurgents two months after the transfer of political authority.

"They were doing battlefield urban operations in four places at one time," said Lt. Col. Albert Maas, operations officer for the 2nd Medical Brigade, which oversees U.S. combat hospitals in Iraq. "It's like working in downtown Detroit. You're going literally building to building."

The sharp rise in wounded was, for the first time, accompanied by a far less steep climb in battlefield fatalities. Since the start of the war in March 2003, 979 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and almost 7,000 have been wounded. Until last month, however, the monthly tallies of fatalities and wounded rose and fell roughly in proportion.

In August, 66 U.S. service personnel were killed in Iraq, according to the Defense Department. The toll was the highest since May, when 80 fatalities were recorded. But it was well below the 135 U.S. combat deaths in April, when a sporadic guerrilla war that had largely been confined to the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad spread to cities across the previously quiescent Shiite Muslim belt in southern Iraq. The U.S. military does not routinely release the reported number of Iraqi casualties and wounded.

Commanders said they had no immediate concrete explanation for why the number of wounded increased so sharply without a comparable rise in combat deaths.

. . . .

There were also indications that troops might have suffered more severe wounds in August than in previous months.

At the Baghdad hospital, staff members are accustomed to seeing the most severely injured soldiers and Marines. The hospital, the only one in Iraq where the military's brain and eye surgeons work, handles the worst head wounds. Normally, perhaps half the patients who come to the emergency room qualify as "acute" cases, a term that indicates severity and urgency.

"A soldier who comes in and is almost bleeding to death will require more care than someone who is just shot with a bullet," Beitz explained.

In August, however, the rate of acute cases jumped to three of four ER patients. [link via Atrios]

The media generally acts as if, since the hand-over of "sovereignty" to the Iraqis on June 28, Iraq is no longer news and may safely be ignored. But contrary to what you might think from the media's inattention and the Republicans' speeches saying how wonderfully everything is going, Iraq continues to be a hellhole, and our soldiers continue to be killed and maimed there, in numbers even greater than before the hand-over. Iraq Coalition Casualty Count shows that in June, 42 American soldiers died in Iraq. In July, 54 died. In August, 66. The total number of dead American soldiers is now 981. Adding in American contractors brings the total number of American dead in Iraq over 1,000 to date. Heaven knows when it will ever end -- John McCain said this week that American troops will probably be in Iraq for 10 to 20 years.

Sixty-six American dead in August is horrible enough, but almost 17 times that number were wounded. Some of those 1,100 wounded will die of their wounds. Many others will spend the rest of their lives missing one or more limbs, or blind, or with terrible brain damage. And they will be joined by thousands more wounded, and hundreds or thousands more dead, before this nightmare is over. Why? So that Dubya could show that he has a bigger dick than his father? It's just sickening. How anyone could think of returning this asshole to office is beyond me.

Health insurance premiums for senior citizens enrolled in Medicare will rise 17.5 percent in 2005, bringing the total monthly payment to $78.20, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

As most Americans began the Labor Day holiday weekend, federal health officials held a late-afternoon briefing to announce that the 42 million disabled and elderly Medicare beneficiaries will be hit with the largest premium increase in 15 years. [link via Daily Kos]

AKRON, Ohio (Reuters) - Democrat John Kerry rebuked President Bush on Saturday for trying to "bamboozle" U.S. voters and burying the largest increase in Medicare history with an announcement at the start of a long holiday weekend amid a rush of news at home and abroad.

Kerry questioned the timing of the Bush administration's announcement late on Friday that older Americans will have to pay about 17 percent more next year for their government-run health insurance.

"He promised again a couple of nights ago to strengthen Medicare," Kerry told a rally at a baseball stadium in Akron. "Then you wake up when a lot of the news is being hidden by what's happening in the hurricane down in Florida, what's happening in Russia with 200 people tragically killed by terrorists." [via BuzzFlash]

Kerry is famous for his reputation as a closer in political campaigns. I think that with less than two months left he's taking off the gloves and becoming more aggressive. See also his post-convention speech (Bush is "unfit to lead this country"), his speech Friday in Newark, Ohio ("Every time they open their mouths they can't tell the truth."), and Kerry Communications Director Joe Lockhart's statement Friday that Bush is asking for a "do-over" -- as though he had not been president for the past four years.

The true absurdity of the entire situation is easily appreciated when we consider that George W. Bush never showed any bravery at all at any point in his life. He has never lived in a war zone. If some of John Kerry's wounds were superficial, Bush received no wounds. (And, a piece of shrapnel in the forearm that caused only a minor wound would have killed had it hit an eye and gone into the brain; the shrapnel being in your body demonstrates you were in mortal danger and didn't absent yourself from it. That is the logic of the medal). Kerry saved a man's life while under fire. Bush did no such thing.

What was Bush doing with his youth? He was drinking. He was drinking like a fish, every night, into the wee hours. For decades. He gave no service to anyone, risked nothing, and did not even slack off efficiently.

The history of alcoholism and possibly other drug use is a key issue because it not only speaks to Bush's character as an addictive personality, but may tell us something about his erratic and alarming actions as president. His explosive temper probably provoked the disastrous siege of Fallujah last spring, killing 600 Iraqis, most of them women and children, in revenge for the deaths of 4 civilian mercenaries, one of them a South African. (Newsweek reported that Bush commanded his cabinet, "Let heads roll!") That temper is only one problem. Bush has a sadistic streak. He clearly enjoyed, as governor, watching executions. His delight in killing people became a campaign issue in 2000 when he seemed, in one debate, to enjoy the prospect of executing wrong-doers a little too much. He has clearly gone on enjoying killing people on a large scale in Iraq. Drug abuse can affect the ability of the person to feel deep emotions like empathy. Two decades of pickling his nervous system in various highly toxic substances have left Bush damaged goods.

Even for those who later abstain, "visual-spatial abilities, abstraction, problem solving, and short-term memory, are the slowest to recover." That he managed to get on the wagon (though with that pretzel incident, you wonder how firmly) is laudable. But he suffers the severe effects of the aftermath, and we are all suffering along with him now, since he is the most powerful man in the world. [via Steve Gilliard]

Go read the rest.

1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida.

104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.

101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned missile defence.

65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.

73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.

83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.

$1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States and Bush family friend.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses.

1,700 Percentage increase between 2001 and 2002 of Saudi Arabian spending on public relations in the United States.

79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi Arabia.

3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through special US-Saudi "Visa Express" programme. [link via Steve Gilliard]

The article is itself excerpted from Carter's book "What We've Lost."

What is so sad is that this girl is directionless and is now scorned because she's venal and stupid. No one wants a whore as a girlfriend unless they're a pimp, and you can blame the men for chasing her, but why didn't she say no? She had that power if she wanted to use it. No one made her sleep with six guys, two of whom were married, at the same time.

. . . .

Cutler is more sad than either foolish or evil. And lots of women get hit on by men, but most say no, and walk away. They don't let themselves become whores, they don't act like nothing matters.

Cutler has proven herself to be deeply untrustworthy. The multiple boyfriends is one thing, we have all been guilty of something like that. Even the money is a bad choice, but it happens, although less obviously. But when you combine the two, and add in the blog which used the real initials, which leads to their exposure online, something was wrong, deeply, deeply wrong.

When you go into a bedroom with someone, it's private, it's personal. Now it's one thing to be catty, another to shoot the shit with your girlfriends, but it you're going to write about intimacy in detail, you have to cover your tracks and theirs. People do stupid shit, and cheating often results in bad things, but anyone who lives like this is either in a great deal of anguish and pain or a sociopath. I'd bet on the first with her. She's not evil, just careless about things she shouldn't be. And she's paying for it.

Some bloggers have been tsk-tsking her behavior. I think that there may be a bit of jealousy on the parts of some in the media and in the blogosphere. After all, her blog was only two weeks old and she managed to achieve notoriety and get a six figure book deal out of it, not to mention the Playboy spread.

. . . .

Washingtonienne got the last laugh. I know it's not fashionable, but I'm glad for her. I'll leave the sanctimonious clucking to other people. Now if only the men in government who had paid her for sex received the same raking over the coals. I don't see that happening any time soon.

What struck Giblets the most - other than Arnold's moving story of growing up in an alternate-universe Soviet-occupied Austria - was his challenge to America. "To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girly-men!" Presidents with BALLS create massive, half-trillion-dollar deficits and lose millions of jobs! Weak-kneed fiscally-conservative PUSSIES worry about "balancing the budget" and "creating more jobs"! Well Giblets has a message to those pussies straight from the Governor of California: stop worrying about growing the economy and start growing a penis and testicles! 'Cause real men flush economies down the toilet, let terrorists escape, invade the wrong countries and go on to beat the Predator in a knock-down drag-out no-holds-barred fight! [via unfutz and Legal Fiction]

My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders – and a good friend.

He was once a lieutenant governor – but he didn't stay in that office 16 years, like someone else I know. It just took two years before the people of Massachusetts moved him into the United States Senate in 1984.

In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington.

Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so.

John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. [link via Atrios]