The poor will always be with us - as long as the GOP is in power!

This is the latest from the census bureau. Do you remember the prosperity felt when we all didn't have so many tax cuts, a war to finance, and a monstrous deficit?

By Genaro C. Armas
Associated Press
Thursday, August 26, 2004; 10:39 AM

The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.

It was the third straight annual increase for both categories. While not unexpected, it was a double dose of bad economic news during a tight re-election campaign for President Bush.

Approximately 35.8 million people lived below the poverty line in 2003, or about 12.5 percent of the population, according to the bureau. That was up from 34.5 million, or 12.1 percent in 2002.

The rise was more dramatic for children. There were 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That was an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of all children were in poverty.

The Census Bureau's definition of poverty varies by the size of the household. For instance, the threshold for a family of four was $18,810, while for two people it was $12,015.

Nearly 45 million people lacked health insurance, or 15.6 percent of the population. That was up from 43.5 million in 2002, or 15.2 percent, but was a smaller increase than in the two previous years.

Meanwhile, the median household income, when adjusted for inflation, remained basically flat last year at $43,318. Whites, blacks and Asians saw no noticeable change, but income fell 2.6 percent for Hispanics to $32,997. Whites had the highest income at $47,777.

Even before release of the data, some Democrats claimed the Bush administration was trying to play down bad news by releasing the reports about a month earlier than usual. They normally are released separately in late September -- one report on poverty and income, the other on insurance.

Putting out the numbers at the same time and not so close to Election Day "invite charges of spinning the data for political purposes," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.

Census Director Louis Kincannon -- a Bush appointee -- denied politics played any role in moving up the release date. The move, announced earlier this year, was done to coordinate the numbers with the release of other data.

"There has been no influence or pressure from the (Bush) campaign," Kincannon said Wednesday.

Official national poverty estimates, as well as most government data on income and health insurance, come from the bureau's Current Population Survey.

This year the bureau is simultaneously releasing data from the broader American Community Survey, which also includes income and poverty numbers but cannot be statistically compared with the other survey.

The figures were sure to generate attention regardless of when they were released since they typically serve as a report card of sorts for an administration's socio-economic policies.

If they call you a dog, you bite the hell out of them.

This from Salon's Tim Grieve:

"The bad news for John Kerry: Talking about the Swift boat smears won't make them go away. The worse news for John Kerry: Nothing else he can do is going to work, either.

"The Swift Boat Veterans' charges have largely been debunked. Reporters at the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have both dismantled the allegations; on Tuesday morning, an L.A. Times editorial declared: 'These charges against John Kerry are false. Or at least there is no good evidence that they are true.'

"But in the non-condemnation condemnations of the president, in the slippery 'If so many people say something it must be true' logic of former Sen. Bob Dole, in the echoes that bounce back and forth between Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and spill over onto CNN, the allegations against Kerry have taken hold. Even if they're not true -- and by all credible accounts, they're not -- the allegations raise doubts in the minds of voters paying just enough attention to know that there's some 'question' about Kerry's war record.

"The Kerry campaign clearly sees some advantage in keeping the issue alive -- in further debunking the charges, in tying them ever tighter to George Bush and Karl Rove -- but Democratic strategists are increasingly concerned."

I think he is very, very wrong. The conventional wisdom among many people - and particularly journalists who believe everything they write is devoured and digressed by the American people - is that negative campaigning always works against you.

It does not. It is very effective.

The Bush Brown Shirts were not going to let this story play out quietly. As soon as those ads were run in limited number, all of the conservative big-mouths on radio and TV and in their columns immediately said the charges were serious and HAD TO BE INVESTIGATED. The ones on Fox were wondering why the Washington Post was not on top of this, since it was even bigger than Watergate.

Kerry had to go on the attack. It was the right thing to do.

Quoting old Bill Clinton, who had a fair number of these attacks waged at him during his campaigns and presidency, "you never let a lie lie. You attack it and you attack those who perpetrated it. If you don't, then the lie becomes a fact in everyone's minds."

The media just can't get it. They had investigated and found all the charges fraudulent, built with incredible contradictions by the ad spokespersons. And they have reported it. Isn't that enough? No - because the President of the United States refuses to discuss it without a smirk. The implication by the President of the United States is that it is true. So, what next?

You do what Kerry is doing. Tie him to it and keep hammering.

Oh, you mean you wanted the truth about THAT abuse.

Surprise, surprise - the abuse at Abu Ghraib (do you think Bush has learned to pronounce it yet?) was more than just a few renegade enlisted personnel. Here is the report of the REPORT. Read it, and say, I knew it all the time.

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 25, 2004; Page A01

Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's leadership of the Pentagon has been weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting.

A report by a blue-ribbon panel he appointed to review the military establishment's role in creating and handling detainee abuse problems at Abu Ghraib prison said that the Iraq war plan he played a key role in shaping helped create the conditions that led to the scandal.

In addition, the four-member panel, which was led by one former defense secretary, James R. Schlesinger, and included another, Harold Brown, found that Rumsfeld's slow response when the Iraqi insurgency flared last summer worsened the situation.

But the report does not appear to threaten Rumsfeld's position as defense secretary, especially because all four panel members emphatically rejected the idea of calling for his resignation yesterday at a Pentagon news conference to release their conclusions.

The panel's findings do, however, provide new support for two central criticisms of the Rumsfeld team's approach in Iraq last year: that the invasion plan called for too few troops, half as many as were used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and that the Pentagon failed to plan smartly for occupying the country after the United States defeated the Iraqi military.

Before the war, the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, said publicly that he thought the invasion plan lacked sufficient manpower, and he was slapped down by the Pentagon's civilian leadership for saying so. After Baghdad fell, Rumsfeld dismissed reports of widespread looting and chaos as "untidy" signs of newfound freedom that were exaggerated by the media. And some State Department officials complained that their attempts to plan for postwar Iraq were largely disregarded by the Pentagon.

The concerns about troop strength expressed by retired generals during the war provoked angry denunciations by Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In April 2003, Rumsfeld, for example, commented that, "people were saying that the plan was terrible, and . . . there weren't enough people, and . . . there were going to be, you know, tens of thousands of casualties, and it was going to take forever."

Now a version of that criticism has been made by a panel appointed by Rumsfeld himself. One of the major factors leading to the detainee abuse, Brown said yesterday, was "the expectation by the Defense Department leadership, along with most of the rest of the administration, that following the collapse of the Iraqi regime through coalition military operations, there would be a stable successor regime that would soon emerge in Iraq."

As Schlesinger, the panel's chairman, tartly put it, the leaders of the military establishment "did look at history books. Unfortunately, it was the wrong history." He said they tended to focus on the refugee problems that followed the 1991 war, rather, he implied, than on other conflicts in which internal turmoil has followed an invasion.

Strikingly, given that Rumsfeld has made agility, adaptability and speed his bywords in pushing the military to transform itself, the panel also faulted the Pentagon's leadership for a flat-footed response to the outbreak of the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq last summer.

"Any defense establishment should adapt quickly to new conditions as they arise," Schlesinger said. "And in this case, we were slow, at least in the judgment of the members of this panel, to adapt accordingly after the insurgency started in the summer of 2003."

He added, "There was a failure to reallocate resources once it was seen that there were severe problems at Abu Ghraib."

In delivering its mixed verdict, the Schlesinger panel endorsed Rumsfeld's handling of the scandal once it broke. "If there's something to be commended on this whole operation, it's the way the secretary of defense has approached the investigations," said retired Air Force Gen. Charles A. Horner, the third member of the panel.

"I think that overall, Secretary Rumsfeld has handled this extremely well," Brown added. "If the head of a department had to resign every time anyone down below did something wrong, it would be a very empty Cabinet table."

Indeed, although some members of Congress criticized Rumsfeld yesterday, there were no calls for him to step down. The harshest statement came from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who said, "Secretary Rumsfeld and other civilian leaders in the Pentagon bear significant responsibility for the fundamental failures that led to the torture and other abuse at Abu Ghraib. At a minimum, there was gross negligence at the highest levels in the Pentagon."

The report showed Rumsfeld's top uniformed brass did not help him out much in rapidly pivoting from the peacekeeping they expected to be conducting to fighting the guerrilla war that confronted them.

The panel repeatedly faulted the judgments and actions of the entire chain of senior generals involved: Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who for most of the time was the top U.S. commander on the ground in Iraq; his two bosses, Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who stepped down as chief of the U.S. Central Command last summer as the insurgency was breaking out, and Franks's successor, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid; and Myers, the nation's top military officer.

"It would have been better had greater supervision been exercised . . . [and] there is failure at the senior levels of the Pentagon to exercise that supervision," Schlesinger said. "I think that more of that falls upon the . . . uniformed military than on the Office of the Secretary of Defense."

The report struck a tone of dismay in analyzing the sluggish response of the military bureaucracy to events in Iraq last summer and fall. It noted, for example, that a personnel plan for Sanchez's headquarters "was not finally approved until December 2003, six months into the insurgency." The result, the report concludes, was that Sanchez and his undermanned staff were overwhelmed and unable to take needed actions. In addition, the report blamed Sanchez for setting up a confused chain of command that made it difficult to determine the responsibilities of certain commanders.

The pervasive lack of troops, especially those with specialized skills, had a cascading effect that helped lead to the abuse, the report said. As the insurgency took off, frontline Army units, lacking interpreters, took to rounding up "any and all suspicious-looking persons -- all too often including women and children," it said. This indiscriminate approach resulted in a "flood" of detainees at Abu Ghraib that inundated demoralized and fatigued interrogators, it continued.

When asked whether anyone should resign over those findings, the panel members tended to sidestep the question, saying they were more interested in preventing the abuse from recurring than in fixing blame. But Brown made it clear that he expects some officers to suffer the consequences of their missteps. "At various levels, there was some dereliction of duty," he said. "At other levels, there were mistakes."

The bottom line, Brown said, is that, "A lot of careers are going to be ruined over this."

We can hope, but do we really, really believe it with the limp penises who now occupy the Pentagon, the Defense Department AND the White House.

And I never liked you . . . and, and your hair is funny.

It is not often that you can find anything from the North Koreans that you can agree with. Here's one of their retorts yesterday:

"Bush is, in fact, a thrice-cursed fascist tyrant and man-killer as he revived the fascist war doctrine which had been judged by humankind long ago and is now bringing dark clouds of a new Cold War to hang over our planet and indiscriminately massacring innocent civilians after igniting the Afghan and Iraqi wars."

Statement on the official Korean Central News Agency.

Forget what you hear - remember only what I say you heard!

Do you need any more evidence of Dubja-Cheney lies. How about these compiled by the Washington Post:

The 2004 presidential campaign sometimes resembles the children's game of "telephone." Here are some quotations as they came out of Democratic nominee John F. Kerry's mouth -- and how President Bush and Vice President Cheney later recounted them.

"Every performer tonight in their own way, either verbally or through their music, through their lyrics, have conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country." -- Kerry, July 8

"The other day, my opponent said he thought you could find the heart and soul of America in Hollywood." -- Bush, Aug. 18

"My goal, my diplomacy, my statesmanship is to get our troops reduced in number and I believe if you do the statesmanship properly, I believe if you do the kind of alliance building that is available to us, that it's appropriate to have a goal of reducing the troops over that period of time [the first six months of a Kerry administration]. Obviously, we'd have to see how events unfold. . . . It is an appropriate goal to have and I'm going to try to achieve it." -- Kerry, Aug. 9

"I took exception when my opponent said if he's elected, we'll substantially reduce the troops in six months. He shouldn't have said that. See, it sends a mixed signal to the enemy for starters. So the enemy hangs around for six months and one day. . . . It says, maybe America isn't going to keep its word." -- Bush, Aug. 18

"I will fight this war on terror with the lessons I learned in war. I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president of the United States. I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history. I lay out a strategy to strengthen our military, to build and lead strong alliances and reform our intelligence system. I set out a path to win the peace in Iraq and to get the terrorists wherever they may be before they get us." -- Kerry, Aug. 5

"Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge he would fight a 'more sensitive' war on terror. America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive. . . . Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed." -- Cheney, Aug. 12

"Lee Hamilton, the co-chairman of the 9/11 commission, has said this administration is not moving with the urgency necessary to respond to our needs. I believe this administration and its policies is actually encouraging the recruitment of terrorists. We haven't done the work necessary to reach out to other countries. We haven't done the work necessary with the Muslim world. We haven't done the work necessary to protect our own ports, our chemical facilities, our nuclear facilities. There is a long, long list in the 9/11 recommendations that are undone."

-- Kerry, Aug. 2

"My opponent says . . . that going to war with the terrorists is actually improving their recruiting efforts. I think the logic -- I know the logic is upside down. It shows a misunderstanding of the nature of these people. See, during the 1990s, these killers and terrorists were recruiting and training for war with us, long before we went to war with them. They don't need an excuse for their hatred. It's wrong to blame America for anger and the evil of these killers. We don't create terrorists by fighting back. You defeat the terrorists by fighting back." -- Bush, Aug. 18

"Yes, I would have voted for the authority [to use force in Iraq]. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively. I would have done this very differently from the way President Bush has. My question to President Bush is: Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth?" -- Kerry, Aug. 9

"He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq. After months of questioning my motives, and even my credibility, the Massachusetts senator now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpiles of weapons we all believed were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power." -- Bush, Aug. 18

Our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe

Thank you, Martin Luther, the religious protester, not the human rights one. You seem to size up very well the current political conflict in America.

I have had grave concerns about this whole Swift Boat dilemma. Actually, I still do have those concerns. I do not believe that the great unwashed masses are spending much time with the details of these charges. It's like Willie Horton. Michael Dukakis had nothing to do with his release, but a good number of the voting public were disturbed about his being to lenient on BLACK mother rapers.

The American Prospect puts it in perspective, very well. Go the site, or read here:

At first blush, the treatment given to Michael Dobbs' page-one swift-boat article in Sunday's Washington Post seems at least vaguely reassuring. There's the neutral headline "Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete," but below that, a deck-headline informing readers that "Critics Fail to Disprove Kerry's Version of Vietnam War Episode." The banner treatment, running across three-fourths of the front page above the fold, places the onus of proof where it belongs -- on the accusers, not on Kerry, a point that Bob Novak and others have chosen to ignore, obscure, or even refute; and in announcing that the proof isn't there, it seems to be a plus for Kerry.

So what's wrong with this picture? This: The Washington Post should not even be running such a story -- a takeout of something in the neighborhood of 2,700 words, I'm guessing, delving into the remotest arcana about what really happened on the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969 -- in the first place. Len Downie and the paper's other editors would undoubtedly argue that the story represents the Post's tenacity for getting to the truth, without fear or favor. But what the story actually proves is that a bunch of liars who have in the past contradicted their own current statements can, if their lies are outrageous enough and if they have enough money, control the media agenda and get even the most respected media outlets in the country to focus on picayune "truths" while missing the larger story.

And the larger story here is clear: John Kerry volunteered for the Navy, volunteered to go to Vietnam, and then, when he was sitting around Cam Ranh Bay bored with nothing to do, requested the most dangerous duty a Naval officer could be given. He saved a man's life. He risked his own every time he went up into the Mekong Delta. He did more than his country asked. In fact he didn't even wait for his country to ask.

George W. Bush spent those same years in a state of dissolution at Yale, and would go on, as we know, to plot how to get out of going to Southeast Asia. On that subject, here's a choice quote. "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment," Bush told the Dallas Morning News in 1990. "Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

Let's parse that quotation phrase for phrase. We do not, of course, know the full context of the conversation he was having with the reporter, and we don't know exactly what question Bush was asked. But his words begin from the presumption that actually going to Vietnam was absolutely not an option. The quote is entirely about how to avoid going. He wasn't prepared to damage his hearing intentionally for the sake of securing a deferment (he probably meant a 4-F classification and confused the two). And he wasn't willing to go to Canada. So he took the third option, the Air National Guard. And note how the choice was about bettering himself, not about thinking of a way to best render service that this child of privilege might -- had he been possessed of the moral fiber and sense of duty of, say, John Kerry -- have considered his obligation, especially considering that, on paper at least, he supported the war.

Dick Cheney is another who, on paper at least, supported the war. But we know Cheney's story: A series of deferments going back to 1963, when he was a student at Casper College in Wyoming. As Tim Noah reported in Slate, Cheney went on to marry -- as fate would have it, right after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when it was clear that young single men would be called up in larger numbers than before. And then he went on to have a child, Elizabeth, born precisely nine months and two days after the Selective Service ended the proscription on the drafting of married but childless men. What a happily timed burst of passion he and Lynn were consumed by! So, while Kerry was plying the Mekong Delta, Cheney was safe and dry stateside, dropping out of Yale because his grades weren't sufficient to maintain the scholarship the school had offered him.

Everyone knows Cheney's quote, delivered to the Senate committee that was vetting him for service as George H.W. Bush's Defense Secretary, that he "had other priorities" than going to fight for his country. But he made another comment at that hearing that's less known and more damning: He said he "would have obviously been happy to serve had I been called." That, as John Nichols notes in his recent book Dick, is not just an obfuscation or a tap dance; it's a lie. He was called, and he ducked.

So now we're having a debate about whether the man who did the honorable thing may have embellished his record a little (although nothing in the documentary record suggests he did this), while we have two cowards who did everything they could to stay miles away from the place Kerry demanded he be sent. This is the fundamental truth. And while yes, Kerry has made his war service a centerpiece in a way that Bush and Cheney for obvious reasons did not, is it really Kerry who deserves scrutiny for how he behaved in 1968 and 1969? Why shouldn't the major media be doing comparisons of how Kerry, Bush, and Cheney passed those years? Why shouldn't The Washington Post be devoting 2,700 words to a comprehensive look at Cheney's deferments? Nichols identifies three young men from Casper who did die in Vietnam: Robert Cardenas, Walter Elmer Handy, and Douglas Tyrone Patrick. Did one of them die because Cheney had "other priorities"?

But The Washington Post won't do that, because there exists no Vietnam Veterans for the Truth About Deferments, financed by wealthy Democratic donors and out peddling its wares. Which is the moral of the story. Our media can sort through the facts in front of their nose and determine, at least some of the time, who's lying and who's not. But they are completely incapable of taking a step back and describing the larger reality. Doing that would require making judgments that are supposedly subjective rather than objective; but the larger reality here is clearer than clear. Just imagine if the situation were reversed: The same people now questioning Kerry's "character" would have worked to establish Bush as a war hero long ago. They would have labeled Kerry a coward. If by chance a liberal-backed group came forward to question Bush's wartime actions, they would have been called traitors and worse. And the mainstream media would be following the agenda they set every step of the way.

You'd think a press corps that has now officially acknowledged that it was had by this administration on the pre-Iraq war propaganda would think twice before letting itself get used one more time. You'd think, for example, that if the editors of the Washington Post were planning 2,700-word takeouts, they might have given priority to an investigation into ties between the White House and the Swift Boat group. If the conventions of mainstream journalism prevent our media from letting readers, viewers, and listeners examine the full truth in its broadest context, then it's time to reexamine those conventions. Until that happens, people who are willing to say anything, and who have the money to back them up, will be setting the agenda, and the media -- once upon a time, a guardian of our democratic traditions -- will be following them.

These are dark hours of the campaign. We need to keep focused. In the meantime, I continue to listen to Bill Clinton's memoirs (he warns about this very tactic) and restarting The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

Thucydides' history of the collapse of Athenian democracy and its empire should be a companion piece to former Sen. Fulbright's own "Arrogance of Power." We are headed down a dark road if the Republicans continue in power. As Thucydides (whose great history ends in mid-sentence!)notes, "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand."

But, to return to Martin Luther. Can Bush be defeated? Martin Luther continues with his fervent hope that the "prince of darkness grim" can indeed be defeated . . . "for lo, his doom is sure, one little word shall fell him."

Our job is to find that damn word!

Good servant, take a break!

Dubya publicly has never admitted that there is even a chance of his losing (kind of in the same category of never admitting a mistake), but apparently he loosened up with some steelworkers in Pennsylvania (another closed meeting to the media) and admitted that if he lost, he could deal with it. Apparently, he thinks God could deal with it, too, and would say, "Good servant, take a break."

If God is keeping such close tabs on his presidency, you would think Dubya would be in a lot more trouble than he is now. I don't know of any action that would God might endorse, although perhaps he's lapsed into his Genesis, revengeful stage, in which case, perhaps he is giving a good eyeball and pronouncing it good:
- killing Iraqis with abandon
- putting people out of work and smirking that it's good for the nation
- raping the environment (since the End Times are just around the corner anyway)
- creating a national debt that can strangle the poor for decades
- ensuring that ever sperm is sacred.

Hmmm. Do I see the hand of God in those endeavors? Well, if you ask Job, you'd probably get a "no" answer since it also does not include full body sores and ruinous debt collectors, but it is pretty close. So, who knows. Maybe Bush is right and he indeed is the Prince of Darkness Grim.

Biting the hand that claims it fed them

This is not a story you will find today on Fox (or for that matter, it probably will never be there. It's not part of the conventional wisdom they like to spread in regards to the Iraqi Intrusion.).

This is a story that should slap a lot of reality in the face of many people who buy into Bush's claims that Iraqis are so pleased we came in and rid them of a dictator.

Basically, the message says: thanks America, but get the fuck out of Dodge.

From CNN:

PATRAS, Greece -- Iraqi midfielder Salih Sadir scored a goal here on Wednesday night, setting off a rousing celebration among the 1,500 Iraqi soccer supporters at Pampeloponnisiako Stadium. Though Iraq -- the surprise team of the Olympics -- would lose to Morocco 2-1, it hardly mattered as the Iraqis won Group D with a 2-1 record and now face Australia in the quarterfinals on Sunday.

Afterward, Sadir had a message for U.S. president George W. Bush, who is using the Iraqi Olympic team in his latest re-election campaign advertisements.

In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes."

The Bush campaign was contacted about the Iraqi soccer player's statements, but has yet to respond.

To a man, members of the Iraqi Olympic delegation say they are glad that former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi athletes and was killed four months after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, is no longer in power.

But they also find it offensive that Bush is using their team for his own gain when they do not support his administration's actions in Iraq. "My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"

At a speech in Beaverton, Ore., last Friday, Bush attached himself to the Iraqi soccer team after its opening-game upset of Portugal. "The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it's fantastic, isn't it?" Bush said. "It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted."

Sadir, Wednesday's goal-scorer, used to be the star player for the professional soccer team in Najaf. In the city in which 20,000 fans used to fill the stadium and chant Sadir's name, U.S. and Iraqi forces have battled loyalists to rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr for the past two weeks. Najaf lies in ruins.

"I want the violence and the war to go away from the city," says Sadir, 21. "We don't wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away."

Manajid, 22, who nearly scored his own goal with a driven header on Wednesday, hails from the city of Fallujah. He says coalition forces killed Manajid's cousin, Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was fighting as an insurgent, and several of his friends. In fact, Manajid says, if he were not playing soccer he would "for sure" be fighting as part of the resistance.

"I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?" Manajid says. "Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq."

Everyone agrees that Iraq's soccer team is one of the Olympics' most remarkable stories. If the Iraqis beat Australia on Saturday -- which is entirely possible, given their performance so far -- they would reach the semifinals. Three of the four semifinalists will earn medals, a prospect that seemed unthinkable for Iraq before this tournament.

When the Games are over, though, Coach Hamad says, they will have to return home to a place where they fear walking the streets. "The war is not secure," says Hamad, 43. "Many people hate America now. The Americans have lost many people around the world--and that is what is happening in America also."

Sex rears its ugly head one more . . . for the GOP

Don't you just love this. Those sanctimonious, pious family men in the White House always seem to have sex on their minds if not in practice. I'm sorry. This is really evil of me, but I so much enjoy this.

Bush Campaign Adviser Quits as Sexual Misconduct Case Is Recalled
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: August 19, 2004


Neal W. Hudson, the publisher of the conservative Roman Catholic journal Crisis and the architect of a Republican effort to court Catholic voters, says he is resigning as an adviser to the Bush campaign because of a Catholic newspaper's investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct involving a female student at a college where he once taught.

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"No one regrets my past mistakes more than I do," Mr. Hudson wrote in a column posted yesterday on the online edition of National Review announcing his resignation.

"At the time, I dealt with this in an upright manner, and the matter was satisfactorily resolved long ago," he wrote, without specifying the accusations. Mr. Hudson, 54, said he had been happily married to his current wife for 17 years. Called for comment, he declined.

Mr. Hudson did not name the publication. Others who said they had been contacted by a newspaper doing an investigation said it was The National Catholic Reporter.

Thomas Roberts, editor of The National Catholic Reporter, declined to comment.

At Fordham University, a Jesuit school in New York where Mr. Hudson taught from 1989 to 1995, a university spokeswoman confirmed that the episode had led to Mr. Hudson's resignation. The spokeswoman, Elizabeth Schmalz, said: "Fordham followed its policy rigorously in this matter and initiated an investigation upon receipt of the student complaint. The professor later surrendered his tenure at Fordham." A person involved with the university's investigation said that a freshman in one of Mr. Hudson's classes reported to the university that, after she had become drunk at a bar, Mr. Hudson made sexual advances toward her. After a period of weeks, she charged him with sexual harassment. The accusations were made near the end of a school year, and Mr. Hudson left academia.

Mr. Hudson, a former Southern Baptist who converted to Catholicism at the age of 34, has been an influential adviser to President Bush and a close friend of the White House political strategist Karl Rove since the late 1990's. Mr. Hudson first caught Mr. Rove's attention by publishing a study in Crisis in 1998 arguing that Republican candidates could make inroads among traditionally Democratic-leaning Catholic voters by focusing on regular churchgoers, a strategy that dovetailed with Mr. Bush's emphasis on "compassionate conservatism."

Mr. Hudson signed on as an adviser to Mr. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. For the last four years, he has been a prominent participant in a weekly conference call held by the Republican National Committee each Thursday with influential Catholic supporters.

Know Your Enemy

Here she is. Merrie Spaeth. I wish I could have run her picture with this, but I could not steal it off her website.

This puppy-eating PR bitch is behind the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." And if that was not enough to ensure a lengthy tenure in hell, it also turns out she was behind that disgusting attack on Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primary. In South Carolina, it was that he had "a black daughter." Actually, she is adopted, and, uh, Indian, which I guess in South Carolina counts as black.

Here's her bio:

Merrie Spaeth has a unique background in media, government, politics, business and the entertainment industry. She is a pioneer in communication theory and executive training, and is acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent crisis management strategists in the country.

Merrie founded Dallas-based Spaeth Communications, Inc. in 1987. The Firm provides communication training and consulting for a wide range of companies and institutions. She is also the founder and president of the Institute for Strategic Communications, a not-for-profit foundation devoted to studying and reporting on business communication issues.

Merrie served as a White House Fellow and was assigned to FBI Director William Webster. She was the first Fellow and one of the first two women on the director’s staff. After the FBI, she served two years at the Federal Trade Commission as director of public affairs, and in 1984, President Ronald Reagan named her director of media relations at the White House. Merrie introduced satellite communications to the White House, and the electronic White House News Service. One newspaper headline said she “took the White House into the Space Age.”

She has worked in every area of print and electronic media. She’s been a radio and television talk show host, a reporter and writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Daily News, and a producer for ABC’s “20/20.” Family Weekly (later USA Today Sunday Magazine) for several years featured her weekly column on personal finance and investing called “Your Finances.” Her first book Marketplace Communication (MasterMedia) is a collection of her commentaries on “Marketplace,” the daily business show on public radio stations across the country. Today, she writes a weekly column for UPI on communication challenges facing businesses, and she is a regular commentator on public radio and television.

Nothing good can ever come from Dallas. Keep that in mind. Oh, and despite the Swift Boat Veterans saying they have no tie to the White House, and the White House disavowing anything part in the planning or delivery of this disgusting ad, please note that Spaeth, who also drinks baby kitten blood, was a White House fellow under Reagan and has very very close ties to the Republican Party.

It's witch bitches like Spaeth who gives PR the dirty name it deserves.

Janis Joplin was prescient . . .

Oh Lord, won't you buy me
A Mercedes Benz
My friends all have Porsches
I must make amends . . .

Questions I Would Ask Dubya at One of His Town Meetings?

Let's just assume for the sake of argument that George W. Bush's town meetings were more than just a photo op and an opportunity to spill his sphile to an adoring audience of supporters. Let's just assume that you could go in and ask the alleged President of the United States anything that you wanted. What would it be. Here are my 10.

1. Why do you find it so difficult to accept evolution as a fact of natural life, particularly when scientists say the only "theory" associated it with it are the various ways natural selection works?

2. How old do you think the earth is? Just a round figure. Are we talking thousands of years, or millions of years, or perhaps even billions?

3. Do you really believe the bible is literal and infallible? If so, why is god such a hard ass in the opening chapters, but such a lovely guy by the time he gets to Matthew?

4. How big a sin is it to spill your seed upon the ground? In Texas, would that be a capital offense? And in fact, do you agree with the bible that a woman left a widow must marry her husband's brother? Hey, let's talk about Leviticus.

5. Who has the best direct contact with god - you or the pope? Would the pope accept a promotion and a move to Washington?

6. Other than the Hungry Goat, what other books have you read since 9/11? Book tapes can also be included in your count.

7. If the merging of an egg and a sperm produces immediate life that must be preserved, how do you justify the killing of Iraqis just to rid the country of Saddam? Does this mean you subscribe to the Vietnam dictum that to save a village, first you must burn it? A follow-up question: do you own a Zippo lighter?

8. At exactly what point does religiosity become off-the-wall and needs to be put down? Let me give you an example:

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- A church elder was sentenced to 21/2 years in prison Tuesday for abusing an 8-year-old autistic boy who died in what prosecutors called an exorcism at a storefront church.
Prosecutors say Ray Hemphill lay on Terrance Cottrell Jr.'s chest for at least an hour while trying to release "demons" from him, before the boy died August 22, 2003.
Hemphill's attorney had argued his client was trying to help the boy, and that Cottrell died after an overdose of medication. The medical examiner ruled the boy died of suffocation.
Terrance died at the Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith in Milwaukee, where Hemphill was a church elder and where the boy and his mother were members.

9. When you say your prayers at night, do you ever ask god to let Saddam rot in hell? A follow up question: where exactly is hell? Is it in Mississippi, or does it just resemble the state?

10. If there is a god in heaven, please explain to me how in the hell you ever became president?

Hey-Ho, taking off the gloves!

Interesting little note from the Columbia Journalism Review:

A different kind of politically active Hollywood type is featured in The New Yorker. Errol Morris, who has directed a number of documentaries, including the Oscar-winning "The Fog of War," a portrait of Robert McNamara, is now producing a series of political ads featuring Republicans who have switched their allegiance from George W. Bush to John Kerry. Using the "Interrotron," which he invented and "uses two-way mirrors to project his face across the lens of the camera as he interviews people," Morris shot the spots without props or music against a sheer white backdrop, in an effort to make central the "unscripted 'eloquence of ordinary citizens.'" After Kerry's people dragged their feet on the project, Morris took the idea to MoveOn, which will air one of the ads during the Republican Convention, and may spend millions on them in the coming months. One possible spot features Texan Deborah Wood, clad in a red flannel shirt, saying, "I don't like to be lied to. I can handle the truth. Where are these mobile labs? Where's the W.M.D.s? Where's the smallpox? If I were a mother of one of those people that were killed--the soldiers that were killed over there--I'd want to know. My kid has died because of you, my kid is dead in the ground because of you. I feel very betrayed. I feel like this whole country is betrayed."

Words, words, words! All I hear is words!

I agree with Eliza Doolittle. Let's have a little less talk and a little more action. I want fisticuffs on Pennsylvania. A Thrilla in DCilla. Kerry and Dubya, dukin' it out as only senators and former governors can - bare knuckles.

Why, because I have a sense of fairness. If we depended only on words, George W. Bush would be completely defenseless. He needs to be scripted, and surrounded by adoring fans. Go here if you want to know what it's like in a Bush "town hall."

We all know his ability for creating malapropisms that would give even Yogi pause. This from the Washington Post:

Reprising a War With Words
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, August 17, 2004; Page A13

Earlier this month, President Bush was almost done with a speech to a group of minority journalists when he dropped a rather startling proposal.

"We actually misnamed the war on terror," he said. "It ought to be the Struggle Against Ideological Extremists Who Do Not Believe in Free Societies Who Happen to Use Terror as a Weapon to Try to Shake the Conscience of the Free World."

Or, if you prefer to abbreviate, SAIEWDNBIFSWHTUTAAWTTTSTCOTFW.

Speaking to a meeting of minority journalists in Washington on Aug. 6, President Bush said: "I cut the taxes on everybody. I didn't cut them. The Congress cut them. I asked them to cut them." (Ron Edmonds -- AP)

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bushism has returned. The malapropisms that adorned Bush's 2000 campaign before going into remission during much of his presidency have reemerged to garnish his reelection bid.

In that same speech to the minority journalists this month, Bush offered this definition of policy toward Native Americans: "Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. I mean, you're a -- you're a -- you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities."

The day before, when signing a Pentagon spending bill, Bush delighted late-night comics when he said that our enemies "never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

While Democrats rushed to agree with that accidental Bush admission, they couldn't compete with the brief but forceful way he summed up his candidacy the previous day in Davenport, Iowa: "We stand for things."

As in 2000, the president seems to enjoy his linguistic miscues. Appearing last week with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bush said he and the Austrian-born California governor "share a lot in common" -- good wives, big biceps and "trouble with the English language."

The next day, he offered a curious wish for his audience in Oregon: "I hope you leave here and walk out and say, 'What did he say?' " The question was rhetorical, but it is possible a listener would at times be truly befuddled about Bush's meaning.

There was this discussion of Iran policy last week: "As you know, we don't have relationships with Iran," Bush said. "I mean, that's -- ever since the late '70s, we have no contacts with them, and we've totally sanctioned them. In other words, there's no sanctions -- you can't -- we're out of sanctions."

In that same session, Bush might have listeners worried about their civil liberties when he ran into plural trouble. "Let me put it to you bluntly," he ventured. "In a changing world, we want more people to have control over your own life."

As if rerunning the 2000 campaign, the national and international media are again examining Bush's syntax. "Tongue-Twisted Bush Is Bent on Self-Harm," announced the Independent newspaper of London. "Dubya's New Word Blunder" was an Australian newspaper's take. National Public Radio wondered if Bush's gaffes "might influence the coming election."

Jacob Weisberg, editor of the online publication Slate and author of four volumes of Bushisms, said his theory is that Bushisms subsided after Bush took office "because the opportunities for him to go off script became more limited."

Now, with Bush again campaigning, there are opportunities for verbal mishaps almost daily. At a campaign event in Florida last week, Bush could be heard joking about an attempted ax murder of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and his wife. "He wakes up one night and an ax-wielding group of men tried to hatchet him to death, or ax him to death. I guess, you don't hatchet somebody with an ax. And you don't ax them with a hatchet. He wakes up, the glint of the blade coming at him, and he gets cut badly, escapes. The guy hit his wife, who never recovered, really."

This year's standard for Bushisms was the Aug. 6 meeting of minority journalists, where Bush offered a range of creative phrases.

Taxes? "I cut the taxes on everybody. I didn't cut them. The Congress cut them. I asked them to cut them."

Discrimination? "I knew this was going to be an issue in our country, that there would be people that say, 'There goes a Muslim-looking person.' "

Immigration reform? "I have talked about it lately. I talked about it this winter."

War? "I wish I wasn't the war president. Who in the heck wants to be a war president? I don't."

Maybe that's why he calls it the Struggle Against Ideological Extremists Who Do Not Believe in Free Societies Who Happen to Use Terror as a Weapon to Try to Shake the Conscience of the Free World.

Anybody but Bush is a legit campaign, 'publicans!

Kevin Drum has said what all of us foolish liberals have been saying for some time, and baby it's right on point:

BUSH HATERS....Jonah Goldberg, in the middle of a post about Clinton haters and the people who hate them, says this:

The Bush-haters — who are just as extreme and nasty as the Clinton-haters were, and in many ways more so....

Tell you what, Jonah. As soon as the most popular liberal editorial page in the country accuses George Bush of murdering one of his aides, maybe I'll give your argument a hearing. And as soon as one of the most influential liberal interest groups in the country starts distributing hundreds of thousands of videos suggesting that George Bush ran a coke ring out of Austin, then I'll really perk up. And when Senate Democrats spend $70 million investigating the Valerie Plame affair — compared to the current $0 — and end up bringing impeachment charges against George Bush, then you'll have me. You'll really have me.

But until then, sell it somewhere else. Michael Moore calling Bush a liar and a moron just isn't in the same league as what your side did to Bill Clinton, and nobody who was sentient during the 90s can find the contrary suggestion anything but laughable.

Of the 50, a good choice though I would throw in Mississippi and Kansas

This just in from the Fox Network:

NEW YORK — Nearly 140 years after the Civil War, another group of Americans wants to secede from the union.

Christian Exodus (search), a California-based group, wants God to be its commander in chief. Decrying what it perceives as the unjust secularization of the United States, it wants a sovereign state of its own.

But rather than eye the Golden State — a "lost cause," says the group's founder — it'll settle for South Carolina (search).

Cory Burnell (search), Christian Exodus' founder and president, told FOX News that the group narrowed its focus to the Bible Belt state based on an electorate that is already "Christian-leaning," has its own ports and — unlike its neighbor North Carolina — is no hub of liberalism.

Christian Exodus' mission, according to its Web site, is to scrap the "tyrannical authority" of federal government in favor of a constitutional republic, with the Ten Commandments rather than the U.S. Constitution as government's guide.

Phase One of the group's "plan of action" in breaking down the wall between church and state is to enlist groups of 1,000 members to move into 12 designated House districts in South Carolina, with the goal of voting 12 "Christian sovereigntists" into the state government by 2008.

Not much in South Carolina worth keeping anyway, and I would be all for it if we could ship all the evangelicals there.

By the way, I just attended a "new season" meeting, in which one of the new "drama" shows on Fox this season will be the partnering of a nun and a reporter who are seeking out evidence that indeed the apocalypse is just around the corner. Sorry, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer stopped at least four different apocalypses in her seven seasons. I don't think more are on the way.

How can you be undecided?

I'm borrowing this from the Washington Post this morning, but it makes a point that I have been wondering about for a long time, i.e., how can any serious voter be undecided this year? Either you really believe in Bush, or you will go for Kerry or even Nader. How, after all that has transpired, can you not have an opinion of Bush?

Well, maybe they do, but just are not yet ready to cross over to a Democrat. Read on, and they are encouraging words.

"Last week Charlie Cook, a highly-respected non-partisan political analyst, wrote in his column for the National Journal that things are looking bad for President Bush.

"Cook's chief point is that while Kerry holds just a slim lead in some polls, there are very few undecided voters out there and that Bush realistically can expect to get no more than 25 percent of them.

"Which would mean a Kerry victory in November. Cook is not foolish enough to predict this and, of course, he includes the usual language about how things can change. But here are his concluding thoughts:

" ' . . . President Bush must have a change in the dynamics and the fundamentals of this race if he is to win a second term. The sluggishly recovering economy and renewed violence in Iraq don't seem likely to positively affect this race, but something needs to happen. It is extremely unlikely that President Bush will get much more than one-fourth of the undecided vote, and if that is the case, he will need to be walking into Election Day with a clear lead of perhaps three percentage points.' "

Bush or Harding? Who's the worst?

From the Jay Leno show last night:

"Is it me or is Bush going everywhere Kerry goes? So far in the past week, President Bush has followed John Kerry to Davenport, Iowa; New Mexico; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; and he follows him to Portland, Oregon. The only place he never followed John Kerry was Vietnam."

Ain't it the truth.

Submitted by my friend, Becky, the best damn little Democrat on Walnut Street:

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
-Adlai Stevenson, statesman (1900-1965)

Let's prove that. In cased you missed it, here is Bush bs'ing again:

Hey Kimo Sabe, who's your sovereign?

Mea culpa, mea culpa! So when do you start saying Bush lies?

OK, we suffered through the New York Times' tear-jerking "we're sorry" about underplaying all the reasons we should NOT have gone into Iraq. The mea culpa supposedly exposed their dirty linen. So who the fuck cares? They didn't have the guts or the chutzpah to take on the Bush Administration when it was very clear they were lying, or at least "overselling" the need to go to war. NYT, spare me the hand-wringing and do your fuckin' job.

This just makes me angry.

So now we have an expose of the Washington Post by its media critic. Same old story: no guts by the editors. It probably should not come as a surprise. It took a while for the Watergate stories to start hitting the front page, but AT LEAST THEY DID!

Is the Washington Post sin greater than the Times? Hard to say. The Times reporter actually played it down, thus making the job for the editors easier. Question: so why hasn't that freakin' dame cashiered? Why does she still have a job there?

But in the Washington Post's situation, their reporters were warning them that the Bush Administration was pulling a Lyndon Johnson, and the freakin' - no, fuckin' - editors buried the stories.

If you have had a personal hand in creating a war that has killed more than 900 Americans and an ungodly number of Iraqis, do you sleep at night. And, yes, I think the Washington Post editors have had a hand in it.

The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story
Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn't Make Front Page

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A01

Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.

"We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," Woodward said in an interview. "We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier" than widely believed. "Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page."

As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war.

An examination of the paper's coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.

I could have told you the same thing 30 years ago!

There was no greater competition than when the United Press International and the Associated Press went after the same story. Frankly, going against an AP reporter head-to-head was the best high I've ever had. The adrenalin never shut down.

Therefore, when I stumbled over this story in the Columbia Journalism Review, I had to post it.

Grandma, as we called the AP, may have beaten us into the ground thanks to our own top leadership problems and financial failings, but the victory did not come at the hands of lack of reportership.

Read on (oh yes, it also has a political statement buried in it, but I love this piece because it takes the AP to task):

Fact Check
AP: Do Not Ingest Without a Grain of Salt

Yet another book came out yesterday critical of John Kerry's Vietnam service and calling into question the circumstances surrounding the Massachusetts senator's three Purple Hearts, on the basis that "none was for serious injuries and two wounds were self-inflicted," according to the Associated Press. This sort of accusation is nothing new. Back in April Campaign Desk tackled this issue. The problem is not that news outlets report such claims, but that they often do so without providing relevant facts for readers to assess the truth of such incendiary charges.

In this case, the Associated Press fails to inform its readers that the severity of an injury in battle has no bearing on whether a soldier or sailor receives a Purple Heart. A wound is a wound. As we wrote in April, "Paragraph 4 of the 'Purple Heart Criteria for U.S. Navy' states that 'a wound is defined as an injury to any part of the body from an outside force or agent sustained under one or more of the conditions listed in paragraph 2 [in 1968, those were: in action against the enemy, or as a result of action by 'any hostile foreign force']. A physical lesion is not required; however, the wound for which the award is made must have required treatment by a medical officer."

The second charge -- that the wounds were self-inflicted -- would indeed have disqualified Kerry for a Purple Heart, according to Paragraph 4. But there is no official report extant from the time indicating that Kerry's wounds were self-inflicted; that charge rests on the disputed accounts of other veterans. (As an aside, we can't help but note that if Kerry did indeed go around wounding himself during the war, he was lucky indeed to get out alive.)

But we digress. The question at hand is: How difficult would it be for AP to dig up those two simple facts? And the answer, alas, is, too difficult, it appears.

And that, in a season of unsubstantiated charges and wild counter charges, is why it becomes an increasingly dubious proposition to rely on the once-dependable wire service.

Why Bush can now claim he is as red as the Red Man!

You just have to hope there will be many debates in this campaign, but of course, there won't be. If we get just one out of the Bush people we will be lucky.

Bush is a danger to himself whenever he tries to use the English language. Truly, this guy is an idiot.

Here's the latest, with him trying to explain to a Native American reporter whether he considers Native American tribes still sovereign, i.e., a nation to themselves as they claim.

Turn up your volume! If this link doesn't work, click on the title.

This one may be the best ever. It's not that he didn't pronounce everything incorrectly - well, almost - it's that he does not have a clue with the name means. Does this not remind you about the time you were in class, never having read the assignment, and then tried to bs your way through?

Who's running this country? Oh, him.

From today's New York Times regarding Goss' appointment as CIA Director:

"Democratic Congressional officials who have been involved in intelligence say they believe that Mr. Goss is now close to Vice President Dick Cheney, and they say there have been times when their impression was that Mr. Goss was unwilling to pursue matters that could cause him problems with the vice president's office."

Have we EVER had a vice president who seemingly has more control over the U.S. government than even the president? Is this not scary, or what?

Hmmmm. What can you make of this Holmes?

This story bears watching.

Ignoring what Iran is saying about the "darkest day," it is more important what Iraq's leaders are saying. Did the U.S. jump the boat and order in a full scale attack without consulting them? Did those leaders hear from the Shiites that a full-scale insurgency would ensue if the U.S. troops moved in. Was this whole episode one of Rummy's over-the-top snap decisions? Can George Bush pick out which country is Iraq and which one is Belgium on a globe?

I think the new Iraqi leadership blinked. I suspect they gave tentative approval for U.S. to take tough action, but when push came to shove, they were not willing to risk their shakey support on the U.S. troops going in force to destroy the city and a goodly number of its inhabitants.

It bears watching. And the Washington neocon spin should be interesting. Watch FOX tonight try to apologise for the administration. Fox web has been touting the inclusion as if it was the beginning of D-Day. And they are still a little slow at this time to admit that the U.S. forces are drawing back.

Wolfe is wrong.

Contrary to the oh-too-much quoted "you can never go home again," you actually can. What Thomas Wolfe should have said was "you SHOULD never go home again." If you do go, it will just depress you.

In my case, home is the South. Specifically, the three-state region locals call the Ark-La-Tex. A good part of my life was spent between Texarkana and Shreveport, a fairly straight north-south line on the Kansas City Southern tracks. The only good things I recall happening during those years of my infancy to teen was that:

- my Grandfather Lee was a Yellow Dog Democrat fisherman who enjoyed telling stories more than actually catching fish;
- I developed a fondness for baseball and the city of Brooklyn;
- Mickey Mouse Club had Annette;
- The Strand Theatre always had a double feature on Saturdays, and tickets cost 9 cents (and with a pickle and a box of pop corn, my day was made for just a quarter);
- I once met cinema cowboy Rex Allen at the Four States Fair rodeo, and rode his horse (by Lash LaRue still remained my favorite);
- My first dance as a 12-year-old was with Mary Beth Wait, who even today I consider the cutest, best looking girl I have ever seen outside of Linda Ronstadt and my spouse (for a blogger to survive, one must know his readership);
- Wake Village Presbyterian Church had a neat back door so that you could slip out of Sunday School without anyone knowing except your best friends Bruce Summers and Jimmy Green who would accompany you back into the pine woods for a smoke;
- My mother excused me from Wednesday night's traditional liver and onions (I had pinto beans and cornbread instead);
- My grandmother Lee's cookie dough, and she never insisted that I had to wait until the dough was backed into cookies before it could be eaten. She predated the now common understanding that cookie dough is far better than a cookie can ever be.

All in all, that's not too bad a time in Texarkana-Shreveport, particularly in the case with Mary Beth Wait. But my list of bad things unfortunately would take up too much internet space, and others might one day want to write.

Suffice it to say, the race question has only marginally improved, the once Solid South is now solid for the GOP rather than the Democrats, and illiteracy seems to be a badge of honor one holds dearly rather than being chagrined.

Actually, the word chagrin does not exist in the South. But that's a topic for a future essay.

So much for the digression. My father's final days keeps drawing me back and it will until the end comes, but I assure you, after that, I am free.

The place truly depresses me. Hardly a car goes by without a yellow ribbon sticker claiming the occupants support our troops, or God, or our president, or sometimes all three. The only other most prevalent bumper sticker outside of Bush-Chaney is the one proclaiming that only the slow arrival of the Rapture is preventing that specific car from careening into approaching traffic driverless.

There is something about the deep South that makes those who live there become idiots. I don't think it's the water. And certainly not the deepfried catfish and hushpuppies. But whatever the cause, it makes them want to say idiotic things like "liberals have killed this great country," or "anytime you get a bunch of coloreds together, you are going to have a fight or something worse." Yes, coloreds still seems the most prevalent description of Afro-americans, though Indians (the subcontinent version), Hispanics and arabic people also seem to fall occasionally into the territory.

Actually, regarding arabic and Indians, that is not totally true. The word "terrorist" seems to crop up more often. Seriously folks, I'm not making this up. FOX Network and the Bush Administration has managed to build the fear in places you would never believe would have fear. In Shreveport, the local newspaper had two stories on the front page in which "terrorists" was in the headline, and neither of them had anything to do with Iraq or Islamic insurgency. One was "domestic terrorists" - a husband-wife bank robbing tandem. The other was a man who threatened to blow up a neighbor's house because they were feuding over ownership of a fence. The sheriff called him a "terrorist who had to be taken off the streets."

My father's spouse told me that they were very suspicious about a Pakistani family who lived next door. "We're told that they have infilitrated everywhere, so it makes sense to be suspicious," she told me. I assume Fox Network told her, though I wouldn't put it past Cheney to have made a private call to her. Because of my father's illness, they are moving away and into a condo. I don't know who will keep track of that suspicious, dark-shinned neighbor now. I will lose sleep over it, I am sure.

Where is this blog going? Frankly, I don't know, though I think the moral to the story is that we are in deep shit trouble when Americans believe their neighbors might be "terrorists" because of the color of their skin and accent. We are in deep shit trouble when a vast number of church pulpits are being used to promote a president who is troubled by "humanist liberals." We are in deep shit trouble when my niece cannot read any fantasy books - including Alice in Wonderland - or enjoy a Halloween night because her mom and my brother think "popular" culture promotes anti-Christian ideal and heathen concepts. We are in deep shit trouble when people think Fox is actually "fair and balanced."

These trips south have to stop. They totally depress me. Though I still like going out for deep fried catfish and hushpuppies.

There is a FOX in the henhouse

This is too funny, and since I am in a Bash FOX mood (as opposed to Bash Bush), you should check this out.

It's from The Boston Phoenix:

DOES ROGER AILES KNOW ABOUT THIS? The most entertaining news from the Kerry campaign trail comes in the last paragraph of Anne Kornblut's story in today's Globe:

Some 200 business leaders endorsed Kerry yesterday, including executives from Oracle, Bank of America, and three other companies who flew here to attend the round-table. They decried rising US deficits and what several said was a chilly international business climate under Bush. Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, said that the Bush administration's "isolationist" and "occasionally bellicose" rhetoric was bad for US financial interests and trading abroad.

Odd, but searching for "Chernin" at FoxNews.com yields nothing since August 2003. You'd think they'd want to get this up right away, so that they could be fair and balanced and all. In fact, Media Log looks forward to the sight of Sean Hannity interviewing his boss on the depradations of George W. Bush.

His Father Always Was Accused of Sticking a Silver Foot in His Mouth

Bush the Bumbler strikes again. That is not surprising, and in any other president, it might be amusing. Here's the link.

It occurred while signing a $417 billion defense spending bill. This may be his best:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

White House Apologist Scott McClellan says the America people knows Bush "speaks with clarity and conviction."

All news agencies are carrying the story this morning, uh, except the Fair and Balanced Network - FOX. This is their story:

FOX --President Bush signed a $417.5 billion wartime defense bill Thursday providing an additional $25 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, body armor for troops and reinforced Humvee vehicles.

"With this legislation America's military will know that their country stands behind them as they fight for our freedom and as they spread the peace," Bush said.

"No enemy or friend can doubt that America has the resources to prevail," he said. "And we will."

Overwhelmingly approved by a Congress eager to show election-year support for the military, the measure includes money for 39 more Army Black Hawk (search) helicopters, a Virginia-class attack submarine, three guided-missile destroyers and a 3.5 percent pay increase for troops. "This money is well-earned, well-deserved and well-spent," he said of the pay increase.

With national security the top issue in his re-election campaign, Bush came off the political trail for the bill-signing ceremony with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (search) and members of Congress. With the ink on the measure barely dry, Bush was returning to the campaign trail for his 20th trip as president to Ohio.

But searching the FOX news site for the story was not a total waste. They have an interesting piece on the GOP signing up the Amish to vote. Apparently they don't like abortion or gay marriage. Perhaps someone should tell the Amish about the war.

How about Al Franken for the U.S. version?

Thanks to Russ McCorkle for calling my attention to this important story!

LONDON, England (AP) -- English Heritage, guardian of various historic sites in Britain, is advertising for someone to be the nation's first court jester since 1649.

An ad appearing in Thursday's editions of The Times laid out the qualifications: "Must be mirthful and prepared to work summer weekends in 2005. Must have own outfit (with bells). Bladder on stick provided if required."

Auditions will be held Saturday at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire, and the winner will have to negotiate a salary, English Heritage said.

The court jester's position died along with King Charles I, who was executed by Oliver Cromwell's supporters in 1649. The monarchy was restored 11 years later, but the position of jester did not return.

"It is about time we had a jester again," said Tracy Borman, the agency's director of education, events and outreach.

"It is one of those roles that fell by the wayside when Cromwell made Britain a republic, but there is no reason not to bring it back now."

This is one English tradition that we also should consider. If the jester truly plays the role like it should be played (see King Lear), then it should rank just behind national security adviser.

Cheney the Devil, or How I Spent My Summer With Your Money

This day's entry is dedicated to my spouse who believes Halliburton is Enron with a protective angel. Hmmm, angel may be the wrong word. But she feels that just possibly Halliburton would be the greatest American business scandal since Teapot Dome, if the Republican-dominated Congress could fixate on something other than getting Dubya re-elected.

So, here's my take on the whole stinkin' mess AND I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO GET INTO THE WHOLE IRAQI BOONDOGGLE. Let's just talk about when Dick Cheney was walking around the boardroom enjoying his dictatorship.

It appears that Manchurian Global um, I mean Halliburton, has paid a fine for secretly changing its accounting practices in a way that inflated its 1998 and 1999 profit figures (this from the Washington Post):

Until the second quarter of 1998, Halliburton had dealt with cost overruns on projects by taking a loss for the amount of the overrun unless and until the company that it was working for agreed to pay part or all of the overrun. But confronted with a large overrun on a fixed-fee project to build a gas production plant in the Middle East - the commission did not say in which country - Halliburton changed its policy so that it would record the income it thought the customer would eventually agree to pay.

That change in policy was not disclosed until March 2000, when the company filed its 1999 annual report with the S.E.C. The commission said that pretax profit for all of 1998 was reported at $278.8 million, 46 percent more than the $190.9 million that would have been reported under the old accounting.

Halliburton's former CFO and controller the subject of an SEC investigation--I bet that does not surprise you. But why is Halliburton's former CEO, currently the vice president of the United States, in the clear? Why, you may ask? Why? Because the SEC is allegedly unable to find any evidence that he knew what was going on.

He didn't know?

It's tough being an SEC investigator. the rule of law seems to be extremely tough to . . . prove a case? Dick Cheney — like most CEOs in cases like this — get off the hook because of the absence of a smoking gun? Do they need a memo with his signature saying," Shit, let's screw the stockholders by declaring a huge profit."?

Now this is what drives my sweet, beautiful wife nutty. She writes speeches for upper management, and - this is so silly of her - she thinks they all stay atop of all financial information. She believes they talk about it in board rooms and KNOW what's happening in their company. She thinks that that is their job.

Is she silly? No. Of course Cheney knew about this. Not only did he know, but this over-budget project was almost certainly a subject of considerable interest to him. A CEO would certainly follow that. The cost overruns were probably a subject of numerous status reports. Try telling me and the rest of the witless world that Halliburton's earnings was not a frequent source of conversation in the boardroom and definitely in front of that pompous Cheney. There is nothing that a CEO pays more attention to than his company's quarterly and yearly earnings reports. Or, rather, he damn well better concern himself over them if he is to keep his job.

Have I made my point? Well, let me overemphasize it.

Cheney knew. But as long as underlings are willing to fall on their swords for him, there will never be any proof. And we can all go on pretending that when earnings turned out to be 46% higher than expected, Dick Cheney just scratched his chin and smiled in wonderment. "I'll be damned," I'm sure he said, "things turned out OK after all."

And nobody in his company ever mentioned the subject of surprisingly high corporate earnings in his presence again. Yeah, that's reality for sure!

And Congress thinks gay couples will ruin America. Not the America I live in. It's CEOs like Dick Cheney who seriously threaten our democracy, though of course one way to save us is take him out of the boardroom and put him one step away from the presidency.

A question for you to ponder: would there have been Watergate hearings if Richard Nixon had been lucky enough to have today's current Congress? I don't think so.

Republicans - I hope your circle in hades is appropriately warm.

What a cute little bounce you have.

I did 13 months in television hell. After leaving behind 15 years with United Press International, I took a job in 1985 with Channel 41 in Kansas City as news director. I thought it would be an easy transition. I wasn't totally naive. One friend in television warned me not to confuse journalism with television news. Still, I thought I could bring in change.

I was wrong. Despite pushing my reporters to cover "real" news like local politics, city council, the state, etc., usually our news casts started off with a real cool fire. Cute animals showed up all too often, and soundbites were considered long if more than 15 seconds.

I laughed my head off at "Anchorman," but it was a little too close to home. The Panda story would have been REALLY big in Kansas City, and we would have covered it heavily.

But after 13 months, I had had enough and entered a truly wonderful, ethical profession: public relations. Despite the manure we paint white, it still has more legitimacy than television news.

If you have been wondering what the academic world of journalism is thinking about the current race, here is a piece from the Columbia Journalism Review, a magazine that still believes journalism is about news and that you can't beat real facts in reporting it.

Spin Buster
August 02, 2004
Follow the Bouncing Bounce

The only thing the political press loves more than a scandal is a poll. And Newsweek this past weekend did no one any favors by releasing a poll immediately after the convention that many have interpreted as a measure of Kerry's post-convention bounce in popularity -- even though half of the poll was conducted before Kerry's speech accepting the nomination on Thursday night.

The Newsweek web exclusive published on Saturday, July 31, revealed what it termed a "baby bump," with Kerry's support growing by 4 percent over his pre-convention number. Fair enough, except that Newsweek, as others have already pointed out, conducted part of the poll on Thursday -- before Kerry's speech. While Newsweek did not classify its poll as "post-convention," it asserted the "bounce" to be the smallest in the history of the Newsweek poll. Most readers (and journalists), however, associate the term "bounce" with a post-convention boost. The misnomer was so obvious that even Republican commentator Joe Scarborough told Don Imus that he "wish[ed] Newsweek would run their poll throughout the weekend."

Unsurprisingly, many in the media leapt at the chance to handicap the horse race, without telling viewers and readers that half of the poll had been conducted during the convention and half after the convention. One of the worst cases was Chris Wallace's interview with Kerry and Edwards on "Fox News Sunday." Wallace asked the two candidates if they had seen the "first post-convention poll," citing the Newsweek poll. Kerry and Edwards promptly corrected Wallace, who proceeded to refer to the poll's "4 point bounce" as if the poll offered a legitimate measure of Kerry's post-convention support.

Then on Sunday the first poll conducted entirely after the convention was released. The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll showed Kerry's support two points lower among likely voters than its prior poll. The storyline then formed that these two polls offered "mixed" indications of Kerry's post-convention bounce. As today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette put it, "two post-convention polls released yesterday -- one by Newsweek and the other by CNN/USA Today/Gallup -- offered mixed news for Kerry-Edwards team." The Dallas Morning News similarly erred, writing in its lede that "aides to [Senator Kerry] and President Bush began playing inside baseball with conflicting polls following the Democratic convention." The Dallas Morning News article notes Kerry's comments that the Newsweek poll was not entirely post-convention, but fails to assert this relevant fact with the weight of the newspaper's voice. Knowledgeable that politicians often spin poll results, the reader is left wondering whether Kerry is fudging or telling the truth.

Campaign Desk has seen this before: One half-baked story can set the tone for the entire press corps' coverage of an issue. Reporters and editors would be wise to check the ingredients before feeding readers and viewers this particular bit of fluff.

Remember the story?

Dubya's dad had the race card that played so well for him. Sons often learn from their dads, and Dubya, though dumb as a doorknob, can actually on occasion pick up some nuances. Well, maybe it's just Karl Rove after all.

It's the Terror Card, which coincidentally seems to pop up whenever Bush's popularity numbers drop, or to offset any Democratic initiatives. Here is what the Washington Post has to say about the latest. Frankly, newspapers across the country should take this stand, though few will even if their editors wink with the common knowledge of what Tom Ridge is doing. And is this working against us? Remember the story?

This message from Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge must make the cubicle jockeys at the Citicorp building feel a lot better: "Just by showing up at work you have made a powerful statement that [the terrorists] will not succeed."

It would make an excellent epitaph. Really. Then again, a terrorist attack still seems pretty unlikely. Would so many government officials be showing up at Citicorp if it were?

If they're not being more overtly reassuring, it's only because it's harder to believe that you're really sending the terrorists much of a message just by refusing to be intimidated by three-year-old information that's clearly being used for political purposes. The administration clearly wants us to panic, but not enough to actually do anything. Except, you know, vote for Bush who saves our bacon each and every day by being, you know, strong and decisive and stuff like that..

Security Alert

Tuesday, August 3, 2004; Page A16

http://www.storyarts.org/library/aesops/stories/boy.html
A SMALL FLEET OF television satellite trucks was parked across the street from World Bank headquarters yesterday. On 19th Street NW, police were pulling over trucks headed in the direction of the International Monetary Fund, demanding credentials from drivers. Police milled around the entrances to both buildings, which were on a list of potential targets enumerated Sunday by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, along with the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup headquarters in Manhattan, and the Prudential building in Newark. But all of this activity, soothing though it may be to the people who work in those buildings, underlines the difficulty that surrounds Mr. Ridge's security warning, even one as detailed as this.

For although this latest information pointed to precise targets, only a broad time frame was supplied. Some of the information reportedly in al Qaeda's possession, on the structure of the buildings and their security, had been collected over a period of years. World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn told his colleagues yesterday that "there is no information that indicates a specific time for these attacks." Hence the odd sight of police pulling trucks over, as if attacks were imminent, and journalists parking their trucks directly in front of the buildings, as if attacks were only theoretical. A District government spokesman grumbled that naming places "gives it a little more specificity, but obviously not enough."

The ambiguity makes advice to those who work near the listed targets less clear than anyone would like: Go to work as normal -- a suggestion IMF and World Bank employees appeared to be following yesterday -- but be alert for unusual cars, trucks, people or packages. Other commuters, both on Metro and in traffic, are advised to do the same. Over time, officials say, new security procedures in the target areas will be made permanent, but in the meantime, pedestrians and drivers will be subjected to unexpected inconveniences, such as closed streets and police checks.

Precisely because it can create confusion, the ambiguity makes politicians' treatment of these warnings, now and in future, extremely sensitive. It is important that prominent Democrats such as former governor Howard Dean refrain from observing, as Mr. Dean did, that "every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism," because that would imply that no terrorist threats, however serious, should be taken as such. It is equally important that the administration not politicize its warnings, because to do so would weaken them.

In his statement, Mr. Ridge stayed away from politics, although he did, as in the past, find it necessary to attach a list of his homeland security achievements along with the warning, which did reduce its impact. The administration's decision to brief the Democratic presidential contender, Sen. John Kerry, probably helped dampen partisan feelings. Both sides should remember that everyone who lives and works in Washington, New York and Newark will benefit from these warnings only if everyone involved bends over backward to depoliticize this issue in a political season.

Bush is right about Iraq

To answer Bush's oft-posed question, "Is not Iraq better off without Saddam?": I have to admit he's correct, as you can see by the enclosed story from the New York Times.

TEHRAN, Aug. 1 - Everything about Amir appears masculine: his broad chest, muscled arms, the dark full beard and deep voice. But, in fact, Amir was a woman until four years ago, when, at the age of 25, he underwent the first of a series of operations that would change his life.

Since then he has had 20 surgical procedures and expects another 4. And Amir, who as a woman was married twice to men - his second husband helped with the transition and remains a good friend - is now engaged to marry a woman.

"I love my life and I'm happy, as long as no one knows about my past identity," said Amir, who asked that his full name not be published. "No one has been more helpful than the judge, who was a cleric and issued the permit for my operation."

After decades of repression, the Islamic government is recognizing that some people want to change their sex, and allowing them to have operations and obtain new birth certificates.

Before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there was no particular policy regarding transsexuals. Iranians with the inclination, means and connections could obtain the necessary medical treatment and new identity documents. The new religious government, however, classed transsexuals and transvestites with gays and lesbians, who were condemned by Islam and faced the punishment of lashing under Iran's penal code.

But these days, Iran's Muslim clerics, who dominate the judiciary, are considerably better informed about transsexuality. Some clerics now even recommend sex-change operations to those who are troubled about their gender. The issue was discussed at a conference in Tehran in June that drew officials from other Persian Gulf countries.

One cleric, Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, is writing his thesis on transsexuality at the religious seminary of Qum.

"All the clerics and researchers at the seminary encouraged me to work on the subject," he said in an interview. "They said that my research can help change the social stigma attached to these people and clarify religious decrees on the matter."

One early campaigner for transsexual rights is Maryam Hatoon Molkara, who was formerly a man known as Fereydoon. Before the revolution, under the shah, he had longed to become a woman but could not afford surgery. Furthermore, he wanted religious guidance. In 1978, he wrote to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was to become the leader of the revolution but was still in exile, explaining his situation.

The ayatollah replied that his case was different from that of a homosexual and therefore he had his blessing.

However, the revolution intervened and men like himself or those who had already changed their sex were harassed, even jailed and tortured. "They made me stop wearing women's clothes, which I had worn for many years and was used to," Ms. Molkara recalled. "It was like torture for me. They even made me take hormones to look like a man.''

It took him eight years after the revolution, in 1986, to get government permission to proceed with surgery. But he could not afford the surgery and did not have it until 1997, when he underwent a sex-change operation in Bangkok. The Iranian government covered the expenses. Four years ago, Ms. Molkara established an organization to help those with gender-identity problems. Co-founders include Ali Razini, head of the Special Court of Clergy, a branch of the judiciary that only deals with clerics, and Zahra Shojai, Iran's vice president for women's affairs. An Islamic philanthropic group known as the Imam Khomeini Charity Foundation has agreed to provide loans equivalent to about $1,200 to help pay for sex-change surgery.

To obtain legal permission for sex-change operations and new birth certificates, applicants must provide medical proof of gender-identity disorder. The process can take years.

It also involves considerable expense. In Tehran, the initial male-to-female surgery runs about $4,000. So far, Amir has spent $12,000 on medical procedures.

The people who pursue this route come from many different backgrounds.