Dick Cheney's Sense of Humor
Then there was Vice President Cheney's speech in Pennsylvania on Aug. 25, when he appeared to confuse Kerry with the other Massachusetts senator, arch-liberal Edward M. Kennedy. "I listened to what Senator Kennedy had to -- excuse me, I get them confused sometimes," Cheney said to laughter, "I listened to what Senator Kerry had to say in Boston . . ."

But the Web site Spinsanity.com notes that Cheney made the very same "mistake" on Aug. 14 in Nevada while discussing votes on intelligence. "Not even Senator Kerry -- excuse me -- not even Senator Kennedy would vote for it. Sometimes I get them confused." Spinsanity wondered if Cheney is "intentionally confusing the names of two people to blur the distinctions between them."
Read the rest of this piece to find out how much it costs Bush to get someone to lie for him.
Propaganda Pawns Strike Back

You've likely heard by now that the Bush-Cheney campaign ran ads using the Olympics to push their propaganda about the invasion of Iraq. And you also probably heard that the USOC asked Bush to remove the ads. As was expected, Bush refused.

So how do the Olympic athletes, who are being used as pawns in this game of propaganda, feel about President Bush?
"My problems are not with the American people," Iraq's soccer coach, Adnan Hamad Majeed, told the Associated Press. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American Army has killed so many people in Iraq." His star midfielder, Salih Sadir, agreed: "Iraq as a team doesn't want Mr. Bush to use us [in an ad] for the presidential campaign…. We don't wish for the presence of the Americans in our country. We want them to go away."

These are not anonymous bomb throwers sending notes to the media. These are Iraq's favorite sons, stars of the national sport. Yet they all seem to be saying the same thing: America's military is not wanted on our land. Another team member, Ahmed Manajid, demanded to know: "How will [Bush] meet his God having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes." The athlete added that were he not playing for his country he would "for sure" be fighting in the Iraqi resistance. "I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?" Manajid asked.
Catastrophic Success?

Apparently the US military has been using the phrase "catastrophic success" to describe the Iraq invasion for several months now. The Guardian UK picked up on its usage back in March in their series, "The language of war."
Amid their excitement at taking on a depleted and demoralised Iraqi army, US commanders are talking about sweeping triumphantly into Baghdad in a "catastrophic success". By catastrophe, they do not mean a disaster, because they are dismissing the idea of thousands of civilian casualties. Instead they are using a negative adjective - catastrophic - to emphasise the positive, in the way that anyone under 21 describes something that is "cool" as "wicked."
I missed this absurd turn of phrase until this morning, when I read that President Bush had used it in an interview with TIME magazine.
"Had we to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day," Bush said.

Vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded for Kerry and the Democrats. "President Bush now says his Iraq policy is a catastrophic success. He's half right. It was catastrophic to rush to war without a plan to win the peace," he said.
To call the phrase Orwellian really doesn't do it justice. Try for a moment to appreciate the twisted logic behind it. First, assume that the Iraq invasion was a success. Then add a modifier that will concede that the "success" has come at a cost, without undermining the impact of the positive. But maybe you're thinking, that's ridiculous! How could something be both a success and a catastrophe? Aren't those words mutually exclusive? How could anyone be misled by such a bald faced deception?

The New York Daily News set the wheels in motion back on July 31 with their story, "Gen. saw chaos coming," a loosely veiled promotion piece for Gen. Tommy Franks' new book.
The U.S. General who routed Saddam Hussein's army in three weeks warned before the invasion that a quick victory could lead to a "catastrophic success" because they were not prepared for postwar anarchy in Iraq.
The phrase is catching on, thanks to a docile press that ran a story first run by a newspaper not fit for fish wrap. A search of Google News shows that it has turned up more than 300 times in the past 12 hours, and then not at all until nearly four weeks ago.

They say that in war, the first casualty is truth. The Bush administration is now waging their war for global dominance on the English language. Who will stand up in her defense?
Anatomy and Physiology 101
"Alright class. In lab yesterday, we dissected the frog. Today, we are going to going to analyze and attempt to classify the North American Saccus Fecalus, or the common sack of shit."

Connections and ContradictionsSwift Boat Veterans for Truth has a web of connections to the Bush family, to high-profile Texas political figures, and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.

Meanwhile, students in the Basic 20th Century History class are researching the evidence, such as "Military records support Kerry's account of Vietnam service"
Kerry released a stack of his military records - including after-action reports, citations for his medals, boat battle damage reports and his officer efficiency reports. These records - and the military records of at least one of his accusers - cast serious doubt on some of the more inflammatory charges raised by the group.

"You boys in the back need to keep it down and pay attention, or you might want to think about dropping this class. Where was I? Oh yes. Tomorrow's lecture will deal specifically with the abnormal neurological wiring in the brain of habitual liars."
Click here for a side-by-side comparison of publicly available military records of both GW Bush and John Kerry.

Extra Credit Assignment
Students wishing extra credit on this assignment may submit a paper analyzing the biological metaphor cited in the article The Washington Post still doesn’t get it.
WITH ALL DUE respect to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, I had to laugh at his 3000-word "We Fucked Up on Iraq" piece that came out last week. In reading it, I was reminded of a scene I once witnessed at the New England Aquarium in Boston, in the aqua-petting-zoo section on the second floor.

The petting pool contained a sea cucumber. Now, anyone who has ever made it through seventh-grade science class knows what a sea cucumber does when threatened. Unfortunately, some parent unleashed a sixth-grader on the pool unattended. The kid started fucking with the sea cucumber, poking and prodding it like crazy. So the sea cucumber pulled out its only defense mechanism, turning itself inside out and showing its nasty guts to the poor kid, who immediately thought he'd killed the thing and ran away crying. Later, when I made another turn through the same area of the aquarium, the cucumber had reconstituted itself and was sitting in its usual log-like position.

It is hard to imagine a better metaphor for these post-invasion auto-crucifixions our papers of record have been giving us lately.

"So, there's your assignment for today. Let's put on those snopes and googles and whatever olfactory protection you brought and get to work. Dissect the saccus fecalis and diagram its anatomy. The output of its life cycle is already well documented. We want to focus on the raw material it uses in its metabolic process and its digestive and reproductive systems. Good luck."



FundRace.org

Do you ever wonder whether your neighbors give money to political campaigns? And if so, how much? And to whom? Now you can find out! This national map shows the concentration of donations according to major party affiliation. (What about the Green Party?) You can also search by name and address.

On a related note, the Harper's Index for January 2003 noted:
Chances that a U.S. House or Senate race last year was won by the candidate whose campaign spent the most: 9 in 10
Since elections are ostensibly bought and sold in this country, one might wonder, why has campaign finance reform meant that more money than ever before is being spent on elections?
Isn't this exciting?!
Like watching WWF, live and in person

Yeah, it looks like it could be another close one after all. Kerry's up in the polls, and Bush looks to be in trouble. But the Republicans could still pull out some secret weapons in the next round.... Will the masked champion retain his title? This could be the match of the season....

How is Rove going to spin all the bad news that even the lapdog press is reporting these days? Simple. Watch. "Hey, everything we've been doing over the past 4 years is a big mess, and we're STILL in a dead heat with the other side." See how that works.

Bush's Two Albatrosses
The first gamble was the decision to attack Iraq; the second, to avoid paying for the war. The rationale for the first decision was to remove the threat of a hostile dictator armed with weapons of mass destruction. The weapons were never found. The rationale for the second decision -- the determination to keep cutting taxes in the face of far higher spending for Iraq and the war on terrorism -- was to stimulate the American economy and end the drought of jobs. The deficits have accumulated, but the jobs have still not come back.

If Bush can win reelection despite the failure of his two most consequential -- and truly radical -- decisions, he will truly be a political miracle man. But as his own nominating convention approaches, the odds are against him.
George W. Bush is the worst president in the history of the United States.
Is Bush really a conservative?

Andrew Sullivan doesn't think so, and for once I agree with him, although not entirely.
If you decouple the notion of being a conservative from being a Republican, no one can doubt that the Bush administration has been pursuing some highly unconservative policies.

He has essentially junked two decades of conservative attempts to restrain government and pushed federal spending to record levels. He has poured money into agricultural subsidies; he famously put tariffs on foreign steel; he has expanded the biggest entitlement healthcare program; and dramatically increased the role of the central government in the matter of education.

He has little interest in the bedrock conservative belief in leaving as much decision-making to the states as possible, endorsing a federal constitutional amendment that would prevent individual states from enacting gay marriage, and using federal powers to prevent other states from allowing medical cannabis.

He has little or no concern for the separation of church and state, funneling public money to religious charities; and has appointed some of the most radical jurists to the federal bench. Whatever else these policies might be called, they have very little to do with traditional conservative themes of federalism, small government, the free market, the separation of church and state, and a strong, independent judiciary.
Although Sullivan is right to claim that Bush isn't really much of a conservative, in the traditional sense, his policies don't represent a radical departure from the agenda that began with the Reagan revolution. If anything, Bush has come to represent all that is wrong with the GOP leadership. Lest anyone forget, Reagan/Bush grew the government, especially the military, and exploded the national debt from $1 trillion to $6 trillion while engineering the same sorts of policies that put federal dollars in the hands of the wealthy, whether through corporate welfare or tax cuts.

As for the claim that states' rights is a "bedrock conservative belief"? Maybe it was when Eisenhower was president, but it hasn't been true since Reagan. The modern conservative movement uses states' rights as a weapon. They say one thing while doing another, supporting states rights only when states advocate a right that they respect -- so yes on banning abortion and weakening gun laws, while no on medical marijuana, right to die and right to marry the one you want laws.

Bush is no more a conservative than he is a Christian. So I keep wondering, when will true conservatives take back their party from the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Delay, Frist, etc?

Porter Goss: The Wrong Man at the Right Time

Last month the Christian Science Monitor ran the story, "Wanted: strong bipartisan manager to repair CIA." Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner was quoted as saying, "We need a vigorous hand to reassert the standards intrinsic to the place - someone who's not there to tell people what they want to hear, but tell them what they think is right."


(Porter Goss at far left.)

Among the five leading candidates, it was noted that Florida Republican representative Porter Goss "was considered a front-runner until recently, when Democrats signaled they will not go for a "partisan" nominee."

While Goss was once respected for his "pragmatic, bipartisan style," that respect has faded in the last year.
He blocked house investigations into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and Washington's links with its erstwhile Iraqi ally Ahmad Chalabi.

During a debate in the house on security, he held up a sign with a 27-year-old quote from the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, calling for budget cuts to the intelligence services.
An editorial in the Fayetteville (NC) -- home of Ft Bragg and the 82nd Airborne -- Observer put is this way:
He is far too partisan for such a sensitive post. Nobody should be playing politics with our national security, but that's exactly what's happening with this nominee. For the good of the nation, his name should be withdrawn and the White House should, instead, begin serious efforts to implement the recommendations of the 9-11 commission.
So why would the Bush administration choose a partisan nominee, rather than someone who might have a better chance of fixing the CIA? In a word: Florida. And because their strategy now, as always, is not to do what is best or what is right, but what will help them win.

* * *

Craig Kilborn had this to say about Goss's nomination on the "Late Late Show":
"President Bush officially made his nomination for Director of the CIA: Republican Porter Goss from Florida, who is an ex-CIA agent himself. A bad sign: The potential new head of the CIA said the nomination came as a complete surprise."

"Goss was chosen after Bush's inner circle repeatedly rejected his first choice, Chuck Norris."

"Experts say it will be impossible for Goss to fill George Tenet's shoes and he'll have to settle for being totally wrong just 80 percent of the time."

"Economy is Bush's downfall"

If the November election comes down to economics -- "It's still the economy, stupid" -- then John Kerry should beat Bush in a landslide. Here are some of the numbers:
-- When Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001, the Dow Jones industrial average was at 10,587.59. It closed Tuesday at 9,944.67.

-- When Bush took office, the unemployment rate was 4.2 percent. It's now 5.5 percent, according to the Labor Department.

-- When Bush took office, U.S. consumer debt totaled almost $1.7 trillion. It's now $2.038 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.

-- When Bush took office, bankruptcy filings during the previous year totaled almost 1.3 million, down 5 percent from a year before. By Dec. 31, 2003, bankruptcies had hit a record of nearly 1.7 million, up 5.2 percent from 2002, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.

-- When Bush took office, the federal budget had been balanced for three straight years and was, in the 2000 fiscal year, running a surplus of $236 billion -- the largest in U.S. history. The White House is projecting a record budget deficit this year of $445 billion.
Bush will continue to claim that the economy is "strong and getting stronger," despite evidence to the contrary, while simultaneously blaming 9/11 for the economic challenges he's faced as President. But most Americans can tell a bold-faced lie when they hear one, and this President has been lying to the American people since day one. What else should you expect from the worst president in US history?
If Dubya Had Read What Poppy Wrote . . .

Former President George Bush (41) wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War, that trying to eliminate Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War in 1991 would have "incurred incalculable human and political costs."

In 1998, he and Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor during the Bush administration, collaborated on the book A World Transformed, a political history covering significant world events which occurred during the first three years of Bush's presidency (1989-1991): the collapse of the Soviet empire, the unification of Germany, Tienanmen Square, and the Gulf War.

In Chapter 19 (on page 489), which discusses the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War (also known as "Desert Storm," the military operation to liberate Kuwait from occupation by invading Iraqi forces), they wrote:
Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.
If only Dubya could read . . .
Outing Another Intelligence Agent

Desperate to create a reason for the most recent politically motivated terror alerts, the Bush cartel commits crimes against the nation when they blow the cover of a Pakistani secret agent, exposing a man working to catch al Qaeda suspects.

From the NY Times:
U.S. officials providing justification for anti-terrorism alerts revealed details about a Pakistani secret agent, and confirmed his name while he was working under cover in a sting operation, Pakistani sources said on Friday.

A Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested in Lahore secretly last month, had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al Qaeda operatives when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.
The Truth Comes Out of Bush's Mouth
"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."

President George W. Bush at the Signing of H.R. 4613, the Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005, Room 350, Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, 9:56 A.M. EDT
The Washington press corps just couldn't resist this one.

You can listen to it for yourself.

Amazingly, the transcript is on the White House website, with Bush's slip intact. Maybe it wasn't a mistake after all?
Citizens, Remain Calm - The Terror Alert is Perfectly Normal
In fact, they're better than ever

The old bogus alert were always so non-specific. They were taking on a boogyman undertone. We were getting numb to them. These new terror alerts are much better.

The administration is listening to the populace, who were demanding more specific terror alerts. In fact, we found the alerts last week downright comical.

Nothing suspect about these new alerts at all. OH MY GOD, THEY'RE COMING! NO REALLY! THIS TIME THEY'RE REALLY COMING! SEE, LOOK, OVER THERE. AAAAAGH!

Aha, scared ya that time, didn't we? Nothing suspect about these alerts whatsoever.
Orange Alert Timing is Suspect
...I Think I Smell a Rat

After Tom Ridge raised the terror alert two days ago, Howard Dean suggested there may be political motivation for the change in threat level. In an interview on CNN's Late Edition, he said he was
...concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism.

His whole campaign is based on the notion that 'I can keep you safe, therefore, in times of difficulty in America, stick with me.'

When you're going to run on inspiring fear in the American people, that's politics.

The president himself made the choice to inject politics into the campaign on terrorism. That was his choice. He's now going to have to live with the consequences.
I watched as Blitzer asked him if he really wanted to make that reach. Remember, this is the same Howard Dean who suggested in December that the capture of Saddam Hussein did not make us any safer. Oh yea, and he was right then, too.

Today it is reported by The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, and CNN, among others, that according to officials, the intelligence information leading to the current terror alert is years old. The New York Times piece puts it in a nutshell with its opening paragraph:
Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.
Of course Tom Ridge is rushing to his own defense as seen in news at CBS and MSNBC, and the current lead story at FAUX News is that, amid these terrible threats, the Statue of Liberty has reopened.
If it looks like a duck...
Take a few moments to read this article. There's a lot to chew on and the print is small.
Politicians will stretch the truth. They'll exaggerate their accomplishments, paper over their gaffes. Spin has long been the lingua franca of the political realm. But George W. Bush and his administration have taken "normal" mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. On top of the usual massaging of public perception, they traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and, ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on.

...The far-right wing of the country—nearly one third of us by some estimates—continues to regard all who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid (liberals, rationalists, Europeans, et cetera) as agents of Satan. Bush could show up on video canoodling with Paris Hilton and still bank their vote. Right-wing talking heads continue painting anyone who fails to genuflect deeply enough as a "hater," and therefore a nut job, probably a crypto-Islamist car bomber. But these protestations have taken on a hysterical, almost comically desperate tone. It's one thing to get trashed by Michael Moore. But when Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos.
Note the author's name. Obviously a traitor.