The Putinization of America

Matt Yglesias takes a turn left, describing the 'creeping Putinization of American life.' Examples:
...the Sinclair incident, the threatening letter to Rock The Vote, the specter of the top official in the House of Representatives making totally baseless charges of criminal conduct against a major financier of the political opposition [shades of Mikhail Khodorovsky], the increasing evidence that the 'terror alert' system is nothing more than a political prop, the 'torture memo' asserting that the president is above the law...

and more all in one paragraph.

Total Shitheads

Why does this not surprise me? Am I beginning to accept the principle that my government when, given the choice, will invariably make the wrong one? Have they managed to lower my expectations this far? I guess so.

"The United States has refused to join 85 other heads of state and government in signing a statement that endorsed a 10-year-old U.N. plan to ensure every woman's right to education, health care, and choice about having children.
President Bush's administration withheld its signature because the statement included a reference to 'sexual rights.'
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kelly Ryan wrote to organizers of the statement that that the United States was committed to the Cairo plan of 1994 and 'to the empowerment of women and the need to promote women's fullest enjoyment of universal human rights.'
'The United States is unable, however, to endorse the world leaders' statement,' Ryan said, because it 'includes the concept of `sexual rights,' a term that has no agreed definition in the international community.'
Ryan did not elaborate on the Bush administration's objections to the phrase 'sexual rights,' but at past U.N. meetings U.S. representatives have spoken out against abortion, gay rights and what they see as the promotion of promiscuity by giving condoms to young people to prevent AIDS"

If one were to use one's brain and follow this action to it's inevitable result one would see the U.S. has put itself in the company of other countries that don't recognize women as full parties to the human race and the resultant parade of continuing AIDs epidemics, unneccesary pregancies and basement abortions will be justified as God's will.

Has Bush lost his reason? from the Guardian

The Observer | Comment | Has Bush lost his reason?:
The entire article is worth reading but this paragraph pretty much tells it all.

"The prophets of doom, whom Cheney exemplifies, are precisely right about the importance of this election. But the momentous decision awaiting Americans is not whether they return to power a President who is uniquely qualified to protect the US against terrorism, as Cheney et al would have us believe. It is whether they re-elect a man who, it is now clear, has become palpably unstable."

Without a Doubt

Very revealing article in the NYT magazine today by Ron Suskind that predicts that if Bush should win reelection in November that there will be a major war within the Republican party 0n Nov. 3.

The New York Times > Magazine > Without a Doubt: "''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' "

CNN.com - New York Times endorses Kerry - Oct 17, 2004

CNN.com - New York Times endorses Kerry - Oct 17, 2004
"We have been impressed with Mr. Kerry's wide knowledge and clear thinking," the endorsement said. "He is blessedly willing to re-evaluate decisions when conditions change."

Froomkin is at it again

Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing is excellent today. Here are a few highlights:

On George's brief chat with reporters in Air Force One after the third debate:

The last time President Bush ventured into the rear cabin of Air Force One to reassure the press pool that everything was okay was on Sept. 11, 2001.

Yesterday's five-minute visit on a flight from Phoenix to Las Vegas came after three widely panned debate performances that have arguably given Democratic challenger John F. Kerry the momentum going into the final weeks of the campaign.

So it was time for spin from the highest level.

Bush insisted he is unworried. "I feel great about where we are," he said.

But his very appearance was interpreted by reporters as a sign of how eager -- possibly even desperate -- Bush is to put the debate phase of the campaign behind him.

On the Bush Campaign's strategy here on out:

"Bush has effectively ended his direct appeal to swing voters, his aides say, and will spend the next 19 days speaking to his hard-core supporters. He will remind them to vote, work hard and get excited."

On the Bush's odd chuckling:

And [Mark Leibovich of The Washington Post] notes an odd, and possibly more frequent, Bush tick: "Bush sometimes punctuates his sentences with quick cackles, even when he hasn't said anything funny. He did this more than usual Thursday, giggling, for instance, upon mention that Nevada has a 4 percent unemployment rate.

" 'I'm proud of my record, heh heh heh,' he says. 'But my opponent seemed to want to avoid talking about his, heh heh heh heh.' "

Yesterday's campaing stop in Oregon:

"Police in riot gear fired pepperballs Thursday night to disperse a crowd of protesters assembled in this historic gold mining town where President Bush was spending the night after a campaign appearance."

Also in Oregon:

"President Bush taught three Oregon schoolteachers a new lesson in irony -- or tragedy -- Thursday night when his campaign removed them from a Bush speech and threatened them with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said 'Protect Our Civil Liberties,' the Democratic Party of Oregon reported.

[snip]

"All three said they applied for and received valid tickets from Republican headquarters in Medford.

Supporting the Troops

This article from ABC News is difficult to read but I think everyone should.

Here are a few paragraphs.
Many of the severely wounded soldiers returning from Iraq face the prospect of poverty and what they describe as official indifference and incompetence.

"Guys I've met, talking to people, they'd be better off financially for their families if they had died as opposed to coming back maimed," said Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly, who served as a civil affairs specialist for the Army while in Iraq.

On July 14, 2003, the Abilene, Texas, native had been on his way to a meeting about rebuilding schools in Iraq when his unarmored Humvee was blown up. A piece of shrapnel the size of a TV remote took his right leg off, below the knee, almost completely, Kelly said.

Kelly attests to receiving excellent medical care at Ward 57, the amputee section of Walter Reed, but said he quickly realized that the military had no real plan for the injured soldiers. Many had to borrow money or depend on charities just to have relatives visit at Walter Reed, Kelly said.

"It's not what I expected to see when I got here," he said. "These guys having to, you know, basically panhandle for money to afford things."

Swift Boat Lies

I knew the Swift Boat Veterans were lying and now ABC Nightline has sent a team of reporters to Viet Nam to the actual villages where the Silver Star incident happened and it turns out that Kerry's version is accurate on O'Neill's is a lie. What is more it turns out that the SBVT guys has already sent someone and a cameraman to the village earlier, knew the truth, and still lied. Scum!
Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly: "In August the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth charged that John Kerry had lied about the events that led to his Silver Star. In order to figure out if the SBVT account was true, Nightline sent a crew to Vietnam, where they visited the hamlets of Tran Thoi and Nha Vi and interviewed the local villagers to get their recollections of what really happened 35 years ago. You can read the resulting story yourself, but it's summarized pretty easily: Kerry was right and SBVT honcho John O'Neill wasn't."

More good News from the Bush Economy

Now to touch on the highlights from today's economic news.

As the presnit says; "It's strong and getting stronger."

--The U.S. trade deficit, propelled by a record foreign oil bill, surged to $54 billion in August, the second highest level in history.

--The August trade deficit in goods and services was 6.9 percent higher than a $50.5 billion imbalance in July. A small 0.1 percent rise in exports was dwarfed by a 2.5 percent jump in imports.

--For the year, America's trade deficit is running at a record annual rate of $590 billion, 19 percent higher than the previous record, last year's $496.5 billion imbalance.

--The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose by 15,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted level of 352,000. The four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out weekly changes, rose by 4,000 to a seven-month high of 352,000.

--The country added a lower-than-expected 96,000 jobs in September as the unemployment rate held steady at 5.4 percent.

--The nation has lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs over the past four years.

--The average price for crude oil jumped to a 23-year high of $36.37 per barrel, up by $3.09 per barrel from July. Imported oil is likely to climb even higher in coming months reflecting rising oil prices that are now at record levels above $50 per barrel.

Even Bob Barr can't vote for Bush

Creative Loafing Atlanta | NEWS & VIEWS | AN AGONIZING CHOICE

But the concerns for many conservative voters -- concerns that may cause them not to vote for Mr. Bush on Nov. 2 -- fall generally into three categories: fiscal, physical (as in the physical security of our nation) and freedom (as in protecting our civil liberties).

When Bush became president Jan. 20, 2001, he inherited an enviable fiscal situation. Congress, then controlled by his own party, had -- through discipline and tough votes -- whittled down decades of deficit spending under presidents of both parties, so that annual deficits of hundreds of billions of dollars had been transformed to a series of real and projected surpluses. The heavy lifting had been done. All Bush had to do was resist the urge to spend, and he had to exert some pressure on Congress to resist its natural impulses to do the same. Had he done that, he might have gone down in history as the most fiscally conservative president in modern times.

Instead, what we got were record levels of new spending, including nearly double-digit increases in nondefense discretionary spending. We now have deficits exceeding those that the first Republican-controlled Congress in 40 years faced when it convened in January 1995.

Another Joins Up

The Albuquerque Tribune (circulation: 16,713) endorsed Bush in 2000. This year it's all Kerry, baby!


The United States has lost its way under President Bush, who too often has failed on both foreign and domestic fronts. Worse, he has been unable to unite a deeply divided nation.

Bush, whom The Tribune endorsed in 2000, has offered simplistic slogans to complex problems, while Kerry sees complicated problems and offers the promise of appropriate solutions - complex or not.

The reality is the world is not a simple place, seldom black or white, and Kerry knows that intuitively. He understands the gray, the nuance - and that easy-bake solutions like nuclear weapons, Navy carriers and conservative or liberal platitudes usually don't apply or work.

[snip]

From the war in Iraq and the acidic sections of the Patriot Act to global warming and national energy policy, Bush's foreign and domestic policies have been based on secrecy, fear, distortion and misinformation.

For these reasons, we urge independent and undecided voters in particular to double-check what Bush says against what he has done. Bush continues to insult American intelligence with his:

Mistaken and unreal views of the war in Iraq, with its mounting costs in American and Iraqi lives, money and good will.

Failure to focus U.S. military might on pursuing our real enemy, the terrorists.

Willingness to compromise American freedoms, in contrast to a resistance to develop and implement safeguards to protect our people, borders, ports and infrastructure from future terror attacks.

Unabashed flip-flop of the conservative fiscal ideal, turning a balanced federal budget - indeed, a huge surplus - into the largest deficit in U.S. history.

Unrelenting attack on 30 years of environmental promise to benefit political friends in the fossil fuel and utility industries.

Willingness to accept a $422 billion federal deficit, a ballooning $7.42 trillion national debt and grossly unfair tax cuts.

These all come at the expense of ordinary, hard-working, taxpaying Americans - and our children's children, who will be stuck paying the bill.

Understanding why Anyone would vote for Bush and Co.

David Neiwert of Orcinus Has the first four parts of an excellent 6 part series on the rise of "PseudopFascism" in America today and how it is transforming and moving the United States toward a truly Fascist state. Reasding the whole thing is vastly worthwhile. Below is just a snippet from the first part of the series on the symptoms.

The final morph into Pseudo Fascism occurred under the dynamic under which the "conservative movement" operated after taking control of all three estates of American government in 2000. By seizing the presidency through means perceived by nearly half the nation at the time as illegitimate, conservative-movement ideologues were forced to govern without anything approaching a popular mandate. But rather than responding by moderating their approach to governance, the Bush administration instead acted as though it had won in a landslide, and proceeded to follow an openly radical course:

-- Instituting a massive transfer of the tax burden from the upper class to the middle, an approach that deepened the nation's economic malaise.

-- Appointing radical right-wingers to key positions in the nation's court system; shifting the emphasis in national security from terrorism to missile defense, a policy that left us vulnerable to the Sept. 11 attacks.

-- Instituting, in the wake of those attacks, the radical "Bush Doctrine" of unilateralist pre-emption.

-- Further using the attacks to undermine civil liberties under the Patriot Act and creating a policy of incarcerating citizens indefinitely as "enemy combatants".

-- Invading another nation by raising the false specter of the "imminent threat" of weapons of mass destruction.

-- Allowing intelligence officials to run amok, violating the Geneva Convention in interrogations at Bagram, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

-- Fighting, for clearly political reasons, every effort to have a thorough examination of the causes of the 9/11 security failures.

-- Moreover, at every step of nearly every policy it has pursued, the administration has erected obstacles to transparency, making clear it intends to operate in utter secrecy whenever possible.

The radical course followed by the Bush administration was, in fact, guaranteed to further divide the nation rather than unify it in a time of need. Moreover, the administration clearly proved itself wrong on so many major counts -- the economy, the pre-Sept. 11 handling of the terrorist threat, the rationale for war, the postwar occupation of Iraq -- that under normal circumstances, their competence above all should have come into serious question.

Now think about the previous post

Think about what it means. Consider all ofthe ramifications of not moving ahead.

The generals say we should move now. Moving now gives us the greatest chance of victory at the lowest likely cost. Moving later gives us a lesser chance of victory at a higher cost in terms of our soldiers' lives. But moving later is helpful to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

John Kerry should be on this message like white on rice.

Our Leader Cares

Thanks to Atrios and Will Bunch

There are a lot of reasons why you should vote for John F. Kerry instead of George W. Bush. However, there is one reason which overrides all others and that is George Bush believes that his re-election is more important than the lives of our soldiers.

From the LA Times

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.

Although American commanders in Iraq have been buoyed by recent successes in insurgent-held towns such as Samarra and Tall Afar, administration and Pentagon officials say they will not try to retake cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi -- where insurgents' grip is strongest and U.S. military casualties could be the greatest -- until after Americans vote in what is likely to be a close election.

"When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously," said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications" of a large-scale offensive, the official said. "We're not on hold right now. We're just not as aggressive."

One More!

Philadelphia Inquirer
Editorial | Kerry for President

The choice is vivid. The stakes are vast.

Our nation is threatened by jihad warriors who scoff at boundaries. It stumbles toward a fiscal ruin that will punish our children. The rules that protect our air, water and health are weaker than we know. When 45 million of our neighbors fall ill, they have no insurance card to hand to the doctor.

We boast of exporting liberty and rule of law, yet watch them erode at home. A hooded prisoner on a box has replaced a soaring lady with a lamp as the global icon of America's intentions. Our national discourse has grown peevish, choking on distortion and bile.

On Nov. 2, we can return to office the man who, since 2001, has spawned some of those ills and shown a shaky touch at healing the others.

Or we can go a new way, one alert to fresh global challenges yet rooted in the approaches that made the 1990s so productive. We can elect Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

Dear fellow citizen, this is as important an election as any in which you've had a chance to vote.

The Inquirer's urgent, deeply felt recommendation: Cast that ballot on Nov. 2 for JOHN F. KERRY.

Read the whole thing. This is one of the best endorsements I've seen.

THE BIG LIE

Did you notice Bush repeating one of his grest lies during the debate?

"Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into office. And today it's less than 1 percent, because we're working together to try to bring this deficit under control."

Here's the truth about increases in non-defense discretionary spending over the past six administrations:

Nixon/Ford: 6.8% per year
Carter: 2.0% per year
Reagan: -1.3% per year
Bush I: 4.0% per year
Clinton: 2.5% per year
Bush II: 8.2% per year

Adjusted for inflation.

The truth is simple: all spending has skyrocketed under his administration — with help from a Republican Congress, of course. It's more of the great Bush fantasy.

Bush Resume

Hello. My name is George W. Bush and I am running for president. Please consider my qualifications as set forth in the following resume.

http://monkeydyne.com/bushresume/resume.html

DON'T forget the Lies

Remember these quotes when Bush looks you in the eye tomorrow night and tells you how hard his job is:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
-Dick Cheney Speech to VFW National Convention, Aug. 26, 2002. [i]

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
-George W. Bush Speech to U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 12, 2002. [ii]

"We know they have weapons of mass destruction … There isn't any debate about it." "[It is] beyond anyone's imagination" that U.N. inspectors would fail to find such weapons if they were given the opportunity.
-Donald Rumsfeld, September 2002. [iii]

"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world."
-Ari Fleischer Press Briefing, Dec. 2, 2002. [iv]

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
-Ari Fleischer Press Briefing, Jan. 9, 2003. [v]

"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."
-Colin Powell Remarks to U.N. Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003. [vi]

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
-George W. Bush Radio Address, Feb. 8, 2003. [vii]

“Does Saddam now have weapons of mass destruction? Sure he does. We know he has chemical weapons. We know he has biological weapons. ... How far he’s gone on the nuclear-weapons side I don’t think we really know. My guess is it’s further than we think. It’s always further than we think, because we limit ourselves, as we think about this, to what we’re able to prove and demonstrate. ... And, unless you believe that we have uncovered everything, you have to assume there is more than we’re able to report.”
-Defense Policy Board Chair, Richard Perle, speaking to a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing, March, 2003. [viii]

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
-George W. Bush Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003. [ix]

"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes."
-Ari Fleisher Press Briefing, March 21, 2003. [x]

"There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And... as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them."
-Gen. Tommy Franks Press Conference, March 22, 2003. [xi]

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
-Donald Rumsfeld ABC Interview, March 30, 2003. [xii]

"I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now."
-Colin Powell Remarks to Reporters, May 4, 2003. [xiii]

More lies and more lies

In the debate last night Cheney said:

"Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session."

In the past 4 years, there have been 128 Tuesdays. Dick Cheney has presided over 2 of them.

One more time, Dick Cheney has presided over 2 Tuesdays, or 1.5% of the total.

During the same period, John Edwards also presided over the Senate twice.

Dick Cheney and John Edwards have both presided over the Senate two times.

Three Americas and the patron saint of stupid

JOHN KERRY AND John EDWARDS ARE WRONG: There aren't "Two Americas." There are actually three Americas.

There's the sane, rational, informed and normal America, which properly and overwhelmingly supports Kerry and Edwards.

There's the crazed, insane, wingnut America which, unbelieveably, supports George Bush or even crazier Ralph Nader.

Then there's the uninformed or ignorant America which, for the moment, supports Bush because it easier than thinking.

The real problem John Kerry faces is that George Bush is practically the patron saint of "shit for brains" America.