If you plan on voting against four more years of the Bush regime running even further amok, PLEASE VOTE!
Prepare for the regime minions who will be attempting to prevent folks like yourself from voting by reading this article.   If the regime minions try to prevent you from voting or you suspect they are otherwise rigging the results, record names, details, etc., and call the the Election Protection Coalition at 1-866-Our-Vote

If you plan on voting for the regime, in the words of your vice president- GO F*** YOURSELF!

Alas, my early vote against the regime will matter little since a overwhelming majority of voters in Tennessee support the regime.  Easily rigged and error prone electronic voting machines are bad enough, but what is worse is the utterly bogus electoral college system used to select presidents.  The fact that someone can lose the popular vote yet be "elected" president by an antiquated "electoral college" is utterly stupid.  The only way this will be corrected is if the '00 results are reversed- i.e. Bush winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote.  If that happens, ripublicans will be frothing at he mouth in their rage against the electoral system.  Rather than undertaking the lengthy Constitutional amendment process, it wouldn't surprise me if they again ran to their supreme count with an adaptation of the 14th amendment/equal protection BS they used in '00.

It could get even more perverse than '00.  The supreme court could throw the election back to state legislatures.  Article II of the Constitution does not require presidential electors to be elected via popular vote in the states.   This was even mentioned by supreme court idiots in their  '00 opinion which selected Bush as president-  "[the state] can take back the power to appoint electors."

"With Election Day almost upon us, it's not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d'etat. By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own."  -  Harold Meyerson's lead in his excellent, must-read Washington Post piece "The GOP's Shameful Vote Strategy".
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Asscroft is dispatching thousands of monitors polling places.   That sounds good until one discovers what their mission is.  It's not to ensure citizens can exercise their right to vote- it's to help ensure those who will likely vote against the regime will not have their ballots counted.  Asscroft's minions have also gone to three state courts arguing that only Asscroft, not voters, may sue to enforce provisions in the Help America Vote Act.   The act requires states provide uniform and nondiscriminatory voting systems and give provisional ballots to those who say they have registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls.   Asscroft obviously objects to these provisions since they can be used to attack the methods the regime is using to steal the election.   In addition, by going to state courts, Asscroft is also laying the legal groundwork to (like in '00) take the election to "their" venue- a federal court system stacked with regime lackeys.
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Greg Palast reports that Bush campaign officials in Florida have compiled a hit list of (surprise!) Florida voters they are planning to have their flunkies challenge when they attempt to vote.   Ripublican spinners claim the list is just a recently registered voters to whom mail the ripublicans sent mail and which was returned.  They refused to say it would not be used to challenge voters.   They also could not explain why such a minor clerical matter as returned mail would be sent to top officials of the Bush campaign in both Florida and Washington.  It's no wonder they won't fess up to what they are doing- it's against federal law to target voters based on race.  As with their recent attempt to prevent alleged black ex-felons from voting but not Hispanic ex-felons, their "bounced mail" list targets blacks.

Palast also wrote the excellent article "Another Florida" in the Nov. issue of Harper's.  An excerpt is here.  Most revealing is that in spite of the fact that Jeb Bush's own experts recommended optical scanners be used state-wide since they are 10 times more accurate than touch screen computers and cost 1/8th as much (and are less prone to being tampered with!),  touch screen computers were selected.  This was aided and abetted by Sandra Mortham, a founder of Women for Jeb Bush and also a paid lobbyist for a computer voting machine manufacturer.
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The regime's election chief in Florida, Glenda Hood has also been waging a months-long campaign to ban what limited manual recounts the electronic voting machines she's pushed will permit.  After her initial try failed to pass court muster, she adopted a bizarre tact- recounts are permitted but, in case the recount results conflict with the original tally, the original tally must be used.
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While most of the articles in the media have concerned the regime's election rigging in Florida, Ohio is likely to be the main battleground state.  Among the regime's dirty tricks is their sect. of state, Ken Blackwell, attempt to reject all voter registration forms which were not submitted on 80 pound stock paper.   He also recently received one of the regime's courts blessing to discard the provisional ballots of voters who did not show up at exactly the right polling place.   There are no reports yet on regime election officials in Ohio moving polling places at the last minute...
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Here's some of the regime's efforts to steal the election:   (source)

 t weekend, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the Ohio Republican party has already challenged the  validity of over 35,000 new voter registrations in the state, while Wisconsin Republicans announced plans to initiative  what it called "background checks" on newly registered voters. In addition, reports have surfaced of Republican plans to  mount aggressive challenges against the credentials of voters in "urban areas" where minority voters are predominant.

 The British Broadcasting Company has also disclosed a memo to top Republican officials in Florida identifying voters  in predominantly black precincts for possible challenge.

 Such efforts, according to Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington Bureau for the National Association for the  Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a member of the LCCR coalition, amount to intimidation. "They are  designed to induce fear on the part of newly registered voters, particularly in minority communities," she said, adding that  the RNC should "work with us to empower minority communities, not deny them their fundamental rights."

 "Sometimes, there is a think line between enforcement of election law and voter intimidation," said Cecilia Munoz, vice  president of the National Council of La Raza, a grassroots Latino group. "Selective access to the polls, arbitrary voter  purges, and speculative complaints ...will diminish or weaken the very process we are trying to energize."

 Adding to these concerns are the facts that the secretaries of state, usually the chief election official at the state level,  in four battleground states - Michigan, Missouri, Florida, and Ohio - have taken top campaign posts for Bush and have  been accused of manipulating state election laws to restrict voter access on behalf of Republicans.

 In Michigan, Secretary of State Terry Lynn Land, who is co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign there has been  criticized by a federal judge for restricting access to "provisional ballots" by voters unsure of their precinct and failing to  take action against voter intimidation efforts in heavily Democratic areas.

 In Missouri, Secretary of State Matt Blunt, who is also running for governor and serves as Bush campaign chair, has  also restricted access to provisional ballots, authorized an insecure voting system, and used federal funds to promote  himself in public service ads.

 Glenda Hood, Florida's secretary of state, was accused of leading the effort to apply a controversial purge list to  disenfranchise black voters and former felons. More recently, she also moved to restrict access to provisional ballots and  intervened in a court case to ensure that independent Ralph Nader appeared on the ballot.

 Finally, Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's secretary state and another co-chair of the Bush campaign in that state, has, among  other moves, insisted that registration applications that are not posted on the correct weight paper are to be canceled,  also restricted access to provisional ballots, and issued confusing directives regarding the right of ex-felons to vote.

I think it's going to be a major factor in either delaying, knowing or deciding who won. In Ohio for example, Republicans have targeted 35,000 voters [for election challenges], most of them registered in cities with large minority populations. And they do this based either on the racist assumption that minorities are inveterate cheaters or because they know that these are voters who are likely to vote against them. Either way, it's a dirty tactic, and only can be thought to slow up, gum up, mess up the whole process. And this is something they [Republicans] have consistently done in every election since the middle to late 1960s -- underhanded, tricky, illegal and immoral tactics. ...   I think it will be worse than in 2000. For one thing, in 2000 you did not have the law-enforcement apparatus of the government engaged on one side of the contest, as you do now. Attorney General [John] Ashcroft has instituted this so-called ballot integrity program. Yes, despite appeals to him to issue statements saying we're interested in protecting the voters' right to cast their votes, he's focused entirely on suspicions and allegations of fraud. I don't think anyone thinks that fraud is a widespread problem in the American electoral system. Instead, he's instructed his attorneys general across the United States to be on the alert for fraud, rather than be on the alert for people who are likely to stymie voters and keep them from casting their votes. (more)

Finally there's this nugget of sheer synchronicity:  chief justice Rehnquist (one of the five real electors of Bush as prez. in '00)  participated in challenges of minority voters 40 years ago when he was a Republican activist in Arizona.    (source)   Look for him to squash any cases of voting suppression and election rigging which make it to his court....
 

The regime also failed to secure sites which contained nuclear isotopes and which were looted according to a spring '03 Washington Post report.   This synergistically compounds the regime's stupidity since constructing a dirty bomb from looted nuclear isotopes and looted explosives is trivial.   This is yet another glowing illustration of how the regime's attack on Iraq, failing to foresee the chaos which occurred and failing to secure weapons (never mind WMD) sites has made us less safe from terrorist attacks.  Then there is the additive factor that the Al Qaqaa site was only one of many of similar sites which the regime failed to secure.

The regime's line of BS is that that explosives were missing before their attack.   This is yet another of their outright lies:

• A  KSTP TV video (and follow-up) of the Al Qaqaa site after the regime's attack proves the explosives were there after the attack and shows regime troops cutting locks on bunker doors and then leaving the place unguarded.
• A NY Times article reports that, "Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday (10/27/04).... (Al Qaqaa) employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility".

A report of weapons being taken from the site as recently as 11/03- long after Rumsfeld "Stuff Happens" BS of 4/12/03 on CNN: "Looting was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval.... Stuff happens"
• Col. David Perkins, who commanded the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, called it "very highly improbable" that 380 tons of explosives could have been trucked out of Al Qaqaa in the weeks after American troops arrived.  Moving that much material, said Colonel Perkins, who spoke Wednesday to news agencies and cable television, "would have required dozens of heavy trucks".

The regime also attempted to absolve itself of gross incompetence by saying the Russians stole the explosives (also this).  The regime flunky who started this line of BS said it was based on  "recently obtained reliable information" (where have we heard that before!).   The ruse failed to get traction even when dutifully reported by Rev. Moon's Washington Times for obvious reasons- like the Russians already had tons of the stuff.   The regime then dug up (more likely manufactured) satellite images of some of the bunkers with trucks parked outside which they said were taken 2 days after the IAEA inspectors had left.  They are spinning this as "evidence" that Sadam took the high explosives.   Some points worth noting:  1) Regime lackey Colin Powell also showed very similar satellite images of Sadam's WMD bunkers to the UN in trying to justify  their rush to war.   2) Even if Sadam got the high explosives before the regime's attack, it was ironically the regime's very attack which enabled this.   The IAEA had ensured he didn't get the high explosives for many years prior to the attack yet they and other weapons inspectors were forced to withdraw from Iraq because of the regime's impending attack.  Besides, getting the best/most arms one can when threatened with an immanent attack by a regime vastly better armed than your own is completely rational if not not

Then there's regime member Rudy Giuliani who said blamed the situation on the regime's troops in a NBC's Today show- "No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough - didn't they search carefully enough?"

I reckon that the regime thinks that if it was able to sell its lies and similar "evidence" about Sadam's WMDs and links to al Queda and 9/11 to vast numbers of stupid americans, it would be able to sell the foregoing lines of utter BS about missing explosives.

Finally, this fiasco and the continuing quagmire in Iraq further illuminates past regime propaganda as utter crap.  One example is the following response to a question on Iraqi looting in 4/11/04 briefing by then chief regime mouthpiece/liar Ari Fleischer,

"It is worth noting that what you are seeing is a reaction to oppression.... And that is not to condone it. It is important that security be enforced, and the military has plans to do so, as I talked about earlier today. And I think as you've seen in Basra, it's a situation that develops and then diminishes.... It's also a situation the world has seen before when oppressed people find freedom. For a short period of time, these actions have occurred in history. You saw it in Sierra Leone, you saw it in the Soviet Union with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And nobody likes to see it, but I think it has to be understood in the context of people who have been oppressed, who are reacting to the oppression. But the military, as they briefed yesterday and they briefed today, does have plans to help enhance the security as the military civil affairs units move in.

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A  piece by Jonathan Chait offers amusing defenses the regime could mount.  Two of them:

Look at the bright side. Kerry, insists Vice President Dick Cheney, fails to "mention the 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that our troops have captured and are destroying." This is sort of like arguing, "Your honor, the record should reflect the countless times I've driven to work without swerving onto the sidewalk and mowing down dozens of pedestrians."

Kerry reads newspapers. "What would he do as president? Get up every morning and say, 'I'm going to govern based on what I find in the newspapers?' " sneered Karl Rove. "John Kerry will say anything he believes will help him politically," wrote Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman, "and today he is grasping at headlines to obscure his record of weakness and indecision in the war on terror." The horror - Kerry is letting world news infect his judgment.

• With the Anti-American Guerilla which documents insurgents getting weapons from the site as late as 11/03
• Tip of the Iceberg by an ex-Marine and former embedded reporter which documents that the Al Qaqaa was just one of many weapon sites the regime left for looters.
• News Video Is at Center of Storm over Iraq Explosives
• The Explosives Depot was Looted a Year Ago
• Iraq Explosives Story Detonates Under Bush Campaign - a Salon article with this take on how the right wing nut media's attempts to make the story only hurt their idiot-in-chief

"As you damage our security, we will damage yours."- bin Laden in a 10/29/04 video He also credits Bush's continuing to read "My Pet Goat" while the 9/11 attack was occurring and as brilliantly depicted in Moore's film, as helping with his 9/11 attack:  "We never thought that the high commander of the U.S. armies would leave 50,000 of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors alone," bin Laden said. "It appeared to him that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the plane s and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God."  "So I don't know where he is.  Nor - you know, I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I... I truly am not that concerned about him." Bush in March of 2002 (source)

Just 6 months after 9/11 and with bin Laden and most of his gang still on the loose in Afghanistan, the Bush regime cut CIA operations there.  For example, a covert commando team that led the hunt for bin Laden and crew was cut by 2/3.  Even more recently, the CIA station chief in Kabul  reported increased Taliban and al Queda activity and requested a 30 folks for an offensive operation.  The regime refused this meager request citing a lack of manpower.  (article)   Rather than capture bin Laden and stabilize the country (both of which are still undone!), the regime diverted CIA, not to mention all other resources to what it wanted to accomplish from day one- attack Iraq.

The article also reports that Iran had captured 290 al Queda members as they fled Afghanistan and offered to give them up.   The regime's response was to name Iran as a member of it's "axis of evil".    Of even more concern is the regime ignoring common sense warnings from their own advisors that much more needs to be done to reduce terrorism recruits by offering alternatives to the radical Islamists.  For example, Bush promised $300 million to counter the infamous madrasas schools in Pakistan but flip-flopped by not even including the funding in his subsequent budget request.   So much for the regime's claims to be fighting terrorism...

If the video story gains the coverage it deserves, it can/will be spun two main ways- 1) the boogie man bin Laden is still on the loose hence one should, as Dick "Dr. Doom" Cheney basically said, vote ripublican or die (or "go f*** yourself") or 2) he's on the loose because the regime abandoned looking for him so it could attack Iraq- a country which had nothing to do with 9/11 and was not an "imminent threat" to us.  For a change, I agree with the regime- since the regime's ambassador to Qatar and Colon "Oreo" Powell tried to to stop Al Jazeera from broadcasting the tape; they apparently believe the second spin of the video.   (more)

"Are we still so afraid of wolves that we will offer the lives of our children to those who cry wolf?" - Marc Ash  t r u t h o u t  Executive Director

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"Bush undoubtedly will see his reelection as a mandate to push the country further to the right. And if he elected, he will be answerable to no one."- Helen Thomas in her excellent article summarizing the reasons to oust the Bush regime.
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Four Brits imprisoned for over 2 years at Gitmo and released without any charges being filed are suing Rumsfeld and 10 of his military henchmen under the Alien Tort Claims Act for prolonged arbitrary detention and torture.  They are asking that the damages ($40 million) be paid out of the thug's own pockets.  The four were alleged to be "enemy combatants" but three were in Afghanistan to help in the ongoing humanitarian crisis while the other was on a religious retreat in Pakistan.  (more)
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The UN issued a report condemning the regime for it's use of torture.  (more)
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Add 100,000 more counts to the murder charges which should be brought against the war criminals in the Bush regime.  That's the conservatively estimated number of Iraqi deaths due to their attack and subsequent quagmire according to a Johns Hopkins study published in the Lancet.   The study also found that the risk of death from violence since their attack is 58 times higher than before the war.   It sure sounds like ordinary Iraqis were safer under Sadam than under the Bush regime!   Although the regime says it doesn't do body counts, a report indicates this as yet another regime lie.  They keep a tally of the number of innocents they've killed, but keep them secret- for obvious reasons.  If this story gains traction, count on the regime trotting out a low balled body count.
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Yet more is oozing out on the regime's "awarding" contracts to their corporate sponsor Halliburton.  This time, a top Army Corps of Engineers contracting official has blown the whistle on the the regime violating the rules on awarding contracts.  Details below.
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Sen Tom Harkin believes Bush will have to restart the draft if re-elected.  He documents why in a 10/28/04 Minnesota Daily article.  The blistering conclusion:   "Bush might have avoided the draft when he was a young man. But if re-elected, he will not be able to avoid the draft as president."  One thing you can count on- Bush's draft will be rigged to give a free pass to spoiled brats of the rich/powerful.
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"George Bush forfeited this election when he openly declared the war, the recession, and the deaths on 9/11 to be his lucky trifecta, joking on fourteen occasions about the good fortune those tragedies had brought to him and his wealthy supporters." - from a Jack MacMillan truthout.org post. on how the events allowed him to give his rich buddies huge tax breaks.    Shrub also similarly joked that what others call the "haves and have mores", he calls  his "base".
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"I hope it comes out the right way in the election. If it doesn't then we're all in trouble. The Europeans so far give us a pass on the grounds that, well, you've got these crazy leaders and they do crazy things. But if we re-elect them, then it's not just the president they're mad at. They're going to be mad at all of us."  from a Seymore Hersh interview.    Helen Thomas' excellent article also supports this view  as does this from the Le Nouvel Observateur Editor-in Chief:   "The stakes in these American elections will rarely be this important. Unilateralism vs. multilateralism, clash of civilizations or reconciliation, to sign the Kyoto protocol or not, Conservative fundamentalism or open democracy, without even mentioning the economic stakes of a policy which has outrageously benefited the rich under George Bush. Even if we cannot hope for a dramatic turnaround from John Kerry, we must hope that the man who is the worst elected in United States' history and who is also the source of the biggest lie in its history, will be sanctioned in the coming elections."  (more)
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"The Americans gave us nothing more than AK-47's so they could stay in Iraq for a long time.  The resistance has the right to fight the occupation. It's an obligation for every Muslim. The Allawi government has no power." - Iraqi National Guard  Lt. Abdul-Latif Salim (more)
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Under the Bush administration, 2.6 million acres of Utah land that had been shielded from development is now suddenly open for business.  Not content with raping 97% of the lower 48 states, the regime is intent on spoiling the remaining 3%.   Except Richard Nixon, every president since Johnson has added at least 3 million acres to the nation's store of wilderness.    But not Bush.   Ramrodding this is the regime's interior sect. Gale Norton- a devote of Reagan's notorious James Watt.   Basically, they have said they will not protect any land which is worthy of wildness designation by congress.  This throws the door open to the rapists who, in despoiling the land, will make it impossible to be designated wilderness.  Says one BLM employee, "We can protect any landscape that no one wants to use for anything else.   If it's not wanted by the oil and gas industry or the ORV [off-road-vehicle] industry, then we can protect it."   (more)
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A 16 month investigation by Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee has reached the long obvious conclusion that the Pentagon intelligence unit run by neocon chicken hawk Douglas Feith "shaded analytic judgments, ignored contrary evidence and sidestepped the CIA to present dubious findings" to senior regime officials to justify the chicken hawk's rush to attack Iraq.   (more)
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The local paper reports a 17 year old Palestinian was killed by Israel regime troops.   The regime said he was "armed".  He was "armed" with a stick according to the locals.  The thugs will have a much harder time explaining why they machine-gunned a  8 year old girl as she walked to school.    Alas, both were likely killed with weapons and ammo made and furnished by the US.
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Dust and rat shit.  That's the excuse the regime attempted to use for its failure to give the AP the documents as required by the FOIA.  Among the documents were a letter from then congressman Bush I requesting a training commander take a special interest in Shrub.   Also included were pay and service records providing further proof the spoiled brat was AWOL.  (more)
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The regime is ensuring it's hand-picked puppet regime is "elected" in the Iraqi election which is supposed to occur in 1/05.  1) They have rigged the election so that Iraqis can only vote for for parties or alliances and not for individuals.  2) they are doing everything they can to encourage their puppet regime to run as an alliance.  This will ensure any organizations opposing the regime's puppet govt. will have little power and ensures the regimes a lock on power.   An official in Washington said the Bush regime now believes Iraq needs a "negotiated resolution - a scaled back democratic process."   Yeah- like the "scaled back democratic process" they used to take power in '00 and will likely redeploy on 11/2/04.    (more)
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Ripublicans in Ohio have already filed 35,000 challenges to voters' eligibility and are preparing to send recruits into 8,000 polling places next Tuesday to challenge other voters they suspect are not eligible (i.e. anyone they suspect of intending to vote against Shrub).  It is reported the recruits are being assigned to predominately black areas where Democratic "527" groups have registered many tens of thousands of new voters.  The goal is not only to challenge voters, it's also designed to clog up the polls and hence dissuade folks from voting.   In a rehash of Florida in '00, the Ohio's sect. of state is also co-chairman of Bush's reelection campaign in Ohio.  (more)
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While most of the media is focused on the regime's impending "November Surprise" attack on Falluja, the situation in its sister city of Ramadi is even worse.  In Falluja, the "insurgents" are in a well defined area.  In Ramadi, they are well and very widely dispersed among the population.  They have also adopted Psy-Ops techniques such as posting the names of Iraqi security officers outside mosques, publishing fliers showing a woman in a black robe being raped by American men in sunglasses, and blowing up whole buildings downtown (e.g. an agricultural center, a veterans' building and the Red Crescent headquarters), videotaping the demolitions and giving the tapes to Arab television networks to attribute blame to American air strikes.  The situation in other areas is about as bad. (more)   In summary, Iraq is a quagmire.   The silver lining is that it has the regime's troops are so bogged down, yet another needless attack on another country as per the neocon warmongers' PNAC blueprint for global domination will be most difficult.   OTOH, they essentially abandoned the search for bin Laden and left Afghanistan a utter mess in their rush to needlessly attack Iraq.
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An audit of Halliburton released on 10/29/04  found that 43% of the inventory they were entrusted with is missing.  More Halliburton new below.  Stealing millions must be contagious among contractors in Iraq.  Yet another one- Custer Battles - has been caught bilking US taxpayers for millions in bogus charges.   In one of the many scams they ran, they repainted forklifts abandoned by Baghdad Airways and then charged us taxpayers thousands of dollars a month for them, claiming that they were leased.  Maybe in a quest for more contracts, they were taking a lesson from Halliburton who was awarded more contracts by the regime after being outed as thieves.  
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Iraq's "interim" prime minister said gross negligence on the part of the Bush regime led to the massacre of up to 51 new Iraqi soldiers (more)
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So far, Iraqi pipelines and other oil infrastructure have been blown up 250 times.  Before the regime's attack on Iraq, Wolfowitz said Iraqi oil could generate $50 billion to $100 billion over two or three years and "finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon".  In the 1.5 plus years since the attack he helped engineer, only $17 billion has been generated (if the regime's puppet Iraqi oil minister is to be believed...).
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A 10/04 Pew poll found that 70% of self described evangelicals or born-again christians planned to vote for the idiot-in-chief. (more)   I suppose many of the remaining 30% will cast write-in ballots for Jesus.
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Tony "regime lapdog" Blair's former chief investigator at the Intelligence and Security Committee's chief investigator says Blair used intelligence as "PR tool'.   The investigator was fired after after criticizing Blair's lies about Iraq.  (more)
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Bush, the flip-flop-flipper:  In 2000 Bush said gay civil unions were a matter for the states.  Earlier this year he flip-flopped by supporting a constitutional admentment.  On ABC on 10/26/04,  he said states should be able to grant same-sex couples the right to form civil unions.
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Three of the regime's "judges" on their kangaroo court in Gitmo were removed for their lack of impartiality.  One of the removed "judges" did not even know the details of the Geneva Conventions.
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"When George Bush heard the Boss was playing, and was going to be here with me today, he thought they meant Dick Cheney!"  Kerry at a huge  Madison Wis. rally with Bruce "the Boss" Springsteen played.     The Boss' comments at the rally are worth a read.  The lead:  "As a songwriter, I've written about America for thirty years. Tryin' to write about who we are, what we stand for, what we fight for. And I believe that these essential ideas of American identity are what's at stake on November 2nd".
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Mary Lou Halliburton, a Republican who worked in the Nixon White House and whose family who founded Halliburton helped create a group against Bush and his band of idiots- Republicans Who Want Their Party Back.   I suppose the ripublicans will rehash the line they tarred FDR with and call them "a traitor to their class".     (more on ripublican women against Bush).
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"This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about al-Qaida and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy.   He understands them because he's just like them." -  Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy advisor to Reagan and Bush 41.
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Eight out of 10 countries polled favor Kerry for president  The results show that in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, Spain and South Korea a majority of voters share a rejection of the Iraq invasion, contempt for the Bush administration, and a growing hostility to the US.   The outlyers are Russian and (surprise!) Israel.  (from the 10/15/04 Guardian)
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The regime's war will cost us taxpayers close to $225 BILLION. After the election, the Post reports that the regime will ask for $70 billion in "emergency funding".   $225 BILLION is a hellva lot more than the lies told by the regime before the war- e.g. Wolfowitz:  "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."  Budget idiot Mitch Daniels said it'd be "an affordable endeavor... that will not require sustained aid" and would cost only $50 to$60 billion."  Perle:  "Iraq is a very wealthy country...They can finance, largely finance, the reconstruction of their own country."
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Greg Palast reports that Bush campaign officials in Florida have compiled a 15 page hit list of (surprise!) Florida voters they are planning to have their flunkies challenge when they attempt to vote.   Ripublican spokespersons claim the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising solicitations or returned letters sent to newly registered voters to verify their addresses for purposes of mailing campaign literature and refused to say it would not be used to challenge voters.   They also couldn't explain why such a minor clerical matters would be sent to top officials of the Bush campaign in both Florida and Washington.  It's not wonder they won't fess up- it's against federal law to target voters based on race.  As with their attempt to prevent alleged black ex-felons from voting but not Hispanic ex-felons, they are once again showing they are a bunch of thugs.
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The regime's "Wolves" ad says Kerry supported "slashing" intelligence funding.  In '94, with the cold war long since won, Kerry voted for cutting funding 3.7% over 5 years.  "Slashing" is a better description for what the puppet they recently installed as CIA director voted for in '95-  to cut CIA staff by 20% over 5 years.
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Although Porter Goss' told congress he'd run the CIA in a nonpartisan manner, his first action reveals he was lying.   He's installed at least four former ripublican staffers in top positions.   One of them has been widely reported as telling people they are to fire 80 to 90 people in the Directorate of Operations. (more)   The folks they are targeting are most likely those who have leaked info that has discredited the regime and revealed them as liars.
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Sinclair Broadcasting has pared down it's planned showing of a grossly anit-Kerry video but is still calling it a "news" piece.  It also fired its Washington bureau chief after he publicly criticized the program.   Behind all of this its idiot chairman/CEO.  An example- after he was arrested for engaging in a "unnatural and perverted sex act" with a prostitute while driving "his" company-owned Mercedes, he ordered "his" newsroom employees to produce a series of reports on a local drug counseling program, which counted toward Smith's plea-bargained, court ordered community service.  I reckon if he'd been sentenced to jail, he'd have one of "his" employees do his time for him.  The producer of the video, an alleged reporter, was outted in '83 for intentionally and falsely reporting that the veterans responsible for creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall were misspending - if not stealing - donated money.   The report was so patently false that his employer was forced to donate $50,000 to the fund for the wall and issue an apology.  Sinclair has also been pressing Kerry to sit for an "interview" and explain his decision to protest the war yet have not been similarly pressing Bush to defend his lack of service.  (more)

• "...know what you believe..."   What about knowing things like the facts?   No, facts would only overwhelm his meager mental capabilities.  Like Reagan, he is obviously capable of acting based only on his grossly simplistic and erroneous beliefs, e.g. "gays=bad"  "corporations=good" "muslims=evil" "christians=good".
• "...chorus of critics..."  is a real hoot since he has very little acquaintance with critics.  He's bragged that he doesn't read newspapers because of the very fact that they quite often contain material critical of him and his regime.  He obviously also instructed his SS troops to keep even lawful protesters well away from him.   Even regime members who say anything critical of the regime are ousted (e.g. Paul O'Neil and Gen. Eric Shinseki).   Basically tho', he couldn't care less what critics think, say, or write because he is utterly and completely convinced he is infallible.
• "...history can deliver... "   He's obviously flubbed the lines given him via his wireless backpack- history can't deliver anything in the future.

 When I was home in New Hampshire on leave last month, a lot of people approached me to tell what a good job we're  doing here in Iraq.
 I appreciate the support, but I don't need the media or those people to tell me what I see every day. We are not getting  the job done.
 People ask me, "How's it going over there?" Cities have been overrun and are in a state of lawlessness. My job brings  me into the streets. I see these things as they happen. They aren't just headlines for me. All we are doing here is treading  water, and at this rate we can't keep afloat much longer. I'm just a simple man, but I can see that everything this  administration has done with Iraq has been dead wrong.
 We appreciate your support, but we can't see those yellow ribbons from here. I ask that you let your vote show your support. I don't know what you go to bed thinking, but I go to bed wondering not how many more years of this  administration I can handle but how many more days I might survive.

Closed, For Business: Energy Bill a Special Interests Triumph
This 10/4/04 Boston Globe article documents the loot the greedy corporations are being given the regime's energy bill in exchange for their bribes.   Electricity industry PACs and executives gave a total of $7,733,941 for the 2004 election cycle- giving most of it to the regime while energy entities spent over $387 MILLION lobbying Washington last year.   The bill includes their prime goal- abolishing the Public Utility Holding Company Act- a New Deal law enacted in response to greedy capitalists running amok and charging customers for their mistakes.   Other bribes by the greed heads:  The nuclear industry, which spent some $71,405,955 lobbying Capitol Hill, would get $7.37 billion in tax breaks and projects.  The Edison Electric Institute, which had contact with Cheney's task force 14 times and spent $12 million lobbying, secured a historic deregulation of the electricity industry analysts believe to be worth billions.   Members of the American Petroleum Institute, which had contact with the task force six times and spent $3,140,000 lobbying last year, would be eligible for billions in tax breaks and subsidies to encourage domestic oil production.   Home Depot spent $240,000 on bribes will get millions in savings from a two paragraph section in the bill to eliminate tariffs on Chinese ceiling fans.  (Boycott Home Depot!)   Another weird provision allows Robert Congel's company, Pyramid Management,  to get $100 million in taxpayers' public money when he builds a mall.  It's a good payoff for the $82,897 his PAC has collected-  most of which when to Bush.

"I was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for almost eight years. I was a career naval aviator, and I support John Kerry for President.   Kerry is a leader with proven courage, integrity, intelligence, and commitment. He served with distinction in the Vietnam war. After returning home he saw how our great nation was misled by our leaders' destructive policies, resulting in a monumental national tragedy. It took great personal integrity and special courage to testify before Congress, and to face his fellow veterans, many of whom were, and still are, in denial about the truth about that war.

"Some former Vietnam POW's have said their treatment was affected by Kerry's testimony in the Senate in 1971. I was there, in the same cells and camps with those men. No information on John Kerry ever came to us during those years, and his actions had no effect on our treatment, or on the length of the war.

"John Kerry did the right thing then, as he will now. That's why I support him for President of the United States."

Bush often says that he wants to allow individuals to invest part of their Social Security tax payments in personal accounts. What he doesn't say is how he will cover the transitional costs of at least $1 trillion over a decade. He would guarantee current recipients and those near retirement what they are due under the present system, but he won't say how much he would cut the existing guaranteed benefit for future recipients. All privatization plans that claim to reduce the long-term costs of Social Security, as Bush says his would, are based on cuts in future government benefits.

Bush skimps on the details because he knows the details are the unpopular part of his idea. Those who say Bush will have to propose benefit cuts are accused of "scaring" people. But voters should be scared when politicians talk about the benefits of their grand schemes and don't level with them on the costs.
...
He wants to get himself reelected by talking about terrorism - and he will inform the electorate only after Nov. 2 that they voted for a lot of other things that they never heard much about

Once, observers imagined that we were entering an information age, but they were wrong. It is a misinformation age. The stupendous machinery of modern media has reached into every cranny of American life. Its outlets have been posted in every household, like a mechanical standing army. The steady, mild propaganda of advertising has long saturated the home for hours every day, the mental equivalent of low-level radiation. Now the public is being dosed with more virulent stuff. The standing army has been given increasingly insistent political marching orders. Stalin and Mao, confined mainly to radios and megaphones, could only dream of such penetration of daily life by their propaganda apparatuses.

Bush has made no real attempt to win the support of the large majority of Muslims who oppose terrorism. Instead, he has created millions of new enemies around the world - people who used to admire the USA - and these people are now more likely to be recruited by or support future terrorists. It is now more likely that they will overthrow their moderate, pro-US governments, such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and replace them with radical Islamic regimes. Far more dangerous to America than Iraq are the radicals trying to take over Pakistan (which already has nuclear weapons), the unpredictable leader of North Korea (which also has nukes), and Iran (which is allegedly working hard to get them). We are less secure today because we are creating more new enemies than we are able to kill or capture. There are smarter ways to track down terrorists and reduce the appeal of radical Islamic ideology, but Bush has decided to take the easy but wrong course of flexing America's conventional military might and intimidating the world rather than rallying our friends and allies around a grand strategy that has a chance of success.

The bottom line is this. President Bush had four years to show us what he can do. He has completely bungled our foreign policy and has been favoring big business interests and wealthy individuals over fiscal responsibility, the well being of our economy, and the health of our citizens. There is no way he's getting another chance if I have anything to say about it.

Sir, you are relieved of duty!

In February 2003, less than a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Bunnatine Greenhouse walked into a Pentagon meeting and with a quiet comment started what could be the end of her career. On the agenda was the awarding of an up to $7 billion deal to a subsidiary of Houston-based conglomerate Halliburton to restore Iraq's oil facilities. On hand were senior officials from the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and aides to retired Lieut. General Jay Garner, who would soon become the first U.S. administrator in Iraq.

Then several representatives from Halliburton entered. Greenhouse, a top contracting specialist for the Army Corps of Engineers, grew increasingly concerned that they were privy to internal discussions of the contract's terms, so she whispered to the presiding general, insisting that he ask the Halliburton employees to leave the room.

Once they had gone, Greenhouse raised other concerns. She argued that the five-year term for the contract, which had not been put out for competitive bid, was not justified, that it should be for one year only and then be opened to competition. But when the contract-approval document arrived the next day for Greenhouse's signature, the term was five years. With war imminent, she had little choice but to sign. But she added a handwritten reservation that extending a no-bid contract beyond one year could send a message that "there is not strong intent for a limited  competition."

The regime's response to her in-house objection to their contracts was to cut her out out of subsequent contracting decisions.  Her lawyers have sent a letter to the acting sect. of the Army stating that Halliburton received special treatment and requesting a high level investigation of the contracting program.  The sect. then passed the hot potato to the Pentagon inspector general "for review and action as appropriate".  The FBI is also reportedly investigating (or whitewashing) the matter.  (see also an extensive LA Times article and a 10/25/04 NY Times article )

In late breaking news, Greenhouse had this to say in a  NBC's Nightly News interview per a  Reuters article:  "It was misconduct, and part of that misconduct was blatant .... "It was the worst abuse of the procurement and contracting system that I have seen".

Regime press spinner McCellan feebly attempted to depict the regime in the best possible light by saying, "If there is wrongdoing, the president expects it to be investigated fully and dealt with."    Yeah, investigated by the "independent" FBI.   It would not surprise me if the wrongdoing was dealt with in the same manner the regime has dealt with it in the past- by giving Halliburton yet more no-bid mega-contracts!

Can this nation survive four more years of Dick Cheney running the show? Probably, but it is a risk that few thoughtful Americans, conservatives included, should want to take.

Whatever one thinks of George W. Bush - do you see a smile or a smirk? - it is now patently obvious that the most powerful vice president in U.S. history is in charge of the White House. Cheney's ultra-secretive, anti-democratic and crony-capitalist instincts have defined this administration.

Perhaps we should have expected all this from a man who, as head of the Bush vice presidential search team, selected himself. It was a forewarning of the Machiavellian arrogance that has made him the leading individual in an administration that has consistently believed that self-serving ends - such as helping Enron at the expense of California's energy needs or boosting Halliburton's profits at the expense of American troops - justify lying, secrecy and preemptive war.

In the hours after the 9/11 massacres, some Americans may have been reassured to have the older Cheney around at a time when the "real" president was confusedly sitting in a classroom listening to a story about a pet goat. However, in hindsight, this was clearly misguided faith in a man who presents himself as a stern father figure but is just an irresponsible ideologue whose disrespect and disregard for the U.S. Constitution are  manifest in all his actions.

On November 2nd our nation goes to the polls to choose a President for the first time in 8 years. Last time we went to the polls our choice for President was not inaugurated. The Supreme Court selected George Bush, and even if they didn't, the Electoral College stole our choice for President.   Confidence in our electoral system is at all time low according recent polls. International observers have requested to monitor our election. Isn't America supposed to be the greatest democracy on earth?

So here we are, staring down a rather historic moment amidst the sputtering ideological orgy that is the American experiment and if you're paying any sort of attention at all you're doubtlessly drunk on election hype and saturated with Bush/Kerry platitudes and you wish a white-hot death upon every screeching TV pundit who is right now analyzing yet another insidious national poll that seems to reveal everything and nothing at the exact same time.

No need to wonder if this year's U.S. presidential election is headed for another meltdown: the meltdown has already started. The voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and lawyers fully armed and ready with an intimate knowledge of the nation's byzantine election laws have flocked to court to cry foul in half a dozen states.

It beggars belief that the world's most powerful democracy should find itself in this hole for the second time in a row – becoming an object of international ridicule, scorn and not a little alarm, even as the country's leaders talk idealistically about exporting American freedom and democracy to Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond.

"Only a miracle, it strikes me, can prevent this election from descending into post-election chaos," John Dean, the Watergate-era White House counsel who knows a thing or two about electoral dirty tricks, wrote last week.

 In Oregon, Pennsylvania and Nevada – all swing states – a Republican political consulting group called Sproul & Associates has been accused of passing itself off as a non-partisan or even a Democratic civic organization to collect voter registration applications outside libraries and supermarkets. In at least two instances now under criminal investigation, company employees have been accused of processing the applications of declared Republican voters while throwing the forms marked Democrat into the nearest rubbish bin. Sproul, which has received more than $600,000 (£330,000) from the Republican National Committee, has denied ever endorsing such practices.

	A Bush regime supporter's attempt to "influence" a female Kerry supporter in Penn
	A photo was doctored by the regime and used in a campaign ad.  A regime spin doctor surprisingly admitted the doctoring but offered the utterly bogus excuse that it was done simply  to remove the president and the podium where he was standing.   The above indicates this to be yet another regime lie.