My Republican Taxonomy For Dummies may be of interest.
Then there's my previously posted Shrub Time Left calculators.    As of 9/11/04, we've got to suffer 131 more days of regime rule.
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The chickenhawks' body count in their Iraq folly has now busted 1,000-  with 865 of those being killed after the flight-suited, arrogant idiot-in-chief declared, "Mission Accomplished."    A rather pointed bit of dark humor:   What is the difference between Bush and Ted Bundy?   Bush has killed many more people than Bundy ever did.
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A report by the Economic Policy Institute provides further evidence that the ripublican's economic plan is working- the rich are getting obscenely richer while the middle class is being merged with the poor.
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CEO '03 salaries reached a record 301 times the wages of their peons (they were a mere 26x in '65).  This was an increase of 9% over the previous year- the average peon's salary/wage increase was about 1%.   Even more obscene,  CEOs doing the most layoffs and those whom raid and underfund their peons' pension plans "earn" more that the average CEO.   Those outsourcing the most jobs also scored big according to "Executive Excess" by the Institute for Policy Studies and  United for a Fair  Economy.   Other facts:  From 2001 to 2003, the top 50 outsourcing CEOs earned $2.2 billion while sending an estimated 200,000 jobs overseas.  The 38 CEOs who have personally raised at least $100,000 for either the Bush or Kerry presidential campaigns earned an average of 88 percent more than the average large company CEO.
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TechsUnite has a good web site on offshoring.   It reports 251,332 of our jobs have been off-shored since Bush was installed as prez. and includes a listing of the corporations offshoring jobs.  Some of the worst (and # of jobs offshored):  GE (20,000), MCI (7500), Dell (6500), Delta Airlines (6200).    All of most worthy of a boycott.   Other pages on outsourcing :  OutsourceThis! .pdf,  The Economic Policy Institute's  Guide PDF  and  Myth's page and CEPR's misconceptions PDF
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The Census Bureau reports that the number of Americans with no health insurance has increased by 5.8 million under Bush, bringing the total to 45 million.   The regime's response?   It is going to reduce the number of uninsured by practicing Eron type accounting-  changing the way statistics are compiled!
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Shrub said in his nomination acceptance speech that the tax code "is a complicated mess".   I agree with the idiot for a change, BUT, as usual,  he failed to mention that, according to his very own IRS, his regime has added over 3 hours to the time it takes the averge Joe or Jane to fill out their taxes.   Adding insult to injury, although Joe and Jane got a hellva lot less than the huge tax cuts given to the rich by Shrub, they have to fill out the same forms to get their crumbs. (Details)
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A Public Citizen report indicates that a whopping 90% of Shrub's biggest bribers are  (surprise!) from greedy corporation and their execs.   It also details the loot these neo robber barons got in return for their bribes.  Some of their many pay-offs:  the financers for $38M got huge special tax breaks,  developers ($32M) got the OK to destroy yet more wetlands and further rape the Everglades,  the electricity barons ($6M) got Shrub to reneg on his promise the regulate CO2 emissions, got to continue to pump out mercury and keep old coal plants in service in violation of the Clean Air Act.  The minerals industry ($38M) got more public lands to plunder and mountian tops to level and the drug pushers got a real plum enacted- their Medicare drug law.    Ripublicans taut that one of Kerry's biggest supports is "Hollywood".  What little damage Hollywood does pales in comparision to the rape and pillage done by  the regime's corporate sponsors.
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I listened to snippets from the Zell Miller's triade at the regime's convention speech on NPR.  As distinct from Fox, NPR tries to be fair and balanced so they also played excerpts from his '92 speech at the democratic convention.   One snippet:  "For 12 dark years the Republicans have dealt in cynicism and skepticism.  They've mastered the art of division and diversion, and they have robbed us of our hope. Let's face facts: George Bush just doesn't get it."   Just 3 years ago he called Kerry  “one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders – and a good friend...  has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment...  has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington".  Now he says Kerry "has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure," and that he "would let Paris decide when America needs defending."   The idiot was either lying previously are he's lying now.  Either way, Zell Miller is a LIAR and a FLAMING ASSHOLE.
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Laura Bush Lies Too.   At the ripublican convention she said Shrub was "the first President to provide federal funding for stem cell research."   What a load of crap- what her idiot husband actually did was cave-in to the religious nuts and cripple research by restricting research to a mere handful of viable stem cell lines.
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Under Shrub, OSHA has eliminated nearly five times as many pending standards as it has completed.   It has not started any major new health or safety rules, setting Bush apart from the previous three presidents, including even the Reagan regime.
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In a speech in Daytona, Fla., regime general Boykin recalled his efforts to capture an Islamic militant in Somalia who boasted that Allah would protect him from Americans.  Boykin said, "Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."   During a speech before a congregation in Oregon, he declared that he was leading a "spiritual battle" against Satan. He told the congregation that Islamic extremists hate the U.S. "because we're a Christian nation"   Being a fellow religious zealot, Bush hasn't uttered a peep against the idiot much less squeched him.  It's no wonder most of the Muslim world firmly believes the US to be later day/neo Crusaders!   Alas, I can't say I blame them....
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A recent poll by CNN/USA Today/Gallup indicates that issues are not driving this year's election- it's voters' perception of Shrub's and Kerry's leadership skills that really count.  On policy, Kerry has a 20 point lead.  Alas, it's just the opposite on leadership.   It's easy to see why tho'- his lack of moral outrage at the regime's tarring of his record in Viet Nam is just one of many indicators.    As a pundit wrote, many voters obviously perfer a dumb but arrogant cowboy to a policy wonk.
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A good read-  Kerry's 1971 Congressional Testimony Against the Vietnam War.   I'm no fan of Kerry (just two of the many reasons: he voted for NAFTA and for Bush's Iraq war) but, I do admire his service in Viet Nam and his courage in fighting against the war when he returned.
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Get the low-down on Nadar at a realchange.org's page.   The snake is much like the corporate execs. he rails against.  He has amassed millions in stock market deals and fat speaking fees yet overworks/underpays his employees and has used typical brazen CEO methods to prevent employees from forming unions.
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The Smoking Gun Site has lots of info on the Bushes. - e.g. love letters from Shrub to his bud "Kenny Boy" Lay.

The book promises to be a best seller (a first run of 3/4 million).  His spin miesters have already gone on the attack and, yet again, they are lying.  Kitty Kelly's past searing bios of the high and mighty have all stood up to close scrunity- she's never had to publish a retraction and, although she has been sued repeatly, none have been sucessful.   I hope she turns the tables this time and sues Bush and his PR flaks for slander!

Bush has repeatly been able to deflect and evade questions and lie about his use of coke and his other illegal behavior.  This time around, the media needs to devote at least as much coverage to this as they did to Clinton's attempted use of grass and to the idiot down.

For an earlier report on Shrub's coke habit, check out realchange.org's Bush Jr.'s Skeleton Closet.  It reports on Bush's '72 bust for cocaine possession and being sentenced to work in a program for innercity kids (an alternative sentence undoubtly reserved for the spoiled brats of hte rich and well-connected).   Amazingly, there are no reports (yet...) of him going AWOL from that committment.   Learning nothing of compassion and empathy from his bust, he had the hypocritic gall as governor to attack his predecessor for his alledged leniency for first-time drug users and he pushed a "no tolerance" policy that sent casual cocaine users to prison for years.   Even more hypocritically,  he proclaimed that such users "need to know that drug use has consequences."   What a flaming hypocrite-  may he rot in his god's hell!

But the ripublicans have a way to rig to elections even where absentee ballots are used.  This has just been successfully field tested by none other than Theresa "Madame Butterfly"  LePore, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach.  For those with short memories, this is the brazen  idiot who greatly aided Bush's theft of the '00 election by refusing to recount disputed votes.   Greg Palast reports that she recently rigged her own re-election:

1. She supervised it herself-  no poll watchers from opponents' organizations were permitted despite a legal requirement to so so.
2. Although 37,000 citizens had requested absentee ballots, she says she'd only received 22,000.
3. She refuses to release the names of those who actually voted in violation of SOP.
4. She has reserved for herself alone the right to determine which ballots have "acceptable" signatures.
5. To aid in determining which absentee ballots she received were for her opponent and hence which she either "didn't receive" and/or had "unacceptable signatures", she had the party affiliation of the absentee voters printed on the OUTSIDE of their ballots.

In other Florida vote-rigging news, a Jeb Bush appointee at the Broward County Board of Elections has already hired a law firm headed by two close cronies of President Bush to fight the inevitable vote-rigging charges against it.

This STINKS!  No, on second thought, "stinks" is too mild of verb for the situation.  Given the above and their zeal for computer based voting, the ripublicans' election rigging could only be topped if they emulated the third world banana republic dictators they've installed and supported by "disappearing" folks who attempt to vote against them.  Although I don't think they feel enough like cornered rats to do dissapear folks, I  have absolutely no doubts about the lengths they and their "base" (an appropriate word!) will go to retain control.  Some quite plausable October Surprises in the Wag the Dog genera:

1. "Capturing" "Bin Lauden"-  it'll most likely be some luckless, lanky Arab they can make-over to look like like Bin Lauden.
2.  "Discovering" WMDs in Iraq.  Since there aren't any (well, except for weapons in the possession of the regime's troops....), Halliburton can plant them for a nominal fee.  Extrapolating from Bush paying them over $6 per pound to do laundry, $2.34 billion sounds about right.   Even the few alledged fically conservative ripublicans won't bat an eye at a couple of more billion in debt they'll foist on the grand kids of the current middle class and poor (soon to merge if the regime gets reinstalled...)
3. Having Asscroft capture "terrorists" hatching plots to mount an attack.   More likely, Asscroft will grab some folks like the members Fresno peace group he's previously  targeted.  Like Yaser Hamdi, they'll be locked up as "enemy combatants" and denied a there day in court until long after the election.

From retired Army Colonel Gerald A. Lechliter, one of a number of retired military officers who have studied Bush's records and old National Guard regulations:

''He broke his contract with the United States government -- without any adverseconsequences. And the Texas Air National Guard was complicit in allowing this tohappen," Lechliter said in an interview yesterday. ''He was a pilot. It cost thegovernment a million dollars to train him to fly. So he should have been held to aneven higher standard."

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

But Lloyd said that singling out Bush for criticism is unfair. ''There were hundredsof guys like him who did the same thing," he said.

Given that 1) swing voters must be persuaded  to vote against the Bush regime since trying to sell Kerry as anything other than the lessor of two evils (or 2.01 counting the idiot/egomanic Nadar)  is futile and 2) attack ads tend to turn-off swing voters,  I'm supporting softer, more though provoking ads.  Fortunately there are many organizations taking this tack, but I think  MoveOn is the best.   Their latest "Real People" ads appear to be ideal for convincing swinging voters that a vote for four more years of mayhem under the Bush regime would be an huge and very grave  mistake.   Two examples of on-the-mark  Real People ads they are seeking support to run in swing states:

Lee Buttrill, a Marine Sgt. and weapons inspector in Iraq on President Bush's signature failure:   "We were given the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction, but where are they? They said they were so sure.  When I was over there I looked.  I was on an intelligence gathering team, we all looked. We found nothing. It was just a lie. That wasn't a proper use of American troops. It wasn't a proper use of my life, my friends' lives, or the Marines I saw die around me."

Financial advisor and Marine Corps veteran Kim Mecklenberg:   "I've been a lifelong Republican since I was old enough to vote and I though that Bush would be fiscally conservative. I feel betrayed. I don't believe that a government should be engaging in reckless spending, recklessly stretching the military to the point of breaking, and recklessly trying to alter the constitution that this country is built upon. That's why I'm voting for John Kerry."

Bush's "Service" in the National Guard.
The 9/8/04 60 minutes pieceon Bush's evasion of service and how he got into the Guard in the first place made the regime squirn a bit.  The regime's spin miester tried to discredit the new info by saying Bush had received and honorable discharge.  Undoubtly the honorable discharge was arranged by his daddy buddies.

Why now this belated move on the bin Laden's former operation? Why not right after the September 11 attack? This year's FBI raid occurred just days after an Islamist terror assault in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Apparently, messin' with the oil sheiks gets this Administration's attention. Falling towers in New York are only for Republican convention photo ops.

I guess Bennett thinks the public has forgotten about his being a notorious gambler (having spent $8 million!) and, worse, a gross hypocrite and wouldn't mind his taking a few million of tax money.    Now, he further confirms himself as a fat hypocrite yet again.  The idiot has touted the free market as the answer to just about everything yet now he takes public money to support his firm.    Undoubtly, the parents of home schooler aren't buying shit from a hypocrite.

Yet another national christian blue-nose has also been outted as a flaming hypocrite.   Ralph Reed, while exec. director of the christian coalition, railed against the evils of gambling, calling it "a cancer on the American body politic".   The 7/12/04 Nation reports he's being paid by a  Lousiana Indian tribe to the tune of over $350,000 to help fight another tribe which wants to enter the gambling industry.   Next thing you know, the regime will be giving him our tax money.

The White House is currently attacking those who raise questions about President Bush's National Guard record. They say the questions about Bush's failure to fulfill his commitment are "dirty politics."[1] Yet a look at the record shows that it was President George H.W. Bush - and his top campaign strategist George W. Bush - who tried to smear the National Guard and military record of their opponents.

As reported in the August 23, 1988 Los Angeles Times, then Vice President George H.W. Bush's campaign co-chairman John Sununu went on national television to impugn an opponent's dealings with the National Guard during Vietnam. Sununu specifically claimed Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX) had improperly helped get his son into the Texas National Guard during Vietnam. Bentsen's son served in the very same National Guard unit at the very same time as George W. Bush. The Bush campaign's attacks came just days after Bush's allies on Capitol Hill launched a vicious attack on Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-MA) for receiving a draft deferment during the Korean War.[LA Times, 8/23/882]   At the time of the coordinated attack, George W. Bush was serving as a senior adviser to his father's campaign.[3]

The feds face a stunning blow to credibility by releasing a long-jailed U.S. citizen.   "Never mind," the feds now say to Yaser Esam Hamdi, the alleged enemy combatant whose case was decided in June by the U.S. Supreme Court. Never mind that we threw you into the brig and then fought like wildcats to deprive you of fundamental constitutional rights.   Never mind that we told federal judges that you were a dangerous enemy of the United States. Now, it seems, the government is negotiating with Hamdi's attorneys for his release from confinement. According to reports, Hamdi would renounce his U.S. citizenship, move to Saudi Arabia and accept some travel restrictions, as well as some monitoring by Saudi officials, in exchange for his freedom.   In addition, he may have to agree not to file a civil rights lawsuit against the federal government.   If all Hamdi has to worry about is going forward into his new life of freedom, it would be a remarkable turnaround for a man who for years now the government has sworn is a terrorist. It would be a shocking admission from the government that there is not now, and probably never has been, a viable criminal case against Hamdi. And it would cause a stunning and long-lasting loss of credibility for the representations that government lawyers and military officials make in these sorts of terror law cases.

77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.' ...  the oil majors - like PhillipsConoco - keep 84% of the proceeds of the sale of Venezuela oil; the nation gets only 16%.   So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%.  So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to "Floridate" the will of the Venezuela electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice won election.   Winning most of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez' government "legitimate."   Hmmm.

Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for Democracy,' to the Chavez-haters running today's "recall" election.

In his speech, Bush spoke of a "freedom deficit" in the Middle East, a phrase taken from the UN report and which was utilised in the GMEI document. At the 20th anniversary of the launch of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is based at the private AEI (American Enterprise Institute- a neoconservative "think" tank).  The NED itself has sparked fierce criticism from governments and organisations around the world, who charge it with collecting US taxpayers' money to promote favoured politicians, political parties and to inject money and influence into the domestic elections of foreign countries. In the US, such financial influence by outside countries into US domestic politics is considered illegal.

But Bush vowed to send "a proposal to double the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy, Also, in January, the US Office of Management and Budget which assists the president in overseeing the financial spending of federal government programs, announced the allocation of $458 million to be spent on "democracy promotion" in Iraq in the first six months of this year. Other Arab leaders, such as Syria's Bashar al-Asad, also criticised the plan because of the political affiliation of its champions: prominent neoconservative figures in Washington, the same neocons who promoted the war on Iraq.

In his state of the union address, Bush put flesh on this skeleton, calling for an expansion of the NED's budget from $40 to $80 million in 2005, the extra funds to go entirely to the Middle East. In January, the Office of Management and Budget said that $458 million would be spent on "democracy promotion" in Iraq alone in the first six months of this year.
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The oddly-named NED has a long history not of promoting democracy but of controlling, subverting, and even rolling back democratic processes. It played a key role, along with overt military coercion, in causing the Sandinistas to lose the critical 1990 election in Nicaragua and tried unsuccessfully to stop the popular groundswell that brought Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti in the same year. The organisations that plotted the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela were funded by the NED, effectively working in tandem with administration official Otto Reich, who met and planned with the coup plotters. In Haiti, the International Republican Institute, closely associated with the NED, manufactured a "democratic opposition" group (the Democratic Convergence and the Group of 184); when it couldn't get anywhere by electoral means (Aristide offered an election, but he would have won overwhelmingly), the same groups created a campaign of violence that ended in a US kidnapping of Aristide in February 2004.

...Indeed, most of the news from Iraq's oil sector, despite some $2.3 billion in investment by the United States in the months since Saddam Hussein was deposed, has been bad. Recent figures show that oil production now approaches 2.3 million barrels of oil per day. Exports have reached about 1.9 million barrels per day -- a fraction of the amount Iraq was exporting in the days before the first Iraq war in 1991. Although the exports are far less than the Pentagon had hoped for

... Some 4,400 miles of pipelines crisscross Iraq. Since last June, insurgents have attacked various parts of Iraq's oil infrastructure at least 90 times. That figure is probably a fraction of the real number. Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington think tank that tracks energy issues, says the real figure may be twice as high. But the Pentagon is reluctant to talk about the attacks on oil targets. "Nobody really wants to provide information because it's a political hot potato," says Luft. According to IAGS's pipeline watch Web site, there were 90 attacks on oil targets between June 2003 and early August of this year. On Aug. 5 alone, there were three attacks, including an additional bombing of the Kirkuk-to-Ceyhan line. That same day, a bomb hit a gas pipeline that feeds an electricity plant in Bayji, north of Tikrit.

... Oil was a key factor in the second Iraq war from the get-go. The first combat took place on March 20, 2003, when several groups of Navy SEALs stormed the Mina al-Bakr and Khor al-Amaya oil terminals. By controlling the oil terminals, the Pentagon was able to ensure that it would eventually control Iraq's oil exports. A week later, on March 27, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that the war wouldn't be overly expensive. "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." He continued, saying "the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years." A few weeks later, Wolfowitz compared America's reaction to the threat of nuclear weapons being developed by North Korea with the situation in Iraq. "Let's look at it simply," he said. "The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

The Bush administration, moving to lend political support to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a time of political turmoil, has modified its policy and signaled approval of growth in at least some Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, American and Israeli officials say. In the latest modification of American policy, the administration now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward to undeveloped parts of the West Bank, according to the officials.

... For the last three years, American policy has called for a freeze of "all settlement activity," The roadmap- the three-year peace plan adopted by the United States, Russia, Europe and the United Nations

In his first comments on the two major investigative reports issued this week at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday mischaracterized one of their central findings about the American military's treatment of Iraqi prisoners by saying there was no evidence that prisoners had been abused during interrogations.

The reports, one by a panel Mr. Rumsfeld had appointed and one by three Army generals, made clear that some abuses occurred during interrogations, that others were intended to soften up prisoners who were to be questioned, and that many intelligence personnel involved in the interrogations were implicated in the abuses. The reports were issued Tuesday and Wednesday. But on Thursday, in an interview with a radio station in Phoenix, Mr. Rumsfeld, who was traveling outside Washington this week, said, "I have not seen anything thus far that says that the people abused were abused in the process of interrogating them or for interrogation purposes." A transcript of the interview was posted on the Pentagon's Web site on Friday.   (and was removed by 8/30/04!)

Mr. Rumsfeld repeated the assertion a few hours later at a news conference in Phoenix, adding that "all of the press, all of the television thus far that tried to link the abuse that took place to interrogation techniques in Iraq has not yet been demonstrated."

After an aide slipped him a note during the news conference, however, Mr. Rumsfeld corrected himself, noting that an inquiry by three Army generals had, in fact, found "two or three" cases of abuse during interrogations or the interrogations process. In fact, however, the Army inquiry found that 13 of 44 instances of abuse involved interrogations or the interrogation process, an Army spokeswoman said. The report itself explicitly describes the extent to which each abuse involved interrogations.

Speaking in Phoenix, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed that there was no way that he and other top military officials could have known about the abuse and torture that took place at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Rumsfeld said, "if you are in Washington, D.C., you can't know what's going on in the midnight shift in one of those many prisons around the world."[1]

But a classified portion of a report by three Army generals (the Fay report) - obtained by the New York Times - found that the atrocities that took place in military prisons were the result of actions taken at the top of the military hierarchy. According to secret sections of the Fay report, the former top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez "approved the use in Iraq of some severe interrogation practices intended to be limited to captives held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan."[2] Moreover, "by issuing and revising the rules for interrogations in Iraq three times in 30 days, General Sanchez and his legal staff sowed such confusion that interrogators acted in ways that violated the Geneva Conventions."[3] A separate investigation headed by former defense secretary James R. Schlesinger "faulted the Pentagon's top civilian and military leadership yesterday for failing to exercise adequate oversight and allowing conditions that led to the abuse of detainees in Iraq."[4] Rumsfeld was cited specifically for contributing to "confusion over what techniques were permissible for interrogating prisoners in Iraq."[5]

President Bush has adamantly denied any connection to discredited and unsubstantial attack ads, run by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), a group that aims to smear John Kerry's record of honorable military service. On Friday, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said that the White House and the Bush/Cheney campaign "weren't involved in any way in these [SBVT] ads."[1]

McClellan neglected to mention that Kenneth Cordier, who appears prominently in the SBVT ads, was a member of the Bush/Cheney veterans steering committee.[2] According to the campaign website, members of the veterans steering committee "serve as messengers for the President's re-election campaign."[3] After the Kerry campaign exposed Cordier's involvement, a spokesman for Bush, Steve Schmidt, announced Cordier would "no longer participate" in the campaign.[4] According to Schmidt, the campaign had no idea that Cordier was involved in the SBVT ads - which have been a major issue in the campaign for weeks and replayed repeatedly on national television. Also skipped over by McClellan: The primary financial backer of the SBVT is Bob Perry - the top donor to Republicans in the state of Texas.[5] Perry has also been a friend of Karl Rove, Bush's top political advisor, for nearly 20 years.[6] Perry ponied up $46,000 for Bush's gubernatorial campaigns and contributed generously to Bush's presidential races.[7]

While aides to President Bush continue to claim "we weren't involved in any way in these ads"[1] against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) by Swift boat vets, more evidence emerged yesterday to disprove those denials.

First, the Washington Post reports that a "top lawyer in President Bush's reelection campaign acknowledged that he has been advising the veterans group." Benjamin L. Ginsberg, the "chief outside counsel to the Bush campaign" admitted "I've done some work for" the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.[2]  Ginsberg has long been a top adviser to Bush. The LA Times reports he represented the Bush campaign in 2000 and became a prominent figure during the Florida recount. In the current presidential campaign, his law firm has been paid $256,635 for his services[3] by the Bush campaign. That figure does not include any cash Ginsberg made in his work with the Swift Boat Veterans.

Additionally, the Dallas Morning News yesterday reported that the man bankrolling the smear ads is hosting President Bush's top political adviser at a fundraiser in New York during the Republican National Convention. Robert Perry, the top Bush-Cheney fundraiser who is financing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads, "is listed as the co-host" of an event whose guest list includes Karl Rove on September 1.[4] This news follows revelations earlier this week that one of the veterans smearing Kerry in the ads is actually a member of the Bush-Cheney campaign.[5]   It also follows news that the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters in Florida is distributing fliers promoting the group smearing Kerry.[6]

Anticipating the release of devastating new poverty and health care statistics, the Bush administration today took the extraordinary step today of trying to bury the numbers. Specifically, the Administration had its top political appointee at the Census Bureau release the numbers a month earlier than usual, during the August congressional recess when many reporters and Americans take their summer vacations. The rescheduling of the announcement also means that the bad numbers will not come out in September immediately after the Republican National Convention, when they have traditionally been released. With the President's economic and health care agenda leaving millions behind, the Associated Press reports, "the statistics today show the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million."[1]

This is not the first time the White House and Republicans have gone to great lengths to hide damning information. As CBS News reported, President Bush released his military service records late on a Friday night on the eve of a three day weekend in order to make sure the story about his poor attendance was seen by as few people as possible.[2]   In Congress, GOP leaders regularly pass the most controversial bills in the middle of the night. Those included bills to slash veterans benefits and health/education funding, as well as spending $87 billion on war in Iraq and passing the President's Medicare bill.[3]

President Bush has repeatedly criticized his opponent[1] for joining with Republicans to slightly reduce funding for intelligence after the end of the Cold War.[2]

But a new report shows that the President recently nominated a CIA Director who tried to make far deeper cuts in intelligence, even as terrorist attacks against the United States increased. Despite the known threat of terrorism, Bush nominated Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) to be the new CIA Director - a man who has led the effort to cut the very intelligence priorities that are most critical to the fight against terrorism. As the Washington Post reports, Goss actually "sponsored legislation that would have cut intelligence personnel by 20 percent in the late 1990s." Goss insisted on these cuts even after the 1993 World Trade Center attack when America became aware of the serious terrorist threat. As the story notes, the cuts Goss supported are far larger than those proposed by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and were specifically targeted at "human intelligence." That is the very same priority which the 9/11 Commission and other independent experts say was lacking in the days and months leading up to the 9/11 attacks.[3] The revelations about Goss come only a few weeks after similar evidence came to light showing that Vice President Cheney has also repeatedly tried to stop intelligence reforms and cut critical defense programs. For instance, in 1992, Cheney led the effort to block the very same intelligence reforms the 9/11 Commission said would have made the United States better prepared to deal with the threat of al Qaeda. Similarly, while the Bush-Cheney campaign has attacked Kerry for supposedly reducing defense spending,[4] it was Cheney himself in 2000 who admitted that as Defense Secretary, he "did in fact significantly reduce the overall size of the U.S. military."[5] And in 1990, it was Cheney who went to Capitol Hill to tout his effort to slash defense, bragging about "programs that I have recommended for termination."

Too bad the press, and even the Democrats, play along in accepting the failure of intelligence as the reason we invaded Iraq. In doing so they let the White House off the hook and deny the public the honest debate it deserves about the real reasons for war.
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And the general consensus contrives to silence those of us who dare to speak on the Iraq debacle. As has become increasingly clear, the neo-conservatives' vision that the US has a strategic imperative to gain more assured control over oil from the Middle East, together with their overweening zeal to eliminate any conceivable threat to the security of Israel, are what sunk us into the quicksand of Iraq. More important at this juncture, these twin aims render it virtually impossible for these policy makers to find a way out.
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In justifying the war, the administration deemed it far better to home in on things like 'weapons of mass destruction' and to count on our somnolent press to miss a glaring inconsistency. On February 24, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated publicly, 'saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction." And in July 2001 Condoleezza Rice said,  "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
.....
Just as the swift boats of August have been spreading thick spray, the Goss hearings next month and debate on Roberts' cockamamie proposal on restructuring, so outlandish as to have zero chance of passing, can be counted upon to spread enough fog to keep the mayhem in Iraq off the front pages and distract attention from the president's most serious vulnerabilities. Karl Rove is counting on it, and he's cleverer by half.   Iraq? The CIA made us do it.

Bush AWOL Doll  from Internet Weekly Report

From Internet Weekly Report  (but Shrub's title should be Clown Prince Dumbella)

More humor is at The George W. Bush Fun Page.  The Bush Family Values page is also great

A few of the many Bush Quotes (courtsey of 00fun.com- stuff in italitcs are mine):

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of  failure."   (No, YOU have failed!)

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.  (one word for Bush:  go fuck yourself!)

"I have made good judgments in the past. I  have made good judgments in the future."  (the past: invade Iraq- the future, invade Mass.)

"The future will be better tomorrow."   (Not if he gets elected or reinstalled in Nov.!)

"We're going to have the best educated  American people in the world." (I sure hope Shrub's education starts with grammar)

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a  part of Europe."  (even France?)

"Public speaking is very easy."   (But speaking intelligentlyis quite another matter for Shrub!)

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people  going to the polls."   (Or a indication of intimidation by by Ripublican thugs)

"We are ready for any unforeseen event  that may or may not occur." (Including being reinstalled by the supreme court if he losses again)

"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children." (I'm sure glad it's not stupid politicans such as Bush teaching our kids!)

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the  impurities in our air and water that are doing it."   (No, it's Shrub and his neo robber barons that are harming the environment!)

"It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."  "For NASA, space is still a high priority."     (Yeah, they should send his ass into space)