GOP tries to censor Carville and Begala because they're helping Kerry campaign

But Bob Novak's whoring for Bush is a-okay. Right. Read More......

TAKE ACTION: DNC demands Bush answer questions about his being AWOL

Two points for the DNC. Check out their action alert, and do it (please). Read More......

New Wash Post story: White House STILL not denying the facts contained in the memos

The Wash Post has written a story for Friday's edition about the controversy of the memos and their authenticity. While several experts contacted by the Post expressed their doubts, listen to what CBS had to say:

A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone and Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."

"These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."

The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.

The Post points out again that the White House refused all day to actually deny the memos' authenticity or the authenticity of the charges they alleged. To wit:

The doubts about the documents left the White House and the Bush campaign in a state of suspended animation, with Bush aides encouraging doubts about the documents but conceding that the possibility that they were forged seemed too good to be true. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said that officials there had not attempted to authenticate the documents but simply released copies "provided to us by CBS in the interests of openness."

The Bush administration's strategy yesterday was to let news organizations raise doubts and conduct forensic examinations, without taking an official position on whether the documents were genuine.

I'm sorry, but if you were to come up with a document saying my real name was Mary and I'm not a political consultant but actually an Irish Setter, I would not stay mum about it all day, telling journalists off the record that the possibility the documents are a fake is "too good to be true." The White House's non-denial is a sign of guilt, period. Read More......

Cheney says unemployment not bad because people have eBay

Cheney also talked up the economy. He said national employment statistics miss many people who are making money, such as those selling items on eBay. - AP

"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," he said. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay." It's unclear how many of those are making enough to support themselves.

Cheney should know about people who profit from selling things dear to them. Earlier this year he sold his lesbian daughter for votes. Read More......

Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden

Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden
Dick Cheney is Osama bin Laden

If you say a lie enough, it becomes true. Read More......

New Reuters story: White House STILL doesn't deny Bush AWOL story

Reuters issued a new story just 8 minutes ago, and the White House STILL hasn't denied any of the charges made in last night's memos, or in any of the other records that the Pentagon has already released to AP showing that Bush was missing in action and that he was grounded for not taking a required physical. Note what the White House had to say tonight:

"'I think you absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president,' said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. 'The polls show Senator Kerry falling behind and it's the same old recycled attacks that we've seen every time the president has come up for election.' "

That's it. Nice answer, but it's not a denial of the underlying charges, which if they were false, the White House would have no qualms about denying. Read More......

24 hours after "60 Minutes" story, no denials from the White House

Notice how, now that it's been 24 hours since the '60 Minutes' story broke about Bush disobeying a direct order in refusing to get his National Guard physical, the White House has NOT denied the story.

Sure, pretty-faced White House spokesman Dan Bartlett with his pretty hair-do (not that there's anything wrong with that) has responded that the reason Bush didn't take his physical is because he was not going to be in a flying capacity in Alabama, but notice that Bartlett is NOT denying that Bush disobeyed the order. In fact, Bartlett's statement confirms that Bush did NOT TAKE his physical. If Bush truly did NOT receive a direct order to take the physical, then that would have been the first thing Bartlett would have told us. But he didn't.

Also note that, according to AP:

"...it was the White House — not Kerry's campaign — that distributed four memos from 1972 and 1973 from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, now deceased, who was the commander of the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Houston where Bush served. The White House obtained the memos from CBS News, which said it was convinced of their authenticity, and the White House did not question their accuracy."

The White House did NOT question the memos' authenticity. If Bush KNEW FOR A FACT that the memos were false, and that therefore he wasn't really grounded, that he didn't disobey a direct order to get a physical, and that it was untrue that one of the reasons he was grounded was for failing to meet the Air Force/Air National Guard standards, then why didn't the White House just say that last night, let alone any time over the past 24 hours?

I mean, come on. The Republicans would have us believe that someone provides you with false documents about YOUR OWN MILITARY SERVICE. You know they're false, because of course you know what you were and weren't ordered to do, and you know whether you did or didn't show up to work for months at a time, BUT YOU DON'T TELL ANYONE THAT THESE DAMNING DOCUMENTS ARE OBVIOUSLY FALSE ON THEIR FACE. Rather, you freely pass the incriminating documents out to a media feeding frenzy without questioning their authenticity, EVEN THOUGH YOU KNOW THEY'RE FAKE AND YOU KNOW THAT DISSEMINATING THEM WILL HURT YOU BADLY. That scenario is so implausible as to be untrue on its face.

Let's face it, this administration won't even tell us the truth about an issue when it incriminates the president, you think they're going to freely tell us a lie that makes the president look like a cad, not to mention a lie that suggests the president violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice? Yeah, right. Read More......

Is there anything these guys DON'T lie about?

Wash Post:

This is the time in the political calendar when soothsayers point to the size of crowds at rallies to see which candidate is producing more enthusiasm. The campaigns, well aware of this practice, can't resist putting their thumbs on the scale.

On Tuesday, correspondents from The Washington Post and the Washington Times counted the crowds at President Bush's three stops in Missouri, then compared the actual figure with the official Bush campaign figure:

• Lee's Summit: Actual attendance, 8,500. Bush count, 14,000.

• Sedalia: Actual attendance, 2,200. Bush count, 3,200.

• Columbia: Actual attendance, 8,000 to 9,000. Bush count, 14,000.

It seems that the Bush campaign is inflating its crowd counts by 45 to 75 percent. Some of this may be the result of people walking through metal detectors more than once, but there's clearly some old-fashioned crowd padding going on.

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Cheney Again Lies by Linking Saddam to Al Qaeda

This is simply getting ridiculous at this point. The lies out of these people are never-ending. I mean, how does Cheney even sit there with a straight face and continue to lie about this particular justification for the war. THIS ALONE would make an incredible campaign by someone on the left to take down Cheney and his credibility (any takers?). Read More......

How indeed

Phillip writes: "How come all these republicans who could not spot obvious forgeries such as the Niger uranium documents are all of a sudden becoming experts in forensics [regarding the new "60 Minutes" memos about Bush being AWOL]?" Read More......

James Carville on The View today

"Now we found out he was given a direct order to take a physical and he refused to do that. Well here's a commander in chief, he's ordering people to storm machine gun nests, and he wouldn't storm a blood pressure monitor." - James Carville on The View today.

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Flippity-floppity

"President Bush said on Wednesday that he wanted to give a new national intelligence director 'full budgetary authority,' a sharp shift from an earlier position and an acquiescence to a major recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission." - NYT Read More......

Study: Bush Judges Most Conservative on Rights

Reuters:

"George W. Bush is the most conservative president that we have data for," Karp said. "In civil rights and liberties cases, his judges were 25 percent more conservative than those of other Republicans."

Any questions? Read More......

I heart Teresa

Reuters:

In an interview with the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Intelligencer Journal, his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, promoted her husband's health care plan.

'Only an idiot wouldn't like this,' she said. 'Of course, there are idiots.'

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From "Message: I care" to "Message: You die"

Maureen Dowd:

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have always used the president's father as a reverse lodestar. In 1992, the senior Mr. Bush wooed the voters with "Message: I care.'' So this week, Mr. Cheney wooed the voters with, Message: You die....

Why should the same group that managed to paint a flextime guardsman as a heroic commander - and a war hero as a war criminal - bother rebutting or engaging with critics?

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Interesting online chat transcript with Wash Post associate managing editor

Excerpts from an online chat today with Wash Post associate managing editor Robert Kaiser. Some quite interesting stuff, if you ask me. (Unless otherwise indicated, everything below is Kaiser speaking.)

Personally I think Bush has never fully fessed up to what he did and how he did it. Today's stories make this a little clearer, I think.
----

The Washington Post made it very clear in a long series of articles published in 1999 about Bush that he had used family connections again and again for many different purposes, apparently including getting a spot in the air national guard. By my lights, the stuff we had then on how Bush's business career was turned into a success entirely by friends in the right places, after his own efforts had not produced business success, was the most interesting. But almost no one paid any attention to that reporting.

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I have thought from the beginning of the Swift Boat controversy that it would not damage Kerry with open-minded independent voters, because the accusations against Kerry are so flimsy, and so clearly contradicted by the available record.

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I think Cheney made a serious political blunder with the statement he made day before yesterday. Our reporting, and various polls, all show growing skepticism in the population about the administration's scary statements about terrorism. The intersting fact that despite allthe warnings, there was no terrorism at either convention, at the Olympics, or anywhere in the U.S. so far this year is a reminder that when you cry wolf, you pay a price. The credibility of our leaders on this subject is not great, and is not improving.

So for Cheney to weigh in as he did really surprised me. It left him open to scathing criticism like Richard Cohen's in today's paper, to which I hope we can link here.

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Reading, Mass.: Would you agree that the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy is that the documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying and that President Bush did not live up to his sworn committment?

Robert G. Kaiser: Well, that's one difference. But I still want more facts about Bush.

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Maryland: George Bush likes to say that the terrorists "hate us for our freedom"...that they hate freedom and peace-loving people. Certainly, fanatic muslim groups may hate the idea of infidels impacting the purity of Islam with their sinful ways, but does anyone really believe that they hate us because we are free and live in a democracy?

Robert G. Kaiser: I've written about this in the past. I share your skepticism. Radical Islamists may well hate us for our mores, our styles of life, our hedonism, whatever, and many hate us just because we are "infidels." But I've seen no evidence that they are upset with the Bill of Rights.

----

Alexandria, Va.: So Robert, how long have you been working for Kerry? Or is it the DNC as a whole? I guess I should be relieved that you are not even attempting to be an unbiased journalist. John Kerry did "everything he could to get into the war and fight?" You're joking, right?! John Kerry tried to get out of serving, including requesting a deferment. He was turned down. Then he joined the Navy RESERVES -- the RESERVES! Which means he did the SAME THING George Bush did. The only difference is that Kerry was called to active duty.

Why not stick to the facts? Here are the facts. POW's -- people like MY UNCLE -- had to sit in captivity and listen to that "man" fabricate stories and call them war criminals. But that's not a very pretty picture of your candidate is it? I suppose that's why you avoid the facts.

Robert G. Kaiser: I have no candidate, but I confess that my stomach is turned by arguments like yours. Kerry did something most of his contemporaries at Ivy League colleges -- indeed, at all colleges -- evaded or avoided. He volunteered to fight. He killed Vietcong himself. I'm sure sorry about your uncle, but I'm also sorry that you can't give a political opponent credit for something he did 35 years ago, when he was no more your opponent than I was, or am.

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Does anyone have a hanky?

Dr. Laura's foundation is closing down. Read More......

Slam Bush Video

Brilliant.
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How many lies did Bush's spokesman tell 60 Minutees last night? BobFertik.com lists 'em all

Bob Fertik, a long-time friend and totally insane Internet activist (insane in a really REALLY good way), has just started a new blog to chronicle the details of Bush's AWOL scandal. He is in the process of listing the lies Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett (the one with the pretty hair-do) told 60 Minutes last night. Check it out. Read More......

Another CBS affiliate drops 60 Minutes story on Bush

A third CBS affiliate reportedly dropped last night's coverage of 60 Minutes, though the other two finally put the show back on the air. The third pre-emption apparently happened in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, PA. Rawstory has the, well, raw story. Read More......

And the hits just keep on comin'

The price of oil just jumped a dollar in a day. It's now at $43.90 per barrel.

Just so everyone knows, the benchmark that traders typically use as a "high" price for oil is $40. Last month the price of oil briefly hit an all-time high of over $49. So of course the administration will tell us oil prices are "down," completely ignoring the impact this has on working families.

Let's see. Americans are paying more for health care, paying more for energy, and their incomes aren't keeping up. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!


Read More......

Another witness steps forward re: Bush cocaine allegations

Sharon Bush is now denying that she confirmed to Kitty Kelley that Bush used coke at Camp David. The problem? Another person witnessed Sharon's entire conversation with Kitty in which she allegedly DID confirm the drug use. Doh! What did Sharon think, the third lunch guest wouldn't confirm the conversation? Man, even marrying a Bush apparently costs you a few brain cells. Atrios has the scoop. Read More......

Even Howard Kurtz says it's fair game

You know you're in trouble when Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, usually a pro-Bush clone, writes the following: "Bush partisans who reveled in every twist and turn of the swift boat controversy are hardly in a position to argue that the president's past life should be strictly off limits." Read More......

Health care costs up 11.2%, fourth straight annual jump

Employers are cutting back health benefits and costs just keep going up. We need a real plan for this crisis. It's nice to see that corporate CEOs continue to rake in the bucks while employees continue to get less and less. We must be completely stupid to tollerate this.

The cumulative effect of rising health care costs is taking a toll on workers: There are at least 5 million fewer jobs providing health insurance in 2004 than there were in 2001, according to the survey of 3,017 companies by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust.

This year, 63 percent of firms offered health benefits to workers, down from 68 percent in 2001. The change is primarily driven by a decrease in the number of small firms, those with 3 to 199 workers, that offer coverage.

The average premium for a family of four grew to $9,950 annually. The family premium for a preferred provider organization, the most common type of insurance, hit $10,217 — the first time it broke the $10,000 barrier

Altman noted that the hike in health premiums outpaced both the 2.2 percent growth in wages and 2.3 percent growth in inflation by five times.

Since 2001, employee contributions increased 57 percent for single coverage and 49 percent for family coverage.

Read More......

Explosion in front of Aussie Embassy in Jakarta, 7 dead

I thought we were told the world is getter safer yet the US State Department had already released a warning to US citizens about travel in Indonesia.
Read More......

Iraqi war intensifying, US death toll jumps even after turnover

It's not getting better as Bush says and there is nothing that says it will improve anytime soon.

A total of 148 U.S. military personnel have been killed since the partial transfer of sovereignty on June 28, compared with 138 who died in March and April of 2003, Pentagon figures show.

The wide geographic dispersion of the violence reflects the strength of a resurgent opposition and also frames the challenge U.S. commanders face in the coming months as the United States seeks to hold an election to establish a new Iraqi government, said military officers and defense analysts.

Meanwhile Rummy is somehow trying to spin it to look better than it is by telling us that they're losing more than we are. Like in Vietnam, that may be the case but we don't have the numbers that will allow us to sustain high losses. At least he's not yet comparing the US deaths in Iraq to US military training deaths as some wingnuts are already doing.
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WHITE HOUSE CAUGHT IN COVER UP

Note this little paragraph buried in an AP story tonight:

"After the [60 Minutes] broadcast, the White House, without comment, released to the news media two of the memos [mentioned in the broadcast], one ordering Bush to report for his physical exam and the other suspending him from flight status."

UPDATE: AP just updated the story, deleting that paragraph and now making the release of the new memos THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF THE STORY. I think AP suddenly realized the significance of the memos, at least content-wise, though they still haven't commented on "where the heck did they suddenly come from". The new first paragraph:

The White House released memos Wednesday night saying that George W. Bush was suspended from flying fighter jets for failing to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard.

FURTHER UPDATE: Now BOTH paragraphs have been dropped from the AP story. I'm talking to AP to find out whether the White House did or did not release these two docs last night as was initially reported.

Yeah, you better not have a comment until you talk to your lawyers because it looks like you just got caught in a conspiracy to withhold documents that you were legally bound to have already released under the Associated Press' earlier FOIA request.

The White House claimed they had released ALL the documents, now tonight, conveniently after 60 Minutes shows the NEW documents on TV, the White House somehow releases the very documents it said it never had? Where did the documents come from, and why didn't the White House release them BEFORE 60 Minutes exposed their existence? And finally, what else is the White House hiding?

PS I must share credit with Rob in Baltimore for mentioning to me on the phone that additional docs were released, though I think I was the one who thought "crime!" :-) Read More......

Bush questioned and DISOBEYED A DIRECT ORDER from a superior

Now that I've watched the 60 Minutes broadcast here are a few of the biggest bombshells in my view:

1. Bush got a direct order to get a physical and then called up his commanding officer and questioned the order, trying to wriggle out of it. Who questions a superior officer's direct orders?

2. Bush disobeyed the direct order to get a physical, and according to an Air Force document obeyed by CBS, his failure to get the physical is one of the reasons he was grounded - so the White House spokesman lied tonight when implying to CBS that Bush got permission not to take his physical. Bush clearly didn't get permission as that's one of the reasons he was grounded ACCORDING TO THE AIR FORCE'S OWN MEMO.

3. Bush wasn't just grounded for failing to take his physical, which is what we were always told previously, but he ALSO was grounded for failing to uphold US Air Force/Air National Guard standards. According to the memo, the other reason Bush was grounded was because "the officer has made no attempt to meet his training certification..."

4. I'm still blown away by the fact that Bush approached his colonel, according to the recently-discovered memos, and "discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November." Imagine approaching your superior in the military and discussing how you can get out of your required military service! Even better, Bush told his commander that he was working on a campaign in Alabama for his father and may not have time - MAY NOT FRIGGIN HAVE TIME! - to take his physical, which was a direct order. The guy actually invoked the name of his father to get out of his already-watered-down military service and out of a direct order. Read More......

The Washington Post is PISSED at Bush

As Jon Stewart would say, just read it. It's clear the Washington Post is NOT happy about the getting the runaround, if not outright lies, from the administration about the non-release of all of Bush's military records. This is a front-page story, baby, and it could NOT spin any worse for Bush. Hell, the headline is "Records Say Bush Balked at Order." It's going to be VERY hard for the rest of the national media not to pick up on this story now. Read More......