Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus!

John Edwards changed topics today and skewered Bush over the Wash Post story (in a post below) that found Bush has taken resources away from hunting Al Qaeda in order to man his Iraq tragedy.

Every day we learn something new about how things are going terribly wrong in Iraq. And more details come out about how George Bush misled the country and took his focus from Osama bin Laden to go after Saddam Hussein," Edwards said at a rally at a community center in this south Florida town....

It was at a time when we had Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda on the run," Edwards said. "Forward bases in Afghanistan were closed, they abandoned an $80 million plan to improve intelligence, and the elite commando team in charge of finding Osama bin Laden ... lost more than two thirds (of) its fighting strength."

"Why did George Bush make this choice? So he could invade Iraq -- a country that had no connection to September 11 and no weapons of mass destruction," Edwards said.

"This is not leadership, this is incompetence. We could do better in this country," he said to cheers from the crowd.

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Poll: Flu Shot Shortage Worries Americans

This is what happens you elect a moron as president. Oh that's right, he wasn't elected.

More than half of the many Americans with a relative who is at high risk of danger from getting the flu say they're worried about the vaccine shortage, according to an Associated Press poll about the crisis that has health officials scrambling for solutions and politicians blaming each other.

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ABC's Terry Moran's anti-Kerry bias

What is it with that guy? He just ran the piece about the new Bush "wolves" ad attacking Kerry, and says the following, and I paraphrase:

While Kerry did propose intelligence cuts in the 90s, senior republicans in congress did too, but kerry's cuts were larger and across the board.

Then he puts the exact phrase "Cuts were larger and across the board" in BIG bold letters on the screen next to Kerry's face.

Well, call me crazy, but didn't Porter Goss, the new CIA chief for Bush, propose CIA cuts at the same time that were, oh, 5 or 6 times larger than Kerry's? Why, yes, I'm right. From the Washington Post:

"The Bush reelection campaign has been blasting Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry as deeply irresponsible for proposing intelligence cuts at the same time. A Bush campaign ad released on Aug. 13 carried a headline: 'John Kerry...proposed slashing Intelligence Budget 6 Billion Dollars.' But the cuts Goss supported are larger than those proposed by Kerry and specifically targeted the 'human intelligence' that has recently been found lacking. The recent report by the commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks called for more spending on human intelligence." (Washington Post, 8/24/04)

Sure, Moran is apparently "correct" that Kerry's cuts were larger and across the board, but Bush's own CIA director wanted even LARGER cuts, and that's not relevant to this story? If I know this fact by simply reading the Wash Post, why doesn't Terry Moran or his people?

I'm sorry, I know people can make mistakes, but that was a nasty segment - blowing up the words next to Kerry's face, when in fact, Kerry has proposed less than Bush's own CIA director. Totally irresponsible one week before an election. And doing it in the context of reporting on the wolf ad basically says Bush is right. Way to go, ABC. Read More......

Video of Ann Coulter getting attacked by pies

Priceless. Read More......

Wash Post: Iraq war undercut search for Osama

This article is long and horrifying. I strongly suggest you read it through. Kerry's people have GOT to pick up on this. It is atrocious what Bush has done. He chose to take resources away from the fight against Osama and Al Qaeda in order to go after Iraq. And then he lied about the "success" they've had capturing the Al Qaeda leaders. Folks, it's getting to the point where you wonder what kind of banana republic live in. The GOP Congress does not while the president sells our lives down the river, IGNORING AL QAEDA in his Quixotic quest for Saddam. Read this:

1. Resources moved from Afgh. to Iraq

In the second half of March 2002, as the Bush administration mapped its next steps against al Qaeda, Deputy CIA Director John E. McLaughlin brought an unexpected message to the White House Situation Room. According to two people with firsthand knowledge, he told senior members of the president's national security team that the CIA was scaling back operations in Afghanistan.

That announcement marked a year-long drawdown of specialized military and intelligence resources from the geographic center of combat with Osama bin Laden. As jihadist enemies reorganized, slipping back and forth from Pakistan and Iran, the CIA closed forward bases in the cities of Herat, Mazar-e Sharif and Kandahar. The agency put off an $80 million plan to train and equip a friendly intelligence service for the new U.S.-installed Afghan government. Replacements did not keep pace with departures as case officers finished six-week tours. And Task Force 5 -- a covert commando team that led the hunt for bin Laden and his lieutenants in the border region -- lost more than two-thirds of its fighting strength.

The commandos, their high-tech surveillance equipment and other assets would instead surge toward Iraq through 2002 and early 2003, as President Bush prepared for the March invasion that would extend the field of battle in the nation's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks....

2. Bush and Cheney have lied about our success in targeting Al Qaeda

Classified government tallies, moreover, suggest that Bush and Vice President Cheney have inflated the [Al Qaeda] manhunt's success in their reelection bid....

3. Iraq took resources from targeting Al Qaeda

Twenty months after the invasion of Iraq, the question of whether Americans are safer from terrorism because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power hinges on subjective judgment about might-have-beens. What is not in dispute, among scores of career national security officials and political appointees interviewed periodically since 2002, is that Bush's choice had opportunity costs -- first in postwar Afghanistan, then elsewhere. Iraq, they said, became a voracious consumer of time, money, personnel and diplomatic capital -- as well as the scarce tools of covert force on which Bush prefers to rely -- that until then were engaged against al Qaeda and its sources of direct support....

4. It's irrelevant that the Arab world now loathes us

Bush and his aides most often deflect questions about recent global polls that have found sharply rising anti-U.S. sentiment in Arab and Muslim countries and in Europe, but one of them addressed it in a recent interview. Speaking for the president by White House arrangement, but declining to be identified, a high-ranking national security official said of the hostility detected in surveys: "I don't think it matters. It's about keeping the country safe, and I don't think that matters."....

5. More about Bush & Cheney lying about Al Qaeda arrests

More significant than the bottom line, government analysts said, is the trend. Of the al Qaeda leaders accounted for, eight were killed or captured by the end of 2002. Five followed in 2003 -- notably Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the principal planner of the Sept. 11 attack. This year only one more name -- Hassan Ghul, a senior courier captured infiltrating Iraq -- could be crossed off....

As the manhunt results declined, the Bush administration has portrayed growing success. Early last year, the president's top advisers generally said in public that more than one-third of those most wanted had been found. Late this year it became a staple of presidential campaign rhetoric that, as Bush put it in the Sept. 30 debate with Kerry, "75 percent of known al Qaeda leaders have been brought to justice."

Although some of the administration's assertions are too broadly stated to measure, some are not. Townsend, Bush's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, said "three-quarters" of "the known al Qaeda leaders on 9/11" were dead or in custody. Asked to elaborate, she said she would have to consult a list. White House spokeswoman Erin Healy referred follow-up questions to the FBI. Spokesmen for the FBI, the National Security Council and the CIA did not respond to multiple telephone calls and e-mails....

6. More proof of how we took resources away from hunting Al Qaeda to take on Iraq

At the peak of the hunt for bin Laden and his lieutenants, in early 2002, about 150 commandos operated along Afghanistan's borders with Pakistan and Iran in a top-secret team known as Task Force 5.... With Bush's shift of focus to Iraq, the special mission units called most of their troops home to prepare for a new set of high-value targets in Baghdad.... Task Force 5 dropped in strength at times to as few as 30 men. Its counterpart in Iraq, by early 2003, burgeoned to more than 200 as an insurgency grew and Hussein proved difficult to find. Late last year, the Defense Department merged the two commando teams and headquartered the reflagged Task Force 121 under Rear Adm. William H. McRaven in Baghdad....

In 2002, the CIA transferred its station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, to lead the new Iraq Issue Group. At least 30 case officers, a knowledgeable official said, joined the parallel Iraq Operations Task Force by mid-2002. By the time war came in Iraq nearly 150 case officers filled the task force and issue group on the "A Corridor" of Langley's top management. The Baghdad station became the largest since the Vietnam War, with more than 300.

Early this year, the CIA's then-station chief in Kabul reported a resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda forces in three border provinces. He proposed a spring intelligence offensive in South Waziristan and in and around Kunar province farther north. The chief, whose first name is Peter, estimated he would need 25 case officers in the field and an additional five for the station. A national security official who tracked the proposal said CIA headquarters replied that it did not have the resources to make the surge....

7. Bush is wrong when he says motivation of terrorists is "hating our freedom"

The president and his most influential advisers, many officials said, do not see those factors -- or U.S. policy overseas -- as primary contributors to the terrorism threat. Bush's explanation, in private and public, is that terrorists hate America for its freedom.

Sageman, who supports some of Bush's approach, said that analysis is "nonsense, complete nonsense. They obviously haven't looked at any surveys." The central findings of polling by the Pew Charitable Trust and others, he said, is that large majorities in much of the world "view us as a hypocritical huge beast throwing our weight around in the Middle East."

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GOP voter fraud suspect linked to Christian Coalition

Gosh. A conservative Christian who might turn out to be not so nice a fellow. Whodathunkit? Read More......

How's your 401(k), part deux

Wow. The same day bush "quietly" signs another historic corporate tax cut for oil companies, a $140 billion giveaway signed on Air Force One on its way to a campaign event, another record surge in oil prices forces the Dow Jones Industrial Average down to its lowest point of the year.

I guess a pack of wolves ate your 401(k).
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Ann Coulter hit with pie

Perhaps they simply thought she needed to eat. (Anyone find a photo of the incident?) Read More......

All they have left is fear

As I mentioned before, they're officially desperate. The bush-cheney campaign is now running a commercial that features a pack of wolves.

They can't run on the economy. They can't even run on Iraq.

This commercial proves they've conceeded on basically every issue. All they can do is try to scare people into thinking if you vote for Kerry, terrorists will attack us and Kerry will blink.

Have they forgotten we were attacked under THIS president's watch? And have they forgotten what he did?

MY. PET. GOAT.
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God bless the Village Voice

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We talk Iraq, we win. We talk economy, we lose.

A friend of mine raised a good point today. Anybody else notice how when Kerry was hitting Bush hard on Iraq, he did better in the polls, and now that he seems to be devoting his time to talking about the economy, the polls are stagnant (or in the Wash Post tracking poll, Bush is actually doing a bit better)? I remember being a bit concerned when I heard Kerry was switching over to talking about the economy. Iraq was working, why switch gears? Especially with today's news about the Saudis helping payroll the insurgents, and another article I'm about to post about how Bush totally emasculated the effort to find Osama, so he could get the troops to go into Iraq.

Jobs matter, but you already have the folks who are worried about their jobs. Perhaps the idea is to go after that group and get more of them to vote, and it may work. And the polls show that the top issue for folks is the economy. But when it comes down to it, the economy didn't send us all into therapy 3 years ago, security did. People may *say* their top issue is the economy, but when the fire engine goes by, they still jump through the roof. Read More......

Religious wackos ahead in Iraq poll

Oops. Bush didn't want the elections to be THAT free. The administration has described these guys winning as the "worst case scenario."

But we're winning, really. Read More......

BIG STORY: Saudis funding Iraq insurgents

Subliminal message to Kerry campaign... FUCKING USE THIS!

Iraq's new security forces are heavily infiltrated by insurgents, and the guerrilla groups have access to almost unlimited money to pay for deadly attacks, according to a U.S. defense official who provided new details on the evolution of the rebels.

A significant part of the insurgents' money is coming from sympathizers in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi government is neglecting the problem, said the official, who was authorized by the Pentagon to speak on the issue this week, but only on condition of anonymity.

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Big surprise - it's a tie!

AP is still showing a Bush-Kerry tie. Read More......

He Just Doesn't Get It

Wow, this new ad really nails it. A real joker, isn't he?
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Halliburton thanks you for your contribution

Sounds like they're going to walk away with the disputed billions of tax payer money. When accounting firms are unable to figure out where the money goes it somehow smells like payola. How can you not figure out something like this? No documentation? Who is stupid enough to actually believe such a story?
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Bunning: "I can walk, talk and chew gum at the same time"

In the most effective campaign speech he's given to date, Jim Bunning outlines his strongest qualifications to be Senator to a supportive Rotary Club audience: "I can still walk, talk and chew gum at the same time."

I think it's actually the talking part that puts him over the top. Anyone should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. But Bunning says he can talk as well. What's more, USA Today says Bunning appeared LUCID in his Q&A session after boldly asserting his motor skills. Of course, the article goes on to report:

But speaking to reporters later, Bunning reinforced an image among some that he
is out of touch when he didn't seem to know about the Army reservists in Iraq
who recently refused to go on a convoy mission. "Uh, what are you talking about?
I don't know what you are talking about," Bunning replied to a question. When
told the story had been in the news for more than a week, he said, "I don't
watch the news. And I have not read a newspaper in over six weeks. When I do
watch some TV news, I watch Fox."

He hasn't read a newspaper in six weeks. Sporadic viewing of Fox News is this guy's window on the world. He isn't aware of the most recent events in Iraq, despite his campaign commercials that say he cares so deeply about our troops there. He needed a teleprompter in his only debate and refuses to have another one. But we should vote for him because he still has rudimentary motor skills and he's apparently lucid.

By the way, Bunning's opponent, Dan Mongiardo, is a surgeon. BUT HE'S NEVER SAID HE CAN TALK AND CHEW GUM WHILE PERFORMING SURGERY. Why are you ducking the real issues, Dr. Mongiardo?
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Healthcare cost sharing, the norm?

After months of searching I received the great news that my sister finally received a new job offer. What a relief because as a single mother with two kids, it was quite stressful for her since her job was going to end next week, so it's truly excellent news that she has a new job. The downside though is the new employer (a very wealthy business, I can assure you) is sticking her with $450 per month of insurance co-payments. Wow! I knew that insurance co-pays were rising but $5400 per year? Screw the federal tax cuts, what the hell about that? Add to that rising prices at the pump, rising food costs and sagging 401K retirement programs, how can anyone not want change?

Since I no longer live and work over there, is this normal? What do you typically pay where you work? Does anyone still receive free healthcare from their employer?
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UK forces to be part of "ring of steel" around Falluja

Let's forget any of this talk about Blair being the innocent guy who has been pushed around by Bush. The British people are also going to have to stand up against their political leadership and hold them accountable as we are trying to do in the US. Blair is taking the Brits deeper and deeper into the war with reports now saying that the UK troops will not be relieving a US unit but instead will be part of the "ring of steel" around Falluja, closing off an access point into the area for the assault by US and Iraqi forces.
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Index of Leading Economic Indicators drop, 4th straight month

There are still a lot of mixed reports out there on the economy and yesterday was no exception. New applicants for unemployment dropped yet the Leading Indicators fell yet again. With all of the recent job cuts announced in recent weeks I'm not convinced that the unemployment numbers will show much great news anytime soon and the economy looks like it's sputtering as we finish the year. Meanwhile the financial markets are still nervous about the high cost of oil as well as the strong possibility of more Bush-led interventionist foreign policy. Yes, Bush is now viewed as bad for business.
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Ah, those undecideds

Not American undecideds, but Iraqi. The news out of Iraq is that the rebel forces are considerably larger than previous estimates and their support is growing. Funds appear to be coming from missing Saddam money as well as Saudi Arabia and Muslim charities. Yep, those Saudis have really clamped down on those charities to help their close friend America. Also interesting of note in this study is that foreign fighters are in the minorty and not all-controlling as the White House would like us to believe. Can we now stop telling everyone that Zarqawi is the only terrorist running around Iraq?

Perhaps the most important variable, these officials note, is that a large segment of the Iraqi population still has not decided whether to give active support to the new government.

Despite concerns about foreign fighters, American officials said the most significant challenge to the stabilization effort came from domestic Iraqi insurgents, and not from foreign terrorists, despite the violence of attacks organized or carried out by foreigners.

"It's not just one group of insurgents rallying under one cause. It's multiple groups with different causes loosely tied together by the threads of anti-U.S. sentiment, some sort of Iraqi nationalism, Muslim-Arab unity or greed."

According to data assembled by the military, about 80 percent of the violent attacks are criminal in nature - kidnappings for ransom or hijackings of convoys - with no political motivation. Of the other 20 percent, which include the most violent attacks on Iraqi security forces, the American military and international organizations, about four-fifths are attributed to domestic insurgents rather than to foreign terrorists.

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Bush ad hints that the terrorists want Kerry to win

Which is funny, since one of the two remaining terrorist states that comprise the Axis of Evil has already come out in favor of Bush's re-relection, as have the responsibles for the Madrid train bombings. Read More......

Bush ad hints that the terrorists want Kerry to win

Which is funny, since one of the two remaining terrorist states that comprise the Axis of Evil has already come out in favor of Bush's re-relection, as have the responsibles for the Madrid train bombings. Read More......