Bush's advisers are freaking

According to the Wash Post, there's trouble in Republican-land. It seems Bush's advisers were "stunned" at how negative the reviews were of Bush's performance at the debate (were they high?). Even better, you now have Republican strategists talking to the media about how concerned they are. That's something the Dems usually do. Well, now the Repugs are doing the same thing. I smell trouble :-)

Bush advisers were described as stunned by how negative the reviews were of the president's performance, which many of them regarded as not his best but not so bad....

Other Republicans were privately less optimistic about the race, fearing that Kerry's debate performance could erase much of the impact of months of Bush-Cheney ads portraying the Democratic nominee as a flip-flopper. They said they were surprised by Bush's lackluster performance, even granting that the president is not the most skilled of debaters.

Asked whether he worried that Bush was on the defensive over his record in Iraq, one GOP strategist said, "I'm far less worried about that than that we had [Kerry] firmly pinned down as a wishy-washy flip-flopper and that's now not nearly as pinned down as I wish it were." The strategist, who declined to be identified to speak freely about the president's campaign, indicated that the debates offered Bush the opportunity to drive home that argument decisively and that in the Coral Gables debate he had failed to do so.

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Bush puts nuclear disarmament in Iran in jeopardy

As you know, President Bush said Kerry doesn't have what it takes to be commander in chief because he supposedly criticized our ally, Prime Minister Allawi of Iraq.

But Bush turned around and criticized our ally France today in a speech blasting Kerry. As Chris noted below, Bush said today that "The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto from countries like France."

Now, I just realized that this is the same France that Bush is counting on to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons so that we don't have to start another war in which we'll be drafting everybody under the age of 35, women included. Look at what Bush said during the debate: "On Iran, I hope we can do the same thing, continue to work with the world to convince the Iranian mullahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions. We worked very closely with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain, who have been the folks delivering the message to the mullahs that if you expect to be part of the world of nations, get rid of your nuclear programs."

Call me crazy, but President Bush is now trashing France, the very country we're counting on to deal with Iran. Is that really in America's best interest? Sure, it'll help Bush get re-elected, but since when it is okay for a president to put politics ahead of the national interest, particularly when we're talking about controlling the spread of nukes?

Now who's not fit to be commander in chief? Read More......

KERRY NOW AHEAD IN NEWSWEEK POLL

This is the same poll that had Bush ahead by 11 points a few weeks ago. It's really good.

In the first national telephone poll using a fresh sample, NEWSWEEK found the race now statistically tied among all registered voters, 47 percent of whom say they would vote for Kerry and 45 percent for George W. Bush in a three-way race.

Removing Independent candidate Ralph Nader, who draws 2 percent of the vote, widens the Kerry-Edwards lead to three points with 49 percent of the vote versus the incumbent’s 46 percent. Four weeks ago the Republican ticket, coming out of a successful convention in New York, enjoyed an 11-point lead over Kerry-Edwards with Bush pulling 52 percent of the vote and the challenger just 41 percent.

Among the three-quarters (74 percent) of registered voters who say they watched at least some of Thursday’s debate, 61 percent see Kerry as the clear winner, 19 percent pick Bush as the victor and 16 percent call it a draw....

Kerry’s perceived victory may be attributed to the fact that, by a wide margin (62 percent to 26 percent), debate watchers felt the senator came across as more confident than the president. More than half (56 percent) also see Kerry has having a better command of the facts than Bush (37 percent). As a result, the challenger’s favorability ratings (52 percent, versus 40 percent unfavorable) are better than Bush’s, who at 49 percent (and 46 percent unfavorable), has dipped below the halfway mark for the first time since July. Kerry, typically characterized as aloof and out of touch by his opponents, came across as more personally likeable than Bush (47 percent to the president’s 41 percent).

In fact, Kerry’s numbers have improved across the board, while Bush’s vulnerabilities have become more pronounced. The senator is seen as more intelligent and well-informed (80 percent, up six points over last month, compared to Bush’s steady 59 percent); as having strong leadership skills (56 percent, also up 6 points, but still less than Bush’s 62 percent) and as someone who can be trusted to make the right calls in an international crisis (51 percent, up five points and tied with Bush).

Meanwhile, Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to below the halfway mark (46 percent) for the first time since the GOP convention in late August. Nearly half of all voters (48 percent) say they do not want to see Bush re-elected, while 46 percent say they do. Still, a majority of voters (55 percent versus 29 percent) believe the president will be re-hired on Nov. 2.

Neither man was seen as a particularly stronger leader (44 percent Bush, 47 percent Kerry), more negative (37 percent Bush, 36 percent Kerry) or more honest (43 percent Bush, 45 percent Kerry).

Perhaps because the debate topic focused on foreign policy—and largely was dominated by the war in Iraq—that issue rates higher as a voter concern than it did a month ago. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6159637/site/newsweek/And key for the president is the fact that he is the preferred man on the issues more important to voters. On homeland security, Bush is preferred 52 percent to Kerry’s 40 percent (a significant spread, but a narrowing one: Last month the spread, in the president’s favor, was 58 percent to 34 percent). On Iraq Bush is preferred 49 percent to 44 percent (compared to 54 percent versus 39 percent a month ago). Kerry is even with the president on the question of which man is better suited to guide foreign policy in general (48 percent Bush to the challenger’s 46 percent) and clamping down on the proliferation of nuclear materiel (47 percent Bush, 43 percent Kerry).

Where Kerry clearly leads is on domestic issues, which will be the focus of the third debate on Oct. 13, in Tempe, Ariz. The Democrat is preferred to Bush by double-digit spreads on who would be better at handling the economy (52 percent to 39 percent), foreign competition (54 percent to 36 percent) and health care (56 percent to 34 percent).

Although the subject of the draft was only briefly addressed during the debate, four in ten voters (38 percent) believe that because of the war in Iraq—which 50 percent of all voters now view as unnecessary—a second Bush administration would reinstate the draft. Just 18 percent feel the same would happen if Kerry were elected. Nearly two thirds (62 percent) feel a draft should not be considered at this time and 28 percent said a draft should at least be considered. But only 46 percent feel going to war was the right decision in the first place with just as many (45 percent) under the impression that the administration deliberately misled the nation into war with falsified evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, echoing a recurring refrain of Kerry’s, more than half of all voters (51 percent) think the Bush administration has not done enough to engage other nations (43 percent feel they have done enough or even gone too far in that direction as it is).

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FOX News runs SECOND fake story attacking Kerry this week

For the second time this week, liberal bloggers caught FOX News running totally fake new stories. In one case, FOX ran a made-up story about Kerry talking to women about doing his fingernails. The story was a fictitious parody written by a FOX reporter and reported on TV and on the Web as REAL news. And just today FOX currently has on its Web site a story quoting a fictitious organization called "Communists for Kerry." FOX quotes this group as a REAL group supporting Kerry, when in fact it has been discovered, with not a lot of research, that the group is a Republican 527 that is simply a parody of Kerry supporters. That didn't stop FOX from quoting the group AS REAL in its story here:



As Atrios and others pointed out, if you go online to communistsforkerry.com and click on "about us" here is what you find:



Yes, a Republican parody club. Gee, now that took a lot of journalism to find that out.

Perhaps it's time to start calling local advertisers and urging them to stop advertising on fake news shows. Atrios has more on this latest FOX outrage. Read More......

Kill da WA-bbit

(Thanks to Brian for creating this. The pun is on Business Week calling Bush Elmer Befuddled.) Read More......

Bush Message of the Day: FRANCE SUCKS

From a great LA Times article. President Bush's answer to our foreign policy challenges:

"The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto from countries like France," the president told a crowd of several thousand in Allentown.

This is the President's message today on how we move ahead in foreign policy? Bash France? I have to assume that this has something to do with the fact that Kerry talked about a "global test." Bush clearly didn't get it - "global test" was merely a euphemism for "bullshit test."

Some good Kerry knock downs of the administration's weak Homeland Security strategy:

Kerry spent Friday campaigning in Florida — perhaps the key state up for grabs on Nov. 2. At stops in Tampa and the Orlando area, he seized on a new government report that faulted the Bush administration for failing to create a single, definitive "watch list" for suspected terrorists.

"It's a complete failure, and yet this president stands there and pretends to America we're doing all that we can," Kerry told a crowd at the University of South Florida campus in Tampa.

A little more on the bullshit test. $200 billion in Iraq when you didn't finish the job here first? That's bullshit.

Feel free to apply the bullshit test across this administration:

• Drilling in ANWR.
• Hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit spending right before the baby boomers retire.
• Bans on stem cell research.
• Proposing the first amendment to the Constitution to restrict civil rights.
• Blocking the morning after pill from going over the counter.

Add your own ideas to the list.

Click on the rating at the bottom of this Yahoo page. Move this story up in the rankings, it's great. Read More......

Bush's snippy smirk even more in the news now

Interestingly, this article in today's Wash Post noted that the reporters on the scene were in another room watching the debate on TV. But they were getting a feed that didn't show the back and forth that TV viewers at home were getting, so many didn't see the horrible scowls and faces Bush was making. THAT'S why the story didn't get out initially, but that's why it's getting out now. Which honestly is great because it's giving the story more legs - a whole new round of stories, like this one in the Post, talking about how disastrous Bush's expressions were.

The post-debate spin is starting to set in stone, and it ain't goood for chimpy. Read More......

Wash Post focus groups HATED Bush

This is a GREAT article. The conventional wisdom is sinking in that Bush sucked. Of course, the title of the story on the Wash Post home page (which is NOT the actual title of the print story) is "Kerry edged Bush in debate, viewers say." Edged? The article says they HATED Bush and even the Republicans in the focus group thought Kerry beat Bush. Jesus, what it it with this paper? Read More......

Cuban-Americans for Kerry

More evidence that the president needs all the illegal vote-stealing and registration-purging help he can get in Florida.

One Floridian on the New travel and remittance restrictions imposed by the administration on Cuba:

"What Bush is doing is choking Cuban people by the neck. . . . The grass-roots people are paying the price, not the government," Beruvides's father, Miguel Beruvides, 58, said bitterly. The measures are "inhumane" and "against families," he said, trying to calm his wife, who has been crying since the rules were announced.

Wonder who he's voting for? Read More......

The Yes Men are coming

I wasn't aware of the Yes Men before reading about them today but their website is fantastic and now they have a movie opening in a few cities. Some of the pranks listed on their site include creating "Smokey the Log", passing out their USA Patriot Pledge document at the GOP Convention and adding an oil derrick to their "Yes, Bush Can!" tour bus.

Bichelbaum and his partner in "identity correction" crime, Mike Bonanno, spent three years impersonating World Trade Organization spokesmen at business conferences.

"We are campaigning for Bush actually. We have a 'Yes, Bush Can!' campaign bus with a quote 'I'm telling the truth' on the side and we are traveling around the country making his policies a little more clear than he cares to make them himself," Bonanno told Reuters.

"For example we are campaigning in favor of global warming, in favor of cutting down the forests and in favor of invading more countries.

"We're taking all the double speak and spin that comes out of the Bush administration and saying it frankly. Our goal is to get people to react badly, but we can't get them NOT to take us seriously," he said.

Be sure and check out their blog as well which includes a Bush-Cheney announcement regarding Smokey the Log. Here's a bit of it:

To popularize this approach, the Bush campaign has unveiled a new mascot for the USDA Forest Service: Smokey the Log. Smokey the Log is a replacement for Smokey the Bear, as bears have little use and are therefore not appropriate in the modern forestry context. On a recent canvassing tour, Smokey the Log collected numerous signatures in favor of logging Yellowstone and Yosemite, and received a hearty hug from Congressional Candidate Jim Feldkamp and much appreciation from Oregon governor Victor G. Atiyeh (www.CheneyBush.com/smokey/atiyeh/).

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Is this precision? Is this what conviction looks like?

There have been quite a few photos like this recently after so-called "precision" strikes. The story this time is that the safehouse was loaded with ammunition. That may very well have been the case but the end result of such "precision" strikes includes civilian deaths. If we have any hope of winning over the locals, killing them is not helping our cause. The US is surely using such tactics to avoid US casualties which are havivng an impact on the US election cycle, but the message to the Iraqi people must be that their lives are worth considerably less than the occupiers. Iraqi casualties have shot up in recent weeks and we are no closer to victory. For a guy who likes to think that he stands firm in his beliefs, he is being kicked around a lot by US domestic politics in his war in Iraq. Remember how he pulled back, twice, from Falluja because of political issues in the US such as the GOP Convention? This guy is flapping in the breeze right now, changing on a daily basis depending on what his advisors think will help him get elected. Talk about a wimp. Where's the conviction?

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Reminder of what is on the line in the election: Supreme Court nominations

It's been discussed a few times before, but it needs to be reviewed again. A second Bush term will have a serious impact on the Supreme Court nominations, not to mention the numerous federal appointments.

Bush said at the Republican Convention in New York that he supports judges who strictly interpret the law, while Kerry has vowed to appoint judges who "protect our rights and liberties."

"The makeup of the Supreme Court could well be one of the next president's most lasting and far-reaching legacies," said Ralph Neas of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way Foundation.

The conservative Family Research Council agreed. Its president, Tony Perkins, said the court's future composition was very important, even though it has been overshadowed as a campaign issue by the economy and the government's war on terrorism.

Bush has cited Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, widely regarded as two of the court's most conservative members, as models for his appointments.

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Dem's still fighting in the trenches for overseas votes

The Dem's are still pounding away on the overseas ballot issue and rightly so. Every last vote counts and this battle needs to be won in the trenches. My wife and I attended a meeting with the Democrats Abroad here in Paris on Thursday and there was an informal poll of the crowd to see who had received their overseas ballots and most of the people had received their ballots. It looked as though there were only about 4 or 5 people who did not receive their ballots. I was quite pleased myself because my ballot had arrived earlier that day, though the envelope was open, whatever that was supposed to mean.

The Dem's Abroad in Paris have been very active with encouraging local Dem's to come to various events to pick up backup ballots which I think is a good idea. We need every last vote and over here, we outnumber the Rep's by a large margin. The only problem I saw Thursday night (prior to the debate) was the usual hand-wringing and feeling of gloom that the media likes to promote. The polls, no matter how off they may be, do have an impact and do bring on the feeling of despair that was hovering over the crowd. The blog efforts to pick apart the bias of the polls needs to keep going so people know that this is a close race. The Dem online coup needs to continue as well to let the bastards know that we are not caving in and giving an inch to the right wingnut smear machine. Don't give in to the hang-wringing crowd. The Rep's are in retreat so boot them in the ass as they are being run out of town. If they fall again, boot them again. Do what you can to help and do not give an inch.
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