Bush to use politics of fear on Social Security

Washington Post reports today that the White House is gearing up for a major effort to push through their plan to destroy Social Security and America's financial infrastructure. Apparently, it will be modeled on the 2004 Presidential campaign so we can be guaranteed there will be a lot of lies and a lot of fear-mongering. From the Post:

President Bush plans to reactivate his reelection campaign's network of donors and activists to build pressure on lawmakers to allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market, according to Republican strategists.

White House allies are launching a market-research project to figure out how to sell the plan in the most comprehensible and appealing way, and Republican marketing and public-relations gurus are building teams of consultants to promote it, the strategists said.

The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away.

None of this should come as a surprise. The key question is whether the Democrats have figured out a strategy to defeat Bush this time around.

The Post also reports that the brains behind this effort will once again be Karl Rove and the star of Americablog's "Mehlman Mondays," the incoming chair of the RNC, Ken Mehlman.

The same architects of Bush's political victories will be masterminding the new campaign, led by political strategists Karl Rove at the White House and Ken Mehlman at the Republican National Committee.

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Having some blogger issues - open thread

No post for a while as blogger is being weird. Emailed them, waiting for a response. And please don't tell me blogger works better with a Mac :-) Read More......

New CIA report confirms Iraq is a new terror breeding ground

Mission Accomplished, George. On the ground training for terrorists thanks to Bush.

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.

Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."

"At the moment," NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist activity."

But as instability in Iraq grew after the toppling of Hussein, and resentment toward the United States intensified in the Muslim world, hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders. They found tons of unprotected weapons caches that, military officials say, they are now using against U.S. troops. Foreign terrorists are believed to make up a large portion of today's suicide bombers, and U.S. intelligence officials say these foreigners are forming tactical, ever-changing alliances with former Baathist fighters and other insurgents.

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