Very good debate analysis

Some exceptional analysis today from the National Journal on tomorrow's debate (it's subscription only, so here are a few excerpts):

[I]t is becoming increasingly difficult for the collective conventional wisdom to do anything other than declare Kerry the winner of the first debate -- everything about it just screams "Kerry" to us....

First, let's look at the momentum. It's simple physics: What goes up must come down. Bush is at or near his highs for the year in many of the most influential media polls (including the erratic and increasingly suspect Gallup poll)....

As for the media's desire for a horse race, one can already sense the early start of the search for a Kerry comeback story. It's not going to take much and the snowball of coverage will go from there. The press already assumes Kerry can't connect with voters and believes these voters don't have a clear sense of his vision for the country. Well, a debate is one place where voters tune in and admit they have finally learned something about a candidate. In this case, the bar is set low enough that it's difficult to imagine Kerry failing to clear it.

And finally, Bush's debate negotiating team may have actually done more to help Kerry than they realized. Take, for instance, the campaign's insistence that the first debate focus on foreign affairs rather than domestic issues. The war on terrorism is Bush's greatest strength; the war in Iraq is potentially his greatest weakness (though it's his best weapon against Kerry). Bush has more tough questions to answer on Iraq than his challenger. The campaign has already established the Massachusetts senator as a flip-flopper but Bush is going to have to answer, for his largest audience to date, what "mission" was "accomplished" last May. He will also have to respond questions about whether his campaign surrogates are crossing the line on the fear front.

It remains unclear why the Bush camp insisted on going with foreign policy first. If the campaign truly believes foreign affairs is the ace in the hole, then why not save it? Why risk having the most watched debate center on a topic that was supposed to be Bush's strength, just to have Kerry do better than expected? If Bush ever starts losing support on terrorism or Iraq, he's in big trouble. If the president doesn't win the first debate decisively, and Kerry grabs the momentum, then Bush is going to have to make a comeback in two debates that are in less comfortable environments -- the town hall in St. Louis and the domestic policy event in Phoenix.

Also, what if the Bush camp’s decision to allow the TV audience to see the flashing light when a candidate's time expires actually focuses Kerry and keeps him on message? Wouldn't the Bush campaign have been better off to spin post-debate about the number of times Kerry went over his allotted time? Now, the entire audience will know. Sure, if Kerry does go over his time limit, it will look bad, but he's not that stupid, is he?....

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Kerry now ahead in PA

Told ya so.... :-) (Well, ok, maybe not about Pennsylvania specifically, but about this race being FAR from over.) Read More......

It's the long state to the left

I always wondered what kind of an idiot would listen to this guy, but never realized they were THAT stupid:

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Holy shit

1. Just watch it.

2. Then read more about it here. Read More......

CBS, NBC, ABC try to censor F-9/11 DVD sales

Seems the big three refused to accept commercials for the DVD version of Michael Moore's movie during any of their news shoes, including their morning shows, and quasi-news shows like Dateline. It's so close to the election, they said. Apparently, if it's not black velvet with four dogs playing poker, it ain't art according to CBS, ABC and NBC. Read More......

Tony Blair ready to negotiate with terrorists / Italy paid $1m ransom to terrorists

UPDATE: Growing confirmations that the Italian gave the terrorists $1 million to secure the release of their hostages. That should buy a lot of dead American soldiers and civilians sometime in the future. Funny, I haven't heard the White House say boo about this yet...

How quickly they fall. First we have Tony Blair trying to negotiate with terrorists - what exactly do you plan on talking to them about, Tony? And yesterday we had Italy's very conservative Prime Minister Berlusconi - the other BIG US ally in the war on terror - pay the terrorists a $1m ransom to get their hostages released. $1m bucks people (see the same article). This is a prime minister who Bush considers one of his staunchest allies in the coalition of the willing.

Three problems here:

1. Bush's coalition of the willing just became the coalition of the paying. And did anyone notice how all of this happened after the puppet Iraqi government announced last week it was going to cave to the terrorists and release Dr. Germ? Think it's just a coincidence that all the allies are now caving as well?

2. Berlusconi and Blair just raised the price on the head of every foreigner in Iraq. Want a million bucks? Kidnap a westerner. Want to talk with the Prime Minister of Britain? Kidnap a westerner. Got a special place in your heart for Dr. Germ? Kidnap a westerner.

3. And finally, thanks to our wonderful coalition of the willing ally Mr. Berlusconi, the terrorists in Iraq now have $1m more dollars than they had two days ago. Think about what kind of hell they can unleash on our troops - let alone on, say New York or Chicago - with $1m bucks in the bank.

THIS is what George Bush's war on terror has bought us. Is Bush still defending these partners as the best coalition ever? Read More......

Cover Up

AP:

Army commanders denied allegations Wednesday that soldiers have been threatened with deployment to Iraq if they do not re-enlist.

"It's just not being done," Lt. Col. David Johnson said. "We are a professional army. We want soldiers who want to be in the Army," he said.

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., has demanded an investigation into claims that Iraqi war veterans near the end of their enlistments had been given a choice between re-enlisting or being sent back to Iraq.

You tell 'em, Colonel. It simply couldn't happen, and that's your final answer. Just like Abu Ghraib didn't happen, just like all the gay-bashings/murders never happened, just like Tailhook never happened. This is a professional Army and there is no need to investigate because these things NEVER happen.

Big fat mo-fo cover up. Once again, at the expense of our troops. If anyone knows ANY service member out there who was coerced in to re-enlisting, email me - I PROMISE I will make that soldier the biggest national news story you've seen in years. Then see if they force them to serve. Read More......

GAO report says military Reserve well running dry

Big, fucking, disaster.

From the Navy Times, no less:

A new government report says the Pentagon could run out of reservists if current deployment rates continue — even as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs has confirmed plans for the next call-up announcement in November.

Over the past three years, the military has deployed 20 percent of its active-duty force but closer to 28 percent of its reserve forces, and officials say they’re concerned about long-term effects on recruiting and retention. More than 40 percent of troops in Iraq are reserve and National Guard members, a percentage expected to climb to nearly 50 percent in the months ahead.

If the Pentagon sticks to its policy of mobilizing individual reservists for no more than 24 months total, “it is possible that DoD will run out of forces,” the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reported in mid-September.

“There are already indications that some portions of the force are being stressed,” the GAO said. “For example, the Army National Guard failed to meet its recruiting goal during 14 of 20 months from October 2002 to May 2004 and ended fiscal 2003 approximately 7,800 soldiers below its recruiting goal.”

Equally significant is the growing stress on reserve-component retention in certain skills that are tapped repeatedly for operational missions. While the Army faces the greatest levels of involuntary mobilizations over the next few years, all the reserve components have career fields that have been highly stressed, the GAO said.

Why does the Navy Times hate our troops? Read More......

Read my lips

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NEWSWEEK: Dodging the draft issue

This is one hell of a story from Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

While Bush has no plans to reinstate a draft, he could be forced into it by events. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, a likely presidential candidate in 2008, says that a draft "might become necessary" in the years ahead. The threshold question before the election is this: which candidate is more likely to have so few international friends amid a crisis that he would have to move beyond the all-volunteer force?

....If we had repaired our tattered relations with them and they felt the United States was again exercising sound judgment, they would join us to de-nuclearize and stabilize Iran. If they didn't, and we faced an occupation that would make Iraq look easy, we would unquestionably have to impose a draft. It doesn't take a nuclear scientist to figure out which presidential candidate this year would have a better chance of making a fresh start in securing the cooperation of our allies when the world erupts again, in Iraq, Iran, North Korea or anywhere else....

Both Bush and Kerry insist they won't revive the draft. But someday a presidential candidate will come along who has the guts to propose national service, in which every young American serves his or her country either in the military or in community-service projects at home. Until then, beware categorical promises. "Not. Gonna. Happen." That's what President Bush's father used to say about raising taxes.

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DC's GOP council member David Catania quits GOP

Wow.

Washington, D.C. Councilman David Catania, once the GOP's top fundraiser in the District, officially quit the Republican party Wednesday over its continuing attacks on gays.

"Today marks the end of my journey as a Republican," Catania said in a statement. He is now registered as an independent.

"On a personal note, this decision is extremely painful and difficult. It will almost certainly lead to a loss of cherished friends within the Republican Party for whom I have an enormous amount of respect and gratitude. In spite of this fact, I will no longer rationalize my association with a political party that has so badly betrayed my values and principles."

I've known David since he was in law school. He's always been a great, principled guy. I never quite understood why he was a Republican, other than he was one of the good guys who hoped he could take on the bad GOPers and win. In the end, he lost. But his loss is our gain - David will continue to be a great force of good for the District, for gay people, and his parting shot at the president and party leaders who betrayed the values the GOP once held dear is worth its weight in gold. I hope he won't mind my saying that David is one more case where Bush fucked with the wrong faggot. Read More......

ZOGBY: Bush in SERIOUS trouble with young male voters

President Pinocchio is going down.

Most political pundits believe that the final month of the 2004 presidential campaign will center around the war in Iraq. If so, then young men are likely to cast a vote of “no confidence” in George W. Bush. These are the findings of a new Zogby/Williams Identity poll conducted by Zogby Interactive from September 3 through September 7, 2004. The interactive survey was conducted online among 850 males between the ages of eighteen and thirty years old.

The survey reveals that 60 percent disagree with the statement that George W. Bush made the right decision to go war with Iraq. (Only 40 percent think Bush made the correct decision.) These attitudes remain firmly held when other aspects of the war are probed. For example, 63 percent disagree with the claim that Bush made the right decision to go to war, even if the intelligence data were flawed. Strong opposition to the war among the nation’s young men has created a crisis of confidence in the president’s leadership: 59 percent believe President Bush misled the American people from the beginning about the need to go to war with Iraq.

These negative assessments of the Commander-in-Chief are held by all major racial and income groups among the young men surveyed.

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Eisenhower's son endorses Kerry

From the Union Leader:

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry....

(John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the White House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing “The White House Years,” his Presidential memoirs. He served as American ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine books, largely on military subjects.)

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Faces of the dead

UPDATE: View an enormous version of the picture here, and a medium-sized version here.



The picture was created here. Read More......

Did Bush lie to O'Reilly?

BobFertik.com says he's got the goods on President Pinocchio. Read More......

Did Drudge doctor anti-Kerry photos?

BradBlog suggests he has. As Brad's server is having issues today - perhaps it caught a draft? - I'm posting this message Brad just sent me, authored by him.
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"Drudge's Orange Alert/Yellow Journalism"

Has it come to this? Doctored pictures on the world wide web's #1 news website in order to try and defeat John Kerry?

Drudge has been running this uncredited photo since last night on his website a with the headline "KERRY ON ORANGE ALERT: SKIN TRANSITION ON EVE OF DEBATE"...



Though I was unable to find the source of Drudge's original photo (Drudge doesn't give the source for them, and he's run lifted and doctored photos before, as recently as during the Democratic Convention - ) an examination of other news photos from the same event on September 27th in Spring Green, WI, clearly suggests Drudge's photo is a phony.

This one is from Reuters..!



Note the bald man to the right of Kerry is the same man on the left of Kerry in the doctored Drudge photo (why did Drudge flip the photo? Hmmmm.)

And this one also from Reuters...



And this one from AP where though Kerry looks a bit more tan, it's nothing like the one that Drudge is running...



Note the woman in red behind Kerry in both this and the Drudge photo.

And just for good measure -- what a world -- here's an AP photo of Bush from September 24 -- undoctored -- but appearing rather orange himself...


I can't believe, frankly, with thousands dead, dying and beheaded in Iraq and the largest budget deficit in the history of mankind in this country that we're wasting our time with this kind of bullshit. Such is the case of the world, I guess, when running against the "Anything to Win" man in the White House and his cronies in the Rightwing Smear Media.

From the BRAD BLOG at www.BradFriedman.com/BradBlog where we've been knocked off line for the last 14 hours, but hope to be back up soon! Urgh! Read More......

1st time in a month, Kerry ahead in a poll!

For the first time in a month, Kerry is ahead in the latest poll. This is great news because, even though he's ahead by one point (a statistical tie), the media will now finally admit "Hey, John Kerry is catching up to Bush," and that message is very very useful.

Interestingly, if you ignore the now-discredited Gallup poll (which includes CNN and USA Today), Bush was ahead by 4 points two weeks ago, then 3 points, then 2, and now Bush is BEHIND by 1. That's a clear trend, unmistakeably.

Sure, we haven't won yet, but this bullshit about "this is Kerry's last chance" is just that, bullshit. The man has been behind by, at most, 4 points over the past two weeks, and now is FINALLY ahead in a poll. That means the race is basically tied. So smile finally, and get to work :-) Read More......

WASH POST: CIA, State Dept, and Army say Iraq is totally FUBAR, Bush is wrong

Want to really be depressed, and outraged, and stunned beyond belief? Read this front-page story in today's Washington Post. I know we post a lot of information on this blog, but this is one of those stories that is a MUST-READ. I mean it. It's a quick easy read and filled with irrefutable information about how totally fucked up Iraq has become, and worse, how totally out of touch - dare I say, lying - the Bush administration has been about Iraq.

It's difficult to know even what to say. There are American men and women dying over there, and men and women getting their limbs blown off. Tens of thousands of civilian casualties. Bush has created the very breeding ground of Al Qaeda that he was supposedly trying to destroy. And now, experts from ACROSS the intelligence and defense establishment of the federal government have come forward - lots and lots of them - to say that George Bush is lying to the American people about what is going on in Iraq.

Not only should this man not be re-elected, he shouldn't be president right now. If this isn't impeachment territory, if this isn't resignation territory, I don't know what is. We shouldn't have a campaign to defeat George Bush in November, we should have a campaign to demand his immediate resignation. This man has betrayed our troops, our country, and the world.

Ok, I've vented. I know my 11th commandment is not to whine and not to be depressed. So rather than let our anger turn to despair, we need to channel it into action. VOLUNTEER FOR THE KERRY CAMPAIGN. This last month it is CRITICAL that we have people helping get out the vote, working the phone lines, leafleting at the subways, knocking on doors. If you're pissed off then do something about it. We lost the last election by 500 some votes, people. Think you can't make a difference? Ha. VOLUNTEER NOW. Hell, at the very least you'll find other people like you who can't believe this man is our president, and who are actually doing something to end this travesty.

A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.

While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and study it at the CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say.

People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."

"Things are definitely not improving," said one U.S. government official who reads the intelligence analyses on Iraq.

"It is getting worse," agreed an Army staff officer who served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad through e-mail. "It just seems there is a lot of pessimism flowing out of theater now. There are things going on that are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year ago."

....Reports from Iraq have made one Army staff officer question whether adequate progress is being made there.

"They keep telling us that Iraqi security forces are the exit strategy, but what I hear from the ground is that they aren't working," he said. "There's a feeling that Iraqi security forces are in cahoots with the insurgents and the general public to get the occupiers out."

He added: "I hope I'm wrong."

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Haiti in chaos, Bush street thugs continue to spiral out of control

Another fine job of international action by the Bush team. The thugs that Bush supported are now running the country and have yet to turn over their weapons. For the ruling thugs, the hurricane that devastated Haiti was a new opportunity for controlling the population via foreign relief food, water and clothing. Too bad the Bushies didn't look ahead at possible consequences there either. Of course, the Bush team could care less about the problems of blacks and anyone who is not white and a conservative Christian whether it be in Haiti, Iraq, US, etc.

Victims who lost relatives, homes and belongings in Tropical Storm Jeanne are now tormented by street gangs who attack food convoys, raid homes at night and shoot those who get in their way.

The failure of Haiti's U.S.-backed government to disarm the gangs that helped oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has created a climate of instability that further jeopardizes lives after the calamity Jeanne visited on Gonaives 10 days ago.

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NY Times on overseas voting problems

Reading this article is like reading about my own difficulties recently. After sending a registered mail to the board of elections in suburban Pittsburgh for my wife, we waited and waited and waited to receive even a receipt from reception (which we paid for, costing over $8) and to date that has yet to arrive. Fortunately her ballot did arrive, after an overseas phone call to the office (again paid for by us) and once we read the document we placed it in a special place so that nothing would touch it because the instructions are rather strict, probably to avoid tampering. A special #2 pencil was mailed with the document but one mistake and it's over and she will have to request another ballot.

My own ballot is said to be in the mail (again, after an international phone call at my expense) but so far, nothing. To chase up all of this requires time and expenses. Once we mail in our votes to our respective counties in PA, we will be spending over $16 of our own money to make sure that the documents arrive properly and safely. The Dem's Abroad have even recommended that people send their papers via Federal Express. For a regular, non-military voter overseas you really have to make an effort to go through this process and you have to be willing to spend a decent amount of your own money just to make sure that your vote gets there. Having it counted is yet another worry. Staff at the election offices in both counties in PA have said that they are swamped with overseas requests, which ought to be great news from Kerry because his support is quite strong with Americans abroad.
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