Oops, Bush forgot to talk to Karl before talking to O'Reilly...

"Rove regrets using banner declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’," AP, 4/16/04
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Mr. Bush's neighborhood

Note all the latest stories on Google News about Iraq today. Then look at the last story in the list. Enough said.

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And now we're going to attack Iran too!

Oh, the fun just keeps on coming. Today President Bush made clear that the US will take military action if necessary to stop Iran from getting nukes.

Now, that's all well and good. I mean, I don't want Iran to go nuclear. But we've got a wee little problem. We don't have the military capacity to start a war with Iran right now. Apparently some jerk used up all our jelly beans attacking another country, all based on a lie. And now we're stuck in that other country, and because everything is going so well we don't want to leave.

So how are we going to enforce Bush's promise to stop Iran from getting nukes using "all options" available to him?

I'll give you a hint: rhymes with "raft"...

US President George W. Bush says "all options are on the table" for making sure Iran dismantles its nuclear program, and that Washington will never let Tehran acquire atomic weapons.

"My hope is that we can solve this diplomatically," Bush said in a three-part interview with Fox News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor" program, excerpts of which were made public on Sunday.

"Let me try to solve it diplomatically first," said Bush. "All options are on the table, of course, in any situation. But diplomacy is the first option."

The Bush administration has charged that oil-rich Iran does not need a civilian nuclear program for energy and that Tehran is actually seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

Asked whether the United States would let Iran develop that capability, Bush replied: "No, we've made it clear, our position is that they won't have a nuclear weapon."

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Time to take on the freepers - Pretend it's Florida

Folks, I can't prove it, but I have a very strong suspicion that the rightwing wackos are playing games with the news stories we see on Yahoo News, and we need to start fighting back.

At the bottom of every story there's a box that looks like this:

You can use that box to rate the story, and depending on your rating, it helps the story pop up higher in some of Yahoo's ratings.

Well, I've noticed that anti-Bush stories usually tend to have lower ratings than pro-Bush stories, and I suspect some rightwingers are making a concerted effort to throw the results.

So, what I'm asking is that every time you read a story on Yahoo, if it's pro-Kerry or pro-Democrat or makes the left look good in some way, rate it a 5. If it makes the right look bad, rate it a 5. But if the story in any way isn't helpful to our cause, rate it a 1. Just make sure you vote like this in the future whenever you visit Yahoo News. Just pretend it's Florida. Read the rest of this post...

Internal Pentagon document says Bush is a big fat liar on Iraq

Apparently when Bush said Mission Accomplished 15 months ago he meant his mission was to pretend to train lots of Iraqi troops, lie to the American public about it, then do as little as he could to spend already-appropriated reconstruction and election-related funds for Iraq, and then again lie about it. In all fairness, that mission was accomplished, and quite well at that.

Many of President Bush's assertions about progress in Iraq -- from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections -- are in dispute, according to internal Pentagon documents, lawmakers and key congressional aides on Sunday.

Bush used the visit last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to make the case that "steady progress" is being made in Iraq to counter warnings by his Democratic presidential rival, Sen. John Kerry, that the situation in reality is deteriorating.

Bush touted preparations for national elections in January, saying Iraq's electoral commission is up and running and told Americans on Saturday that "United Nations electoral advisers are on the ground in Iraq."

He said nearly 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are already at work, and that would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year.

And he promised more than $9 billion will be spent on reconstruction contracts in Iraq over the next several months.

But many of these assertions have met with skepticism from key lawmakers, congressional aides and experts, and Pentagon documents, given to lawmakers and obtained by Reuters, paint a more complicated picture....

The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained," and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force.

....22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush....

The status of election planning in Iraq is also in question. Of the $232 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the Iraqi electoral commission, it has received a mere $7 million, according to House Appropriations Committee staff....

While Bush said the commission has already hired personnel and begun setting election procedures, congressional aides said preparations in other areas were behind schedule....

With the violence expected to intensify in the run-up to the elections, congressional experts were also skeptical $9 billion could be spent on reconstruction projects within several months, as Bush asserted.

A top Republican aide briefed by the administration said, "at best," the $9 billion would be disbursed by late 2005 or early 2006. A top Democratic aide called Bush's projections "laughable."

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Kerry RIPS Bush over "Mission Accomplished" gaffe

I told you. We got ourselves a new John Kerry, and he's fighting mad :-)

Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry ripped into President Bush on Sunday for saying he had no regrets over his "Mission Accomplished" speech on Iraq and would do it again.

Kerry, expressed outrage after Bush's statement in an interview with Fox News in which he was asked if he would still have shown up in a flight suit for that May 1, 2003 speech aboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of California.

"Absolutely," Bush was quoted as saying in excerpts of the interview, which is to air this week.

Kerry, arriving in Madison, Wisconsin for debate preparations, called the statement "unbelievable."

"I will never be a president who just says mission accomplished. I will get the mission accomplished," said the Massachusetts senator. "That's the difference."

Read my earlier post about Bush's gaffe here. Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING NEWS: Bush would say "Mission Accomplished" again if had to do it all over again

UPDATE: Kerry responds :-)

The man may have just signed his political death warrant, IF the Dems pounce on this now, and I think they will. Kerry - the new Kerry - has been fast and furious, jumping quickly on every gaffe Bush has made over the past two weeks. But on this one, Bush may have just handed Kerry the keys to the White House. The Bush campaign has been quite adept at making Kerry squirm for his past support of the war resolution, but now it's Kerry's turn to put the screws to Bush. Does Bush still think that 150 deaths at the time he said Mission Accomplished, as compared to over 1,000 deaths today, still somehow marked the end of the war? Is he absolutely out of his mind?

And oh wouldn't it be juicy if FOX News helped him do it. His arrogance, his bravado, his stupidity, and his stubbornness is going to get us all killed.

President Bush said he had no regrets about donning a flight suit to give his "Mission Accomplished" speech on Iraq in May 2003 and would do it all over again if he had the chance, according to excerpts from an television interview released on Sunday.

When asked by Fox News if he still would have put on a flight suit to declare major combat operations in Iraq over, Bush replied, "Absolutely."

When Bush gave his May 1 speech fewer than 150 Americans had died in the war. Since then more than 900 have died.

Someone is DEFINITELY getting fired at FOX. Though I now read that it was O'Reilly who did the questioning. Hmmmm. O'Reilly's a funny one. I've been on his show probably 7 or 8 times and while I know a lot of you don't love the man, he sometimes can surprise you, in a good way. Meaning, sometimes he comes up with the darndest things, like coming out relatively in favor of gay marriage (not opposing it at least), in favor of gay job protection legislation, etc. He's not a FOX clone, though he sometimes plays one on TV.

The big unknown here is two-fold.

1. How did O'Reilly react? I can't imagine he let that one go by without expressing some shock.

2. How will this play out during the week? It's totally possible the prez said this on purpose, i.e., it was planned. Karl Rove has an uncanny knack for sticking with a lie until it's perceived to be the truth, and perhaps Rove has decided it's time to take "Mission Accomplished" on, big time. Take Bush's biggest negative and somehow twist it into a positive. The thing is, how do you twist 900 dead soldiers, and all the recent violence in Iraq, into something good?

But if anyone can do it, it's Bush & Co. Read the rest of this post...

Couple arrested for anti-Bush t-shirts, sues Secret Service

Yet another cautionary tale of life in Herr Bush's Amerika. This woman even lost her job with FEMA over this, then FEMA (wisely) hired her back before she became Exhibit A stumping for the Kerry campaign. Fortunately, she and her husband haven't taken "I'm sorry" for an answer. They're suing the bastards with the help of the ACLU. Good. Read the rest of this post...

Bush has "no plans" for the draft. Same way he had "no plans" for a war in Iraq

BradBlog does the hard lifting for us. Read the rest of this post...

So Bush and Allawi are BOTH liars

The Washington Post paints a rather horrifying picture of what the situation is really like in Iraq right now. A new secret report the Post their hands on shows that the situation is hardly getting better, and it's hardly limited to just 3 provinces, which both Bush and Allawi have alleged recently. So Allawi outright lied to a joint session of Congress this week, and Bush lied again, and repeatedly, about Iraq this entire past week. And this is the same man who says we won't need a draft to fix this mess - since of course, the mess doesn't exist.

In number and scope, the attacks compiled in the Kroll reports suggest a broad and intensifying campaign of insurgent violence that contrasts sharply with assessments by Bush administration officials and Iraq's interim prime minister that the instability is contained to small pockets of the country....

To many natives and foreigners living in Iraq, the portrait of progress that Allawi painted during his trip to Washington does not depict reality.

After his speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Allawi described Baghdad as "very good and safe." In fact, during the period for which security reports were available, the number of attacks in the capital averaged 22 a day....

In his remarks Thursday, Allawi did not specify the three provinces he deemed insecure, nor did he specify what he meant when he contended that violence in those provinces had been limited to "certain pockets." But since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Baghdad and three of the country's largest and most populous provinces -- Anbar in the west, Salahuddin to the north and Babil to the south -- have been the principal hotbeds of insurgent violence. And according to the Kroll reports, recent violence appears to have been widespread rather than limited....

Moreover, the security reports indicate that a majority of the hostile acts committed against U.S. and Iraqi security forces over the past two weeks have occurred outside those three provinces. For example, the cities of Amarah in the southern province of Maysan and Samawah in Muthanna province, also in the south, had long been relatively free of violence but are now experiencing frequent attacks, the reports indicate.....

The security situation has grown so dire that many of the few remaining nongovernmental aid organizations left in Iraq are making plans to withdraw.

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The Daily Show: just read it

JON STEWART: Well Stephen, what do you think is going to happen now at CBS News?

STEPHEN COLBERT, Daily Show Senior Media Correspondent: Jon, there's got to be some accountability. Dan Rather is the head, the commander in chief if you will of his organization. He's someone in the ultimate position of power who made a harmful decision based upon questionable evidence. Then, to make things worse, he stubbornly refused to admit his mistake, choosing instead to stay the course and essentially occupy this story for too long. This man has got to go!

STEWART: Uh ... we're talking about Dan Rather...?

COLBERT: Yes Jon, Dan Rather. CBS is in chaos, it's unsafe, riven by internal rivalries. If you ask me, respected, reputable outsiders need to be brought in to help the rebuilding effort.

STEWART: ... at CBS News?

COLBERT: Yeah, at CBS news! What possible other unrelated situation could my words be equally applicable to?! Now people need to be held accountable. The commander in chief, the vice president, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser -- everyone at CBS News needs to go! Jon, I can tell you, Walter Cronkite is rolling over in his grave.

STEWART: Walter Cronkite is still alive.

COLBERT: Not according to my sources ... at CBS News.

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Wash Post: Gay in the Bible Belt

BIG front-page Wash Post story on gay youth in the Bible Belt.

Michael Shackelford slides under his 1988 Chevy Cheyenne. Ratchet in hand, he peers into the truck's dark cavern, tapping his boot to Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings" drifting from the garage.

Flat on his back, staring into the cylinders and bearings, Michael fixes his truck like he wishes he could fix himself.

"I wake up and I try so hard to look at a girl," he says. "I tell myself I'm gonna be different. It doesn't work."

Michael is 17 and gay, though his mother still cries and asks, "Are you sure?" He's pretty sure. It's just that he doesn't exactly know how to be gay in rural Oklahoma. He bought some Cher CDs. He tried a body spray from Wal-Mart called Bod. He drove 22 miles to the Barnes & Noble in Tulsa, where the gay books are discreetly kept in the back of the store on a shelf labeled "Sociology."

He bought some Cher CDs! How cute! Read the rest of this post...

Here's why we're going to win

The pollsters are using election 2000 assumptions in their polls, when now we have a LOT more registered voters and a lot more likely voters (i.e., many dems who sat out last time will NOT be sitting out this time). Read the rest of this post...

Powell: No need for a draft AT THIS POINT

"There is no need for a draft at this point." - Colin Powell, ABC's This Week, 9/26/04 [emphasis added]

Kerry/Edwards say there will be no draft, period, if they're elected. Bush's people (Powell, Rummy, McLellan) have all made similar "no draft at this point" quotes. Enough said. Read the rest of this post...

ABC's 'THIS WEEK': Powell on Iraq insurgency

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it getting worse?

POWELL: Yes, it's getting worse.

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Another peaceful day in democratic loving Iraq. It's getting better.

Nothing to see here, keep moving. It's only a few bad apples and it's clearly limited in scope.

The strikes in Fallujah targeted two buildings where militants were allegedly meeting and a cluster of rebel-built fortifications used to mount attacks on nearby Marine positions, the U.S. military said. Doctors said 16 people were killed and 37 wounded.

...an American soldier was reported killed by a bomb Saturday, and the U.S. military said four Marines died in separate incidents Friday. A statement said the Marines were involved in a security operation in Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, Ramadi and other places that see frequent clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents.

In Baghdad, gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying Iraqi National Guard applicants, killing six people, police said.

The National Guard also clashed with unidentified gunmen in Haswa...

Meanwhile, five mortar shells struck the Iraqi Oil Ministry in Baghdad...

Several explosions rocked the Iraqi capital late Saturday...

In Fallujah, explosions lit up the night sky for hours before dawn Saturday and at least two buildings in the city center were wrecked, witnesses said.

Explosions rocked the city again after dark Saturday. Eight people were killed and 22 injured in the blasts...

American troops have not entered Fallujah since ending a three-week siege of the city in April that killed hundreds but have staged repeated attacks on sites the U.S. military described as being used by al-Zarqawi's followers.

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Dem's heavily outpacing Rep's in new voter registration in OH and FL

We're winning in the trenches! I've also heard that the Dem's have had over 1,000 online registrations per day for overseas voters as well. It's amazing what happens when you try and tell people that they don't count anymore.

The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas.

A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.

...in heavily Democratic areas - 60 ZIP codes mostly in the core of big cities like Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown that voted two to one or better against Mr. Bush - new registrations have more than tripled over 2000, to 63,000 from 17,000.

In Duval County [Florida], where a confusing ballot design in 2000 helped disqualify thousands of ballots in black precincts, new registrations by black voters are up 150 percent over the pace of 2000.

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