Hurricane A Blessing For Bush?

This is deeply cynical -- and I have many friends in Florida who worried their homes might be destroyed -- but I can't help thinking the natural disaster Hurrican Charley is a blessing for Bush. It comes right before the election and he gets to tour the state, hang with his brother Jeb and pour oodles of money into the state. He's certain to do a better job than his dad, who famously dragged his feet in getting support to Florida after the devastating Hurricane Andrew. So Bush gets to hand out cash and look Presidential? That could be a deciding factor there.

Note to Kerry: laud Bush for acting promptly and then damn him for backtracking on his promises to New York -- New York has never gotten the funds Bush promised and his national plan to defend the country has been turned into pork barrel, with states that face little or no threat getting a LOT more money per capita than obvious targets like New York and Los Angeles and DC that are still desperately underfunded, have virtually open ports, etc.

Note to bloggers: I address one blogger's complaints at length in the comments. But let me restate the obvious: I'm noting an uncomfortable but real political fact, just like all the commentators who talk about the "bounce" Bush might get if there was an attack on American soil before the election. That isn't politicizing a terrorist attack; that's discussing the political ramifications of a real or potential tragedy. If I had suggested Bush had engineered the hurricane to gain political points, that would be politicizing something beyond his control. (We all know only Pat Robertson can control the weather.) Politically, all I did was say Kerry should continue to point out the many times when Bush has not responded rapidly in a time of national tragedy.
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Bush Administration Defies Supreme Court

Bush continues to show his disdain for the rule of law -- he's above it, don't you remember? On Friday, USA Today reported that the Bush administration is arguing against all logic that the Supreme Court ruling that said the detainees in Cuba have a right to contest their detentions don't really have any rights at all. Bush is insisting those prisoners have "no legal rights," especially the right to counsel.

Attorney for the detainees wrote, "One would never know that this case had just been to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the government made -- and lost -- virtually the same arguments it now recycles here."

Yes, Bush is refusing to abide by a ruling of the Supreme Court. This should be a much bigger issue, since Bush has a pattern of ignoring the law of the land. A U.S. District Judge in DC plans to hear arguments on Monday.
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Pakistan Keeps Mum on Latest Arrests

Pakistan arrested two people involved in a plot to assassinate top Cabinet members. They only released sketchy details. On Friday, they arrested five more members of Al Qaeda.

At the time, AP reported:

"Pakistani officials would not name the five al-Qaeda men they said were arrested in the past two days, their nationalities or their roles within the organization."

Didn't they get the memo from the Bushies who said that it was no big deal when they leaked the arrest of that al-Qaeda computer mole because everyone around them would learn about it anyway? Come on, Pakistan, get on the ball! That's no way to fight terror.
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Reservists losing their jobs thanks to Bush

Looks like Bush is pissing off yet another group of voters.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Labor Department reports receiving greater numbers of complaints under a 1994 law designed to give Guard and Reserve troops their old jobs back, or provide them with equivalent positions. Benefits and raises must be protected, as if the serviceman or servicewoman had never left.

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Vatican Cleans House (Sort Of)

That seminary in Austria that was accused of widespread sexual misconduct, harboring computers with more than 40,000 pornographic images and videos (including shots of little boys, beastiality and violent sexual scenarios) has finally been shut down a year after the scandal first broke.

But Bishop Kung -- who dismissed all this as "boyish pranks" -- is still in power and Bishop Kreen (a far right conservative) only shut the seminary down after resisting as long as possible. In classic "it was only a few soldiers" mode, Kreen blamed it all on a few seminarians.
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Bush Flip-Flops On Taxes

Actually, Bush simply has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to a national sales tax. Bush was in Florida last week and told a hand-picked audience it was an interesting idea that they ought to explore. Later, his own staff said that the President had no idea what he was talking about -- okay, they just denied that Bush is considering such a tax, even though that's exactly what he said he was doing. Nice twist? Kerry effectively slams Bush on it.
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Iran refuses to compete against Israel at Olympics

Like the Irani government is anything to crow about. I say throw the entire Irani team out.

Iran's world judo champion Arash Miresmaeili refused to compete against an Israeli Sunday, triggering a fresh crisis at the Olympic Games where race, creed or color are barred from interfering in sport.

The International Judo Federation (IJF) failed to agree how to deal with the politically explosive issue at an emergency meeting and said it would hold further talks Monday.

The burning issue was whether any penalty would hit Miresmaeili alone or the entire Iranian team, as the intrusion of the Middle East's bitter politics threatened to fly in the face of the Olympic ideal.

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Dick Cheney gay-bashes Kerry, again

It's sad to see a man with an openly lesbian daughter have no problem whatsoever continuing to use gay-bashing code to attack his political opponent. Yes, I'm talking about the "sensitive" fury that apparently broke out while I was enjoying Monaco.

First off, it's anti-gay code, pure and simple. It fits into the larger pattern the Bush-Cheney team are using to cast Kerry and Edwards as somehow less manly by attributing feminine and/or gay characteristics to them.

Second of, it's an outright lie. Read Kerry's quote, then read Cheney's spin on Kerry's quote. Outright fucking lie.

But hey, the man is willing to sell his gay daughter for votes - hell, his gay daughter is willing to sell herself, her lover, and her community for votes - so big surprise Cheney is a liar to boot.

What Kerry said:

"I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."

What Cheney says Kerry said:

"As our opponents see it, the problem isn't the thugs and murderers that we face, but our attitude. Well, the American people know better. ... Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed." (Cheney actually said more than this, check out the article for his entire quotes.)

The irony here, of course, is that it is EXACTLY Bush-Cheney's "attitude" that got us into the war in Iraq, that required the US to go it alone, and that has now given us over 900 dead Americans lost to this lie of a war. Read the rest of this post...

Two brothers, two weddings -- one gay, one straight

The Boston Globe starts a 4-part series today on marriage in Massachusetts. I think it's worth checking out. They're describing it as a story about "two brothers and their paths to the altar." Read the rest of this post...

Bush responsible for increase in TB

So not exaggerating this one. Today's front page of the Wash Post has a horrifying article on what happens when you give Republicans their anti-regulatory wet dream. People get sick and die.

I truly believe that our talking points shouldn't just be about Bush, they should be about how the Republicans got the revolution they always wanted - the White House, House and Senate - and what ensued was war, death, disease, and economic malaise. The point here isn't just to get Bush out of office, it's to make "Republican" as dirty a word as "liberal."

Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing with alarming frequency across the United States. The government began writing rules to protect 5 million people whose jobs put them in special danger. Hospitals and homeless shelters, prisons and drug treatment centers -- all would be required to test their employees for TB, hand out breathing masks and quarantine those with the disease. These steps, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration predicted, could prevent 25,000 infections a year and 135 deaths.

By the time President Bush moved into the White House, the tuberculosis rules, first envisioned in 1993, were nearly complete. But the new administration did nothing on the issue for the next three years.

Then, on the last day of 2003, in an action so obscure it was not mentioned in any major newspaper in the country, the administration canceled the rules. Voluntary measures, federal officials said, were effective enough to make regulation unnecessary.

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Younger Voters Rapidly Deserting Bush

Washington Post:

Four years ago, network exit polls found that Bush and Democrat Al Gore split the vote of 18-to-29-year-olds, with Gore claiming 48 percent and Bush getting 46 percent -- the best showing by a Republican presidential candidate in more than a decade.

But that was then. In the latest Post-ABC News poll, taken immediately after the Democratic National Convention, Kerry led Bush 2 to 1 among registered voters younger than 30. Among older voters, the race was virtually tied. About 1 in 6 voters in 2000 was between 18 and 29 years old.

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Gay issue threatens to rip open Republican convention

There may be an all-out brawl at the Republican Convention over gay rights, according to the LA Times. We're talking an old-style open convention where they fight over the party platform, and the fight this time is over an amendment to the platform that would basically reiterate the party's "open tent" mantra, including a specific reference to agreeing to disagree about gay rights.

A few interesting points here.

1. The gay Republican group Log Cabin is poking a big ole finger in Bush's eye and I'm more than a bit surprised by it. This is a big deal what they're proposing, if only because it will totally piss off the radical right AND they are now making "gay" THE issue of the convention, which is clearly not the message the Republicans want the week devoted to.

2. The proposed language the gay Republicans want is still pretty irrelevant in that the language says you agree to disagree, then the party turns around and tries to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and possibly vitiating every single pro-gay law and corporate policy in the country, the party supports taking your kids away from you if you're gay, the party wants laws on the books that throw you in jail simply for being gay, etc. Basically, the party is going to throw everything short of Auschwitz at "the gays," but we're going to pretend that this is agreeing to disagree. It's not.

But having said all of that, this is still a gutsy move by Log Cabin - gutsy because some of their members/funders, according to my sources, are anti-gay gays who care nothing about gay civil rights and everything about protecting George Bush at all costs. Taking on their own takes cojones, and they get kudos for that. And finally, as I noted, taking on Bush and risking his convention, and thus his election, is ball-sy as well.

Hopefully they stick to their guns - that remains to be seen. As does whether the gay Republican group, Log Cabin, endorses Bush's re-election when they meet in the next few weeks. Platform language or not, what matters are the president's ACTUAL policies, and on that score, no self-respecting gay person can vote for this bigot. Read the rest of this post...

Keyes Wants to End Election of Senators

Please elect me so I can take away your right to vote. Read the rest of this post...

Bush Sr. Throws First Olympic Pitch

Totally inappropriate much? Sorry, but two months before the US presidential election you don't give the father of the incumbent candidate a photo opp. Read the rest of this post...