Froomkin exposes the latest Bush Campaign

Dan Froomkin's column today reviews Bush's recent speeches which trash opponents of his Iraq policy (which, everyone but Bush seems to know includes the majority of his constituents). The column includes the quote from Bush that the attacks are "baseless" and endanger our troops. With that, Froomkin eviscerates the Bush arguments:

But Bush's argument is deeply flawed. Far from being baseless, the charge that he intentionally misled the public in the run-up to war is built on a growing amount of evidence. And the longer Bush goes without refuting that evidence in detail, the more persuasive it becomes.

And his most prized talking point -- that many Democrats agreed with him at the time -- is problematic. Many of those Democrats did so because they believed the information the president gave them. Now they are coming to the conclusion that they shouldn't have.

Froomkin also lays out what we can expect from Bush. You can actually see Bush slipping back into that campaign mode of his -- from the days before he had his mandate:

Like other Bush campaigns, this one will inevitably feature the ceaseless repetition of key sound bytes -- the hope being that they will be carried, largely unchallenged, by the media -- and virulent attacks by the White House on those who dare to disagree, even going so far as to question their patriotism.

Bush can only succeed if the media does just regurgitate what he tells them. The White House press corps should save this column and refer to it frequently. Having been such patsies for Bush and Rove, they owe us some real reporting now.

In just those three paragraphs, Dan Froomkin explains the problems with the Bush Iraq strategy more clearly than almost anyone else has. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

We need to talk. Read the rest of this post...

Bush letting the Wingers set anti-contraception agenda

Another example of the Bush Administration putting the politics of the theocrats before science and health. It's not just Roe v. Wade they want to overturn. It wasn't just Terri Schiavo whose life they wanted to control. Bush wants to be involved in every single, private aspect of people's lives. They are going to figure out every way they can to do just that:

The Food and Drug Administration did not follow its usual procedures in rejecting an application for over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B, the investigating arm of Congress found today.

The Government Accountability Office also said in its 57-page report that there were questions about whether top officials of the F.D.A. made the decision to reject the application for over-the-counter sales of the drug, which is opposed by some religious conservatives, even before its own advisory committee had issued its recommendation on the matter.

Now, what would happen if Jenna or Barb Jr. needed emergency contraception? Read the rest of this post...

Does Harriet still think George is cool?

Not according to the latest notes uncovered by The New Yorker. Here's one:

October 27, 2005
Hi! Just a quick note to say that you looked heavyish last time I saw you, which, come to think of it, was this morning, in the Oval Office, when you accepted my withdrawal (which you had secretly demanded) and ruined my life and dreams and spirit. I hope we can stay friends. And, again, I am sorry for vomiting on your desk. Best to your wife (Laurel??).

Harriet Miers, NOT a Supreme Court nominee

Read the rest of this post...

Only 1 in 10 Americans would vote for a Republican congressman who supports Bush

Just when you thought the polls couldn't drop any further:

Fewer than one in 10 adults say they would prefer a congressional candidate who is a Republican and who agrees with Bush on most major issues, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday. Even among Republicans, seven of 10 are most likely to back a candidate who has at least some disagreements with the president.

And there's more:

• A 53% majority say they trust what Bush says less than they trusted previous presidents while they were in office. In a specific comparison with President Clinton, those surveyed by 48%-36% say they trust Bush less.

• A record high 60% say going to war in Iraq was "not worth it." In a finding consistent with previous polls, 54% say it was "a mistake" to send troops there.

Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post: Bush is now lying about how he lied about Iraq

I'm reposting this very important story from Saturday's Washington Post. As it was published on Saturday, many might have missed it. The Post story explains, in details, how Bush is now lying in an effort to defend how he misled the public and Congress into war.

This article is THE response to anything Bush and his staff and his apologists try to say in his defense. They're all lying, and this article, courtesy of the Washington Post, proves it. I recommend folks write letters to their local papers if they see any articles about Bush attacking the Democrats for daring to criticize him over the war. The Washington Post just blew Bush's response out of the water - it needs to be cited, repeatedly.

Read more here. Read the rest of this post...

Buchanan slams Bush

Pat Buchanan thinks Bush has left the GOP in crisis:

With the rout of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives, Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia, and President Bush’s free fall in national polls on job performance, credibility and character, the Republican Party is in imminent peril of losing the country.

He pontificates a bit, gets on immigration again, then uses the I-word.

True to the neoconservative creed, Bush launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.

Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Arab and Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.

Read the rest of this post...

Alito: Constitution doesn't protect a woman's right to an abortion

And while we're at it, that includes the right of a man to choose not to have a child as well. You're in this too, guys. Read the rest of this post...

Target digs itself a deeper hole in emergency contraceptive scandal

AMERICAblog reader, and fellow blogger, Joseph Hughes of Hughes for America, just sent me the latest response from Target about their growing emergency contraception scandal.

Full disclosure, I've worked as a consultant for Planned Parenthood for a number of years, on this issue and every other. They're a great organization, and I'd be pushing this issue even if I'd never heard of them. This issue really infuriates me, and scares me too. It isn't just about birth control. This is part of the religious right's larger agenda to "target" gays, women, and other minorities. They hope to slowly and surely take away all of our rights, one small bit at a time. That is what's going on here. Target is caving to America's Taliban, and it needs to stop.

As you may recall, Target is letting its pharmacists refuse to fill your order for emergency contracptive pills (Plan B, as it's called) simply because they find your prescription immoral. Target is now saying that they'll fill your prescription in a "timely manner" at another pharmacy, or at their pharmacy at a later time (presumably when their holier-than-thou employee is on break).

I don't know about you, but when I go to the pharmacist, I don't want him sending me to another Target 40 miles away simply because he has religious issues with my prescription. It's none of his business what prescription I'm getting filled, and short of there being a glaring mistake in my prescription a la "It's a Wonderful Life" - i.e., instead of allergy pills someone gave me cyanide - it's none of his damn business passing religious judgment on my prescriptions, my illnesses, my prefered form of treatment, or me.

I already have a priest, and he doesn't work at Target, thank you.

But Target feels otherwise. In fact, Target is now claiming - quite incredibly - that its employees' religious fanaticism is covered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yes, apparently Target employees are allowed to not sell you things based on THEIR religion. That's an absurd, and rather dangerous, legal statement from Target.

So let's ask Target if they also support the following Target employees:

- Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
- Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
- Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a "Satanic counterfeit" (read: "The Pope," in fundie-speak).
- Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS.
- Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it."
- Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
- Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed.
- Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?

Interestingly, Target responds in the email below, just issued today. It seems that Target will ONLY honor its employees constitutionally-protected (so THEY claim) religious beliefs IF that religious belief deals with Plan B. So Target is now saying that it will NOT permit its employees to exercise their supposed religious rights under the 1964 Act if the medication or product in question is anything OTHER than Plan B.

Why not?

How can Target say that the employees have an absolute right under the 1964 Act to discriminate in what they sell because of their religion, but then they don't have that same right if the product the employee objects to selling is anything other than Plan B? That makes no sense. Target can't pick and choose which civil rights it wants to grant its uber-Christian employees. Either those employees are or aren't covered under the Civil Rights Act. And if they are covered by it, I have a hard time understanding how Target is going to defend not permitting its Christian Science employees from banning aspirin or its fundamentalist Christian employees from refusing to serve gays. Are those religious beliefs somehow less meritorious than objectsions to what the fundies perceive as abortion (even though Plan B isn't abortion, the fundies claim it is)?

Is Target now in the business of deciding, Solomon-like, which religious beliefs are valid and which are not? Sure sounds like they just did.

Here's Target's most recently email:

From: Target.Response Target.Response@target.com
Date: Nov 14, 2005 11:14 AM
Subject: Filling Prescriptions

Dear Target Guest

In our ongoing effort to provide great service to our guests, Target consistently ensures that prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also requires us to accommodate our team members' sincerely held religious beliefs.

In the rare event that a pharmacist's beliefs conflict with filling a guest's prescription for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, our policy requires our pharmacists to take responsibility for ensuring that the guest's prescription is filled in a timely and respectful manner, either by another Target pharmacist or a different pharmacy.

The emergency contraceptive Plan B is the only medication for which this policy applies. Under no circumstances can the pharmacist prevent the prescription from being filled, make discourteous or judgmental remarks, or discuss his or her religious beliefs with the guest.

Target abides by all state and local laws and, in the event that other laws conflict with our policy, we follow the law.

We're surprised and disappointed by Planned Parenthood's negative campaign. We've been talking with Planned Parenthood to clarify our policy and reinforce our commitment to ensuring that our guests' prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. Our policy is similar to that of many other retailers and follows the recommendations of the American Pharmacists Association. That's why it's unclear why Target is being singled out.

We're committed to meeting the needs of our female guests and will continue to deliver upon that commitment.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

And here's Joseph's response:

Jennifer,

Target is being "singled out" because what your pharmacists are doing is wrong. If they don't want to dispense Plan B based on moral or religious views, they shouldn't have gotten into the business in the first place. They should have gotten into the ministry.

Here's how it works: I have a prescription. You fill the prescription. That's all there is to it and anything else, any hemming and hawing, any refusal based on moral or religious grounds, is not only wrong, but also morally reprehensible. And that's a shame, because I used to love shopping at Target. Until you reinstate full compliance with prescriptions, I'll never shop there again. It's as simple as that.

And I'm not the only one. There are millions more like me.

You've overstepped your bounds and are posing a safety issue to your female customers, customers who may be coming to your pharmacy as the result of a rape. That Target has chosen to side with overbearing pharmacists and not potential victims is truly shameful. And it shouldn't even be about those extreme examples. If someone needs Plan B, you should be there to fill the prescription. No questions asked.

Don't get me wrong, I think everyone's entitled to his or her own beliefs. But never should those beliefs get in the way of administering potentially life-saving medication. How many lives must Target potentially ruin before its powers that be rethink this terrible policy? What if the "different pharmacy" won't help, either? Or the one after that? I'm sorry, Jennifer, but if the unthinkable ever happens, the blood will be on Target's hands.

If Target sincerely was "committed to meeting the needs" of its female guests, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's as simple as that.

Thank you for your reply,

Joseph Hughes
Hughes for America

More on this issue from Dav Savage. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

News? Read the rest of this post...

Gov Ehrlich and Lt Gov Steele in Maryland caught in race-baiting lie over "Oreo" incident that never happened

Typical. Seems the "story" that the governor of Maryland, Bob Ehrlich, and his conservative African-American lieutenant governor have been peddling is all lies.

They've been claiming for years that the lt gov was pelted with Oreo cookies at a debate - because an "Oreo" is a word used to describe a black person who is black on the outside and white on the inside, i.e., a sell-out. Well, now there's overwhelming evidence that the incident never happened, even though the governor and his staff have been quite detailed in their descriptions of exactly how it did happen.

So now we have the governor refusing to answer questions at all:

Speaking on Stateline with the Governor on WBAL-AM yesterday, Ehrlich said he would not tolerate questions about the veracity of the incident.

"This revisionism is real dangerous. And to the extent anyone is out there now saying, 'Well, no, those Oreo cookies really weren't thrown at Mike Steele, that's now an urban legend, whatever, made up by the Republicans,' I mean these people have got to get real," Ehrlich said....

As for those who question the story, Ehrlich said yesterday: "They're not going to be able now to reinvent something that a lot of people saw. Just go ask people who were there."

Yet his spokesman recalls a veritable shower of Oreos:

Paul Schurick, Ehrlich's communications director, said last week that he saw people passing out packages of the cookies outside Morgan State University's fine arts center before the debate and that when Steele entered the auditorium about 15 minutes before the start, people let fly with the cookies.

"It was raining Oreos," Schurick said. "They were thick in the air like locusts. I was there. It was very real. It wasn't subtle.

Wow, locusts. That must have caused quite a mess:

Several debate attendees, however, could not corroborate Ehrlich and Schurick's version of events.

"It didn't happen here," said Vander Harris, operations manager of the Murphy Fine Arts Building at Morgan State. "I was in on the cleanup, and we found no cookies or anything else abnormal. There were no Oreo cookies thrown."...

Clint Coleman, a spokesman for Morgan State who was at the event, said he saw lots of unseemly behavior but no Oreos.

"There were a lot of things, disturbances, by this group of outsiders who were bent on disrupting the debate," Coleman said. "But I never actually saw Oreo cookies being thrown at him."

As for "raining Oreos," Coleman said, "I can tell you that did not happen."

Neil Duke, who moderated the event for the NAACP, said last week that he didn't see any cookies....

Funny, because the shower of locusts apparently even hit people, they said:

Most of the accounts in the past few weeks have described Steele being "pelted" by Oreos. Ehrlich said on WBAL radio that his father was hit in the head by one of the cookies. Schurick also said Ehrlich's father was hit. Schurick would not make Robert L. Ehrlich Sr. available for an interview yesterday.

Yes, now that the story has been debunked, now that it's been shown with proof that Steele and Ehrlich have lied about this story for 3 years, everyone is shutting up:

Steele campaign spokesman Leonardo Alcivar said last week that the cookies "were clearly thrown at the lieutenant governor." He said Steele would not respond to questions about the event.

You know, if Steele and Ehrlich want to use race to their advantage, and oh they do, then they need to address racial issues even when the issue at hand is their own race-baiting.

They can't have their Oreo and eat it too. Read the rest of this post...

Any good blogs from troops in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Does anyone know of any good blogs from troops in Iraq or Afghanistan? (Are they even allowed to have a blog?) Maybe a good blog from a parent or loved one of someone in Iraq? I'm not talking about a political polemic from the field (pro or con). I'm just looking to hear what the experience is like over there.

Today the President is going to use "the troops" as a backdrop as he once again tries to berate the 60% of the public opposed to his handling of the war into supporting him. Just for a moment, I'd really like to hear from the humans being used as props on the stage. What do they really think, feel, experience? It's a story that I (and I imagine others) would really like to read.

Blogs, by their nature, tell stories. I would imagine that out there, somewhere, someone is telling a really good story. If you know of one, share it in the comments. Read the rest of this post...

Karl's head is still on Fitzgerald's chopping block

All that talk about Karl Rove being in the clear was just talk. He was probably doing the spin himself...in some of his infamous super double secret background briefings. But whoever has been doing the spin has been pulling one over on the media...again. Murray Waas has the latest in National Journal:

Fitzgerald did not seek an indictment of Rove, opting to present any potential new evidence on the White House deputy chief of staff to a new grand jury. In recent days, Fitzgerald has reinterviewed several witnesses with knowledge of Rove's role in the Plame leak and talked with attorneys of other potential witnesses.

The ongoing investigation means that Rove's legal status is likely to remain up in the air until the final disposition of Libby's case. That could be two years from now, or even longer. Rove's predicament contradicts recent news accounts indicating that Fitzgerald will conclude his probe of Rove in the near future.

Rove and the White House had hoped that President Bush's most important political adviser was out of legal jeopardy when the Libby indictment was announced on October 28, and that the political fallout from the CIA leak scandal would recede with the expiration of the grand jury's term. That no longer appears to be the case.

In the article, he's being defended by Jack Abramoff's good pal, Grover Norquist. That just about sums it all up.

Bush has no credibility anymore anyway. But his attacks on opponents of the war ring extra hollow while he is harboring a traitor at the White House. Read the rest of this post...

Forrester: Bush caused my loss in NJ

Okay, Forrester was probably never going to win in New Jersey. But, let's suspend reality for a second...because now Bush is officially 0 for 2 last week. The Reverend Moon's right-wing rag proclaimed that "Bush 'sank' GOP in Virginia." Can't have a more authorative Republican source than that.

Now, the GOP candidate in New Jersey says Bush sank him, too:

In an interview published yesterday in The Star-Ledger of Newark, the state's largest newspaper, Mr. Forrester said his campaign had done "all the right things we were supposed to do." Still, he said, he could not overcome a spate of bad news for Mr. Bush, like the administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

As a result, he said, "it was not a foolish thing" that Mr. Corzine had sought repeatedly to link him to the Bush administration. "If Bush's numbers were where they were a year ago, or even six months ago, I think we would have won on Tuesday," Mr. Forrester told the newspaper, in his first interview since losing to Mr. Corzine, by 53 percent to 44 percent. "Katrina was the tipping point."

Bush is on a roll. There are a lot more Governors, Senators and Representatives left for him to sink next year. Read the rest of this post...

Monday AM Open Thread

Open thread away! Just watching the Today show and Dan Bartlett - what a liar!

So Bush is on the run in Asia this week. Eight days, and he's going to berate the public yet AGAIN on his way out of the country. He's stopping in ALASKA to talk to... you guessed it, the troops! Who is left in America who supports this "President"?

UPDATE 1: Bartlett is now on CNN's American Morning. Soledad O'Brien is doing a pretty good job kicking his ass telling him "no misleading." You go girl!

Hey Dan, someone did mislead the public - YOUR administration did. You can't berate the public into backing a war you lied about. And it's not Democrats with the most scathing attacks, it's Republicans - like Powell's former Chief of Staff. Read the rest of this post...

Late night open thread

Well I'm back from New York. :-( Read the rest of this post...