Interesting...

"About 80 percent of respondents said that Mr. Bush was either 'hiding something' or 'mostly lying' in talking about the war in Iraq." - NYT

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Navy Says Kerry's Service Awards OK'd

Actually, this is good stuff. Will cause a flurry of stories about how Kerry deserved his medals, how he was a hero, etc. Perhaps we should also thanks the nutjobs at Judicial Watch for making Kerry's heroism a story ago. Read the rest of this post...

GOP mailing tells West Virginians: The Dems like the homos

It really is time to out every last one of them. Speaking of which, our phone lines are still open. Got a tip, send me an email. Read the rest of this post...

Bad luck, or big mother con artist? You decide

Remember we told you earlier about Phil Parlock, the Republican man in West Virginia who seems to have REAL bad luck attending presidential political rallies where Democrats seem to constantly attack him, rip his 3 year old daughter's sign, etc? Well, the blogosphere just discovered (and emailed me) yet ANOTHER incident just two weeks ago involving this man. Yes, we now have a fourth incident. This time, shots were "fired" at the guy while watching the president's acceptance speech at a local GOP gathering in W. VA. Uh huh.

Filing a false police report is a crime where I live. Anybody want to check in with the local police in Huntington, W. VA. and tip them off to this uncanny coincidence?

SHOT FIRED
By: Dee Delancey

PAT LATE NIGHT GUNFIRE IN DOWNTOWN HUNTINGTON. THE TARGET? A REPUBLICAN POLITICAL GATHERING. DEE DELANCEY JOINS US LIVE FROM OUR PUTNAM NEWSROOM. DEE, IT HAPPENED AS G-O-P FAITHFUL WERE WATCHING THE PRESIDENT ON T-V? Dee Delancey ON A NIGHT OF REPUBLICAN CELEBRATION NEARLY ENDS IN TRAGEDY IN HUNTINGTON.

NEARLY TWO DOZEN PEOPLE ESCAPED INJURY AFTER AN UNKNOWN ASSAILANT FIRED A SINGLE GUNSHOT AT THE LOCAL G-O-P HEADQUARTERS.

Lyons; Maybe the guy will come back again and I can get a hold of him.

THE BULLET SLAMMED INTO THE FRONT WINDOW AS LOCAL REPUBLICANS WATCH THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.

Lyons; If they have a taget why don't they go get it? Face up! Whoever did it is nothing but a coward if you are listening out there. You come by again and maybe I'll be here.

DeLancey; There continues to be a serious impact for the Republican today. There office in Cabell County shut down due to this gunfire.

NO-ON IS TAKING THE VIOLENT ACT LIGHTLY.

Howard; To think now that's going to be in the back of our minds whether or not there's going to be somebody shooting at us. It's just insane. Definately crosses the line.

DeLancey; We're standing here right now? Howard; That's right. We could be targets out here right now.

PEOPLE HERE SAY DEMONSTRATIONS LIKE THIS MAY BE ACCEPTABLE, THIS IS NOT.

Parlock; I think this is definately, definately an act that was by an extremeist kind of thing.

DEE FORTUNATELY, NO-ONE WAS HURT. POLICE ARE STILL INVESTIGATING. I'M DEE DELANCEY REPORTING LIVE IN OUR PUTNAM NEWSROOM.

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Bush getting ready to call up more troops after election?

Bush denies it. Which pretty much much confirms it's true. Read the rest of this post...

CONTEST TIME: Design a protest sign, and Freeway Blogger will use it

UPDATE: I'm moving this to the top of the blog until 6pm Eastern time so you can all make sure to get your suggestions in - then I'm going to cull through the suggestions and post the best ones for further comment. Thanks, JOHN

You may, or may not, be familiar with FreewayBlogger.com. He's a guy who makes signs for about 75 cents a piece, and then posts them on overpasses to freeways during rush hour, so ten thousand people are forced to read them. It's a brilliant idea, and now it could be YOUR brilliant idea.

The Freeway Blogger has told me that he'd like YOU to come up with your BEST freeway sign, and he'll put it up. So, I want your best suggestions, then we'll all vote on 'em :-) Best one, the Freeway Blogger will use. Just some quick advice. Check out some of the signs he's already done to give you an idea of what to shoot for. The only caveat is that this has to be a sign that can win people over, not turn them off (i.e., nothing too risque, no swear words, etc.)

Some examples of past signs:







You get the picture. So, post your suggestions! Read the rest of this post...

When the knock on the door comes, can we throw them in camps too?

I mean, if I'm going, I'm taking them with me. Read the rest of this post...

House GOP to Reject 9/11 Commission Recommendation

The House GOP is joining with President Bush in rejecting the recommendations of the 9.11 commission - the commission that THEY DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO SET UP - with regards to the new national intelligence chief. Kerry ought to rip them all a new one. Read the rest of this post...

Iraq Violence Spreads to Basra, Mehdi Army Dictates What Streets Coalition Can and Cannot Use

In a sign that the insurgency is expanding into once peaceful areas like Basra, AFP reports:

Clashes erupted between British troops and Shiite Muslim militiamen in Iraq's southern city of Basra Friday, causing one British casualty, said an aide of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and the military.

The Mehdi Army opened fire after coalition forces violated an agreement not to drive in front of the street that leads to the cleric's Basra office, said Sadr's Basra representative, Sheikh Assad Basri.

"The British soldiers fired back. There was rocket-propelled grenade and light arms fire," Basri said.

Basra was once a bright spot in Iraq. Under British occupation, it had been a relatively calm city. It now seems that the British, too, are kowtowing to the Mehdi army. Just who is really in charge over there? Read the rest of this post...

$1000 to RNC if White House says EVENTS described in the CBS memos are UNTRUE

Love Bob Fertik. Read the rest of this post...

The polls are underestimating Kerry supporters

A number of you have sent me this article. It raises an excellent point. All these telephone polls are at risk of missing one-in-five voters - i.e., younger voters who only use cell phones. And the polls show that 2:1, the younger voters support Kerry over Bush. This isn't just fuzzy math, it's a very valid point.

...political polls are done by telephone. Land-line telephones, as your house phone is called.

The telephone polls do not include cellular phones. There are almost 169 million cell phones being used in America today - 168,900,019 as of Sept. 15, according to the cell phone institute in Washington....

The people who are using telephone surveys are in denial," Zogby was saying. "It is similar to the '30s, when they first started polling by telephones and there were people who laughed at that and said you couldn't trust them because not everybody had a home phone. Now they try not to mention cell phones. They don't look or listen. They go ahead with a method that is old and wrong."

Zogby points out that you don't know in which area code the cell phone user lives. Nor do you know what they do. Beyond that, you miss younger people who live on cell phones. If you do a political poll on land-line phones, you miss those from 18 to 25, and there are figures all over the place that show there are 40 million between the ages of 18 and 29, one in five eligible voters.

And the great page-one presidential polls don't come close to reflecting how these younger voters say they might vote. The majority of them use cell phones and nobody ever asks them anything.

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Laura Bush event stiffs DC bar

Hey, at least she didn't drive a car through their window.

And once you finish reading the article, feel free to call the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters and ask them why they don't pay their debts: 703.647.2700. You might want to also mention that other bill the president doesn't seem intent on paying - it's called the national debt.

From the Washington Blade:

Managers and employees of the trendy D.C. nightspot Helix lounge, are feeling a hangover from a Bush-Cheney campaign party held there on July 15, after its gay hosts reportedly walked out on their tab. The “Party for the President” — a grassroots initiative of the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign to raise money and enlist supporters — held by Armando Cortinez and his partner, Tom Duschney, drew only about 15 patrons. But the number still qualified partygoers to participate in a nationwide conference call with First Lady Laura Bush for which Cortinez reserved a conference room.

After sipping $7 Bushtinis in the front bar adorned with Bush-Cheney signs, partygoers adjourned to the room to listen to the First Lady. As the event concluded, manager Kobie Ali said, the staff presented the couple with a $205 bill. Duschney and Cortinez disappeared after they told Ali they needed to get their checkbook, he claimed.

“I was floored. I couldn’t believe it,” Ali said. “Then, when I tried to run the credit card they had used for deposit, it was declined.” Duschney, a contractor for that National Institutes of Health, told the Hill newspaper that the couple disputed the room-rental fee. He claimed the staff wanted to besmirch the couple over what some gay people see as hypocritical political beliefs. A hotel representative said attempts to contact the couple have risen to the double digits. The Helix has yet to receive an explanation, the source said. “We’re not going to discriminate on the basis of politics, but the next week we hosted a fund-raiser for John Kerry that went off without a hitch,” the representative said.

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Meanwhile, the atrocities continue while we do nothing

Arab militias are raping women in Sudan -- you know, that place where Powell used the word "genocide" to describe what's going on. That place where the head of USAID is watching refugees attack "aid workers" who won't let them talk to him and won't let them leave. That place where leaders with well-documented ties to al-Qua'ida are actively pursuing weapons of mass destruction. That place where hundreds if not thousands of innocent people are dying every day, from famine, disease, and violence.

Of course, dubya doesn't have a personal score to settle with the leaders of Sudan. So I guess his "pre-emptive" doctrine doesn't apply.
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Bush Told Months Ago Iraq Going Badly

From CNN:

The Bush administration has sought to downplay the significance of a U.S. intelligence forecast painting a pessimistic picture for the future of Iraq, insisting that predictions of difficulties ahead -- including the possibility of civil war -- were not a surprise.

Sources have confirmed to CNN that a National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was "tenuous stability" and the worst case was civil war.

These people are in MASSIVE DENIAL:

"I think that anybody that thinks that you can hold elections in the Sunni Triangle by the end of January is really smoking something," military historian Frank Fukuyama said.

And the Pentagon also admits the insurgency in Iraq is growing in both size and sophistication, and as a result, the number of U.S. war dead -- now over 1,025 -- is climbing at a faster rate than any time since major combat ended.

Spokesman for the National Security Council, Scott McCormack, Thursday described the report as "more of an academic think piece" than a forecast.

These people are in such denial that it boggles the mind to imagine a second administration. An "academic think piece"? Tell that to the mother of the dead American soldier arrested at Laura Bush's rally. Read the rest of this post...

Apparently hate IS a family value

House Republicans have objected to a Senate initiative to strengthen and expand the federal hate crimes law, probably dooming prospects for its passage this year as part of the 2005 defense authorization bill. - Wash Post

The GOP is using the hate crimes bill, and their opposition to it, to drum up religious right votes. Mel Martinez, the GOP Senate candidate in Florida, criticized adding sexual orientation to the hate crimes bill as support for the "radical gay agenda." This in spite of the fact that two top staffers on Martinez' campaign are openly-gay - his chief finance guy (who has a long-term partner) and a top strategist. And this beside the fact that one of Martinez' top supporter, GOP congressman Mark Foley of Florida is also gay (and reportedly has a long-term partner).

Ah, you know you've matured as a movement when you can be out and proud of who you are, but still stick a knife in the back of your own people AND even your own spouse. Read the rest of this post...

Consumer sentiment flat

Analysts predicted an increase of one point but I guess Americans just aren't patriotic enough.
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Voting funny business

So I just got an email this morning from my good friend GW Bush (I'm on the campaign's mailing list). In it, they're urging folks to VOTE NOW absentee rather than voting on election day. Sounds a tad fishy to me. The Republicans were caught last month (or so) urging their supporters to get absentee ballots because real ballots couldn't be trusted (at least they learned something in Florida), but I suspect something else is up as well. Bush is worried. About Iraq, about the economy, and about Kerry finally getting some cojones. They'd like to lock the vote in now, lest the voters see the catastrophy in Iraq and at home that's just around the corner.

Below is a snippet of the email. And check out the URL for the Web page on the Bush-Cheney site discussing all of this:
http://www.georgewbush.com/VoteEarly/

Of course, they made a small mistake. I believe the phrase is "Voter early AND often."

The election is less than seven weeks away and our momentum is building. As I travel the country, the crowds are big and the mood is upbeat. There is real excitement for our agenda, and I know that this enthusiasm will mean a tremendous turnout.

On Election Day, you may be one of many who will be working the polls, driving voters to their polling locations, or making Get Out the Vote calls. Our message must be: No matter what you're doing, be sure to vote. The stakes are high.

Starting today, you can request your ballot by mail, and soon you can cast an early ballot at early vote locations in your area. If you're going to be busy on November 2nd, I encourage you to take this opportunity and vote early. There's even a special page on our campaign website to make the process easier.

www.GeorgeWBush.com/VoteEarly

Using this link, you can get your Absentee/By Mail ballot request or find a list of early voting locations near you. By casting your vote early, you can avoid lines at the polls on Election Day and still be sure your voice is heard in this important election.

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Republican "Dad of the Year" exploits his 2 year old daughter for photo

Atrios has an unbelievable story right now that makes me ill. For those of you who saw the pathetic photo and story on Drudge about some poor little girl who had her Bush-Cheney sign ripped in front of her eyes, check out the real story. What a fraud! The guy has been pulling this stunt for three straight presidential elections. Worse yet, wait until you see just who the "bad guy" is that supposedly took the sign and ripped it up. Talk about revolting. Read the rest of this post...

Oil prices up despite no known damage by hurricane

Like I said the other day, the factors for high oil prices include pipeline sabotage in Iraq, peak capacity production from most OPEC countries, growing Chinese consumption and more recently the hurricane. The hurricane has come and gone but the prices are still rising. We're trading in a range now and it's going to be closer to its current number than $30 for the time being. The impact on the economy in this range will be interesting to see.
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A desperate act by desperate people

Having spent a fair amount of time in Cincinnati, "radical" or even "liberal" are not words that get tossed around much there. Proctor and Gamble is pretty mainstream America, as I recall and it operates in a very conservative town that manages to bundle in the worst elements of the old south and the worst of the midwest and it's called Cincinnati. (Yes, Mount Adams and a few places in town were less conservative, but generally speaking, the town is very right wing.)

So in that context, Christian groups are furious with P&G; and planning a boycott of their products because the company opposes a local statute to exempt gays and lesbians from special civil rights protection. Hell, I think opposing bullshit like that in Cincinnati is impressive and ought to be rewarded. Great job P&G!
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Winning hearts and minds everywhere

More shock, less awe. Civilian deaths always help win over the locals.

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Foreign hostages now over 120 in Iraq

Staggering. Is this in the country that is "headed towards democracy?"
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