Monthly Archives: September 2006

John McCain 2000: The Swiftboaters’ First Mission

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This piece originally appeared on The Patriot Project
Imagine that it’s 1997, and you’re a strategist trying to figure out how to get George W. Bush, of all people, into the White House. Your candidate’s record is, to put it mildly, not so great: he had been elected Governor of Texas in 1994 and before that … well … never mind. His term as government is marked by cronyism and corruption, and if elected to the nation’s highest office it promises to be more of the same.
If you’re going to win this you will need to mask your candidate’s record and agenda. You need a strategy that turns your opponent’s advantages into disadvantages, and, most important, that distracts everyone from your own candidate’s awful record. And to accomplish this you need a team that is willing and cynical enough to do what it is going to take to sell your guy. Bush’s top strategist Karl Rove learned his licks alongside Lee Atwater. Rove and Atwater went back a long ways,

Back in 1972, the 22-year-old Rove was a candidate for chairman of the College Republicans. The rambunctious Atwater was his Southern regional coordinator.

What kind of campaign schooling did Rove receive? In 1981 Atwater, then a Reagan strategist, said in an interview,

You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff.

In 1988, Atwater ran Bush’s father’s campaign against Michael Dukakis,

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Today’s Housing Bubble Post – Ripples

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The slowdown in the housing market is already affecting the sales of pickup trucks. Housing slowdown brakes pickup sales | Chicago Tribune,

General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the world’s three largest automakers, are discovering that a housing slump can do what record fuel prices couldn’t: cripple demand for pickup trucks.
From 1995-2005, sales of full-size pickups surged 46 percent as home builders bought them for work-related projects and consumers followed suit.
But sales are down 14 percent this year, hurt by a housing slowdown that caused existing-home prices to drop for the first time in 11 years last month.

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Congressman Foley Resigns For Some Reason

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Say what you will about Foley, he was the Congressman most dedicated to protecting children. I’m concerned about the possibility that during the period while his replacement is being selected and trained, children will not be adequately protected. Someone ought to bring this problem up with Speaker Hastert, to make sure that he replaces Foley with someone equally dedicated to child-protection.
And keep asking him, and asking him, until we get a straight answer. We need to be sure that the children are being protected.
Update:I have posted this comment on several comment threads, and a lot of people take it seriously and get mad. I don’t blame them; Republican trolls are impossible to parody, because it’s impossible to write something stupider than what they really think.

Front Group Report: Black Republican Freedom Fund

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This piece originally appeared on The Patriot Project
A new, factory-produced front group named the Black Republican Freedom Fund is running ads saying – sit down for this, and do NOT have a cup of coffee anywhere near your face – “Martin Luther King, Jr. Was a Republican.”
Last week in Patriot Project’s report, Front-Group Economic Freedom Fund and Meridian Pacific, the question was asked,

“How is it that so many front groups are able to appear just in time to spread their lies and poison into campaign seasons? It is almost as if there is a template that is used, with a factory that cranks them out, all the parts assembled, needing only a misleading name — and a target.”

That story discussed how one person is able to fund a front group that is now conducting nasty (and in one case likely illegal) “push polls” and running ads against Democrats in Congressional districts around the country.
That Patriot Project story concluded,

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It Was BUSH, Not Clinton, Who Refused To Get bin Laden!

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Well, now we know WHY there have been so many recent accusations that Clinton had a chance to kill bin Laden and did not. It’s because the Republicans knew a book was coming soon that exposed that Bush was begged to do something about bin Laden ad didn’t.
What is the STF Rule? When Republicans accuse, it means it is something THEY are guilty of.
From New York Daily News – Home – Chance at Osama pre 9/11, sez book:

CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism head Cofer Black sought an urgent meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, writes Bob Woodward in his new book “State of Denial.”
They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and “sounded the loudest warning” to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden.
… Black later calculated that all he needed was $500 million of covert action funds and reasonable authorization from President Bush to go kill Bin Laden and “he might be able to bring Bin Laden’s head back in a box,” Woodward writes.
… Tenet said he had hoped the meeting would shock Rice into encouraging the President to take immediate action against Al Qaeda.
… Woodward says that Tenet described the meeting as a “tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the 9/11 attacks.”
Tenet also claims that his alarm over Bin Laden was downplayed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who asked, “Could all this be a grand deception?”

Also see Think Progress.

Who Voted For Torture?

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Go read: Daily Kos: The REAL List Of Congressmen Responsible for Torture,

Keep this in mind. If your neighbor’s mean-ass pit bull comes into your yard and bites you, you don’t get mad at your own dog for not protecting you. First order of business is to get rid of the god-damned pit bull. After all, he’s the one that’s really responsible for your wounds. Once that’s done, then you can worry about giving your own sorry pooch some watch-dog training.

Go see the whole list, then send EACH of their challengers in this election $1000. EACH ONE!
(And if you really do that, remember my tip jar, too!)

Bush Dishonesty Ratio: 485 to 2

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So… just HOW dishonest is Bush? Well, let’s approach this scientifically. Remember in May, when the White House said that Jack Abramoff only had two contacts with the White House? White House logs list only 2 Abramoff visits – May 10, 2006,

Newly released visitor logs show disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was signed in to the White House complex on two occasions since President Bush took office in 2001, including once when the president was out of town.

Well it turns out the White House misunderestimated the number,

The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed from Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Mr. Rove’s office. [emphasis added]

So, there we have it. We can now calculate that when the White House says ’2′ the truth is ’485′.
Let’s hope they aren’t saying we’ll be occupying Iraq for 2 more years.

Kristen Breitweiser – Jersey Girl

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RADIO: Taylor Marsh has an Interview with Kristen Breitweiser on Intelligence Failures — about her new book “Wake-up Call”.
Kristen Breitweiser is one of the “Jersey Girls” — “four women from New Jersey who were widowed when their husbands were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequently researched the policy and intelligence failures that led up to the attacks.”

Although Breitweister stated that she was a Republican and she voted for George W. Bush in 2000, she became an Independent due to her anger over Bush’s response to 9/11 and vigorously supported John Kerry in 2004 and is now an outspoken critic of the Bush Administration, claiming Bush has not made the United States safer since the attacks, as well as criticizing the war in Iraq.

Jokes About Anthrax

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I hope Digby doesn’t mind too much but I’m just going to quote this entire post. I’ve had a bad day, and there’s the torture bill, and Iraq is falling apart, and the housing bubble popping threatens to explode the debt bomb and maybe I’d better start taking anti-depressants. So here’s Digby’s post:

Sick
by digby
It really takes a lot of gall for the NY Post to obnoxiously ridicule Keith Olberman for calling the police when some asshole sent some white powder to his house with a note that said it was in response to his commentary against the president. The NY Post was one of the places that the original anthrax killer hit in 2001 — and their own employees got sick.
What in the hell is wrong with these people? Jesus.

I mean, what in hell is wrong with these people? Jesus.

Other Blogs

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If you scroll down the left side of this page you will come to “Links to Other Blogs:”
What you have there is a list of LOTS of other progressive-oriented bloggers, all of them with something important to tell you.
I suggest picking a random blog, visiting and reading. You might find a new second-favorite blog. (Seeing the Forest WILL remain your first favorite.) It’s a good habit to get into, because this is about the Voice of the People. Democracy. Sticking up for each other. Kumbaya. All that stuff.
(If you find a blog that has stopped posting, etc. let me know.)

What Waterboarding IS

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Bush says waterboarding is something your government should continue doing to people. But just what IS waterboarding?
From DownWithTyranny!: OH COME ON! IS WATERBOARDING <i>THAT</i> BIG OF A DEAL?

“It’s completely illegal according to the congressinally-passed Geneva Conventions. Let Robin Williams show you what Bush has made the theme of the Republican Party, 2006.”

Click and watch.

Vote No To Republican Values.