The Bush presidency is coming to an end.
Pity Charlie Gibson. What did he do to earn the rage of George W. Bush? There he was, moderator of the second presidential "debate", and all he was attempting to do was, well, moderate, going beyond the stilted question-asking automatons that were Jim "Eyes Courtesy of My Taxidermist" Lehrer and Gwen "No Question Too Insipid" Ifill. Instead of merely allowing the candidates to blather on for an additional minute, Gibson tried, desperately at times, to get the two men to answer a direct fuckin' question. Kerry responded to Gibson, engaging him and mostly expanding on the question. However, George W. Bush chose instead to either ignore or bulldoze Gibson. It was the Old West: no tinhorn reporter's gonna ask George W. Bush a follow-up.The latest Zogby-Reuters poll gives Kerry a 3-point lead over Bush. This is a tracking poll taken from Friday through Sunday, which seems to me shows that Bush didn't help himself in the Friday debate. If You Had Seen What I Have Seen'He can run but he can't hide' See any parallels between then and now? Discuss with specific examples.
Learn about Prop 8 here.SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mormons are being asked by their church leaders to step up their already considerable efforts to pass a ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California.
Senior elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a televised appeal to members Wednesday night and laid out a week-by-week strategy for boosting Mormon involvement before the Nov. 4 election.
They urged Mormons to man phone banks, distribute campaign materials and intensify voter registration efforts during an hourlong meeting, which was broadcast to church buildings in California, Utah, Hawaii and Idaho.
The Mormon church is part of a coalition of conservative groups backing Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman and thereby overturn the California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage.
"What we're about is the work of the Lord, and he will bless you for your involvement," Elder M. Russell Ballard said during the broadcast.
McCain’s game is craps. So is Jeff Dearth’s. Jeff was at the table when McCain showed up and happily made room for him. Apparently there is some kind of rule or tradition in craps that everyone’s hands are supposed to be above the table when the dice are about to be thrown. McCain—“very likely distracted by one of the many people who approached him that evening,” Jeff says charitably—apparently was violating this rule. A small middle-aged woman at the table, apparently a “regular,” reached out and pulled McCain’s arm away. I’ll let Jeff take over the story:Read it all here.
“McCain immediately turned to the woman and said between clenched teeth: ‘DON’T TOUCH ME.’ The woman started to explain...McCain interrupted her: ‘DON’T TOUCH ME,’ he repeated viciously. The woman again tried to explain. ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO?’ McCain continued, his voice rising and his hands now raised in the ‘bring it on’ position. He was red-faced. By this time all the action at the table had stopped. I was completely shocked. McCain had totally lost it, and in the space of about ten seconds. ‘Sir, you must be courteous to the other players at the table,’ the pit boss said to McCain. “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? ASK ANYBODY AROUND HERE WHO I AM.”
Mrs Palin has defended her comments, saying they were "about an association that has been known but hasn't been talked about".There are other things that have been known but not talked about much.
--the BBC
Though [Mark] Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.Read it all here.
Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution’s language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as “Black Helicopter Steve,” to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. “Every time I showed up her door was open,” said Chryson. “And that policy continued when she became governor.”
Ms. Palin has denied that anyone told Mr. Monegan to dismiss Mr. Wooten, or that the commissioner’s ouster had anything to do with the trooper. But an examination of the case, based on interviews with Mr. Monegan and several top aides, indicates that, to a far greater degree than was previously known, the governor, her husband and her administration pressed the commissioner and his staff to get Mr. Wooten off the force, though without directly ordering it.
In all, the commissioner and his aides were contacted about Mr. Wooten three dozen times over 19 months by the governor, her husband and seven administration officials, interviews and documents show.
George W. Bush lies about everything, all the time, and without compunction. Big things, little things, provable things and unprovable things. He has spent his entire administration lying about everything from war to the economy to his own advisors' activities to surveillance to the plain meaning of laws to everything else, and he's staffed his government and his Justice Department with unapologetic liars as well. Anyone who hasn't realized this at this point is beyond the help of reason or medical science.
"McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."
Ron [Fournier], AP: "As he fought to keep his emotions in check in a testy, personal debate with Sen. John Kerry, the president asserted 'That answer almost made me scowl.'... Several answers brought Bush's emotions to the surface, for better or worse, as he sought to curb Kerry's momentum.... Bush was the most aggressive, at one point overrunning moderator Charles Gibson's attempt to pose a question.."From thirdparty's diary of 10/9/2004
Consensus in last night's debate is summed up in this headline on Bloomberg News:
On October 10, 2004, we get this from Hoffmania:Y'know - this is fine for judging talkshow hosts, baseball players and sizing up real potential friends. But call me nuts - I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to have a beer with my president. I want them brighter than me, smarter than me, classier than me.
Oh, yeah. I also want my president to be more sober than me. I'm just crazy that way.
Why is this still a valid question in the eyes of the press?
How about this tidbit from the Washington Post on 10/10/2004?For Marines, a Frustrating Fight
Some in Iraq Question How and Why War Is Being Waged
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 10, 2004; Page A01
ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq -- Scrawled on the helmet of Lance Cpl. Carlos Perez are the letters FDNY. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York, the Pentagon and western Pennsylvania, Perez quit school, left his job as a firefighter in Long Island, N.Y., and joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
"To be honest, I just wanted to take revenge," said Perez, 20.
Now, two months into a seven-month combat tour in Iraq, Perez said he sees little connection between the events of Sept. 11 and the war he is fighting. Instead, he said, he is increasingly disillusioned by a conflict whose origins remain unclear and frustrated by the timidity of U.S. forces against a mostly faceless enemy.
"Sometimes I see no reason why we're here," Perez said. "First of all, you cannot engage as many times as we want to. Second of all, we're looking for an enemy that's not there. The only way to do it is go house to house until we get out of here."
Perez is hardly alone. In a dozen interviews, Marines from a platoon known as the "81s" expressed in blunt terms their frustrations with the way the war is being conducted and, in some cases, doubts about why it is being waged. The platoon, named for the size in millimeters of its mortar rounds, is part of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment based in Iskandariyah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.
Well, there's the new confidence amongst Dems that Kerry is moving up. You can see it in the way Friday's debate and this week's campaign is framed. As noted before, Kerry thinks it's October and is running to the middle and going after weak Bush and undecided swing voters while Bush is still, after all these months, shoring up his base and trying to make the election about Kerry, not about him. Kerry goes positive, in other words, while Bush goes negative.
It was almost six years ago that we learned the name Matthew Shepherd. We might someday have learned about how this bright, kind and compassionate man contributed to our country. But we learned Matthew Shepard’s name because of the terrible way he was killed on Oct. 12, 1998.
We still remember the fence where Matthew died. His brutal murder opened our country’s eyes to the hatred and violence that many gays and lesbians endure. Yet here we are, almost six years later, with a president who refuses to support legislation barring hate crimes based on sexual orientation.
According to the FBI, crimes committed in 2002 due to bias based on sexual orientation represent 1 in 6 of reported hate-crime incidents. There were more than 1,200 incidents and 1500 victims in 2002 alone.
John Kerry and I want an America that is stronger at home and more respected in the world. We know we cannot achieve that goal until we recognize that all Americans, including gays and lesbians, are part of the fabric of America’s family. And when it comes to family, we must protect each other. We must recognize that crimes against people because of their race, religion, or sexual orientation have no place in America.
That is why John Kerry and I firmly support the bipartisan legislation that will add new protections against hate crimes motivated by the real or perceived sexual orientation of the victim. George Bush has said that this kind of legislation amounts to “special rights.” But there’s nothing special about the right to be free from hateful violence.
In America, people ought to be able to take that right for granted.
Of the Bush campaign Lambert wrote this:Truth isn't even relevant to these guys. They just make shit up, throw it, and if it sticks, so much the better.
The Orpheum Theater, New Orleans
"I don't remember ever hearing anyone raise concerns or questions or concerns about [Ayers'] background," says Anne Hallett, who has worked closely with Ayers on the Annenberg Challenge grant and with Obama on education and other community and legislative matters. "And that included everybody I was engaged with," including prominent Republicans, and corporate and civic leaders in Chicago, Hallett adds.Oh, really?! So not only was Obama working on a Republican funded initiative, but prominent Republicans were involved on the board with Ayers. Do they all hate America so much that they are "palling" around with terrorist? He had been in their midst for years, why did not the republican's run him out of town.
From Juan Cole:One of the reasons the US military prefers to follow the Geneva Conventions, which forbid torture, is that when America tortures it encourages its enemies who capture GIs to torture them. It is therefore sad to know that Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld ordered that prisoners be tortured and that "the parents of Spc. Byron Wayne Fouty believe he was tortured by his captors . . ." Fouty was from Texas.Godde have mercy upon him.
The Cotton Exchange, New Orleans
Window treatment of the Cotton Exchange
I made the worst mistake of my life by attending two meetings, the first with the chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the government agency charged with regulating the practices of the nation’s savings and loans, and a week later with four bank examiners based in San Francisco who were at that time investigating the investment and lending practices of Lincoln Savings and Loan of Irvine, California, owned by my good friend and generous supporter Charles Keating.
Black, now an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that McCain’s long-standing opposition to regulation of the financial markets and his support for relaxed accounting standards that allow institutions to mask losses makes him unqualified to handle the financial crisis that threatens an economic Armageddon for the country.[Emphasis mine, as usual]
Dillinger and Eddie in the Albuquerque SunportTold of these criticisms, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, branded them "preposterous," and noted that Osama bin Laden, suspected of bankrolling the installations that were bombed, "is one bad mother."
Mother Jones: You not only have had combat experience in Vietnam, but you were also a prisoner of war. When you look at terrorism right now, with people like Osama bin Laden, do you have any reservations about watching strikes like that?
John McCain: You could say, Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted? Most of us have never heard of him before. And where there is a parallel with Vietnam is: What's plan B? What do we do next? We sent our troops into Vietnam to protect the bases. Lyndon Johnson said, Only to protect the bases. Next thing you know.... Well, we've declared to the terrorists that we're going to strike them wherever they live. That's fine. But what's next? That's where there might be some comparison.
With just a month to go until election day, I know you’ve all been hearing a lot about politics out here in North Carolina. I know you’ve been seeing a lot of ads, and getting a lot of calls, and reading a lot about this election in the newspaper.
Alaska Governor Palin has defended the remarks, which she made several times, saying it was "fair to talk about".Well, Governor, since you insist, may we note that Senator McCain's association with Charles Keating has been known but has not, of late, been talked about very much? Shall we engage in some vigorous exploration and discussion there, looking, perhaps, for clues to the early days of deregulation and timorous (or non-existent) oversight that helped lead to our current financial crisis? The ties between the Keating and McCain families were far closer than any association Obama has had with Ayers. And, arguably, of significant consequence for the American economy.
...
Mrs Palin has defended her comments, saying they were "about an association that has been known but hasn't been talked about".
--the BBC
The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government...and I won't be buried under their damn flag...
I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions.
