This from Andrew Sullivan's blog:
"I loved Bush's comment yesterday about the smear-ad: 'I can understand why Senator Kerry is upset with us. I wasn't so pleased with the ads that were run about me. And my call is get rid of them all, now.' 'Us'?? I thought Bush had nothing to do with it."
I am going to copy a bit from a New York Times piece about the prostests. Otherwise, you prbably won't hear much about it, I suspect. The media is too afriad of being dubbed "liberal". Well, here it is:
"A roaring two-mile river of demonstrators surged through the canyons of Manhattan yesterday in the city's largest political protest in decades, a raucous but peaceful spectacle that pilloried George W. Bush and demanded regime change in Washington."On a sweltering August Sunday, the huge throng of protesters marched past Madison Square Garden, the site of the Republican National Convention opening today, and denounced President Bush as a misfit who had plunged America into war and runaway debt, undermined civil and constitutional rights, lied to the people, despoiled the environment and used the presidency to benefit corporations and millionaires.
"The protest organizer, United for Peace and Justice, estimated the crowd at 500,000, rivaling a 1982 antinuclear rally in Central Park, and double the number it had predicted. It was, at best, a rough estimate. The Police Department, as is customary, offered no official estimate, but one officer in touch with the police command center at Madison Square Garden agreed that the crowd appeared to be close to a half-million."
Of course CNN, and many other news outlets are pulling the whole, "tens of thousands" of protesters. Well, I am sorry, but in this case hundreds of thousands is the right way to put it. They are even too afriad too actually report the real news.
There was a new NPR poll released today that has some pretty good news for Kerry.
The National Numbers
Kerry 50%
Bush 45%
The National Numbers w/Nader
Kerry 48%
Bush 44%
Nader 3%
But here are the numbers that I found most interesting:
Battleground States
Kerry 52%
Bush 43%
Now, I am not sure how they came up with those battleground numbers, but they certainly look encouraging.
I was watching CNN earlier today, and saw a very good piece about the protesters that are gathering in New York for the Republican National Convention. It was a good piece, a responsible piece, and it really didn't show anything overly outrageous or out of bounds, at least as far as protests are concerned. Then, after the piece, the CNN anchor Carol Lin pops back up on screen and says the most outrageous thing. She said:
"I know it's democracy, but sometimes it's hard to take seriously."
What? I don't even know where to start with a quote as shamefully idiotic as that. Just another way to belittle the protests, I guess.
Also, is it just me or has CNN seemed to be moving to the right this past week to try and pump up ratings for the convention? Either that or they are trying to steal some of the moron Fox News viewers. I don't know, but I have grown very tired of the media playing the fourth branch of our government.
For the past several months I have been looking for an online electoral map that had updated polling infromation included. There are several polling sites that offer this service for the price of a subscription to their site, but I was holding out hope for a free site.
Well, thanks to a link on Taegon Goddard's Political Wire, I finally found the holy grail of electoral maps, and it's free. You can check it out here.
Just in case you're wondering, the current electoral race, according to the electoral-vote.com site is: Kerry 280, Bush 238. Colorada and Missourri are exactly tied, and so their votes go to no one for the moment. However, I have heard that in tied races the incumbent traditionally loses.
So, needless to say, this map is good news for Kerry, but we haven't seen the Republican's convention bounce yet. I suspect Bush will get a three or four point bounce in the national polls, but all this will probably level out in time for the debates. That is when things will get really interesting.
I know the need for an electoral map sounds excessive, but it really is a much more relevant barometer of the race than the national horse race numbers.
More evidence of a connection between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Smear Group. CNN reports that the Bush campaign attorney has also been advising the Swift Boat group:
"Benjamin Ginsberg's acknowledgment marks the second time in days that an individual associated with the Bush-Cheney campaign has been connected to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which Kerry accuses of being a front for the Republican incumbent's re-election effort."The Bush campaign and the veterans' group say there is no coordination."
If you still think that there is no connection between Bush and the Swift Boat group then you are obviously ignoring the facts. In other words, you must be a Republican.
If this is true, it is extremely bad news for the U.S.'s attempts to win the war in Iraq, and it will probably kill any hope of ever winning over the rest of the Middle East.
"Reports from Iraq say U.S. forces have hit part of a holy Shiite shrine in Najaf where rebels have been locked in a two-week standoff with U.S.-led forces."The report, carried by the Reuters news agency, was from a senior commander of Shiite militants who said the wall of the Imam Ali Shrine was hit by U.S. fire on Sunday night."
I don't think that Americans have the slightest idea how important this mosque is to the Shiites. Ali was Mohammed's Son-in-Law, and Shiites believe that he was the rightful heir to Mohammed. So the Americans may have just fired and hit the mosque of the Mohammed's rightful heir. This is extremely bad news. There could be a real uprising because of this catastrophic blunder.
By the way, it is pretty bad that I had to get this story from a Canadian news outlet. I suppose it's no surprise that the American media is holding this monster back.
This just in from Reuters:
"A Vietnam veteran who worked with President Bush's campaign has left over his appearance in a commercial by a group challenging Democratic candidate John Kerry's war record, a campaign spokesman said on Saturday."Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Ken Cordier was a Bush supporter during the 2000 election and served as a member of his a steering committee to help reach out to veterans during this election.
"'Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement in the advertisement being run by (Swift Boat Veterans for Truth),' Schmidt said. "Because of his involvement with this 527 (group), Col. Cordier will no longer participate" in the steering committee.
"The disclosure of Cordier's involvement came one day after White House spokesman Scott McClellan and Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot denied the campaign coordinated with the group on the ads, which claim that Kerry lied about his Vietnam War service."
If there is any justice in the world all these guys, and all their supporters will really live to regret what they have tried to do with these disgusting and untruthful ads.
We should also remember, when this is all over, that Rupert Murdoch and all his lackeys, including the deeply hated Faux News Channel, were salivating at every turn with this story. And they weren't very good at hiding it either. Right, Brit Hume?
Here is an excerpt from a must-read piece in this morning's New York Times that proves that these so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" are nothing but a bunch of hatchet-men from the hard right.
"The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements."
If you are still unconvinced of Faux News' "Unfair and Imbalanced" coverage, here is an excerpt from a memo sent out to the staff of Fox News' Senior editorial Vice President John Moody.
from 6/3/2003
"His[Bush's] political courage and tactical cunning are worth noting in our reporting through the day."
There is a really interesting new program called SoftVote that is available for free download from the Enigma Software Group. It offers an online Presidential Poll that updates its data automatically on your computer, and also gives you state by state results. It is a really nice tool for political junkies like me.
The only problem right now is that republicans seem to be the only ones using the program. The poll (as of 10:30pm) has Bush up right now, 50% to 43%, and their electorial map shows Bush getting 349 votes to Kerry's 189. So, obviously some democrats have to download this program, or else how will I be able to have any fun with it?
Here is an excerpt from In These Times magazine from, "I Love You Madame Librarian" by the iconic author Kurt Vonnegut:
"In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed."In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.
"With good reason.
"In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want."
This photo was printed in today's L.A. Times. I discovered it on Tom Tomorrow's blog. It comes from a Yale publication during Bush's undergraduate days. The caption that is on the photo is the original caption.
It is funny because Tom Tomorrow seems to suggest that this action should prove to people that Bush is a thug, someone who will do anything, even openly break the rules, to win a battle. The problem is that most the people that are voting for him already know this, and his thuggishness is a big part of what they like about him.
Bush's strongest supporters by far are white males. These are guys who don't believe in evolution because they haven't got there yet. They're still hunched near a tree waiting to club a date or shoot their food. Haven't these apes heard of Match.com or a supermarket?
Seriously, though, this photo, if anything, helps Bush with the neanderthal electorate, you know the "I-could-have-a-beer-with-that-guy" crowd.
All of this being said, we really should look at this picture, look at it closely. We need to ask ourselves a serious question: How did this guy become the President of the United States? It is utterly embarassing.
I guess he must have sucker-punched his way all the way to the top.
An American Research Group Poll posted on August 5 has some promising news for the Kerry/Edwards ticket.
New Hampshire Poll of 600 likely voters (Margin of Error +/- 4 pts.)
Bush 42%
Kerry 49%
Nader 2%
Undecided 7%
This is important because Bush won New Hampshire in 2000, and many people thought that their "live free or die" ways would send the state Bush's way again. Remember that the NRA is a powerful force in New Hampshire. So, obviously things will definitely shift there, but this is promising for Kerry.
Florida
Bush 43%
Kerry 50%
Nader 2%
Undecided 5%
This is great news for the obvious reasons, but it is also great because Bush had been leading in most state polls up to this point. I think this race is going to be as important, if not more important than Ohio this time around. Everybody keeps talking about Ohio being the next Florida. I still think Florida will be the next Florida. Ohio will be another mess altogether.
This Tuesday, August 10, Nichoson Baker's novel Checkpoint will appear on bookshelves across the United States. It is a 115 page dialogue between two characters. One character is planning to assassinate George W. Bush. The second character is trying to talk him out of killing the president.
I have been trying to figure out how I feel about this book since I first heard about it on NPR a few weeks ago. I always thought that any muttering, or writing, of assassinating a president was illegal, but apparently not in the case of fiction. However, I was troubled when I read a piece about the book in this week's Newsweek, and learned that Baker wrote the book in a rage over Bush's war in Iraq. Then I read this in a Slate review of the book:
"...most of these critics haven't read the book and therefore don't know that the would-be assassin, Jay, is shown to be unhinged—a delusional paranoiac who drifts from job to job and has little feeling for his own children. Ben, the novel's other character, a comparatively sturdy Cold War historian, tries desperately to dissuade Jay and eventually succeeds. It isn't clear that Jay represents much of a threat, since his most prized weapons turn out to be 'radio-controlled flying saws,' a giant boulder made of depleted uranium ('You're going to squash the president?' Ben asks), and 'homing bullets,' which Jay programs by 'marinating' them in a box with a photograph of President Bush. The murderous rage in Checkpoint cannot and should not be mistaken for Baker's own."
From CNN.com:
"Bush misspoke as he delivered a speech at the signing ceremony for a $417 billion defense spending bill."'Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we,' Bush said.
"'They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.'"
Calling Dr. Freud.
Come in, Freud.