Karl Rove is now, officially, in charge of pretty much everything at
 the White House.
 
 But it's mostly just a title change.
 
 President Bush's long-time chief political strategist is now assistant
 to the president, deputy chief of staff and senior adviser.
 
 That's a lot of titles. But of course Rove has even more nicknames.
 He's been called "Bush's guru," "Bush's brain," "the man behind the
 curtain" and "the wizard of the West Wing." Rove himself cracked that
 his reputation is "evil Rasputin." And Bush alternately calls Rove "the
 architect," "boy genius," or "turd blossom" -- the last a reference to
 a West Texas flower that grows in cow manure.
 
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10754-2005Feb9.html
 

 JACK DOUGLAS JR., Knight Ridder Newspapers
 
 FORT WORTH, Texas -- President Bush, who's had difficulty at times holding alliances together, may have inadvertently ruffled feathers overseas by flashing a "Hook 'em Horns" sign during last week's inaugural parade. Bush and the rest of the first family raised their right hands in the traditional "'Horns" salute -- customary among University of Texas Longhorns
 -- as the school's band marched in front of the presidential reviewing stand Thursday. But in Norway and some other parts of the world, a nearly identical hand gesture is considered an insult or, worse, a sign of the devil. In Mediterranean countries, it implies a man is a cuckold, the victim of an
 unfaithful wife. In parts of Africa, it's used as a curse and in many European countries it's used to ward off "the evil eye." In Russia, it's a
 symbol for so-called New Russians, the newly rich, arrogant and poorly
 educated.

 In sign language, it means "bull----," which elicited a surprised giggle
 from the first lady's press secretary, Gordon Johndroe of Fort Worth, Texas,
 himself a University of Texas grad. When told its meaning by the New York
 Daily News, Johndroe replied, "Texans have been known to BS every once in a
 while."
 A headline in the Norwegian Internet newspaper "Nettavisen" expressed
 outrage at the first family's collective gesture last week, saying "Shock
 greeting from Bush daughter" above a photo of Bush's daughter, Jenna,
 smiling and waving the sign, according to The Associated Press.
 
 http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/01-05/01-23-05/b03wn262.htm

The Stakeholder :: Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — So evil and shadowy:

In the final three weeks of the campaign, independent "527" groups backing President Bush bought nearly $30 million worth of television and radio ads, three times what their Democratic counterparts spent, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.

Read the rest

Wednesday, November 3, 2004

Kerry concedes.
Updated.
Click on thumbnail for full image (Igor Knezevic)

8:15am: Four more years of a nation led by criminals. I was making coffee with one eye on CNN when the news broke, and I called my dad, a man who's spent many years fighting for good things, sometimes at great personal cost.

"Get over it," he said, "The way you feel now is exactly how I felt when Nixon won a second term -- crushed. I just couldn't believe America was that stupid. But remember what happened to Nixon that term."

"Change comes from discontent," he said. "And right now, there's a lot of discontent."

I finish pouring my coffee, and agree when my dad says what we're faced with right now is considerably more frightening than Nixon. BB pal Jim Graham IMs a few minutes later: "Yeah, and Karl Rove makes Lee Atwater look like a choir boy."

Dan Gillmor sums up what the continuation of Bush's presidency means for America.

The Republicans have an even stronger congressional majority. They have shown how gladly ruthless they can be in using their power. Bush and his allies have never believed in compromise. They have even less incentive to govern from the middle now, even though the nation remains bitterly divided.

There's no secret about what's coming. We don't have that excuse this time.

Here comes more fiscal recklessness -- as we widen the chasm between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else, cementing a plutocracy into our national fiber, we'll pay our national bills on the Treasury Bill credit card for the next few years. Many economists expect a Brazil-like financial crisis to hit the U.S. before the end of the decade. If we muddle our way though the near term, we'll still have left our kids with the bill.

Here comes an expansion of the American empire abroad, a fueling of fear and loathing elsewhere on the globe. This is also unsustainable in the end. Empire breeds disrespect.

Our civil liberties will shrink drastically. This president and his top allies in Congress fully support just one amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Say goodbye to abortion rights in most states. Roe v. Wade will fall after this president pushes three or four Scalia and Thomas legal clones onto the Supreme Court. Say hello, meanwhile, to a much more intrusive blending of church and state.

The environment? We'll be nostalgic for Ronald Reagan's time in office.

This is not sour grapes. This is reality.

I hope, but doubt, that the Democrats re-discover enough of their collective spine to block the most extreme moves. If they do it'll be a change for a party that stands for so little these days.

People say there are two Americas. I think there are at least three.

One is Bush's America: an amalgam of the extreme Christian "conservatives," corporate interests and the builders of the burgeoning national-security state.

Another is the Democratic "left": wedded to the old, discredited politics in a time that demands creative thinking.

I suspect there's a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored -- or made worse -- by those in power today.

That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party.

If you follow South Park, maybe this is all about being forced to choose between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. BoingBoing readers are a good-humored lot, though. Some have suggested sending fecalgrams to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as an exercise of free speech. Reader Pete Setchell says, "There is still one chance to get him out of the White House - send him a pack of pretzels to celebrate his victory. I've just sent some via Amazon."

Reader Dave in the UK writes,

"As a British citizen, I just can't understand why. Does the British media unfairly portray Bush, or are more than half of American voters just fucking stupid? I write this as an appeal to BoingBoing - please, please help me understand how this could have happened, and why, why on God's earth would so many Americans support Bush?"

Presuming the elections were fairly conducted and accurately counted -- which remains a matter of some considerable debate -- I'm going with the latter.

Mateusz Pozar in Sweden (the place that has no army) echoes the emails of BoingBoing readers around the globe today: "I must say that i’m surprised (and most of the world with me actually) that Bush got a second term. Seriously, would he have to rape kittens to get kicked out of office?"

Iranian expat blogger Hossein "Hoder" Derakshan says -- welcome to the Christian Republic of America.

"You know what? I really think Iranians should export their revolution to America. They badly need it. Unbelievable, half of Americans go to Church once week at least? Even Iranians don't go once a week to Mosque, thanks to the Islamic revolution. So I guess America really needs a Christian revolution, maybe people would see what religion really is."

BB reader Billy Hayes says,

"I am from Texas (born and raised). I am a white male. I did not vote for Bush. I guess we all have our reasons. I voted for Kerry. I find comfort in what you posted about what your father said about Nixon. Bush likes to use old Texas sayings a lot. I have one for him. In Texas there is a saying that goes, 'Give em enough rope and they will hang themselves.' Well, I guess the Republicans have all the rope they need."

Reader Hal Eckhart in Minneapolis says,

"Thanks for the consolation, however small. We can only hope and keep on trying.

"I, too, remember being aghast when Nixon won re-election, and the sense that everybody was blithely oblivious to his evil. My high-school civics teacher had a "four more years" sticker on his podium, and once bragged to us that he laughed out loud when he heard JFK had been shot.

"This country and this world are full of idiots. This country's idiots are just a little more cock-sure that they deserve what they've got. A lesson in humility is certainly on the way, and we can only pray that it will be no more painful than it needs to be."

Johannes says, "Greetings from cold and windy Vienna! Your former guest blogger just wants to wish you good luck with your new/old president. Link, and Link two."

John Shirley, another ex-BB-guestblogger, says

The newspaper today says that millions of young people who said they were anti-Bush and who were registered to vote Democratic *didn't show up at the polls.* They were too busy playing Grand Theft Auto or renting Jerry Bruckheimer movies or smoking weed or babbling in chatrooms. It's their fault we're heading into a theocracy. But they're not alone in their culpability."

BoingBoing pal Q-Burns Abstract Message IMs,

Bill Hicks once told a story about an American friend of his who complained about the USA. When told, "well, if you don't like it then move somewhere else" the friend's reply would be, "What? And become a victim of our foreign policy?"

Image at the top of this post: Vote/Vomit, created by BoingBoing reader and American immigrant Igor Knezevic, who says, "Attached is my small comment on my first voting experience in this great country. Being a graphic artist - that's the least I can do for whatever it is worth."

Geek and new dad Glenn Fleishman tells BoingBoing,

I've been Jewish, not very observant, my whole life. I'm one of the first generations of Jews to not fear assault as they went to school or lived their lives in secular or religious ways. To not worry about slaughter. I have only met a handful of concentration camp survivors, including a teacher in college. I don't know what it is to be oppressed or insulted for my ethnic and religious heritage.

Today is the first day I am afraid in America because I am Jewish.

Today is the first day I fear for my new son, who is not, but has a Jewish father.

I'm lucky to live in Washington State, and specifically in Seattle. A haven of secular and broad-spectrum religious views in a sea of red. We went strongly, even among Republicans, to Kerry, and maybe I just won't leave this state much for the next four years.

Some talk of moving to Canada. Some in Canada say this, others put it this way. (Thanks, Brent)

Me, I just keep thinking about this kid's face. And promises of endless war. Link to portrait of LC David Murphy, shot at Camp Abu Graib near Falluja by Kevin Sites.

From Kerry's concession speech:

Audience member: We still got your back!
Thank you, man. And I assure you -- you watch -- I'll still have yours.

Link
 

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:25:22 PM permalink | Other blogs commenting on this post

by Michael K. Smith

(GWB) -- King George swept the presidential debates last night, vowing to remain president until the second coming of Christ. He haughtily dismissed John Kerry as a wild-eyed liberal determined to redistribute the wealth from the top 1% to the top 3% of the population. "That's Communism," said George, "and I won't stand for it."

Although Americans think Senator John Kerry did well in the debates, the Democratic nominee appears to have lost ground to Bush in the popularity contest. According to an Andersen Accounting poll released Sunday King George leads 112% to 29%, based on overwhelming support from first-time fetus voters.

The poll interviewed 1,013 fetuses by cell phone Thursday through Saturday, including 942 who identified themselves as supporters of a Constitutional amendment to ban Democrats. Most indicated they were likely to vote absentee due to logistical difficulties in getting to the polls.

As in 2000, King George's favorability ratings -- how Americans view him as a (Divine) person -- went up after a debate that voters say he lost -- from 51 percent in the October 9-10 poll to 95 percent in the most recent poll. Most respondents attributed his poor performance to "brain damage." According to Bush's senior political advisor Karl Rove, this is not a failing in a Divine being.

Bush is still seen as a better commander in chief and a stronger leader, by a 53 percent to 44 percent margin. As one debate-watcher put it, "No one can start wars better than George."

Bush also picked up ground on education, owing to his proposals to let high school students earn school credit for counterinsurgency work performed in Iraq or Afghanistan, and health care, where the president supports a plan to let Jesus heal the sick, thus reducing HMO costs. On jobs, Bush recommended that workers facing financial ruin from outsourcing go to college and learn how to do something relevant to today's economy - like setting up corporate tax shelters in the Cayman islands.

In the most recent poll, 69 percent of all respondents said Bush would do a better job on education than Kerry, since he knows what it feels like to receive a diploma you can't read. In the latest Zogby poll a 90% majority says Bush "is more experienced with illiteracy" than Kerry.

On health care, 82% agreed that Bush would keep medical treatment affordable for billionaires and would "stop wasting money on vaccines" for children whose parents fail to donate to the GOP. 79% said he would expand the development of prosthetic devices, especially in Iraq. Large majorities agreed he would produce more mental breakdowns, occupational disease, heart attacks, road rage, strokes, cancer, drug addiction and suicide than his opponent.

Karl Rove declared Bush the winner of the debate, instructing the media to ignore large majorities in viewer instant polls saying the president "sucked."

Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), from Common Courage Press

Striking with precision and psychological acuity   Photograph by Susanna Howe

Ms. Bush-Bash Does anyone understand Dubya better than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd? By JOHN COLAPINTO

Maureen Dowd isn't simply a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times op-ed columnist. She's also the pre-eminent Bush-basher in the country, which is saying something when you trawl the mountains of I-hate-Bush books in your local Barnes & Noble. What puts Dowd, 52, miles above the armies of foaming leftist ranters is the precision and psychological acuity of her strikes. In her recent book, Bushworld (a collection of her writings on the Bush family from 1992 to 2004), she fingers the Bush cabal's first term as the "most astonishing and dangerous subordination of American history to particular psyches I've ever seen" and documents how world events have fulcrumed around the paranoid insecurities, macho posturings and sour cynicism of a small handful of neocon warmongers, with the "barking mad" Dick Cheney and his yapping lap dog, George W., at the helm. Here, Dowd grapples to explain the enduring popularity of a president who, as she puts it, "has done everything wrong."

More at Rolling Stone

by Michael K. Smith

Quickly rebounding from his lackluster performance in the first debate, George W. Bush delivered a knockout blow in round two with an impeccable command of facts and logic that left Senator Kerry and the audience gasping at his Royal Insights. Though his Divine Debating Style can hardly be captured in words, a summary of King George's key points follows:

1.) "I don't think the Patriot Act abridges your rights at all."

A stunning insight that has eluded the best legal minds to date. The only thing the state is authorized to do to us that it wasn't before the enactment of the Patriot Act and Bush's presidential order authorizing secret military tribunals is: (1) arrest us without cause (2) hold us indefinitely without charge (3) subject us to secret military trial (4) replace juries with military officers (5) suspend rules of evidence (6) prevent us from witnessing our own trial (7) prevent us from seeing the evidence against us (8) convict us on hearsay (9) torture us (10) execute us in secret (11) execute our friends and associates for "harboring" us.

Of course, Bush has promised that none of this will be applied to U.S. citizens, although one of the first people corralled under the Patriot Act was a U.S. citizen and Richard Perle said journalist Seymour Hersh was "the closest thing we have to a terrorist" and Education Secretary Rod Paige said the members of the National Education Association were terrorists and . . . well, you get the picture, we can trust the government.

2.) "I tried diplomacy."

At last, the truth is told. President Bush very diplomatically ignored the fact that Saddam Hussein had disarmed after Gulf War I, at the same time bellowing to the whole world that he was a brutal tyrant with scarcely a rival in history who lived only to torture, murder, and make mass graves. He then very prudently launched a huge propaganda campaign to convince Americans that Saddam was involved in 9-11, wisely omitting mention of the fact that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein hated each other and Bin Laden had offered to fight Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Bush patiently delivered ultimatum after ultimatum to Saddam to dismantle weapons he didn't possess, gently promising to bombard Iraq with satellite-guided missiles and bombs if he didn't get his way. He went to the UN in good faith, announcing that the Security Council must endorse U.S. aggression in Iraq or be declared irrelevant.

Has anyone ever gone the extra mile for diplomacy more than King George? I think not.

3.) "Our [Iraq] plan is working."

Like a charm. Business is booming at Iraqi morgues, there is a huge uptick in demand for nuclear materials via Iran and Pakistan, and Al Qaeda's recruitment problems are solved for all time. Who could ask for more?

Not to mention U.S. forces are winning! They have taken Samarra three times in just the last year-and-a-half. Fallujah is being bombed nightly and will soon be invaded and wrecked. Happily, Najaf is pretty much demolished already. The Bush plan is to make a great show of force with air power, so as to keep casualty counts from rising before the U.S. selection in November. Then after King George is re-annointed he can carpet bomb the country to a lifeless moonscape and install whatever government he wants amidst the rubble. Praise his holy name!

Don't pay attention to those stubborn people in black masks who are establishing check points on all roads leading in and out of Baghdad. And don't give it a thought that Iraqi police in Mosul are giving part of their pay to a nationwide resistance movement determined to expel the U.S. from Iraq. We already know the Iraqi people love us. One of the last polls taken by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority this past summer showed that support for the U.S. occupation had soared to 2%. So not to worry and crank up the draft.

Let's not forget that Bush has already delivered on his 2000 campaign pledge to be a uniter and not a divider. I mean, he has united the Sunnis and the Shi'ites, the militant moujahedeen and the Iraqi nationalists, all of whom now hate the U.S. more than they do each other! Who would have thought it possible?

Anyway, the Iraqi elections in January are bound to turn out wonderfully with 138,000 U.S. troops occupying the country. Any candidate favoring their continued presence is sure to be popular and may even live past election day. As Bush says, one should strive to be optimistic.

4.) " . . . we're working together to try to bring this deficit under control."

Absolutely true. Just because the Bush Administration's own economists estimate that the government will be unable to pay $44 trillion of bills in the coming decades, a fact they deleted from their annual budget report in 2004, is no reason to doubt the validity of this claim. It is true that Bush was trying to ram through another tax reduction for the rich at the time this information was suppressed, but this is merely proof that King George's Divine Wisdom works in mysterious ways. There's certainly no cause to get cynical. After all, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer did state quite frankly: "There is no question that Social Security and Medicare are going to present [future] generations with a crushing debt burden unless policymakers work seriously to reform those programs" - that is, by meat-axing benefits. Once again, don't worry. The Treasury Department says that the entire problem could be solved instantly with nothing more than an across-the-board income tax-increase of 66%.

Anyway, King George is certainly wise to bankrupt the government so we will have no choice but to put our health care and retirement funds completely in the hands of the stock market. Once our entire fate is in the stock market, we will have a vested interest in keeping stock prices high by undermining wage increases, dispensing with health and safety regulations, and aborting all social democratic policies that make life worth living but restrict profits. In short, we'll all be Republicans. Hallelujah!

5. "What happens in those forests, because of lousy federal policy, is they grow to be - they are not - they're not harvested. They're not taken care of."

Only a mind of singularly awesome powers could discern that trees are best taken care of by being cut down. This policy could and should be extended to many other areas of social life. For example, parents could care for their children by harvesting their organs for profit. Homeowners could protect themselves against the winter cold by setting their houses on fire. Farmers could take care of their crops by exposing them to locusts. The opportunities are boundless.

6.) "I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land."

Unfortunately, this Royal Insight remained undeveloped, as the studio audience spontaneously burst into gales of laughter for some reason. Perhaps the White House will provide further details.

7.) "The quality of the air's cleaner since I've been president."

Who can doubt it? Smog is virtually gone now that President Bush has put industrial polluters on the honor system as far as obeying environmental laws go. Last year the Bush Administration decided to allow thousands of the nation's dirtiest coal-fired power plants and refineries to upgrade their facilities without installing costly anti-pollution equipment, as they previously had been ordered to do. Under the rule change, industry is allowed to save billions of dollars in pollution-control equipment costs while continuing to emit hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants. A Bush policy so ingenious it will surely take your breath away!

Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), from Common Courage Press

Journalist Greg Palast will introduce the Texas premier of Bush Family Fortunes.

LOCATION:
The Paramount Theater
713 Congress Avenue
Austin, Texas
TICKETS:
Reserve Your Tickets

"Stunning...Disturbing ... Important."
-Sen. John Edwards

by Michael K. Smith

Quickly rebounding from his lackluster performance in the first debate, George W. Bush delivered a knockout blow in round two with an impeccable command of facts and logic that left Senator Kerry and the audience gasping at his Royal Insights. Though his Divine Debating Style can hardly be captured in words, a summary of King George's key points follows:

1.) "I don't think the Patriot Act abridges your rights at all."

A stunning insight that has eluded the best legal minds to date. The only thing the state is authorized to do to us that it wasn't before the enactment of the Patriot Act and Bush's presidential order authorizing secret military tribunals is: (1) arrest us without cause (2) hold us indefinitely without charge (3) subject us to secret military trial (4) replace juries with military officers (5) suspend rules of evidence (6) prevent us from witnessing our own trial (7) prevent us from seeing the evidence against us (8) convict us on hearsay (9) torture us (10) execute us in secret (11) execute our friends and associates for "harboring" us. Nothing else has changed, not one little bit.

2.) "I tried diplomacy."

At last, the truth is told. President Bush very diplomatically ignored the fact that Saddam Hussein had disarmed after Gulf War I, at the same time bellowing to the whole world that he was a brutal tyrant with scarcely a rival in history who lived only to torture, murder, and make mass graves. He then very prudently launched a huge propaganda campaign to convince Americans that Saddam was involved in 9-11, wisely omitting mention of the fact that Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein hated each other and Bin Laden had offered to fight Hussein after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Bush patiently delivered ultimatum after ultimatum to Saddam to dismantle weapons he didn't possess, gently promising to bombard Iraq with satellite-guided missiles and bombs if he didn't get his way. He went to the UN in good faith, announcing that the Security Council must endorse U.S. aggression in Iraq or be declared irrelevant.

Has anyone ever gone the extra mile for diplomacy more than King George? I think not.

3.) "Our [Iraq] plan is working."

Like a charm. Business is booming at Iraqi morgues, there is a huge uptick in demand for nuclear materials via Iran and Pakistan, and Al Qaeda's recruitment problems are solved for all time. Who could ask for more?

Not to mention U.S. forces are winning! They have taken Samarra three times in just the last year-and-a-half. Fallujah is being bombed nightly and will soon be invaded and wrecked. Happily, Najaf is pretty much demolished already. The Bush plan is to make a great show of force with air power, so as to keep casualty counts from rising before the U.S. selection in November. Then after King George is re-annointed he can carpet bomb the country to a lifeless moonscape and install whatever government he wants amidst the rubble. Praise his holy name!

Don't pay attention to those stubborn people in black masks who are establishing check points on all roads leading in and out of Baghdad. And don't give it a thought that Iraqi police in Mosul are giving part of their pay to a nationwide resistance movement determined to expel the U.S. from Iraq. We already know the Iraqi people love us. One of the last polls taken by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority this past summer showed that support for the U.S. occupation had soared to 2%. So not to worry and crank up the draft.

Let's not forget that Bush has already delivered on his 2000 campaign pledge to be a uniter and not a divider. I mean, he has united the Sunnis and the Shi'ites, the militant moujahedeen and the Iraqi nationalists, all of whom now hate the U.S. more than they do each other! Who would have thought it possible?

Anyway, the Iraqi elections in January are bound to turn out wonderfully with 138,000 U.S. troops occupying the country. Any candidate favoring their continued presence is sure to be popular and may even live past election day. As Bush says, one should strive to be optimistic.

4.) " . . . we're working together to try to bring this deficit under control."

Absolutely true. Just because the Bush Administration's own economists estimate that the government will be unable to pay $44 trillion of bills in the coming decades, a fact they deleted from their annual budget report in 2004, is no reason to doubt the validity of this claim. It is true that Bush was trying to ram through another tax reduction for the rich at the time this information was suppressed, but this is merely proof that King George's Divine Wisdom works in mysterious ways. There's certainly no cause to get cynical. After all, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer did state quite frankly: "There is no question that Social Security and Medicare are going to present [future] generations with a crushing debt burden unless policymakers work seriously to reform those programs" - that is, by meat-axing benefits. Once again, don't worry. The Treasury Department says that the entire problem could be solved instantly with nothing more than an across-the-board income tax-increase of 66%.

Anyway, King George is certainly wise to bankrupt the government so we will have no choice but to put our health care and retirement funds completely in the hands of the stock market. Once our entire fate is in the stock market, we will have a vested interest in keeping stock prices high by undermining wage increases, dispensing with health and safety regulations, and aborting all social democratic policies that make life worth living but restrict profits. In short, we'll all be Republicans. Hallelujah!

5. "What happens in those forests, because of lousy federal policy, is they grow to be - they are not - they're not harvested. They're not taken care of."

Only a mind of singularly awesome powers could discern that trees are best taken care of by being cut down. This policy could and should be extended to many other areas of social life. For example, parents could care for their children by harvesting their organs for profit. Homeowners could protect themselves against the winter cold by setting their houses on fire. Farmers could take care of their crops by exposing them to locusts. The opportunities are boundless.

6.) "I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land."

Unfortunately, this Royal Insight remained undeveloped, as the studio audience spontaneously burst into gales of laughter for some reason. Perhaps the White House will provide further details.

7.) "The quality of the air's cleaner since I've been president."

Who can doubt it? Smog is virtually gone now that President Bush has put industrial polluters on the honor system as far as obeying environmental laws go. Last year the Bush Administration decided to allow thousands of the nation's dirtiest coal-fired power plants and refineries to upgrade their facilities without installing costly anti-pollution equipment, as they previously had been ordered to do. Under the rule change, industry is allowed to save billions of dollars in pollution-control equipment costs while continuing to emit hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants. A Bush policy so ingenious it will surely take your breath away!

Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), from Common Courage Press

wonkette does a play by play

9:00 Charlie Gibson's gonna hold them to their time limits "forcefully but politely." Funny, that's what we like about Mr. Wonkette.
9:03 Kerry pats Bush on the back! Checking for that wire. . .
9:05 Weapon of mass deception! Hey, that's a. . . joke!
9:07 "I can see why your colleagues think he changes his position a lot... Because he does!" Bush was like wetting his pants to say that. And so he said it again!
9:09 Is it just me, or does Bush get more drawly when he's talking to, uhm, "a group of folks"?
9:14 Global test! Global test! Global test! Bush is so psyched. He's going to start jumping up and down and clapping his hands if someone asks about "frivolous lawsuits."
9:18 Bush: "I talk to Tony Blair all the time! He has an easy name!" (Also: He's not sighing, but he is about to throttle John Kerry.)
9:21 Love it when Bush talks about not joining the International Criminal Court. Do average Americans know what that is or do they think he's talking about the Superfriends?
9:23 Kerry meets with foreign leaders. Good thing Bush is in semi-hysterics or that would be an opening for him.
http://markarkleiman.com/ :

Reality check

My opinion about who won last night debate is hopelessy compromised by my bias. So it's nice to know that Dan Drezner watched the same debate I did:

a) Bush did better than the first debate;
b) Kerry also did a bit better -- he was sharp from the start this time;
c) Again, both candidates whiffed on the openings given by the other candidates;
d) If Kerry gets elected, you just know that his to-the-camera pledge not to raise taxes for households under $200,000 is going to bite him in the ass,
e) The bizarre moment of the night was the Bush foray into Dred Scott territory. But I do feel safer that Bush will not appoint pro-slavery judges.

So I think Kerry won, but not by as much as last time.

Read the rest of the story by Michael Smith at http://bush2004.com/articles

Analysis of Cheney's comments on http://factcheck.com

Cheney Plugs FactCheck

Cheney got our domain name wrong -- calling us "FactCheck.com" -- and wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of Halliburton.

In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right.

Shorter Thomas L. Friedman: Iraq: Politics or Policy? This war is too important to be left to politicians.

With apologies to General Ripper.

See Also: Tristero recapitulates Friedman's pre-vacation prognostications.

Plus: Hellblazer suspects manipulation.

		Dick Cheney misdirected debate viewers to an anti-Bush website.
		Mark Duncan, AP

A mistake he made in giving a Web address sent tens of thousands of computer users to an anti-Bush site when they searched the Internet late Tuesday and into Wednesday.

The drama started nearly halfway into the debate, when Cheney referred to a Web site he said had information that would rebut charges leveled at him by Sen. John Edwards. The charges involved Halliburton, the company Cheney ran before becoming vice president.

Cheney said Edwards was "trying to throw up a smokescreen" by raising questions about Halliburton's past dealings with Iran and Libya and its current contracts with the U.S. government in Iraq.

The vice president urged viewers to go to "factcheck.com" for an independent analysis. But Cheney should have sent viewers to "factcheck.org," an online project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

By sending Web users to "factcheck.com," they got to George Soros site urging the US to get out of Iraq and promoting the billiionaires cross country speaking tour

by Michael K. Smith

Wednesday, October 6, 2004 Posted: 5:15 AM EDT (0915 GMT)

CLEVELAND, Ohio (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney proudly claimed the Bush Administration's bloodsoaked record in Iraq as a success story and blasted Senator John Edwards of North Carolina for having an "undistinguished" record in the Senate in last night's Vice Presidential debates.

Cheney insisted the world is safer today thanks to the widening catastrophe in Iraq, which is proving a breeding grounds for Al Qaeda terror that did not exist in the country prior to the U.S. invasion. Cheney said if he had it to do all over again, he gladly would.

"It's important to look at all of our developments in Iraq within the broader context of the global war on terror," Cheney said. This includes the soaring popularity of Osama Bin Laden, growing legions of recruits eager to serve his cause, and increasing hatred and disgust with Washington throughout the world.

Cheney denied ever suggesting a link between Iraq and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror." True enough. Iraq gassed Iran and later the Kurds with the full support of the Reagan Administration, whose Commerce Department arranged for Saddam Hussein to receive the materials he needed for his WMD program. Washington also provided satellite intelligence to help direct the gas attacks on Iran. Reagan Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld was instrumental in carrying out these memorable achievements.

Cheney insisted Halliburton was a non-issue. Under his reign as CEO between 1995 and 2000, he and Halliburton clearly made the world a much better place. They profited off of rebuilding Iraq's petroleum industry, which Cheney had helped destroy as Secretary of Defense in the first Gulf War. They worked closely with major human rights violators like the governments of Burma, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and the Congo. They passed their tax burden on to the American people by quintupling Halliburton's subsidiaries registered in offshore tax havens like the Cayman islands. They doubled the value of Halliburton's federal contracts based on Cheney's government connections and made Cheney a deliriously rich man. As for the U.S. taxpayers, they got billed $750,000 for work Halliburton did for the Pentagon that actually only cost $125,000.

Halliburton’s federal taxes dropped from $302 million in 1998 to a negative $85 million in 1999, that is, the company got an $85 million rebate that year. At the same time Halliburton received $2.3 billion in government contracts and $1.5 billion in government financing and loan guarantees. During his vice-presidential debate with Joe Lieberman in 2000 Cheney insisted that the government had had “absolutely nothing to do” with his financial success. $3.8 billion = 0. I guess it’s that new math.

Based on such achievements, Cheney was on firm ground in accusing Senator Edwards of having a "not very distinguished" Senate record. It certainly is no match for Cheney's, which is in a class by itself. As a Wyoming Representative from 1979 to 1989, Cheney voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, against Head Start, against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, against a holiday for Martin Luther King, against Meals on Wheels for seniors, against government funded abortions for incest and rape victims, against a ban on cop killer bullets, against restrictions on plastic guns that could easily be slipped through airport security, against safe drinking water standards, against establishing the Department of Education, against a waiting period for handgun purchases, and against imposing sanctions on apartheid South Africa (but only 10 times).

Another career highlight for Cheney occurred when California spun into financial disaster from a phony energy crisis induced by Enron. Cheney had six meetings with Enron representatives, including two with CEO Ken Lay, the last just six days prior to the company’s revelation that it had vastly overstated its earnings. While Enron executives cashed out over $1 billion in company stock before the day of reckoning, their employees lost their pensions and their jobs - just in time for the Christmas season.

When he left Halliburton, Cheney received $13 million in severance pay and left behind millions of dollars in losses from bad investments, a spate of SEC investigations, and a pile of lawsuits, not that there's anything wrong with that. The value of Halliburton stock plunged.

Cheney has also blessed the nation with his terrific sense of humor. After the Bush Administration abandoned its campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions Cheney said the promise had been a mistake because carbon dioxide isn’t a pollutant. David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council commented: “If carbon dioxide isn’t a pollutant, maybe ketchup is a vegetable after all.” With news like this, Jon Stewart will never have to write material.

Ecology is perhaps Cheney’s strongest suit. When he was faced with a series of potentially ruinous asbestos-related lawsuits at Halliburton the company decided it should lobby for a change of law rather than argue the cases in court. So Cheney and his company shelled out nearly half a million dollars to congressional candidates between 1997 and 2000, with $157,000 directed to 62 lawmakers who found it in their hearts to co-sponsor bills limiting the liability of asbestos manufacturers. Democracy in action!

Cheney is a big fan of drilling for oil in the National Arctic Wildlife Preserve, which can supply U.S. energy needs for weeks on end. On the other hand, his Energy Task Force killed a plan to increase fuel-efficiency standards, which would have saved 2.5 million barrels of oil a day - permanently.

Like all Republicans, Cheney cherishes family values, which is why at the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia he would not appear on the victory platform with his lesbian daughter. Of course, his real family is Halliburton, Enron, Philip Morris, AT&T, Microsoft, and the Pentagon.

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Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), available from Common Courage Press

by Michael K. Smith

Looking like a cranky 5-year-old who hadn't had his afternoon nap President Bush opened the debating season by repeatedly slamming Senator John Kerry for not sharing his Divine status, dismissing him as a vacilating whimp far too weak to lead the nation.

Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq, saying the sacrifice made by 1,059 U.S. troops who have been killed there was "noble and worthy," as evidenced by endless bloody disaster and increasing prospects of a Taliban-style regime.

"We're being challenged like never before, and we have a duty to our country and to future generations of Americans to achieve a free Iraq, a free Afghanistan and to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction," Bush said. His record indicates that the way to do that is to murder and destroy until these countries submit to U.S. puppet governments, at the same time tearing up arms control treaties and mass producing a new generation of weapons of mass destruction.

Very early in the debate, the president conceded that he understood "everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions I've made, and I've made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand." The question of whether the President knows where he stands remained unaddressed. Many observers insist he hasn't the slightest clue what the policies of his own administration are.

Again and again during the debate, Bush charged that Kerry's inconsistent positions on the Iraq war -- after voting for a congressional resolution authorizing Bush to use force -- would make it difficult for him to function as commander-in-chief, taking particular aim at Kerry's recent statement that Iraq was the "wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time." Bush's position is that all U.S.-led wars are righteous, especially since 2001 when they have been directly mandated by God.

Kerry insisted that despite the president's assertions to the contrary, "I've had one position -- one consistent position -- that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way, and the president chose the wrong way." Neither candidate indicated how Iraq could have gotten rid of weapons it didn't possess or how it constituted a "threat" when two-thirds of its national territory was under foreign control.

Kerry said that the invasion of Iraq was an ill-conceived adventure that's "getting worse by the day" and has distracted the United States from the fight against terrorism, which Kerry insisted he could win to by fighting a "smarter" war.

"Smart means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and taking it off to Iraq,'" Kerry said. "This president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment. And judgment is what we look for in the president of the United States of America." Many analysts consider this criticism unfair, in view of the fact that President Bush can't even keep track of whether or not his shoes are tied.

Bush and Kerry agreed that the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction were the greatest threat to the United States, agreeing as well that unrestrained development of WMD by the U.S. threatens no one.

Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George," (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), available from Common Courage Press

by Michael K. Smith

NEW YORK (GWB) --

Mr. Chairman, delegates, fellow citizens, I'm honored by your support, and I accept your nomination for King of the World.

When the Supreme Court appointed me four years ago, none of us could have envisioned what these years would bring.

We have seen a floored economy stumble to its knees - and fall to the floor again. We have seen the opium trade revived in Afghanistan. We have seen the Palestinian people locked inside a giant cage. We have seen Americans in uniform storming Iraqi family homes and machine-gunning their loved ones as they drive across town. Now nothing will hold us back.

In the work we have done and the work we will do, I am fortunate to have a superb vice president who can plunder foreign assets with the best of them. I'm honored to have him at my side.

I am grateful to share my walk in life with Laura Bush. We have a great partnership. She reads in libraries, I close them down.

I'm blessed with a sister and brothers who have awesome achievements to their credit and remain unindicted anyway.

Tonight I will tell you where I stand, what I believe, and where I will lead this country in the next four years.

I believe every child can learn and every school must teach, which is why I am devoting the lion's share of federal revenues to unleashing wars all over the world. Because we act in this way, more and more children are illiterate, hungry, and afraid.

I believe we have a moral responsibility to honor America's seniors, which is why I'm sending them to fight in Najaf and the mountains of Afghanistan. Soon my prescription drug plan will insure that every senior gets the drugs they need to make it through the firefights ahead.

I believe in the energy and innovative spirit of America's workers, which is why I've left them to fend for themselves after exporting their jobs and awarding tax relief to those earning over $375,000 a year.

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is security, which is why protestors have infiltrated our convention hall every night this week without our being able to stop them.

I am running for president with a clear and positive plan to build a more militarized world and a more hopeless homeless population. I am running with a compassionate conservative philosophy that says government should help rich investors improve their lives and crush everyone else.

The times in which we work and live are changing dramatically. The workers of our parents' generation typically had one job, one skill, one career, often with one company that provided health care and a pension. But now with unions vanishing we don't need to offer that kind of security anymore and can impose minimum wage jobs with no benefits on an increasing portion of the population.

Today, workers change jobs, even careers, many times during their lives, desperately trying to find a way to keep afloat. And in one of the most dramatic shifts our society has seen, two-thirds of all moms work outside and inside the home, gulping sedatives as they attend to their multi-tasking.

This changed world can be a time of great opportunity for all Americans to hustle and fret, watching their families deteriorate and kissing off the whole idea of career in a downsized world. And government must guard against their rage.

Many of our most fundamental systems -- the tax code, health coverage, pension plans, worker training -- were created for the world of yesterday. We will transform these systems so that citizens are stripped of government entitlements and forced to sell themselves to corporate America on any terms they can get.

My plan begins with transferring Medicare and Social Security funding to Wall Street. It concludes with unleashing dozens of new wars to Americanize a fallen world.

In addition to this we must protect corporations from the explosion of frivolous lawsuits that allow victims of breast implants and cancer-causing foods to seek compensation for injury and death.

Another drag on our economy is the current tax code. In a new term, I will lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify it. The rich will not have to file at all. Ordinary Americans will file a new "short form." Line one will request a declaration of total income. Line two will say simply, "send it in." No further computation will be required.

In this time of change, many workers go back to school in the forlorn hope they can find a decent job in a service economy of nursing homes and hamburger stands. Amidst growing cynicism and a rotting infrastructure they stubbornly seek a better deal. That's why we will double the number of prisons to contain their rage when they finally give up hope of ever having a decent life.

To stand with workers in poor communities and those that have lost manufacturing, textile, and other jobs, we will create American opportunity zones where hookers, hustlers, drug dealers, and outcasts can work harder for less, which is what entrepreneurial activity is all about.

As I've traveled the country, I've met many workers and small- business owners who have told me that they are worried they cannot afford health care. But the beauty of America is being able to say, "not my problem." So that's what I tell them.

In a new term, we will offer a tax credit to encourage small businesses and their employees to set up health savings accounts so they can pay for their ruptured spleen or appendicitis attack without government help. We've got all we can handle invading and occupying other countries and can't spend money on frills and extras like the public's health.

We will provide low-income Americans with better access to health care - in Iraq. In a new term, I will ensure every poor person in America has a community health center they can access in the Sunni triangle after a tour of duty.

To make health care more affordable and accessible, we will reduce access to the system for sick people, who tend to cost a lot of money and depress profit margins.

And in all we do to improve health care in America, we will make sure that health decisions are made by stockholders and financiers, not doctors and patients.

In a new term we will change outdated labor laws that offer time-and-a-half pay for working more than 8-hours a shift. Our laws should never stand in the way of hard-working people who prefer to work round-the-clock for peanuts.

Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, where 1% owns and 99% works for those who own.

Thanks to our policies, home ownership in America is at an all- time high, along with hypertension, heart attacks, insanity, and divorce. Not to mention commuting now takes 4 hours a day, which gives people plenty of opportunity to have their ears filled with ranting Republican demagogues on talk radio.

In an ownership society, some people will own their health plans and the rest will do without medical care. Some will own a piece of their retirement, others will stick their heads in a gas oven. That's what makes America great: individual choice.

With the huge baby boom generation approaching retirement, many of our children and grandchildren understandably worry whether Social Security will be there when they need it. Not if I can help it.

We must gut Social Security by allowing younger workers to save some of their taxes in a personal account, a nest egg you can call your own and Wall Street can raid. If your pension is Enronized you can always bag "Freedom Fries" at the local Burger King. It gives a whole new meaning to your "Golden Years."

Education is my highest priority. In northeast Georgia, Gainesville Elementary School is mostly Hispanic and 90 percent poor. And this year, 90 percent of its students passed state tests in reading and math. The other 10% were forced to swallow Lye. See, this school is challenging the soft bigotry of low expectations. The principal knows success means scaring the crap out of the kids and then applying Andersen Accounting methods if the test scores still don't turn out right.

These four years have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget - the squandering of trillions of dollars in surplus revenues, the gutting of the Bill of Rights, the establishment of secret tribunals, the implementation of massive tax cuts for billionaires; parents selling blood plasma to fund their children's education; terrorists with boxcutters killing thousands while our the most powerful military in the world stood by helpless; the killing of thousands in Iraq based on a fraudulent claim of Weapons of Mass Destruction. These are great moments, and they deserve four more years for me in the Oval Office.

God Bless America.

Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker) available from Common Courage Press

Verbatim Winter Soldier Testimony Speaks For Itself

“. . . they didn’t believe our body counts. So we had to cut off the right ear of everybody we killed to prove our body count.”

“Now what we did to this man when we strung him up is that he was stripped of all his clothes, and then they tied a string around his testicles and . . . the guy that was holding that string would just yank on it as hard as he could about ten times . . .”

“. . . we threw full C-ration cans at kids on the side of the road. Well, just for a joke, these guys would take a full can . . . and throw it as hard as they could at a kid’s head. I saw several kids’ heads split wide open . . .”

“They went into the village and instead of capturing her, they raped her–every man raped her. . . . and then, the last man to make love to her, shot her in the head.”

“The philosophy was that anybody running must be a Viet Cong; he must have something to hide or else he would stick around for the Americans, not taking into consideration that he was running from the Americans because they were continually shooting at him. So they shot down anybody who was running.”

“. . . . He took me down to this dungeon where South Vietnamese troops were pulling fingernails out of an old woman. There was an American captain standing by, rocking on his heels, rather enjoying the show.”

“We’d throw out the C-ration cans that we didn’t like and, after they thought we were getting a lot of food, we’d hand them cans of 5606, which is helicopter hydraulic fluid and very poisonous. And I observed one kid . . . take a good healthy drink out of it before his mother knocked it over.”

“This was common policy. Kill anything you want to kill, any time you want to kill it–just don’t get caught.”

“. . . . two men were leading a young girl, approximately 19 years old, very pretty, out of a hooch. She had no clothes on so I assumed she had been raped, which was pretty SOP, and then she was thrown onto the pile of the 19 women and children, and five men around the circle opened up on full automatic with their M-16s.”

“. . . . he was . . . . the platoon hatchet man. Any time that he had a prisoner that nobody in the room wanted, this guy would take his ID card and tell him to 'Di Di Mau,' which is 'run' in Vietnamese. The guy would get about ten feet, and get a full burst of automatic, which is 20 rounds, in the back.”

“You go out, fly your mission, you come back to your air-conditioned hootch and drink beer or whatever. You’re not in contact with it. You don’t realize . . . what you’re doing.”

“. . . the heads of the bodies were cut off and they were placed on stakes, jammed down on stakes, and were placed in the middle of the trails and a Cav patch was hammered into the top of his head, with Bravo Company’s 'B' written right on the patch.”

“. . . . when the kids, and I do mean kids–four years old, ranging up to sixteen years old–came around the fence to sell GIs cigarettes, or candy, or beg for food, they were CS’d. And what I mean is they were gassed.”

“. . . . we’d take C-ration crackers and put peanut butter on it and stick a trioxylene heat tab in the middle and put peanut butter around it and let the kids munch on it. . . . . the effect more or less of trioxylene is to eat the membrane out of your throat and if swallowed, would probably eat holes through your stomach.”

“I saw during my tour 20 deformed infants under the age of one. . . . I thought it was congenital or something, from venereal disease, because they had flippers and things. . . . it was common knowledge that Agent Orange was sprayed in the area . . . .”

“Fugas is a jelly-like substance. It’s flammable and . . . . they explode the barrel over an area and this flaming jelly-like substance lands on everything . . . people or animals or whatever.”

“I didn’t see any humane treatment of prisoners . . . If it wasn’t electrical torture, it was the snake torture. If it wasn’t the snake torture it was barbed wire cages . . .”

“There was a lot of mistreatment. We stood there and watched these leeches on peoples’ backs. They would suck out enough blood (they would be about five inches long) and these young guys would just fall over. . .”

“. . . people in my unit were a little bit weary of going out in the field with me. I started enjoying killing people a little bit more than you’re supposed to . . .”

“You could take the wires of a jeep battery put it most any place on their body, and you’re going to shock the hell out of the guy. The basic place you put it was the genitals.”

“The major that I worked for had a fantastic capability of staking prisoners, utilizing a knife that was extremely sharp, and sort of filleting them like a fish.”

“I had a friend who was working with USAID and he was also with CIA. . . . He went over there, ripped her clothes off and took a knife and cut her from her vagina almost all the way up, just about up to her breasts and pulled her organs out, completely out of her cavity, and threw them out. . . .”

Source: The Winter Soldier Investigation (Beacon, 1972) pp. 5-114 passim

President Bush has long had a soft spot in his hearts for those who serve their country in battle. In the 2000 primary election season, for example, he showed his love for them by destroying John McCain, who had been tortured so extensively by Hanoi that he still walked with a limp 30 years later and couldn't lift his arms high enough to comb his hair. Bush and Co. spread rumors that McCain was mentally unstable because of the torture he had been subjected to, that he was gay, that he had fathered an illegitimate daughter with a North Vietnamese woman, that he had a black daughter, that he had voted for the largest tax increase ever, that his wife had stolen prescription drugs from a charity and abused them while she was supposedly caring for their four kids, that McCain was pro-abortion, that he had abandoned his crippled first wife, that he was a liar, a cheat and a fraud. But this was just a warm-up for 2002, when Bush smeared Max Cleland, a Vietnam vet and triple amputee, as unpatriotic.

Yes, this is the brave and principled President who wishes us to "support our troops." How? By sending them to remote corners of the world to kill and die for Halliburton and Bechtel; by cutting their benefits; by paying private mercenaries ten times their meager pay. Call it patriotism Bush style.

Bush, of course, spent his Vietnam years renting a bachelor pad at the swinging Chateaux Dijon in Houston, where he played volleyball, got high, and got laid while his contemporaries were crippled and killed in Vietnam. Bush did ultimately join the 147th Fighter Group of the Texas Air National Guard, which was known as the Champagne Division because it had within its ranks so many Texas sons of privilege, all coincidentally far from the mayhem in Vietnam. At a time when Bush's friends say he was indulging cocaine use he failed to show up for his army physical, which would have included a drug test as a matter of routine. In 2000 Veteran's groups offered reward money for anyone who could verify Bush's whereabouts for his last year of National Guard duty. The money remained unclaimed.

Dick Cheney has said he "had other priorities" than fighting in Vietnam in the 1960s, as though the grunts who took the field in his place had nothing better to do. He got student deferments to keep him at home. After graduating college he got married, which gave him the marriage deferment. In 1964 the government announced that it would draft married men - except for fathers. Nine months and two days after that announcement Cheney became a father. Republican family values at work!

In 2003-2004 hundreds of U.S. troops that had been wounded in Iraq were kept in limbo for months in hot, dirty, overcrowded cement barracks like Fort Stewart, Georgia, waiting for medical treatment. They were required to pay for their own toilet paper (there's no free lunch!) and had to hobble across the sand to use a bathroom. It took a protest in the Senate to get the White House to stop charging the soldiers $8.10 a day for their hospital meals.

In February, 2002, just when he was dispatching thousands of troops to Afghanistan, Bush proposed tripling the cost of medications to needy veterans. In 2003 his administration announced it was cutting off access to its health care system for 164,000 veterans and reducing military housing and medical facilities funding by $1.5 billion. Around the same time Bush refused a relatively modest Congressional request for $275 million to cover veterans' health care costs. In his 2004 budget, GW cut $2 billion from the VA's already inadequate budget. At the same time that he praised the National Guard and Reservists Bush opposed a proposal that would give them access to the Pentagon's health insurance system. His administration also tried to reduce hazardous duty pay and family separation allowances for troops under fire abroad.

In 2003 the Bush Administration attempted to prevent a group of U.S. veterans - who had been tortured in Iraqi prisons during the first Gulf War - from collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets that a federal court had awarded them. Administration lawyers said the money really should be spent on reconstruction contracts. "No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering they went through," said a White House spokesman. So they were given nothing. Compassionate conservatism in action!

American dead continue to be returned to the states in secrecy and President Bush continues to ignore the grief of their families. Even the term "body bag" is too evocative to be used by the Busheviks. Now they are called "transfer tubes."

Doesn't it bring tears to your eyes when you think of how Bush "supports the troops?"

Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker, available from Common Courage Press.

(Note: this entry posted by Bob Harris)

As long as we're re-examining the 1960s, looking for signs of character, trying to decide if a man who volunteered for combat and was decorated five times was more or less courageous than a guy who didn't even show up for his own medical exam... here's George W. Bush during his college days, hitting a fellow sportsman in the face.

The above photo, credited to the Yale yearbook (the caption is in the original), appeared in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, alongside a story on the appeal of "bad boys" in American politics. It's not in the Times' online version, and the rest of the country should see it, I think.

Incidentally, while rugby is a contact sport, every player knows that tackling above the shoulders is a foul. So is leaving your feet during a tackle. Either of these is serious enough that the other team is immediately awarded a penalty kick, often directly resulting in points for the other team.

So even without throwing a punch, Bush is already well outside fair play.

Grasping an opponent by the back of the head and punching him in the face is beyond the pale -- I've watched rugby avidly for years, and I've never seen it during an open-field tackle like this, honest -- and will typically result in a player being immediately sent off.

I'm sure by next week Karl Rove will have a collection of rugby players claiming that John Kerry was even worse...

UPDATE: Had a delightful email exchange with Jim Sleeper, the Yale political science lecturer who wrote the L.A. Times piece and recently found the above photo in his own Yale class of '69 yearbook. Go click over to Jim's article at the link above; it's good. Several other newspapers will apparently be running the photo and story in their print editions in the next few days. Good news for Jim, us, and the republic.

As to why nobody seems to have noticed this photo before, Jim thinks it's because Bush had already graduated a year earlier, and so nobody looked past the '68 book for Bush stuff.

Strange, then, that this photo would be in the '69 book -- unless Bush was well-known as a thug, and thus it wasn't considered out of bounds to print such a thing about a guy who wasn't there anymore.

I've heard from a few rugby players who conjecture that what we're seeing, while unsportsmanlike and a clear foul (Bush has left his feet and made contact above the shoulders), might be the moment immediately after a incompentently-made dirty tackle, with the arm coming down, instead of the moment before an incompetently-thrown dirty punch, with the arm coming up. But I've also heard from a few who think it's exactly what Yale's yearbook staff said it was. We'll probably never know.

Decide for yourself. Either way, both incompetent and dirty.

As Jim points out in his email... character really is destiny, ain't it?

FURTHER UPDATE: This has generated more email than anything else I've ever posted, scrutinized as if it's the Zapruder film of men in knickers.

A few new tidbits: several sources, including this article, say Bush's position was a wing (make up your own right- or left- jokes), a position that requires more sprinting speed than tackling skill. Gee, um, no kidding.

For the truly curious, Yale has a photo of the full team; Bush is in the back row, center, two guys down from a fellow who seems to have undergone some sort of Manchurian Candidate surgery. Of course, rugby truly can be considered a form of trepanation by other means...

As to the photo appearing in the yearbook after Bush's graduation, apparently that happens fairly frequently with sports photos. That's nothing unusual, although the choice of photo and caption, a year later, still seems pretty wild.

Finally, no, of course this isn't supposed to be more important than other issues like the War On Tara, "voting" machines which are anything but, the slow Guantanamization of American life, or the rest of our impending doom during the incompetent reign of a corrupt alcoholic chimpanzee who thinks he talks to God. September, as described below, is National Frighten The Children Just Before The Election month. That alone is way more a part of our future than whether or not Bush slugged a guy, drove drunk, dodged Vietnam, profited from insider trades, took sadistic delight in executing people, or ignored repeated warnings about Al-Qaeda until it was too goddam late.

But the past is prologue.

I again applaud Jim Sleeper for surfacing this tiny bit of it.