Of course, the bad news is that the absolute worst of the lying fascists wholly unfit for any public office, Condiliar Rice, is set to replace Powelliar. She, too, declared Saddam harmless in '01. And then there's that "mushroom cloud" lie less than a year later, not to mention her continued refusal to admit "Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside US" PDB was a dire warning no one acted upon...

11-15-04
8 am
NB

11-14-04
8 am
Let's see... what's the top story? Is it the 56 US KIA and over 300 WIA since Nov 1? No - it's the fate of S. Peterson, of course. And who said America's priorities are fucked up? If we could just make gay marriage a federal crime, none of this would be happening at all...

Helen Thomas continues to ask the right questions - and continues to receive no acceptable, honest answers: "Why are we killing Iraqis in their own country? And why are our forces being killed?" For oil, Israel, and the empire's fascist corporate interests, Helen. That's why...

David Broder - we used to respect you so. What happened? How could you possibly suggest the Dems would fight Bushco's efforts to eliminate our entire social netting? Have you missed the unadulterated class war Bushco's been waging relentlessly the past four years? Have you witnessed any setbacks or throttling courtesy of the ball-less Dems? No? Yet, you somehow believe they'll rise up against the cult now? HA! Come on, David - stop the coddling and inexplicable hopefulness - we're fucked! And the only answer is all out, massive, sustained activism aimed at hammering home the heinous truths about Bushco's unprecedented criminality and firing up Dems to bash it out for all twelve rounds. Got it?

11-13-04
8 am
We're up to 4 KIA per day, folks, which means an average of 32 WIA per as well. Good thing freedom's on the march, or our ever growing troop body count would be seriously disturbing...

Bushco runs the military just like they run the economy: tax cuts for the rich during war, creating a gigantic deficit the next two generations will have to pay off. Eight of ten divisions deployed, creating a gigantic military deficit the next two generations will be conscripted to support. Thank God we have an MBA in the WH, right?

Oh, yea, well miss Rod fucking Paige as Ed Sec: 
"Dr. Paige called the nation's largest teachers' union, 
the National Education Association, a "terrorist organization..." Hey, Rod - 
and thanks for that Most Children Left Behind disaster, too, asshole...

11-12-04
1 pm
The coalition dwindles still: the Dutch are leaving Iraq, as are the Poles (by Jan,) and possibly even the Italians, or at least most of them. That leaves us and the Brits and a handful of inconsequential misc. support personal from a few tiny countries. Excellent diplomacy, Bushco, just goddamn excellent! 

Love them Bushco values - Army suicides are up over 40% just this year! Wonder if killing tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children, or watching their buds get blown to bits for no apparent reason has anything to do with said alarming suicide rate rise. And we wonder how many soldiers have attempted suicide unsuccessfully...

8 am
22 year CIA counter- terrorism expert Michael Scheuer, AKA "Anonymous," has "quit," supposedly because the Agency has ordered him to stop telling the truth. Can you say lying Bushcult member and new CIA Director Porter Goss cleaning house of all "enemies?"

And, speaking of which: "What were first reported to be tanks and now identified as Marine APCs showed up at an anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood (Los Angeles.)"  (Pics here.) A practice run for the massive protests expected once Steady Liar restarts the draft maybe?

Mike Whitney explains why moral-less, anti-American Gonzales is wholly unqualified for the job of US AG, or any other job requiring a law license: "Several groups have already announced opposition to his nomination including the Center for Constitutional Rights, People for the American Way and Human Rights First. The paper trail that connects him to Abu Ghraib should precipitate a criminal investigation, not plaudits and rewards."

"Eight of ten US divisions are tied down by a few thousand insurgents." And the rest of the world is well aware of just how incredibly vulnerable and insecure this country is. If China, or Iran, or NKorea decided to fuck around, our only response choices are: A) Limited air and naval power against serious air, naval and ground power, or B) nukes - like the "bunker busters" Steady Liar's busy building. Sooner or later, one - or a combo of many - will decide it's time to knock the king off his high horse. Then what?

"The Washington Post has confirmed that US troops are firing white-phosphorus rounds that create a screen of fire impervious to water." Which, if used by any other country, would be deemed a chemical weapon. When "we" deploy such an inhumane weapon, it's called, er, freedom on the march...

11-11-04
8 am
Why be afraid? Steady Liar's replacing lunatic Ashcroft with a former Enron rep who advised his boss on how best to violate every domestic and international law ever written, (AKA, Bushco "moral values.) We're, like, so sure history's most notorious thief, Ken fucking Lay, will do hard time and be forced to return his stolen loot. And so much for ever prosecuting any Bushculters for the hundreds of egregious war crimes they committed and continue to commit. Four more 
years, huh?

Look - even we know how all rebels operate at this point: the US announces a major assault in advance; the rebels break up, leaving enough behind to make it appear as if they're engaging our troops - but most actually split and wait it out - because they got nothing but time (and hundreds of tons of explosives.) So we "win," then, in a month or so, when we start to back out, the rebels return and take over - and recruit most of the Iraqi security forces we leave in charge. Then it all starts again. Good luck boys - you'll need it taking orders from your mentally ill leaders!

Meanwhile: "But there are certainly plenty of thorny matters awaiting resolution: the probe into the leak of a CIA operative's employment; reports and lawsuits stemming from the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib; probes into prewar intelligence in Iraq and the White House's use of it; and FBI investigations into how sensitive intelligence wound up in the hands of Israelis and Iranians." And don't forget the Medicare lies, the litany of Constitutional violations, the missing Iraq "rebuilding" billions, the EPA lies to NYers after 911, the myriad of still unanswered, er, questions re: 911, the OSP, and their continued ignorance of the Supreme Court on Gitmo and dozens of other lower court orders. Yes, there sure are plenty of thorny matters 
Dems with balls should be demanding answers for relentlessly!

11-10-04
8 am
So, we're done with our mourning week: What now? The brainwashed have chosen their fascist cult leaders in spite of the unprecedented litany of high crimes, war crimes and misdemeanors said fascist cult leaders have committed. In spite of the destroyed economy and amplified class war, in spite 
of the abject racism and Constitution shredding, in spite of the environmental destruction and sell-off, the ruination of America's standing and reputation, and the near total decimation of our military. Bushco has a, er, mandate to proceed with the lunatic neocon global domination for elite profit agenda - and we can't do a fucking thing about it.

Impeachment? Never happen with the GOP in control of the entire gov. (Though we all should definitely keep the possibility alive - and vocal.) Insurgency? Again - never happen. Dems are basically pussies and Bushco would surely reign unimaginable violence upon any who tried to resist en masse. Regular protests? Please - they're obviously a complete waste of time, and most of "us" are too busy trying to make ends meet to participate in more than a couple events a year. A military coup? No fucking way - the majority of our fighting force have been trained to obey, whether they agree or not. So?

BAM will continue on, although we're not really sure covering and analyzing Bushco's anti-American hell for the choir is anything more than an exercise in total futility. Cleary, knowing the truth is all but irrelevant. Of course, we're sure it's just a matter of time before Net dissent is all but shut down and most of "us" are on one of Steady Liar's numerous secret terrorist lists... On the other hand, as our new TRUTHSTICKS state: If we could nail Nixon, we can nail Bush. Any chance we'll be able to unite, rally the troops, set to aggressively debrainwashing the cult, and maintain relentless pressure on both the Congress and the White House?...

Regarding the above, and as you can see, we're starting fresh. The 300 or so links featured here pre-11-02-04 can now be found on Page Two; Page Three features 20+ categories incl., Halliburton, Neocons, Economy, etc.

Morals, values, hearts and minds - the Bushco way:
"U.S. soldiers raided the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad during Friday prayers, killing at least four and wounding up to 20 worshippers."
Inter Press
"We are deeply concerned by the devastating impact that the fighting in Iraq is having on the people of that country." Pierre Kraehenbuehl,
 ICRC's Director 
of Operations.

"46 Groups Will Boycott 
Iraq Vote"
LA Times

"And America’s major media outlets are helpfully providing a journalistic fog around a central fact: The U.S. government is at war with many people it claims to be liberating."
Norman Solomon
"Falluja Arithmetic Lesson"
Greg Palast
"What did the destruction of Fallujah accomplish?"
James Goldsborough
"Marine intelligence officials have issued a report warning that any significant withdrawal of troops from the Iraqi city of Fallujah would strengthen the insurgency... "the enemy will be able to effectively defeat I MEF's ability to accomplish its primary objectives of developing an effective Iraqi security force and setting the conditions for successful 
Iraqi elections."
Agence France Press

Freedom marching right 
the fuck along!
"Heroin production is booming in Afghanistan, undermining democracy and putting money in the coffers of terrorists, according to a U.N. report Thursday..."
AP

"The last remaining Australian aid agency in Iraq, World Vision, is pulling out of the country after the murders of its own head of operations and CARE Australia aid worker Margaret Hassan."
AFP

"A suicide car bomber blasted an American convoy north of Baghdad and U.S. troops battled insurgents west of the capital Wednesday as a wave of violence across Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland killed at least 27 people."
AP

"U.S. deaths in Iraq this month are approaching 100, making it the second-deadliest month since American forces (illegally) invaded..."
AP
"Our strategy is succeeding."
BUSH 09-14-04
"For those who remain interested in understanding what actually has occurred since the US-led invasion of Iraq, three very important sources of information have recently appeared."
The Age

"Sunni Arab Regions 
in Flames"
Juan Cole
"It's too late to fix Iraq by pumping more U.S. troop numbers in now. The resistance has grown so widespread that it would take half a million American soldiers to win at this game of Whack-a-Mole and install an Iraqi government that would last long enough for the United States to walk away from the country without humiliation... In any case, these might-have-beens are irrelevant since the Bush administration never intended to withdraw fully from Iraq (those 14 "enduring bases")..."
Gwynne Dyer
And the only way to justify our indefinite presence is to keep Iraq as chaotic, violent and desperate as possible. Hence, what we see as "mistakes," "misjudgments" and the lack of an occupation plan is, in actuality, the occupation plan.

"The more successful we are, the worse things are going to get. That's what George Bush said on Friday: that violence will increase as Iraqi elections grow closer - a total mind warp since the more violent Iraq becomes, the less the chances of any election ever being held..."
Robert Fisk

"Iraqi authorities have fired thousands of police officers and taken over the recruiting of new policemen... "The Iraqis have their own methods of recruiting police officers that might fall short of U.S. civil rights standards, but they are proving effective," according to (Army Cpt. Bradley.)
UPI
A Democracy with limited civil rights and, for the foreseeable future, total martial law. This is what 
69 US soldiers died 
for in the past week?

"After six days of intense combat against the Fallujah insurgents, US warplanes, tanks and mortars have left a shattered landscape of gutted buildings, crushed cars and charred bodies. A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction..."
The Independent

"Gunmen have killed the Shi’ite Muslim mayor of a Baghdad suburb where violence against Shi’ites and Christians has been rising, witnesses said on Saturday."
Reuters

Mission accomplished!
Again!
"The United States and Iraq's interim government claimed yesterday that the battle for Fallujah was over, with 1,000 insurgents killed and the rebel stronghold effectively pacified after six days of fighting. But even as the victory was being declared, wide-spread violence erupted throughout the rest of the country..."
The Independent
Of course, with pre-massacre estimates at 2 - 5000 "insurgents," it appears up to 4000 have escaped to do what they do every single fucking time: blow shit up in other cities while waiting for us to split town, which they'll then retake. What a Jesus-inspired cycle of senseless death and misery...

"The US-led invasion of Iraq will eventually succeed but US troops will likely have to stay in the country for up to three more years, a former commander of US forces (Tommy Franks) who ran the war in Iraq and Afghanistan..."
AFP
Which translates to the restarting of the draft - 
there's simply no other way 
to maintain hundreds of thousands of troops and support personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention our deployments in over 130 other countries, period.
"Iraqi insurgents have extended their reach over large swaths of the country, including sections of the capital, making it unlikely that the United States can establish the stability needed for credible elections in January even if its forces succeed in Fallouja, military and political analysts say."
LATimes
"Hundreds of men trying to flee the assault on Fallujah have been turned back by U.S. troops following orders to allow only women, children and the elderly to leave."
ABC
Nice to see we spreading them Bushco morals and values whenever we can...

"Aid workers yesterday warned that four days of fighting had turned the city of Fallujah into a disaster area, with water and electricity cut off and the stench of dead bodies permeating the air."
The Scotsman

"Twenty-two US troops and five Iraqi soldiers have been killed in the fight for Fallujah..."
AFP
"More than 200 soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq, mostly in the offensive on the Iraqi rebel bastion of Fallujah, have arrived at the US military hospital..."
AFP
"Aid agencies called on 
U.S. forces and the Iraqi government to allow them to deliver food, medicine and water to Falluja saying four days of intense fighting had turned the city into a "big disaster"."
Reuters

"But now, nearly two years after the first troops rolled across the desert, rank-and-file soldiers 
and their families are increasingly speaking up... And soldier-advocacy groups are reporting a rising number of calls from military personnel who are upset about the war and are thinking about refusing to fight; a few soldiers have even fled to Canada rather than go to Iraq... Doubts about the war have contributed to the decline of troop morale over the past year—and may, some experts say, be a factor in the 40 percent increase in Army suicide rates in Iraq in the past year."
Mother Jones

"As for the defenders, those Iraqis who resist in a city that heroically defied Saddam Hussein; they were merely "insurgents holed up in the city," as if they were an alien body, a lesser form of life to be "flushed out"... The thrust of the reporting is that the "insurgents" are led by sinister foreigners of the kind that behead people... No irony is noted that the foreigners in Iraq are overwhelmingly American and, by all indications, loathed."
John Pilger
"The Marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan...." In other words, Satan started this conflict. And we – the anti-Satan forces – fully intend to finish it by destroying him.
Sounds very fundamentalist.
Sounds a lot like 
Osama bin Laden... As the United States government terrorizes and murders in the name of fighting terrorism and murder, the message from Washington is that its holy war of might is un- questionably right."
Norman Solomon

"The U-S military is now saying 178 Americans have been wounded since the start of this week's assault on Fallujah."
AP
"Insurgents today launched attacks in Iraq's third largest city (Mosul), raiding police stations, political offices and other targets."
AP
"A car bomb exploded in the heart of Baghdad Thursday, killing 17 people and wounding at least eight..."
MSNBC
"Iraqi rebels have attacked the Northern Iraqi city of Baiji and blocked several streets 
in the city..."
Focus

"Baghdad sources confirm to Asia Times Online that the mujahideen now control parts of the southern suburb of ad-Durha, as well as Hur Rajab, Abu Ghraib, al-Abidi, as-Suwayrah, Salman Bak, Latifiyah and Yusufiyah - all in the Greater Baghdad area. This would be the first time since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, that the resistance has been able to control these neighborhoods... In a major development not reported by US corporate media, for the first time different factions of the resistance have released a joint statement... The message is clear: the resistance 
is united."
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times

"23 US troops killed in 
2 days."  
"More than 650 US troops deployed in Iraq have been infected with a fly-borne parasite that causes chronic, festering sores, officials said at a health conference 
in Miami..."
AFP
Like they don't have enough problems as it is...

"...the fact remains that what is occurring today in Iraq is part of a well-conceived plan the goal of which is to restore the Baath Party back to power. And the policies of the Bush administration are playing right into their hands."
Scott Ritter
"There is no doubt that the US can recapture Fallujah, if only by blowing most of it up. But this is unlikely to have much of an effect on the guerrilla war in central and northern Iraq which continues to escalate."
Patrick Cockburn

"Residents say scores of civilians have been killed or wounded in 24 hours of fighting since US-led forces pushed deep into the city on Monday evening."
Aljazeera
Guess that's what happens when you get in the way of Bushco morals - freedom marches you to death...
"A major Sunni political party has quit the interim Iraqi government and revoked its single minister from the Cabinet in protest over the U.S. assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah..."
USA Today
"The problem is that the insurgents are active all over the Sunni Triangle (not just in Fallujah.) They dramatized this fact over the weekend. In Samarra, attacks on Iraqi police stations killed 33, including the local national guard commander, and injured 48. In Ramadi, a slew of suicide car bombings wounded 20 U.S. Marines. In Haditha and Haqlaniyah, guerrillas raided three police stations, killing 22 officers. In Diyala Province, the governor's aide and two members of the provincial governing council were killed. Bombs also exploded across Baghdad, at a Catholic church, and against U.S. convoys along the main road to the airport."
Fred Kaplan, Slate

"Iraq A total of 14 Americans have been killed in the past two days across Iraq -- including five in and around Fallujah."
AP
"Militants attacks and clashes killed 45 people in the Iraqi city of Baquba on Tuesday..."
New Nation
"A powerful group of Sunni Muslim clerics called Tuesday for a boycott of national elections set for late January to protest the U.S.-led attack against the Sunni insurgent stronghold Fallujah."
AP

"The battle of Fallujah promises to be far more shocking and aweful than the bombardment of Baghdad that kicked off Operation "Iraqi Freedom" in April 2003. A senior Marine Corps surgeon warned that casualties will surpass any level seen since the Vietnam War... Bush's war on Iraq is a war of aggression... Pursuant to policies promulgated by Bush and Rumsfeld, U.S. forces have engaged in widespread torture and inhuman treatment 
of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Bush admitted in his 2003 State of the Union address that he had sanctioned summary executions of suspected terrorists... Nuremberg prosecutor Justice Jackson labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times."
Majorie Cohn

"The president is not going to trim his sails or pull back."
Colin Powell
Or admit to royally fucking everything up, or to murdering and maiming hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, or to stealing billions for his fascist cronies, or attend a single military funeral... but, in order to continue his so-called "aggressive" foreign policy, Steady Liar will, in fact, start drafting more bullet magnets as soon as it's politically feasible...

"Public distaste with the Iraq war in Britain has hit its worst-ever level, with fewer than a third of people thinking it is the right thing, an 
opinion poll said."
Agence France Presse

"The first military commission trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was halted Monday after a federal judge here ruled the proceedings invalid under 
U.S. and international law — dealing a blow to the legal process set up by the Bush administration to handle accused terrorists."
Hendren, LATimes

"House and Senate negotiators have tucked a potentially far-reaching anti-abortion provision into a $388 billion must-pass spending bill, complicating plans for Congress to wrap up its business and adjourn for the year... "On a huge spending bill they're writing law, and they're taking away rights from women." 
(Sen. Boxer)
NYT

"Alberto Gonzales, on the other hand, possesses one of the most twisted minds the American legal system has ever produced... The military's judge advocate generals (JAGs), not known for squishy liberalism, say that 
Gonzales is nuts."
Ted Rall

"Having picked up a handful of seats in this month's election, House Republicans seem to think they have a mandate to eradicate Congressional ethics standards... The old era is clearly over, as are any doubts that the Republican House leadership has lost interest in the high moral ground now that it has further consolidated its power."
NYT eds.
"The repeal might be called the Tom DeLay Protection Act of 2004... You don't have to be a crackpot to believe that the Gilded Age is now."
E.J. Dionne Jr.

"Faced with the prospect of a government unable to pay its bills, the Senate voted on Wednesday to raise the federal debt limit by $800 billion.... The bill, if approved by the House in a vote expected on Thursday, would authorize the third big increase in the federal borrowing since President Bush took office in 2001... "I don't remember anyone during the elections making a promise to raise the federal debt to $8.1 trillion."
NYT

"The Selective Service System (SSS) and the U.S. Department of Education now are gearing up to compare their computer records, to make sure all men between the ages of 18 and 25 who are required to register for a military draft have 
done so."
Brownsville Herald
"Forget all this talk about a draft. We're not going to have a draft so long as I'm the president..."
BUSH
But he will prepare for the re-starting of the draft, 
(which will probably be called something Orwellianly patriotic, like "mandatory liberation service," or "The Project to Protect American Interests and Spread God's Gift of Liberty"), for no apparent reason...

"Well, apparently the neo-crazies are seriously considering launching – or condoning – a preemptive strike against Iran's Safeguarded facilities, in flagrant violation of the 
UN Charter."
Gordon Prather
"I don't see any circumstances in which military action would be justified against Iran, 
full stop."
UK Foreign Sec Straw
And we all know what happens when a Bushcultist insists a certain action 
won't happen...

"This is not a purge of incompetent (CIA) officers or of those who have caved under political pressure -- this is a political purge of those "disloyal to George W. Bush."
Molly Ivins

We are just so, so fucked:
"Within the past month, four former deputy directors of operations have tried to offer CIA Director Porter J. Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss has declined to speak to any of them... Goss's first choice for executive director - the agency's third-ranking official - withdrew his name after The Washington Post reported that he left the agency 20 years ago after having been arrested for shoplifting."
Pincus, Priest WPost
"The CIA's Deputy Director for Operations Stephen Kappes and his immediate deputy, Michael Sulick, told colleagues Monday morning that they were departing the agency..."
AP

Good thing the CIA isn't being politisized anymore than it already is:
"The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources... One of the first casualties appears to be Stephen R. Kappes, deputy director of clandestine services, the CIA's most powerful division... On Friday John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year veteran of the intelligence division who served as acting CIA director before Goss took over, announced that he was retiring."
Royce, Newsday

"Federal judges are jeopardizing national
 security by issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush's decisions on 
America's obligations under international treaties and agreements, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday."
AP
Man, how we pine for the old days, when America was a Democracy, and those in leadership positions had actual working knowledge 
of our Constitution and system of checks and balances...

And a backwards we shall go:
"President Bush has chosen White House counsel Alberto Gonzales...  to succeed Attorney General John Ashcroft... Gonzales publicly defended the administration's policy - essentially repudiated by the Supreme Court and now being fought out in the lower courts - of detaining certain terrorism suspects for extended periods without access to lawyers or courts.
He also wrote a controversial February 2002 memo in which Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture law and international treaties providing protections to prisoners of war... And he once was a partner in a Houston law firm which represented the scandal-ridden energy 
giant Enron."
AP
As if that's not fucked up enough:
"The CIA will now be but another, ever expanding militarized arm of an administration that will already control Congress (hence no possibility of serious oversight over the Agency), significant parts of our courts and justice system, a media machine, a political machine, a religious machine, a majority of the state governments in our federalist system, and sizeable hunks of the government bureaucracy. The President, in other words, will have his own intelligence arm and secret army at his beck and interventionist call for the next four years, and no one around to take a peek."
Chalmers Johnson
"Springtime for Spooks"
Jim Lobe

"Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans resigned Tuesday, the first members of President Bush's Cabinet to leave as he headed from re-election into his second term... "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."
Hunt, AP
And he achieved that without a single successful terrorism arrest and prosecution. Amazing. Of course, the anthrax killer's still on the loose, so there's that... and those 10,000 members of Al Qaeda "sleeper cells" who apparently still roam free... But, hey - Asscroft got Tommy Chong and those Louisanna hookers, so we can sleep 
easy tonight...

"These might once have been idle questions for conservative Washington think-tanks. But now, with President Bush safely re-elected for another four years and increased Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, such radical right-wing notions are no longer pipedreams. They are the active stuff of policy discussion... "I don't know if we're going to abolish the prescription drug benefit [for senior citizens], but we'd like to... We'd like to see oil and gas exploration increased in the continental United States. We want a constitutional amendment on marriage. We want the culture of life expanded..." The New York Times reported yesterday that Vice-President Dick Cheney was supporting the idea of abolishing income tax and replacing it with a flat national sales tax - a highly regressive notion that would effectively shift the tax burden drastically away from the rich to the dwindling middle class and the working poor."
Gumbel, The Independent

"The U.S. electoral system looks increasingly dysfunctional, and those of us who used to mock the old Soviet or Iraqi "elections" 
for lacking competition 
ought to be blushing."
Nicholas Kristoff
What a dickhead - as if this election issue is somehow more important than the rampant fraud we knew was coming and is now slowly being revealed. Hey, Nick - got back to the Sudan, 
will ya?

"The unavoidable conclusion is that this year's election in Ohio was deeply flawed, that thousands of Ohioans were denied their right to vote, and that the ultimate vote count is very much in doubt."
Fritrakis, Wasserman

"Today the University of California's Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team released a statistical study - the sole method available to monitor
the accuracy of e- voting - reporting irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000-260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election... "No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained..."
via Common Dreams

"Facts suggest something went very wrong on Nov. 2."
Ritt Goldstein

"Could we have been so naive? Thousands of the country's most credentialed lawyers flocked to Florida to guarantee a fair election. Did we inadvertently miss an election debacle even greater than that of 2000 and negligently allow our client to concede?"
Ian Solomon
Short answer: duh.

"The vast majority of provisional ballots cast in Ohio were legitimate, say election officials who are poring over thousands of presidential election ballots."
AP
So what? If Dems, progressives, liberatarians, greens, indys and the rest of the majority who didn't vote for Fascism don't rise up and start fighting with everything they got, nothing will change, and America and the world are quite doomed...

"Both Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik will be demanding a recount (in Ohio.)"
Truthout
Ohio Dems demand ever
 vote be counted.
Truthout
Don't forget about Florida, assholes - that's where the real fraud and crimes took place - what, you think made fascist Jeb ain't doing baby bro's wet work? Grow the fuck up already, Jesus...

"I work with statistics and polling data every day. Something rubbed me the wrong way. I checked the exit polls for Florida--all wrong. CNN's results indicated a Kerry win: turnout matched voter registration, and independents had broken 
59% to 41% for Kerry... The results are shocking. Overall, Bush received 2% fewer votes in counties with electronic touch-screen voting than expected. In counties with optical scanning, he received 16% more. "
Colin Shia, Zogby
A must read for anyone who thinks that A) Bush actually won the election fair and square (two words which have never before been used in the same sentence with spoiled alcoholic deserter Steady Liar,) or B) thinks we should roll over and play dead like we did last time. And that worked out swell, didn't it?

"Come on. If Republicans had lost the election, this column would be unnecessary because Karl Rove and company would be contesting every vote.... But the much-publicized voting- machine error that gave 
Bush 4,258 votes in an Ohio precinct where only 638 people cast ballots preceded a flood of disturbing reports, ranging from the Florida voting machine that counted backward to the North Carolina computer that eliminated votes. In Ohio's Warren County, election officials citing "homeland security" concerns locked the doors to the county building where votes were being counted, refusing to allow members of the media and bipartisan observers to 
watch.Bush won the county overwhelmingly."
Britt, WPost

"George W. Bush's vote tallies, especially in the key state of Florida, are so statistically stunning that they border on the unbelievable."
Sam Parry, Consortium News

"By any standard, what happened in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election was a disaster. What happened during the Presidential election of 2004, in Florida, in Ohio, and in a number of other states as well, was worse. "
William Rivers Pitt

An Interesting Day:
President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11 

NEOCONS ARE DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR 9-11 
A BAM THEORY 
Which we wrote more than 18 months before the publication of Sen. Bob Graham's book, "Intelligence Matters" in which his "claims significantly reinforce the view that the Bush regime "intentionally" created the conditions for a massive terrorist attack to facilitate their ambition of a global war for the world's dwindling oil reserves."

"One last chapter of the investigation by the Sept. 11 commission, a supplement completed more than two months ago, has not yet been made public by the Justice Department... Drawing from this unpublished part of the inquiry, the commission quietly asked the inspectors general at the Departments of Defense and Transportation to review what it had determined were broadly inaccurate accounts provided by several civil and military officials about efforts to track and chase the hijacked aircraft 
on Sept. 11."
NYT
So that's two reports that reveal who failed to uphold their duty and oath of office being withheld for political purposes. Not that Bushco has anything to hide, mind you...

"It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names... release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11- member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss... "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."
Robert Scheer

"American diplomats pressured the Halliburton Company in late 2003 to keep using a Kuwaiti subcontractor to truck fuel into Iraq, despite evidence that the company was charging exorbitant prices, newly released State Department documents 
show."
NYT
Rep Henry Waxman - one of the few left actually fighting for truth and justice.

"In a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, the oil services company said that the Justice Department expanded its investigation into Halliburton, that government probes have found that bribes may have been made in Nigeria... Its 
SEC filing Friday disclosed 
more trouble related to investigations by the SEC, Justice, a French magistrate and Nigerian officials into whether a consortium including Halliburton paid $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials involving a gas plant from 1995 to 2002. Cheney ran the company from 1995 to 2000..."
Milbank, WPost

"That is how President Bush rushed the country into an unnecessary conflict with Iraq in his first term, and we have been seeing alarming signs of that approach all week on Iran... Puzzlement turned to alarm yesterday when The Washington Post reported that Mr. Powell's comments were based on unverified information that had been brought to the United States by a previously unknown source whose reliability and authenticity had not yet been vetted. That certainly did bring back old memories - of Mr. Powell assuring the world that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, based on fanciful intelligence reports about aluminum tubes."
NYT eds.
They still refer to themselves as "the paper of record," 
yet use euphemisms like "unnecessary conflict" instead of "illegal aggressive invasion," and "fanciful intelligence" instead of "lies woven from whole cloth to mask the true agenda." Fucking paper of record 
our asses...

"Whatever George Bush wants to hear George Bush will hear."
H.D.S. Greenway

"I realize that members of a Christian cult that originated in the 19th century believe they have a biblical obligation to love Israel. Well, people are entitled to their religious beliefs, but none of them has any business being used as a basis for American foreign policy. We have one, and only one, interest in the Middle East. That is access, at a fair market price, to oil. Whether the countries from which we buy oil like or don't like Israel, are democracies or monarchies or dictatorships, is immaterial and irrelevant."
Charley Reese

"History will show that the Bush crowd of incompetents brought tremendous amounts of suffering to enormous numbers of people. The amount of blood being shed is sickening, and there is no end to the grief in sight... Some of the world's most important decisions - often, decisions of life and death - have been left to those who are less competent and less experienced, to men and women who are deficient in such qualities as risk perception and comprehension of future consequences, who are reckless and dangerously susceptible to magical thinking and the ideological pressure of their peers."
Bob Herbert

"Maybe I'm just dumb or hopelessly naive, but I don't understand how it can be that all the folks who messed up foreign policy in the first Bush administration, especially over Iraq, are being either promoted or kept in place. The ones who had the intelligence and courage to oppose what was happening are being given the boot."
Klerfeld, Newsday

"Religious leaders are even daring to instruct us in how to vote, and in some cases are suggesting that those who dare to vote contrary to their leaders' wishes risk their soul and standing with God.
This is America?"
Jay Bookman

And just where are those "religious leaders" when ya need 'em?
"Deficit spending didn't bother the Bush administration when the issue was tax cuts. Congress had no trouble finding "savings" to supposedly offset new costs when the costs were in a corporate tax bill stuffed with special-interest provisions. But when it comes to health care for poor children, different, stricter rules seem to apply... The result is that some 200,000 low-income children will be at risk of losing health coverage in the next three years."
WPost eds.
Hey - Bushco supporters - these are the morals and values you want everyone to live by, are they? So how many poor children would Jesus ignore, anyway?

"Never before has an American chief executive worked deliberately to foment a fundamentalist absolutism that is ultimately tribal, theocratic, antiscientific, and incompatible with pluralist democracy."
Robert Kuttner

"The coalition cannot have it both ways. Either this is an armed conflict, in which case the 1949 Geneva Conventions apply, or else they are giving aid to the provisional Iraqi government, in which case they must be subject to its laws. It seems they want neither."
Chris Bellamy
Seeing as how Steady Liar has already declared himself exempt from Geneva Conventions - and all international and domestic laws generally - and the fact that one CPA edict declares US forces, contractors and civilians exempt from all Iraqi laws, it would appear Bushco already has it both ways: they can bomb and kill and steal with total impunity and there's no one in the world who can stop them. Now that's good ole American morals and values.

"Now, by successfully discarding those who won't buy into the administration's ideological fantasies of remaking the world in our image, the neoconservatives have consolidated control of the United States' vast military power. With the ravaging of the CIA and the ousting of Powell - instead of the more-deserving Rumsfeld - the coup of the neo- conservatives is complete. They have achieved a remarkable political victory by failing upward."
Robert Scheer

"The level of devastation wrought upon Fallujah is clear proof that the people who dwelled there were the scum of the earth, deserving of death and disaster. This must certainly be so, because George W. Bush would never order an all-out assault on a city filled with civilians in order to cover up his gross mismanagement of the situation lo these last twenty months. This is what I've
 been told, anyway."
William Rivers Pitt

"But here's what you don't know: In the global conflict for moral and economic supremacy, Europe is winning."
O'Hehir, Salon
Well worth the Free 
One Day Pass...

"It is time to challenge the notion that it is our job to broker peace in the Middle East and every other troubled region across the globe."
Rep. Ron Paul

"For the Republican Party to claim itself a party of Jesus-like values soils the historic reputation of a man like Jesus as well as Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Buddha and Mohammed."
John F. Borowski

"Someone might say that when leaders of a country have caused so many deaths that they might just deserve 
to be hauled before an international court of justice as war criminals -- especially if the war was based on false premises and conducted
 with an ineptitude that 
staggers the mind. It is an unnecessary, unjust, stupid, sinful war. The majority of Americans have assumed responsibility for the war. Therefore they share responsibility for all 
the Iraqi deaths."
Andrew Greeley

"You'd think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like "love thy neighbor," "turn the other cheek," "good will toward men," "blessed be the peacemakers" and "judge 
not lest you be judged."
Maureen Dowd

"Certainly the U.S. military can eventually suppress Fallujah, but for how long? Iraq is burning with wrath, anger, and sadness … the people of Fallujah are dear to us. They are our brothers and sisters, and we are so saddened by what is happening in that city."
He asked what the difference is between what is occurring in Fallujah now and what Saddam Hussein did during his repression of the Shia Intifada that followed the '91 Gulf War. "Saddam suppressed that uprising and used less awful methods than the Americans are in 
Fallujah today."
Dahr Jamil

"Interestingly, in light of the reported contributions that Christian evangelicals made to Bush's re-election, Eland notes that Wilsonianism preceded Wilson and was rooted in the desire of Christian missionaries to save savage and inferior peoples and vanquish evildoers. Fast-forward 90 years and find the "axis of evil". Coincidence? I don't think so."
David Isenberg
Get the book, "The Empire Has No Clothes" 
by Ivan Eland

"Forget the rubble that once was Iraq’s urban and suburban heart, the destruction and idling of thousands of factories and productive enterprises between Iraqis, and 100,000 Iraqis who did not survive the past 18 months. Forget what neoconservative idiocy in power has wrought for Iraq in the name of social experimentation and creating friendly and free market regimes. These are not pleasant thoughts. And forget the tens of thousands of mostly young American men in uniforms who died, or were and will be permanently maimed, deep in some unpronounceable Iraqi hellhole in the glorious name of defending America.
Well, it isn’t defending America, and as we all know today, it never was. "
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski

"Falluja will be "taken" by destroying it, just as Bush has been "liberating" Iraqis by killing them and Allawi has been leading them to democracy by imposing censorship, curfew and martial law. But this 
offensive will no more end 
the reign of terror than the conquest of other 
cities did. "
Haroon Siddiqui
Now, seeing as how that's pretty much the common consensus at this point, the question is - why is Bushco proceeding? Might it have something to do with the neocon loony theory of "creative destruction?"

"For make no mistake, this 
is the election in which American Christianity destroyed itself. "
Michael Feingold
We thought that happened when more than 10,000 priests were found to be diddling their alter boys at will for decades...

"And holy cow, are the D's ever about to get a gift from the R's. R's are apparently planning to scrap the progressive tax system entirely and make it all regressive. Good grief -- that's not only unbelievable, it's immoral."
Molly Ivins

"Don't get me wrong: With an ideologically radical party in control of all three branches of government, the capacity for mischief -- and misery -- during the next few years is frightening... Barring another major terrorist attack of the sort that saved his first term, I would predict that in an amazingly short time Bush will be quacking like the lamest of ducks."
Robert Scheer

"There is, of course, a real question that the media should be addressing: Did Sen. John Kerry win Ohio, Florida and New Mexico or was it mere coincidence that all exit polls showed President Bush losing those states? I honestly don't know the answer, but we should find out if cheating occurred.
And we should plan for 
the future."
Ed Garvey

"As detailed in a telling new Congressional report, Mr. Bush's secrecy obsession - 
by now a widely recognized hallmark of his presidency - is truly out of hand."
Dorothy Samuels

"I do not write the headlines for my columns. Someone else does. But if I were to write the headline for 
this one it would be, 
"Impeach George Bush."
Richard Cohen