We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ...

To this:

The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership's intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago.

The provision, part of the massive bill introduced Friday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist organizations but have not been tried on or convicted of any charges. Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong House Judiciary Committee meeting, but it survived on a party-line vote.

The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Hastert spokesman John Feehery said the Justice Department "really wants and supports" the provision.

I wanted to write something learned, eloquent, profound. But I remained stuck. So I'll just go with it.

First, the very worst thing anyone can leave in comments is any variation on the theme, "but other people are worse," up through and including today's horrors in Iraq. We are not supposed to be other people! Do it, and I'll verbally strip the flesh from your bones.

The second worst thing anyone can do is "remind" me how often we've failed to live up to those words. I know that. I know it personally: I'm gay; I'm under assault. The point is that "We the People" knew enough to write them down once. Everything about the last 228 years has been about how close we can come to attaining that ideal. We screwed up; we tried; we backslid; we tried again. We tried again.

Reputedly, we have a quite-the-Christian president. Apparently, those 40 bloody minutes of The Passion of Christ is now to be policy. With Bush understudying Pilate — and not entirely metaphorically: die out of sight, out of mind — and certainly beyond the range of American videocams. Hand me some soap.

If this passes, we have will have lost any moral right to rage that Libya or similar nations may be on the U.N.'s Commission on Human Rights. They're now our subcontractors. We've lost any claim we may have had that Abu Ghraib was an aberration by a few. Hastert, Ashcroft, and Bush are now running the joint, one-off, through de facto, off-shore subsidiaries.

If we can internalize the "necessity" of torture, we are self-damned.


Postscript: fixed an HTML code. Sorry.

Sheree DiCicco was shocked to learn that her insurance company used satellite images to determine her home was located too close to brush and would not be reinsured because of the potential for wildfire damage.

"I didn't know insurance companies would, or even could, do such a thing,'' said DiCicco, who lives in Auburn in the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento.

Increasingly, however, insurance companies are using satellites to identify homes at high risk of fire damage because of their proximity to brush, a development that alarms some state regulators and privacy advocates.

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

The fact is that today’s “Republican” Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republican” has always been synonymous with the word “responsibility,” which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.

Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.
[...]

Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, “If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both.” I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today.

I'm not an uncritical fan Likeable Ike (see Bitter Fruit about our involvement in Guatemala), but he is a legendary figure in the Republican Party.

Second, a Marine veteran, not long back from Optional War I, who's running, indirectly, against George.

A candidate who has actually served in the Middle East during the Iraq war, Brozak has seen the quagmire up close. A dark-haired, broad-shouldered man, he has a deep, authoritative voice and enunciates crisply -- it's easy to imagine him in uniform, barking orders. When he speaks of the Bush administration, though, it's with the stunned incredulousness of one who's seen all his assumptions about the world upended. Before the war, Brozak says, he wanted to believe his president. It barely occurred to him not to. Now, his voice gets heated when he talks about Iraq, which is the subject he talks about most. "There were no weapons of mass destruction," he says. "There was no planning, just this sense of arrogance and contempt by the civilians in this administration."
[...]

When Brozak returned from the Middle East to his post in Arlington, Va., he tried to alert civilians in the Defense Department to the trouble on the ground. But, he says, they were uninterested. "It was that same arrogant, contemptuous attitude. When I came back and said we have a problem, we need to address it right away, we are fighting for our lives, their attitude was, 'We know better than you do.' It was their contempt for the people in uniform, it was their contempt for all Americans" that finally drove him out of the Republican Party.

In fact, Brozak says, Republicans' contempt for soldiers -- coupled with their mawkish reverence for the military in the abstract -- had been bothering him for a while. He first started souring on his party when the Bush team smeared John McCain during the 2000 primaries; he was outraged by the 2002 attacks against Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was tarred as a traitorous ally of Osama bin Laden despite the fact that he lost three limbs serving in Vietnam.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: what the hell do Chaffee, Collins, and Snow have in common with George, Dick, and Bug-Man Tom? It's not the party of Lincoln, or Eisenhower, or even Goldwater. Mourn the loss and leave.


QUICK UPDATE: Eisenhower's defection is receiving air play on the local all-news radio station. Good.

Call it the industry that barely speaks its name.

So secretive is the lucrative world of kidnap and extortion insurance that some companies that carry such coverage don't merely decline to discuss it.

"Some employers will vehemently tell everyone, 'We don't have kidnap and ransom insurance,' when in fact they do," said Dan Anber, president and CEO of XN Holdings in Montreal, a Florida-based financial services company that insures about 14,000 expatriates in more than 100 countries.

"That's to minimize the risk of making their company a target."
[…]

For the insurer AIG, the main rule is that the kidnappers be made to understand that any ransom that gets paid is the maximum they can expect. Pay too much -- or too quickly -- and there's a risk of a second kidnapping, the thinking goes.

So what might such coverage cost? The insurers won't say, but a crew of five contractors heading for Iraq these days, for example, can expect to pay about $10,000 for $1-million worth of coverage, Mr. Gosselin, the broker, estimated.

If you have travel plans in the Middle East, here's some information on companies that offer the insurance

Life insurance for foreigners in Iraq is off the scale. Premiums run around $1,250 a month. The Globe and Mail paid $800 a day to insure one of their correspondents, which give you an idea of who are considered high-risk targets.

Here's an idea: Turn this week's presidential debate into an edition of "Jeopardy!"

With Alex Trebek moderating, let the candidates go at it fielding questions under such categories as "Homeland Security," "Creating New Jobs" and "No Kidding, What DID You Do in the War?"

Other good categories:

Who Was It? (Sample clue: wanted dead or alive)
Spending Money Wisely
To Tell the Truth
Surviving Snack Foods

Because Cat Stevens is back in the news, one of my colleagues at work was reminded that she had not yet replaced one of her old Cat Stevens record albums (which she'd had since she was 10 years old) with the CD version. She went to Hastings here in town last night about 7 p.m. and bought a copy on her credit card. At 9:15 last night, she received a phone call from the "Regional Homeland Security Office" asking why she bought that CD.

Eccentricity admits this could be a "particularly nasty hoax." I agree. But given how many verified intrusions on civil liberties there have been since passing the obscene "Patriot" Act, the administration keeps giving such tales credibility. Dear Lord, librarians — not usually part of the tin-foil hat brigade — have taken to shredding check-out slips rather than surrendering them to Crisco Johnny's Merry Marching Men.


Side note: While in Philadelphia last week, I saw the ACLU's excellent ad on the "Patriot" Act. It's not available on their website yet. It should be. Make it so, folks.

Bowing to a barrage of complaints from Jewish groups, retail leader Wal-Mart Inc. has stopped selling "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," an infamous anti-Semitic tract long exposed as fake.

Y'know, I've known for a very long time that this shit was still being sold, but — apparently, naively — I thought sales were via the David Duke Book Club, Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby, or some random fundie frother's equivalent. I don't believe in censorship, and those would be appropriate venues. But at red-white-and-blue Wal-Mart? Jebus.

By the way, I'd be fascinated to know which Wal-Mart stores were stocking this, uh, tome. I can't imagine it would do well here in the northeast or in California.

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Applying his formula to dead Iraqi civilians (remember them?), it would be equivalent to between 143,000 and 154,000 Americans. In 18 months... With no end in sight... Think even wingnuts might start to notice that something was amiss?

Put another way, there have been between 4 and 5 9/11s visited upon a nation that had no part in 9/11 — or in American terms, between 47 and 51 9/11s.

What if we had some moral clarity again? What if we had a president with a clue?

The Bush campaign said Kerry's "conspiracy theory of a secret troop deployment is completely irresponsible" and the White House called it "a baseless attack."

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke said, "Any discussion of troop rotations beyond those previously announced would be premature."

Short answer: count on it.

Baseless? Puh-leeze. Mobilizing the Immediate Ready Reserve has been quietly discussed for months. In fact Military.com found a proposal that the Internal Revenue Service may be used to track down IRR members who moved and not provided the Pentagon with forwarding addresses. I'm sure that will make the IRS=Satan crowd very happy.

What is the IRR?

Unknown to most Americans, though, is the existence of the Individual Ready Reserve, which has more than 280,000 members.

The IRR is a distinctly different animal than the drilling reserves or National Guard.

Those in the IRR are people who have completed their active-duty tours but are subject to involuntary recall for a certain number of years. For example, a soldier who serves four years on active duty remains in the IRR for another four years.

During that time, however, they receive no pay, do not drill with a unit and are otherwise completely civilian.

The problem for the Pentagon is that the whereabouts of 50,200 of those veterans are unknown to the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. The largest number - 40,700 - are former Army GIs.

Let's get real: the first stop-loss order was a clue that we were in trouble. G&C needs more fodder bodies, they don't have enough, and they're not yet willing to call for a draft (of other people's kids). All else follows as night does day.

^*Bend Over Here It Comes Again. From my friend, Jo Fish.

From Secret papers show Blair was warned of Iraq chaos

Tony Blair was warned a year before invading Iraq that a stable post-war government would be impossible without keeping large numbers of troops there for "many years", secret government papers reveal.

The documents, seen by The Telegraph, show more clearly than ever the grave reservations expressed by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, over the consequences of a second Gulf war and how prescient his Foreign Office officials were in predicting the ensuing chaos.

They told the Prime Minister that there was a risk of the Iraqi system "reverting to type" after a war, with a future government acquiring the very weapons of mass destruction that an attack would be designed to remove.
[...]

The Cabinet Office said that the US believed that the legal basis for war already existed and had lost patience with the policy of containment.

It did not see the war on terrorism as being a major element in American decision-making.

"The swift success of the war in Afghanistan, distrust of UN sanctions and inspections regimes and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors," it added. That view appeared to be shared by Peter Ricketts, the Foreign Office policy director.

There were "real problems" over the alleged threat and what the US was looking to achieve by toppling Saddam, he said. Nothing had changed to make Iraqi WMD more of a threat.

"Even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years. Military operations need clear and compelling military objectives. For Iraq, 'regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge match between Bush and Saddam."


From 'Failure is not an option, but it doesn't mean they will avoid it'

The Prime Minister knew the US President was determined to complete what one senior British official had already described as the unfinished business from his father's war against Saddam Hussein.

There was no way of stopping the Americans invading Iraq and they would expect Britain, their most loyal ally, to join them. If they didn't, the transatlantic relationship would be in tatters. But there were serious problems.

A Secret UK Eyes Only briefing paper was warning that there was no legal justification for war. So Mr Blair was advised that a strategy would have to be put in place which would provide a legal basis for war. It was also vital that the Prime Minister should be able to persuade the public that war was justified and, just as importantly, convince those among his backbench MPs who were becoming increasingly vocal in their opposition to another US-led war.
[...]

Mr Straw clearly had grave reservations about the whole idea of toppling Saddam.

Any British action had to be "narrated with reference to the international rule of law", Mr Straw insisted. He warned that his legal advisers were telling him that it would almost certainly need a fresh UN mandate to make it legal, a mandate the Americans didn't feel was necessary and the rest of the Security Council was unlikely to give. He questioned the rationale behind the whole enterprise. Whatever the allies put in Saddam's place, it was unlikely to be much better. But the problem for Mr Blair was that he knew there was no stopping the Americans. That much was clear from the Secret UK Eyes Only "options paper" on Iraq given to him on Friday, March 8, 2002.

But these Guard troops aren't being sent to fight the people who attacked the United States in September 2001. They're being sent to--and locked in--Iraq. Some 40,000 members of the Guard are in Iraq today, six times the number of Guardsmen sent to Vietnam. Already, more Guard troops have died in Iraq than in Vietnam.
[...]

In short, Bush has pulled Guard troops away from their homeland security duties to fight and die in a war unrelated to the service for which they enlisted. A Guardsman who did less than he signed up for is coercing other Guardsmen to do more than they signed up for.

One Guardsman is doing something about it. After serving nine years in the Marines and the Army, including combat duty in Iraq, he enlisted last fall in the Guard. The bait he swallowed was the "Try One" program, which supposedly lets veterans sample a year of Guard service before making a longer commitment. Two months ago, invoking its "stop-loss" policy, the Army called up the Guardsman's unit for duty in Iraq and changed his one-year commitment to three years. He sued to void the policy, noting that its application to Iraq "bears no relation to the threat of terrorism against the United States."

Most Guard officers, however, refuse to admit that their institution is being abused. ...

And that's the saddest statement of all.

This wretched war has been going on for 18 months, and more Guard have been sent abroad and died than did in that other wretched war, which lasted more than a decade. And the other day John McCain said we should expect to be in Iraq for five to ten years.

How are we going to induce people to contribute their names to the next black wall? Well, as Atrios noted, intimidation is one way: threaten short timers with duty in Iraq unless they re-up for another three years. (Once they do, want to bet they still get to go?)

Or we can just change the rules: instead of involuntary mobilizations totaling no more than 24 months, repeated mobilizations that may last no more than 24 months at a time. In short, sign up for the Guard or reserves — in a spirit of wanting to help your community — and you sign up to be drafted when, as, and if "necessary."

Finally, if you try to evade your patriotic duty, the IRS may be able to hunt you down.

There is recurring talk of reviving the draft — which I adamantly oppose — but it would have the virtue of being honest. The Guard and reserves are being used as de facto draftees. They just don't know it yet: no one was honest enough to tell them.

Congress has defaulted on its Constitutional duty to "declare war." Instead they give vague authorizations to use force — and bodies — to irresponsible frat-boys. Not too surprisingly, irresponsible people do irresponsible things.

I'm going to get the quote wrong, but I thought the most compelling moment in Fahrenheit 9/11 was this:

I'm constantly amazed that those who have the least are willing to give the most.

And I'm constantly amazed at how those that have the most are willing to sacrifice those who have the least.

Brent Bozell, president and founder of the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com, called Rather on the carpet Thursday for "employing old Bill Clinton tactics of denying the obvious, muddying the issue with irrelevant information, and attacking critics." Both Rather and CBS are defending the documents and the story.

"Dan Rather and CBS continue to deny the documented truth: their smear attack on President Bush was based on fraudulent documents," Bozell said. "They simply must stop obfuscating. Dan Rather and CBS News lose more credibility with every Clintonian denial."

The brigade's presentation outraged many soldiers who are close to fulfilling their obligation and are looking forward to civilian life, the sergeant said.

"We have a whole platoon who refuses to sign," he said.

Did it ever occur to the dipsticks that hatched this scheme that a volunteer army needs, uh, volunteers?

The United States military may run out of national guard and reserve troops for the war on terrorism because of existing limits on involuntary mobilisations, a congressional watchdog agency warned in a report released overnight (AEST).

Government Accountability Office (GAO) said the US Government has considered changing the policy to make members of the 1.2 million-strong guard and reserve subject to repeated involuntary mobilisation, so long as no single mobilisation exceeds 24 consecutive months.

In commenting on the report, the Department of Defence (DOD) says it plans to keep its current approach.

"Under DOD's current implementation of the authority, reserve component members can be involuntarily mobilised more than once, but involuntary mobilisations are limited to a cumulative total of 24 months," the report said.

"If DOD's implementation of the partial mobilisation authority restricts the cumulative time that reserve component forces can be mobilised, then it is possible that DOD will run out of forces."
[...]

More than 47,600 members of the guard and reserve were serving in Iraq as of last month, about a third of the 140,000-member US force currently deployed.

When those deployed in Afghanistan and rear areas are added, the total is in excess of 66,000, according to Pentagon figures.

Since September 11, 2003, more than 335,000 guard and reserves have been involuntarily mobilised for active duty - 234,000 from the army alone.

Not that we're in trouble or anything. It's just taking more people to sweep up all those rose petals.

By the way, the coalition of the willing is shrinking again. New Zealand is pulling out.

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 14 -- Walter Maestri, an emergency manager here in America's most vulnerable metropolitan area, has 10,000 body bags ready in case a major hurricane ever hits New Orleans. As Hurricane Ivan's expected path shifted uncomfortably close to this low-lying urban soup bowl Tuesday, Maestri said he might need a lot more.

If a strong Category 4 storm such as Ivan made a direct hit, he warned, 50,000 people could drown, and this city of Mardi Gras and jazz could cease to exist.

Cease to exist? I don't want to be alarmist, but that sounds alarming.

And wouldn't you just know, administration politics are involved:

Louisiana's politicians, environmentalists and business leaders have been pushing for a $14 billion coastal restoration project to try to bring back those lost marshes and islands -- in order to help protect New Orleans as well as an oil and gas industry that handles nearly a third of the nation's supply.

The Bush administration forced the state to scale down its request to $1.2 billion last year, and a Senate committee authorized $375 million….

Even if George and Dick don't much care for jazz and Mardi Gras, you'd think that the oil industry tie would have captured their attention. You'd be wrong, of course.

If anyone can think of one thing George has done for — as opposed to to — the country, please let me know.

The police have also asked an Israeli television network for a transcript of an interview with extremist rabbi Yossi Dayan, who said he was willing to conduct a medieval ceremony to put a fatal curse on Mr Sharon.
[…]

Indicative of the passions that are beginning to roil were Rabbi Dayan's comments during the television interview. He said he had invoked the cabbalistic pulsa dinura curse against then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 shortly before he was assassinated by a Jewish extremist.

He said he would be willing to do the same to Mr Sharon. The curse is pronounced during a ceremony involving black candles and chanting.

A friend keeps saying it must be something in the water. He's looking righter all the time.

The Israeli government does not intend to honour the US-backed road map to peace in the Middle East once it has completed a planned pullout from Gaza, an Israeli newspaper reported today.

Afghanistan is a mess, Iraq is a disaster, North Korea is building nukes, Iran may soon, and now our ally has just told George to pound salt someplace painful. Quite a record, hey?

Serbia's education minister has ordered schools to stop teaching the theory of evolution for the current school year, a leading newspaper has reported.

The paper, Glas Javnosti, quoted Ljiljana Colic as saying that in future Charles Darwin's theory would only be taught alongside creationism.
[...]

Ms Colic said current material on evolution would remain in textbooks but would not be taught.

Sigh.

As American military deaths in Iraq operations surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas.
[...]

[The comments by Rumsfeld and Myers], which came after a two-day spike in violence in Iraq led to a surge in American military deaths, represented an acknowledgment that the Americans had failed to end an increasingly sophisticated insurgency in important Sunni-dominated areas and in certain Shiite enclaves. Fighting raged on Tuesday in Sadr City, in Baghdad, as Shiite militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr ended a self-declared cease-fire. [Page A14.]

The officials' assessment also underscored the difficulty of pacifying Iraq in time for elections scheduled for January. The cities of greatest rebel control are Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra, in the so-called Sunni triangle, west and north of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein remains popular and many forces loyal to him have gathered strength.

There is increasing concern in the administration over plans for the election, with some officials saying that if significant parts of the Sunni areas cannot be secured by January, it may be impossible to hold a nationwide balloting that would be seen as legitimate. Putting off the elections, though, would infuriate Iraq's Shiite majority. The elections are for an assembly that is to write a new constitution next year. Mr. Rumsfeld warned that the violence would intensify as elections approached.

Mr. Rumsfeld said that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi recognized that his government could not continue to allow rebel control in crucial areas of the country, but that it would take time for him to determine how to proceed.

I haven't heard al-Sadr described as a warlord yet, but the functional difference is becoming hard to see.

Need I say that the longer this drags on and the factions become more established, the harder it will be to salvage the remains. Right now, "remains" is just about the way I'm looking at it.

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice," Mr. Cheney told a crowd of 350 people in Des Moines, "because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

Not even the vestige of shame.

Perversely, he could be right. If we make the wrong choice, the terrorists will win — two of them, anyway. George and Dick have been doing their damnedest to terrorize this country for years. I see the results of their handiwork each day in lower Manhattan (while port security remains what it was three years ago). As others have noted, every time the administration gets in trouble or the poll numbers sag, Tom Ridge has another wolf alert.

Of course their biggest success rages on in Iraq.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

Law Enforcement:

I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.

Military:

I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam. The payroll records that could show whether I completed my military service have been accidentally destroyed.

College:

I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock. I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money. With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:

- I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America!

- I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

- I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

- With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

- I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

- I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.

- I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.

- I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.

- I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

- I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

- I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.

- I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

- I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.

- I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

- My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. History, Enron.

- My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.

- I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

-I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

- I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.

- I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

- I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.

- I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.

- I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S.
history.

- I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.

- I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.

- I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

- I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).

- I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

- I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

- I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later ! made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

- I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.

- I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world community.

- I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime.

- In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.

- I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

- I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.

- I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

-All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

- All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

- All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN 2004!
PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERY VOTER YOU KNOW!

I just did.

It was not the first time Al-Jazeera faced problems in Iraq.

Iraq's now-disbanded Governing Council, in place during the U.S. occupation, banned the station's reporters from entering its offices or covering its news conferences for a month in January because it had reportedly shown disrespect toward prominent Iraqis.

Unlike Arab state-run media, Al-Jazeera airs views of local opposition figures and their criticisms of their countries' rulers. That has brought the the station in problems with authorities in other Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and the former Iraqi regime.

Since its August suspension, Al-Jazeera has depended on other media organizations for news and footage to cover Iraq, and has not formally worked here.

BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) – A hundred or more people were killed after Russian troops stormed a school in a chaotic battle to free children, parents and teachers who had been held hostage for 53 hours by Chechen separatists.

I don't know where George Soros gets his money," one man said. "I don't know where - if it comes from overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from." George Soros, another declared, "wants to spend $75 million defeating George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin." After all, a third said, Mr. Soros "is a self-admitted atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust."

They aren't LaRouchies - they're Republicans.

Unfortunately, LaRouchies and Republicans are becoming harder to distinguish these days. But I interrupted.

Why are the Republicans so angry? One reason is that they have nothing positive to run on (during the first three days, Mr. Bush was mentioned far less often than John Kerry).

The promised economic boom hasn't materialized, Iraq is a bloody quagmire, and Osama bin Laden has gone from "dead or alive" to he-who-must-not-be-named.

Another reason, I'm sure, is a guilty conscience. At some level the people at that convention know that their designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are impugning the patriotism of men who have.

That's why Band-Aids with Purple Hearts on them, mocking Mr. Kerry's war wounds and medals, have been such a hit with conventioneers, and why senior politicians are attracted to wild conspiracy theories about Mr. Soros.

It's also why Mr. Hastert, who knows how little the Bush administration has done to protect New York and help it rebuild, has accused the city of an "unseemly scramble" for cash after 9/11. Nothing makes you hate people as much as knowing in your heart that you are in the wrong and they are in the right.

Yep.

Forget the war. Forget policy. Forget everything but two men who want something from me. Kerry could never have joked about the way he walks – or made any other joke at his own expense. Bush can, and did. That's a guy comfortable in his own skin, and that's a guy I'd give something to, before the other guy. I'm pretty sure a lot of people recognize that, even if only instinctively. In other words, my gut tells me to vote for Bush.

My brain does, too.

VP's brain is obviously a distant runner-up in the decision-making process: the brain actually gives many reasons why he should not vote for George within the context of VP's political beliefs. Some of brain's reasons overlap mine.

But, yo, brain, forget everything George has mangled or wants to mangle or the reasons why: gut tells me he tells jokes! Mediocre, predictable jokes that would be Borscht Belt groaners, to be sure, but jokes about himself. Be still, my woodie heart!

Well, sure, George has decades of material to work with.

By his nom de blog, VP and I probably share a taste for a certain liquid. Sadly, I already want one.

LIMBAUGH: I still say, if you really dig deep, you might find some Clinton PAC [political action committee] money, laundered three or four different ways, found its way to the Swift Vets. But that's just me.

You might also find the space aliens who really built the pyramids. But that's just me.


UPDATE: Tbogg may have an alternate explanation for Limbaugh's statement.

Last week, the Census Bureau released statistics showing that for the first time in years, poverty had increased for three straight years, while the number of Americans without health care increased to a record level.1 But instead of changing its economic and health care policies, the Bush administration today is announcing plans to change the way the statistics are compiled. The move is just the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods.
[…]

This is not the first time the White House has tried to doctor or manipulate economic data that exposed President Bush's failed policies. In the face of serious job losses last year, the Associated Press reported "the Bush administration has dropped the government's monthly report on mass layoffs, which also had been eliminated when President Bush's father was in office." …

Ron Reagan was right: they lie reflexively.

(via Andrew Tobias, September 2)

Unnumbered weirdness by John Ashcroft (it’s too hard to keep count): The Department of Justice has asked the Government Printing Office “to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the department has deemed ‘not appropriate for external use.’ Of the five publications, two are texts of federal laws. They are to be removed from libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library,” according to the American Library Association. All the documents concern either federal civil or criminal forfeiture procedure, including to how to reclaim items that have been confiscated by the government during an investigation.

In the late '60s, Soviet dissident Anatoly Marcheko wrote a book, My Testimony. He tells of being charged with a crime, and when he asks, what charge? under what law? the answer was: you can't know; it's a secret.

Now, apparently we are going to have laws that common people can't know. Common people still can be charged with them, of course.

But, hey, why be alarmist? You can still recover properties the government has seized by hiring a lawyer — assuming you can afford one after the government has seized your assets.

Think I'm going to play my old Steppenwolf Monster album tonight.

Me at a party last night: "I've never really been around a lot of Republicans before." "So now you think better of us?" "Not really."

Overheard in a hotel lobby: "I get the feeling these New Yorker liverals just don't understand how 9-11 changed things. It's like they don't even remember it." (no, fuck you).

There may have been dividends, or at least I hope so.

MADRID (Reuters) - Relations between Spain's government and its clerics have turned hostile. Socialists swept to power earlier this year with a pro-gay, feminist agenda and the church is putting up a fight.

Spain is a non-denominational country, according to its 1978 constitution, but the state still funds the Roman Catholic Church. More than 90 percent of Spaniards say they are Catholic, but only 25 percent are practicing, surveys show, and few young people go to church.

In September the government, which took power after a surprise election victory in March, plans to start legalizing gay marriage. It also plans to ease access to divorce and abortion.
[…]

A high profile bishop attacked the government's plans at a mass attended by King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and a colleague blamed the media for trying to "destroy and eliminate Jesus Christ."

Destroy and eliminate? Isn't that a tad, uh, extreme?

By way, almost 70% of Spaniards favor equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. The contrast with the United States is not favorable — to us.