side note: i laugh everytime i see this picture…..this is the right’s cowboy, a guy you can have a beer with? this seems more like a guy you’d see hosting an Avon party!

Ray McGovern
TomPaine.com

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from the administrations of John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush. He now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.

When President George W. Bush was asked at his news conference last Wednesday whether we are winning in Iraq, he answered, “Absolutely; we’re winning.” The disingenuousness was almost enough to provoke sympathy for the beleaguered president as he lived through another bad week with further diminished credibility.

A letter winner in cheerleading at Andover and Yale, the president knows how tough it is to keep spirits up when it becomes clear that his team is not winning, but the bedlam in Iraq has become the supreme test. Some of his fellow cheerleaders have quit cheering, and even the Fox News Channel is having trouble putting on a brave front.

And small wonder. For example, on October19 USA Today put the main challenge succinctly:

The mistaken war and botched aftermath have created such a mess that the only credible course change must be predicated on this painful question: Is there an achievable goal that makes the further sacrifice of American lives worthwhile? With each passing day, that is looking less and less likely. … What, exactly, is the goal that U.S. forces are fighting and dying for? (more…)

By Robert Parry, Consortium News.

Many Americans are cynical about what they hear from politicians — and often with good reason — but perhaps no U.S. political leader in modern history has engaged in a pattern of lying and distortion more systematically than George W. Bush has.

Bush’s lies also aren’t about petty matters, such as some personal indiscretion or minor misconduct. Rather his dishonesty deals with issues of war and peace, the patriotism of his opponents, and the founding principles of the American Republic.

They are the kinds of lies and distortions more befitting the leader of a totalitarian state whipping up his followers to go after some perceived enemy than the President of the world’s preeminent democracy seeking an informed debate among the citizenry.

For instance, in an Oct. 28 speech in Sellersburg, Indiana, Bush worked the crowd into a frenzy of “USA, USA” chants by accusing Democrats of not wanting to “detain and question terrorists,” not wanting to listen in on “terrorist communications,” and not wanting to bring terrorists to trial — all gross distortions of Democratic positions.

Bush has used this same gambit for many years. He characterizes his strategies and actions in the most innocuous ways; he then ignores honest reasons for disagreement with him; and he characterizes his opponents’ positions in the most absurd manner possible.

So, regarding the “war on terror,” Bush never mentions the constitutional concerns about his strategies or the questions about their effectiveness. According to him, his decisions are always benign and obvious; those of his opponents border on the crazy and disloyal.

“When al-Qaeda or an al-Qaeda affiliate is making a phone call from outside the United States to inside the United States, we want to know why,” Bush told the cheering Indiana crowd. “In this new kind of war, we must be willing to question the enemy when we pick them up on the battlefield.”

Referring to the capture of alleged 9/11 conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Bush said, “when we captured him, I said to the Central Intelligence Agency, why don’t we find out what he knows in order to be able to protect America from another attack.”

Bush then contrasted his eminently reasonable positions with those held by the nutty Democrats.

“When it came time on whether to allow the Central Intelligence Agency to continue to detain and question terrorists, almost 80 percent of the House Democrats voted against it,” Bush said, as the crowd booed the Democrats. “When it came time to vote on whether the NSA [National Security Agency] should continue to monitor terrorist communications through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, almost 90 percent of House Democrats voted against it.

“In all these vital measures for fighting the war on terror, the Democrats in Washington follow a simple philosophy: Just say no. When it comes to listening in on the terrorists, what’s the Democratic answer? Just say no. When it comes to detaining terrorists, what’s the Democrat answer?”

Crowd: “Just say no!”

Bush: “When it comes to questioning terrorists, what’s the Democrat answer?”

Crowd: “Just say no!”

Bush: “When it comes to trying terrorists, what’s the Democrat’s answer?”

Crowd: “Just say no!”

Bush vs. the truth

Yet, Bush realizes that the Democrats are not opposed to eavesdropping on terrorists, or detaining terrorists, or questioning terrorists, or bringing terrorists to trial.

What Democrats — and many conservatives — object to are Bush’s methods: his tolerance of abusive interrogation techniques; his assertion of unlimited presidential authority; his abrogation of habeas corpus rights to a fair trial; and his violation of existing laws, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which already gives the President broad powers to engage in electronic spying inside the United States, albeit with the approval of a special court. (more…)

side note: look at those people in these posters. You can’t tell me with a straight face that these people aren’t getting it on. When you want to have sex, and can’t, it’s very, very frustrating. People who’ve been having sex, look like these people.

By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY

The federal government’s “no sex without marriage” message isn’t just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it’s a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

“They’ve stepped over the line of common sense,” said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. “To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It’s an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health.”

Abstinence education programs, which have focused on preteens and teens, teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on birth control or safe sex. (more…)

By Patrick Cockburn, AlterNet.

The following is an excerpt from Patrick Cockburn’s new book, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso, 2006).

It has been the strangest war. It had hardly begun in 2003 when President George W. Bush announced on May 1 that it was over: the American mission had been accomplished. Months passed before Washington and London realized that the conflict had not finished. In fact, the war was only just beginning. Three years after Bush had spoken the US military had suffered 20,000 dead and injured in Iraq, 95% of the casualties inflicted after the fall of Baghdad.

Almost without thinking, the US put to the test its claim to be the only superpower in the world. It spurned allies inside and outside Iraq; in invading Iraq Tony Blair was Bush’s only significant supporter. The first President George Bush led a vast UN-backed coalition to complete victory in the Gulf War in 1991 largely because he fought a conservative war to return the Middle East to the way it was before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It was a status quo with which the world was familiar, and restoring was therefore supported internationally — and in the Middle East. The war launched by his son, George W. Bush, twelve years later in 2003 was a far more radical venture. It was nothing less than an attempt to alter the balance of power in the world. The US, acting almost alone, would seize control of a country with vast oil reserves. It would assume quasi-colonial control over a nation which fifteen years previously had been the greatest Arab power. Senior American officials openly threatened to change the governments of states neighboring Iraq.

The debate on why the US invaded Iraq has been over-sophisticated. The main motive for going to war was that the White House thought it could win such a conflict very easily and to its own great advantage. They were heady times in Washington in 2002, as the final decisions were being taken to invade Iraq. It was the high tide of imperial self-confidence. The US had just achieved a swift victory in Afghanistan. The Taliban forces had evaporated after a few weeks of bombing by B-52s and the withdrawal of Pakistani support. Their strongholds in Kabul and Kandahar fell with scarcely a shot fired. To Tony Blair, believing that the US was about to fight another short and victorious war, support for Bush must have looked like a safe bet. (more…)

A four-month investigation reveals that dozens of federal judges gave contributions to President Bush and top Republicans who helped place them on the bench. A Salon/CIR exclusive.

By Will Evans
http://www.salon.com

At least two dozen federal judges appointed by President Bush since 2001 made political contributions to key Republicans or to the president himself while under consideration for their judgeships, government records show. A four-month investigation of Bush-appointed judges by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that six appellate court judges and 18 district court judges contributed a total of more than $44,000 to politicians who were influential in their appointments. Some gave money directly to Bush after he officially nominated them. Other judges contributed to Republican campaign committees while they were under consideration for a judgeship.

Republicans who received money from judges en route to the bench include Sens. Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Gov. George Pataki of New York.

There are no laws or regulations prohibiting political contributions by a candidate for a federal judgeship. But political giving by judicial candidates has been a rarely scrutinized activity amid the process that determines who will receive lifelong jobs on the federal bench. Some ethics experts and Bush-appointed judges say that political giving is inappropriate for those seeking judicial office — it can appear unethical, they say, and could jeopardize the public’s confidence in the impartiality of the nation’s courts. Those concerns come as ethics and corruption scandals have roiled Washington, and on the eve of midterm elections whose outcome could influence the makeup of the federal judiciary — including the Supreme Court — for decades to come. (more…)

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer
yahoo.com

U.S. troops on Tuesday abandoned checkpoints around the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on orders from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the latest in a series of moves by the Iraqi leader to assert his authority with the U.S. administration.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers in fighting in the Baghdad area on Monday, bringing the number of troops killed in Iraq this month to 103.

More insurgent violence was also reported against civilians, with at least 11 people killed, including four children, and 21 others wounded when a suicide car bomber struck a wedding party in Baghdad.

U.S. forces disappeared from the checkpoints within hours of the order to remove the around-the-clock barriers by 5 p.m., setting off celebrations among civilians and armed men gathered on the edge of the sprawling slum that is under the control of the Mahdi Army militia run by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. (more…)

by Alan Wolfe
The New Republic
The God That Never Failed

Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction
By David Kuo

I.

Tempting Faith is the story of how David Kuo, an unassuming if ambitious young man, discovered the wonder-filled joy flowing from devotion to a force more powerful than himself. I don’t mean that he found God, although Kuo, by his own account, first encountered Jesus in high school. When Kuo tells us how he got “hooked,” the object of his reverence lived not in Nazareth, but in Austin. “He seemed not just charming, but weighty, seductive yet pure, likeable but mysterious,” he writes of his first meeting with then-governor George W. Bush. “I couldn’t tell whether his disclosures were private revelations to someone he liked or just part of a pitch to someone he might need. I didn’t much care. I loved him.”

Neither theological brilliance nor grace-earning humility on the governor’s part caused Kuo to succumb. It was all about the bottle. “Watching him, I couldn’t miss the evidence of the former drunk, the lost soul who had fallen to his knees sobbing before God; the sinner who had become God’s own.” For Kuo, being a Christian means sharing your journey. “When Christians like me share the stories of how we came to believe in Jesus and what his presence means in our lives,” he writes, “it is called a testimony. It is deeply personal, deeply intimate, and shared with fellow Christians as well as with those we hope are open to accepting Jesus.” Bush’s testimony–how he lost his way, how Billy Graham pointed him in the right direction–established his sincerity. My goodness, Kuo goes on, you just had to see the man when his path crossed with that of an addict. “Any swagger disappeared. Something softer and perhaps more genuine took its place. He listened to each story and nodded. He seemed more like a counselor than a politician. When this happened–just a few times I was around–he didn’t hurry and didn’t rush. It was one of the more Christ-like things I have ever seen a powerful man do.” This is Noonanism with a born-again face. For Kuo, Karl Rove is “nice” and has “a soft heart,” Karen Hughes is filled with “sensitivity,” and even Dick Cheney has “a surprising jocularity.” Surprising, indeed. (more…)

via onegoodmove.org

The Daily Show is in Ohio. This piece of the story provided by some crappy blog.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

side note: It’s finally nice to see our “liberal” media call these pieces of shit out and not let them get away with their cookie-cutter answers

via crooksandliars.com

On Face The Nation, Bob Schieffer wouldn’t buy Ken Mehlman’s “lame” excuses for running a racist ad against Harold Ford when he paid for it. He called into question the notion that Republicans hold all the cards when we’re talking about “values” because actions speak LOUDER than slogans. Heading down the stretch to November 7th, this administration has shown America that “winning” is their core value. If Bob calls you lame, well—you’re just lame.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

side note: what are we still doing in this civil war?

By George F. Will
Newsweek

Many months ago it became obvious to all but the most ideologically blinkered that America is losing the war launched to deal with a chimeric problem (an arsenal of WMD) and to achieve a delusory goal (a democracy that would inspire emulation, transforming the region). Last week the president retired his mantra “stay the course” because it does not do justice to the nimbleness and subtlety of U.S. tactics for winning the war.

A surreal and ultimately disgusting facet of the Iraq fiasco is the lag between when a fact becomes obvious and when the fiasco’s architects acknowledge that fact. Iraq’s civil war has been raging for more than a year; so has the Washington debate about whether it is what it is.

In a recent interview with Vice President Cheney, Time magazine asked, “If you had to take back any one thing you’d said about Iraq, what would it be?” Selecting from what one hopes is a very long list, Cheney replied: “I thought that the elections that we went through in ‘05 would have had a bigger impact on the level of violence than they have … I thought we were over the hump in terms of violence. I think that was premature.”

He thinks so? Clearly, and weirdly, he implies that the elections had some positive impact on the level of violence. Worse, in the full transcript of the interview posted online he said the big impact he expected from the elections “hasn’t happened yet.” “Yet”? Doggedness can be admirable, but this is clinical.

Anyway, what Cheney actually said 17 months ago was that the insurgency was in its “last throes.” That was much stronger than saying we were “over the hump” regarding violence. Beware of people who misquote themselves while purporting to display candor. (more…)

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Last week, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and senior White House officials, in hopes of shoring up the GOP’s sagging poll numbers before the November 7 midterm election, went on a media blitz, granting on-the-record interviews to dozens of conservative print and broadcast reporters. One of those interviews resulted in a backlash against the White House when Cheney told a reporter that, for him, water-boarding, a controversial technique used against terror suspects that simulates drowning, was a “no brainer.”

But poring through another transcript revealed statements made by President Bush during a lengthy interview at the White House with conservative columnists that are equally disturbing but that have not been reported with the same gusto and zeal as the reports that Cheney backed water torture.

While discussing the situation in Iraq and explaining the reasons the United States launched a pre-emptive strike against the country, Bush told the journalists that “I believe when you get attacked and somebody declares war on you, you fight back. And that’s what we’re doing,” according to a transcript of the interview. (more…)

side note: it’s really unreal the level of incompetence.

By JAMES GLANZ
NY TIMES

The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

The report was undertaken at the request of Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and who recently expressed an assessment far darker than the Bush administration’s on the situation in Iraq.

Mr. Warner sent his request in May to a federal oversight agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. He also asked the inspector general to examine whether Iraqi security forces were developing a logistics operation capable of sustaining the hundreds of thousands of troops and police officers the American military says it has trained.

The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands. (more…)

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

Here are the five stages of housing grief:

1. Housing bubble? What housing bubble? “A national severe price distortion [in housing] seems most unlikely in the United States.” (Alan Greenspan, October 2004)

2. “There’s a little froth in this market,” but “we don’t perceive that there is a national bubble.” (Alan Greenspan, May 2005)

3. Housing is slumping, but “despite what you hear from some of the Eeyores in the analytical community, a recession is not visible on the horizon.” (Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, August 2006)

4. Well, that was a lousy quarter, but “I feel good about the U.S. economy, I really do.” (Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, last Friday)

5. Insert expletive here.

We’ve now reached stage 4. Will we move on to stage 5?

Over the last few years, most good U.S. economic news has been the result of soaring home prices. Spending on new houses created jobs and poured cash into the economy. Consumers borrowed against the rising values of existing homes and went on a buying spree, spending more than they earned for the first time since the great depression. (more…)

side note: I remember Halloween as a child….I used to love getting condoms and abortion pills myself!

via crooksandliars.com

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

via truthout.org

October 25, 2006 | Marines carry the casket of Sgt. Brock Babb into St. Boniface Catholic Church in Evansville, Indiana. Babb and a fellow Marine were killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on October 15. The US military said 96 US troops have died so far in October. The rise in deaths has been a major factor behind rising anti-war sentiment in the United States.
(Photo: Jason Clark / AP)