In the interest of conserving bandwidth
Hey folks, just a quick note to let everyone know that the reason for the light blogging over the past few days is that my DSL service is down. This is a painful story with an ending that is not yet written. So, since I am using my limited tin-can-and-a-string-minutes allotted by the ISP God I will keep this short.
First, I had a great time at last nights Pittsburgh Blogfest. It was a pleasure meeting everyone, hopefully we can make it a regular thing.
Second, I would like to point you to the following article which pretty much sums up the fortunes of the pResident in these waning days of the campaign. One piece worth noting below might explain why the administration has been so hesitant to admit to counting the Iraqi death toll.
A new survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.
Another doosy comes here:
Bush’s camp prides itself on its professionalism, but his re-election campaign acknowledged Thursday that it had doctored a photograph used in a television commercial to remove the president and the podium where he was standing. The campaign said the ad will be re-edited and reshipped to TV stations.A group of soldiers in the crowd was electronically copied to fill in the space where the president and the podium had been, aides say.
Finally, on a different note, I have six gmail invites to hand out for anyone interested. I will give them out on a first come first serve basis so simply post your request in the comments below.
UPDATE:
I just found out that in addition to the Monday night airing of Bush’s Brain on The Sundance Channel, IFC is showing a documentary entitled Fahrenheit 9/11: A Movement in Time tonight at 10 PM; Saturday at 1:00 AM, 11:45 AM, and 7:30 PM; and Sunday at 9:30 AM. Here is how they describe it:
IFC presents a tribute to the most provocative documentary of our time. Featuring interviews with Mario Cuomo, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Wyclef Jean, Bonnie Raitt, Michael Stipe and others.
In addition, you can get yourselves fired up for election day Monday night by watching The War Room (8:00 PM, 10:15 PM), described as follows:
Seminal documentarians D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus capture the behind-the-scene machinations of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign through the eyes of George Stephanopoulos and James McCarville(sic), the two volatile generals who orchestrated their candidate’s march to the White House.
NO
by Thomas Burns
Republished with the permission of Thomas Burns.
What kind of a blogger are you?
|
You Are a Pundit Blogger! |
Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. |
Pundit blogger, yes. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few…I don’t think so. Thanks for the link Deb.
George W. Bush, will you please go now!
Where are Theodore Geisel and Art Buckwald when you need them? Inspired by a PBS documentary on the life of Dr. Seuss I got the feeling this one needed to be revived. Please don’t sue me.
George W. Bush, will you please go now!
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don’t care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
George W. Bush, will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!…
EMINEM - "MOSH"
Marshall’s contribution to the get out the vote effort…
Get your facts straight Senator Kerry
This election year all of the news organizations unleashed an army of fact checkers to knock-down erroneous claims made by the candidates during the debates. Regardless of the channel on which you chose to watch your post debate spin you were treated to some variation of “Kerry continues to say that the war in Iraq is costing the American public $200 billion, that is wrong.” One reason all the “fact-checkers” stuck to this point is that they all got their facts from FactCheck.org who repeatedly said on their webiste,
Kerry continued to refer to “the cost” of the Iraq war as $200 billion, when it fact the cost to date is just over $120 billion, according to budget officials. Kerry is counting money that has been appropriated to be spent in the fiscal year that started Friday, Oct. 1. Much of the money Kerry counts has not even been requested formally by the Bush administration, and is only an estimate of what will be sought sometime in the coming year, to be spent later.
The cost to date may very well have only been $120 billion but that does not change the fact that the cost is rising daily. In any event, with seven days until election day it appears we need to tap those fact checkers once again because it seems that Kerry was indeed wrong, the number is not $200 billion after all, it is more like $225 billion.
The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday.
Rumor has it that pResident Bush was over-heard on the campaign bus this morning saying, “I guess this is one of those ex-agg-era-tions”.
KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSMENT
DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH “THE SYPHILLIS PRESIDENT”
“Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis,” the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. “Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush,” Dr. Thompson warned. “He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November.”Thompson, long known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as “a worthless Judas Goat with no moral compass.”
“I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago,” he said, “and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States.”
Bush supporters delusional
Further evidence that Bush supporters are brainwashed.
The Weekend
With one week to go before the election I would have been fully satisfied to have hunkered down in my home in the heart of Pittsburgh Democratic territory surrounded comfortably by Kerry/Edwards yard signs and like minded neighbors. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for working to improve the discourse in the blog-o-sphere by encouraging open, civil discussion among camps but I would stop short of spending the weekend at Temille Hoffert’s home breaking bread. So you will be surprised to know that that is essentially what I did this weekend.
My sister-in-law Michelle, while certainly not Temille Hoeffert, is a staunch Bush supporter from the born-again-Christian-right camp who lives just outside of D.C. in Virginia with her beautiful family. Since it was my father-in-law’s birthday this weekend (Happy Birtday Walt!)my wife Vicky, daughter Gabrielle and I took the trip from Pittsburgh to Southern Maryland and stopped along the way to stay at her sister’s place. I promised myself that I would not discuss politics and only briefly entertained planting Kerry/Edwards yard signs in their yard and changing the home pages on all their PC’s to Comments From Left Field. I anticipated some heated discussion breaking out ending in her husband and I drawing pistol’s at dawn (it is after all Vaginia Sir!).
Luckily the first night passed uneventfully and I shuttled off to bed feeling, as I always do visiting them, a great sense of family warmth and love. When I awoke at 6:00 AM Saturday morning in a groggy haze I was surprised to see that Michelle and Vicky had stayed up all night talking. I stumbled over to the coffee maker and Michelle met me in the kitchen and handed me a navy blue mug. Now you need to know that for the first half-hour or so after I wake up in the morning I am completely out of it. I poured a cup of coffee and turned to see Vicky and Michelle snikering and pointing at me. What, was I sporting morning wood? No, whew! I brushed it off and took my first sip of coffee and that is when it hit me. The mug planted firmly in my hand had writing on it, writing that shocked me out of my stupor.
I’ve been Punked! 
The American Conservative Endorses Kerry
Well, this (Kerry’s The One) is not as much an endorsement for Kerry as it is the opening salvo in the oft-predicted civil war within the Republican party.
The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected.If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past - and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.
George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naive belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies - a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky’s concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies - temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election - are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans “won’t do.” This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support.
Massachusetts Miracles
by Thomas Burns
Republished with the permission of Thomas Burns.
Boycott Sinclair Advertisers
The following link allows you to compose an email to ALL Sinclair Advertisers. Simple and powerful, make it so!
College Students Favor Kerry 52-39
BOSTON — Oct. 21 — A new national poll by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP) finds exceptionally high interest in the presidential campaign on college campuses, and turnout among college students is expected to rise dramatically. Nearly 72 percent of college students report that they are “certain” they are registered to vote and “definitely” plan on voting this November. More than in other years, students believe that they have a stake — and will have a say — in the outcome of the election.
The Harvard poll also reports that Senator Kerry maintains a 13-point lead among college students, and a slightly stronger 17- point advantage among likely voters in key swing states.
Bush Supressing 9/11 CIA Report
October 19, 2004 — It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general’s office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago. “It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed,” an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that “the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren’t interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward.”
We can not allow the administration to sit on this story, the American people need to know the truth so they can make an informed decision on Nov. 2. I urge you to contact the CIA and and requst the release of this report.
Contact them via secure online form here.
By phone: (703) 482-0623 — 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., US Eastern time
By fax: (703) 482-1739 — 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., US Eastern time
(please include a phone number where they may call you)
Article explaining more:
Lawmakers Prod CIA for Pre-9/11 Accountability Report By Greg Miller
The Los Angeles Times- Wednesday 20 October 2004-The agency says thedocument isn’t finished, but some think they’re stalling to benefit Bush.
Bloggers, please post this to your sites and track back to this article as well as this one and this one.
UPDATE: Sign the petition to CNN, MSNBC,FOX NEWS,ETC. demanding the CIA reports about 9/11 be released before the election.
Sinclair Retreats on Kerry Film
Now that’s what I am talking about! Sinclair Retreats on Kerry Film
Facing advertiser defections, a viewer boycott and a plummeting stock price, as well as strong opposition from Democrats, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. scrapped its plan to air a film that attacks the 1970s-era antiwar activities of Sen. John F. Kerry, and will instead run a special produced by its news division incorporating parts of the movie.
I would not call this a complete victory since we do yet know what portions of the film they will use in their “news” piece or whether they will allow equal time to the Kerry camp. In any event, the impact will most certainly be less acute since the new plan does not call for preempting programming on all of Sinclair’s 62 stations.
The company said it would limit the airing of the special to one station in each city to “minimize the interruption of normally scheduled programming.”
Chalk one up for the good guys.
Sinclair update
David Brock of Media Matters for America has taken the fist step toward legal action against Sinclair Broadcast Group for their plans to air the Swiftie film Stolen Honor.
At 10 a.m. today, a letter from Glickenhaus & Co., a Wall Street firm with clients who hold stock in Sinclair, was delivered to the CEO of Sinclair, David D. Smith, and the company’s board of directors, demanding that they immediately “provide those with views opposed to the allegations in the film an equal opportunity to respond.” If an answer to Glickenhaus’ demand is not received by close of business today, Tuesday October 19, additional remedies, including an injunction in a court of law prior to the first scheduled airing of Stolen Honor October 21, may be sought.
And according to TPM there is also another lawsuit underway.
From the Votemaster
As you may well have noticed, electoral-vote.com has John Kerry continuing to surge in the electoral college.
Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 284 Bush 247
Kerry keeps moving up in the electoral college. A new Survey USA poll shows he has now inched ahead of Bush in Florida, although his 1% lead means the state is still a statistical tie. Nevertheless, we now show Kerry with more than the critical 270 votes in the electoral college to win. Perhaps more signficant, though, is the fact that in states where Kerry’s lead is at least 5%, he has 228 electoral votes. In states where Bush’s lead is at least 5%, he has 183 electoral votes. Clearly the race is still wide open.
–The Votemaster