Category Archive for Politics
October 31, 2004
Campaign of Fear
Yow. So now they just openly admit that their campaign is based on scare tactics. Wake up, people! From the New York Daily News:
"We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."
A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."
He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection.
Come on. What more convincing do you need???
Read the full story here
Posted by Turfdigger at 3:55 AM
October 1, 2004
Dubya's Hooked on Phonics
It would be nice if we had a president that didn't need constant coaching, really it would. You'd think that given the vast number of "alliances" W purports to have forged, he'd be able to pronounce some foreign names. Guess not:
Evidently, the official UN transcript is the exact speech that Bush read off the teleprompter. My reader says that nobody who works there can ever remember a leader having to have words phonetically spelled out before...
Believe it or not, I discovered this snippet while looking at photoblogs. Gotta love the interweb...
Read about more political stuff and grab a PDF transcript of the speech in question over at Hullabaloo.
Posted by Turfdigger at 1:00 PM
September 30, 2004
V for Victor(y)
V is also fairly close to the bottom of the pickin's as far as the alphabet goes, just like CNN coverage on this AP story yesterday, found buried at the bottom of the CNN homepage this morning:
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero struck down a provision of the Patriot Act that authorizes the FBI to force Internet service providers and phone companies to turn over certain customer records. The companies are then barred from ever disclosing the search took place.
In his ruling, the judge called national security of "paramount value" and said the government "must be empowered to respond promptly and effectively" to threats. But he called personal security equal in importance and "especially prized in our system of justice."
This sounds like a great victory for the people ( although the decision is still open to appeal ) and comes as refreshing news, since the culled polls over at electoral-vote.com have been quite disheartening since the RNC ran its course and CBS ran their infamous story regarding the military record of W.
First debate is tonite - this will prove interesting.
CNN.com - Judge blocks part of Patriot Act - Sep 29, 2004
Posted by Turfdigger at 6:46 AM
September 17, 2004
Kettle's on the Boil
And the saga continues - but of course CBS is now doing the credibility dance:
NEW YORK (AP) -- CBS News is trying to restore its credibility after a week of questions about its report on President Bush's National Guard service -- yet it may never conclusively know whether it was duped by fake documents.
Read the full AP wire as reported on CNN.com
Posted by Turfdigger at 6:47 AM
September 16, 2004
Calling the Kettle Black
In the recent and ongoing hoo-ha about the "military record" of one George W. Bush, some questions have arisen regarding the validity of documents submitted to and reported on by CBS. I find it interesting that the House Majority Whip from Missouri had this to say:
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, said he collected signatures from 39 colleagues on a letter sent to the network calling for a retraction and asking CBS News to reveal the source of the documents.
"Clearly, their sources aren't what they need to be, or they're not willing to reveal even the nature of who their sources are," Blunt said. "It's hard for me to believe ... that CBS, an organization with a long and distinguished history in journalism in the past, would be willing to stand by this story when virtually everybody else has questions about it."
Kinda funny, since the Bush administration has stood by its story(ies) regarding why the US needed to invade Iraq - when virtually everybody else has questions about it.
read the full article at CNN.com.
Posted by Turfdigger at 6:46 AM
September 8, 2004
Cheney's Curse
From Rolling Stone online: Can W survive the curse of having Dick Cheney in his administration?
Should George W. Bush win this election, it will give him the distinction of being the first occupant of the White House to have survived naming Dick Cheney to a post in his administration. The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch. It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992. The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.
read the full story here.
Posted by Turfdigger at 4:51 PM
Graham Book: Saudi-9/11 Investigation Blocked by Bush
Sunday's Miami Herald online had this story about Senator Bob Graham's (D-FL) newly-released book, Intelligence Matters:
WASHINGTON - Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.
The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote.
And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.
Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa with Franks, then head of Central Command, who was ``looking troubled'':
``Senator, we are not engaged in a war in Afghanistan.''
''Excuse me?'' I asked.
''Military and intelligence personnel are being redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,'' he continued.
Graham concluded: 'Gen. Franks' mission -- which, as a good soldier, he was loyally carrying out -- was being downgraded from a war to a manhunt.''
Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October 2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would hinder the fight against al Qaeda terrorism.
He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Rep. Porter Goss, nominated last month to be the next CIA director. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers.
This administration stinks like the break room across from my office...
read the full article here.
Posted by Turfdigger at 11:34 AM
September 3, 2004
Where Was W?
...from an interesting article in yesterday's Guardian, via salon:
George W. Bush's Missing Year
'Who was this guy who came in late and left early?' After thirty years of silence, Mary Jacoby finds out what the future President really did in 1972
Before Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George HW Bush phoned his friend and asked a favour: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W Bush?
"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."
After more than three decades of silence, Allison spoke with Salon over several days before and during the Republican National Convention this week - motivated, as she acknowledged, by a complex mixture of emotions. They include pride in her late husband's accomplishments, a desire to see him remembered, and concern about the apparent double standard in Bush surrogates attacking John Kerry's Vietnam War record while ignoring the president's irresponsible conduct during the war. She also admits to bewilderment and hurt over the rupture her husband experienced in his friendship with George and Barbara Bush. To this day, Allison is unsure what caused the break, though she suspects it had something to do with her husband's opposition to the elder Bush becoming chairman of the Republican National Committee under President Nixon.
Posted by Turfdigger at 8:11 PM