John Kerry Was an Excellent Candidate

And this post demonstrates that pretty clearly. I'm sick and tired of Democrats who bash Kerry. He ran a pretty good (although not optimal) campaign. (He should have smashed the Swiftboat Liars to pieces immediately, though.) He would have been a great president, light years better than the malicious buffoon we have now. In short, let's hear it for Kerry--as strong a candidate as we could have had.

Astounding! Bush Knew 10 DAYS After 9/11 That Iraq Wasn't Involved

This article gives the details. Apparently, a Presidential Daily Briefing from 21 September 2001, the details of which are still being kept secret, indicated that Iraq had no connection to the 9/11 attacks. The very existence of this document was kept secret from the Congress.

Bush KNEW that Iraq hadn't been involved, and yet he invaded in part because he claimed that in so doing he was fighting terrorism. The Administration's paid liars hinted and implied REPEATEDLY that Saddam was implicated in the attack on America. Many Americans still believe this, due in large part to Republican lies.

An outrage, pure an simple.

Antonin Scalia is a Damned Liar

The Worst Supreme Court Justice Imaginable is now claiming that it was Al Gore's fault that the Florida election fiasco landed in the Supreme Court. The case, you'll recall, was named Bush v. Gore--in other words, Bush was the plaintiff. It was Bush's thugs that were fighting to overturn the Florida Supreme Court's recount decision. Scalia further lies when he says that the media recounts showed Bush won anyway. They showed no such thing, as many can document.

The 2000 election was a Republican coup d'etat and Scalia was a part of it. Is there any wonder that he would defend it so ardently now?

By the way, as a reminder, here, to me, is the key moment in the Florida recount: a riot staged by Republican goons to stop the Miami Board of Elections from completing its work. Check out the identities of the rioters.

Stryker Rants Against the Anti-Military Republicans: Awesome

This is an expression of pure and righteous rage by a long-time supporter of the military who's had enough. My favorite part is the opening:

All the talk about Republicans being big supporters of the military is bullshit. If there’s someone insulting a vet and calling him a coward, chances are it’s a Republican who’s never served. If there’s a choice between money for shit people really need or a sexy new weapon system built by a company that donates heavily to the Party, the company will profit.

Heh heh. Suck on that, Karl.

The Abramoff Volcano is Ready to Erupt

And its lava is going to overwhelm a lot of Republicans in Congress. The New York Times has the story. Tom DeLay is a prime target of the Justice Department's investigation. Money quote in the NYT article:

"I think this has the potential to be the biggest scandal in Congress in over a century," said Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional specialist at the Brookings Institution. "I've been around Washington for 35 years, watching Congress, and I've never seen anything approaching Abramoff for cynicism and chutzpah in proposing quid pro quos to members of Congress."

It's time to clean out the Republican crooks, liars, thugs, and con artists. This is all a prelude to the Big Clean Out that's going to take place on Tuesday, 7 November 2006, when the American people elect a Democratic Congress.

Please--I Implore You--Watch This Video

You'll find it here. It's a statement from and about John Murtha. Just trust me on this. Go watch.

Please

The Immediate Objective Must Be the Political Destruction of Karl Rove

By all accounts, the despicable, vicious campaign of lies and smears that has been launched against Representative John Murtha is being directly coordinated by Bush's chief political deputy Karl Rove. Rove is determined to destroy Murtha for daring to call for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. You see, Murtha isn't just any regular anti-war Democrat. He was in the Marines (active and reserve) for 37 years. He received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart in Vietnam. He has been a fierce Democratic hawk, unfailing in his support for the military. A few years ago he received a special lifetime achievement award from the Marines. He voted to give Bush the authority to take military action. He has been visiting wounded servicemen at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington right from the start of the war. So when someone like Murtha speaks up against continuing our military involvement in Iraq, it has a huge impact. This is why the Republican Rightwing noise machine has gone into high gear to attack him. And Rove is coordinating the assault.

It's time to take this son of a bitch out.

Rove, first of all, is a draft dodger who avoided military service and yet loves to attack people who have served if they dare to cross him. Second, he's a piece of human garbage who learned his dirty tricks working for Nixon. Third, every campaign in which he's been involved has gotten unbelievably ugly. Rove spread lies about Bush's opponent in 1994, Ann Richards, deliberately spreading rumors in gay-hostile Texas that Richards was a lesbian. He smeared a Democratic candidate for the Alabama Supreme Court by spreading rumors that the Democrat was a child molester. He personally coordinated the horrible attacks on John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary campaign. (I lost all respect for McCain--almost--when he meekly supported Bush in 2004.) Rove personally coordinated the Swift Boat bullshit against John Kerry, with Bush's personal approval. And now Rove is attempting to destroy yet another veteran. (What is it with these chickenhawk bastards like Rove and Limbaugh? Anger and guilt because they know what gutless cowards they actually are?) But whatever the case, one thing is clear: ROVE MUST BE POLITICALLY DESTROYED FOR ALL TIME. Democrats must attack him by name, relentlessly, angrily, ruthlessly, incessantly. There must be no let up on the assault against Rove. Every political weapon must be used against him. Democrats have a reputation of not being willing to fight back as hard and as dirty as the Republicans do. Well, this Democrat, J. Miller the Rampant, isn't a Democrat who just takes it. I FIGHT BACK. My blog may be tiny, but with whatever voice I have, I will call for Rove's destruction. Rove is the brains, heart, and soul of the utterly corrupt and morally bankrupt Republican Party. Tear him down, and you decapitate the Republican Right. Use any dirt you have on him. Attack him by name on the Sunday talk shows. Start the rumor mill going against him. Shed light on this lousy little cockroach every chance you get. And above all, push for Patrick Fitzgerald to stay focused on Rove and his traitorous actions in the Plame Affair.

This is it, Democrats. A good man is under attack by Rove. What do you intend to do about it? I'll be waiting.

And I'll be fighting back.

UPDATE: Check this column out from the LA Times.

The Bush Collapse Deepens

Survey USA's 50 state poll of Bush's approval is in for November, and it's ugly for the Boy King. Overall, he's down by a stunning 37-60. He has net approval in only four states. He's tied in two others. He has net disapproval in 44 states. (I am proud and happy to note that Illinois is rejecting him 31-67.) Bush is massively unpopular. Democrats, go for the throat--don't let him up. Destroy his presidency utterly. The first step is taking back Congress in 2006. Don't hesitate, and don't hold back. Tie Bush around the throats of the drowning Republicans next year--and watch them sink as if an anvil had been thrown on them.

Gene Lyons: Bush's Revisionist "History"

Lyons does an excellent job of summing up Bush's most recent lies on the history of how the United States went to war in Iraq. Point by point, he tells us--again--what really happened. And he reminds us that 57% of the American people, in a recent survey, said they believed Bush deliberately misled the nation into war. Go and give it a read. I'll wait here.

Smearing Representative Murtha

The White House and the Republican slime who run the House of Representatives have already swung into action to attack the reputation of deeply respected Democratic Representative John Murtha. Murtha, a decorated Vietnam vet, had the nerve to actually call for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq! Can you imagine? Attacking our country that way by criticizing Dear Leader's infallible policies? The nerve of this guy! Here's an account of the affair written with plenty of colorful language.

By the way, check out these disgusting, filthy remarks by Republican scum Jean Schmidt during the debate on a phony resolution about the war the Rethugs are pushing. Remember, she's talking about a guy who was in the Marines for over 30 years:

The fiery, emotional debate climaxed when Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, the most junior member of the House, told of a phone call she received from a Marine colonel.

``He asked me to send Congress a message - stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message - that cowards cut and run, Marines never do,'' Schmidt said.

Garbage. Just outright human garbage, that's what Jean Schmidt is.

Harris: Bush Approval Rating 34%-65% NEGATIVE

And this is only a little more than a year after his "re-election". Check out the details here.

The strategy is clear: Wrap Dubya around the throat of every Republican candidate for office in 2006--and watch the GOP sink.

Cheney's Despicable, Pathetic Lies: On the Record

The sheer damned nerve of the Torture King is truly something to behold. He now is attacking Democrats for daring to call him on his constant, never-ending falsehoods on Iraq. Want to see the biggest ones (and a link to all the Administration's lies on the war)? Then go here and check it out.

The Return of the Poll Tax

Ah, those wonderful conservative Republicans. Such nostalgia for the past. I guess that's why they're going to start charging poor voters in Georgia (those without a car)a fee to vote. For real. Of course, the vast majority of those hit by the fee will be indigent black Democrats. The objective is plain: suppress the black (and Democratic) vote.

The Georgia Republican Party: Keeping the Spirit of the Klan Alive in the 21st Century.

(See also this larger story in Kos that I found originally)

Uh-Oh. Bush is Turning Into Captain Queeg!

This item, with information taken from Rev. Moon's weirdly right-wing Washington Times, gives us a portrait of Dubya as an increasingly isolated, brooding, paranoid. If this is true, I'm more than a little bit apprehensive. I have to ask: is this guy emotionally stable?

The NYT Smacks Bush's Intelligence Lies Down Hard

This editorial in today's New York Times gives the lie once again to Bush's preposterous claims that "everyone" had the same intelligence in the period leading up to the war. Moreover, not everyone was reaching the same conclusions. Key section:

The administration had little company in saying that Iraq was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999 to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time by analysts with real expertise.

The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer

Bush's enemies (like me) are not going to let him get away with twisting and distorting the record. We're going to nail his lies--relentlessly.

Another New Low for Bush

In the polls, not just his conduct as a human being. And please, please, please look at this astounding statement:

Fewer than one in 10 adults say they would prefer a congressional candidate who is a Republican and who agrees with Bush on most major issues, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday. Even among Republicans, seven of 10 are most likely to back a candidate who has at least some disagreements with the president.

Did you see that?? Less than 10% say they want a Congressional candidate who agees with Bush on most major issues?? This is borderline cataclysmic. This is the stuff of potential Democratic landslides.

If the Democrats play their cards right.

If the Democrats don't let the Naked Emperor off the hook.

If the Democrats guts it up and act like Democrats.

P.S. And this must be making the radical rightwingers just writhe in agony:

A 53% majority say they trust what Bush says less than they trusted previous presidents while they were in office. In a specific comparison with President Clinton, those surveyed by 48%-36% say they trust Bush less.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

James Fallows Cuts Through Bush's BS on Iraq

James Fallows, who has forgotten more about Iraq than The Boy Emperor, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have ever learned about it (combined), tears through Bush's pathetic tissue of lies on the issue of whether Democrats are equally culpable for the Iraq disaster. The key section of Fallows' piece:

Everybody was not, in fact, working from the same misleading information. The administration's line about WMD these days is: OK, we might have been wrong -- but everybody was wrong, and everybody came to the same conclusion we did. The foreigners came to that conclusion through their intelligence services, and the Democrats (especially that weaselly Kerry and ambitious Hillary) did it when they voted for the war resolution. But at the time, Administration officials were most emphatically NOT saying "hey, we're all operating in the dark here." The implied message of every briefing for reporters, every speech to the public, and every background session with legislators, was: If you knew what we knew, then you'd be as alarmed as we are. That was the message of Dick Cheney's statement that "there can be no doubt" that Iraq "now" had weapons of mass destruction, of Condi Rice's warning about the mushroom cloud, and of Colin Powell's presentation to the UN. The argument over Iraq's capabilities was by definition one sided, because the Administration's presumed insider knowledge trumped what anyone else could say. To pretend this was just a big widely-shared confusion is dishonest and wrong.

Damned right. Now that Bush and his fellow thugs have been shown to have been disastrously wrong, they're trying to say that they didn't pull the "inside info" trick on everyone. That's perhaps the most brazen lie of all.

And they're not going to get by with it.

They Don't Know; They Don't Care That They Don't Know

A troubling article on the state of recent college graduates and the attitudes many (not all) have toward broadening their education. Read this and see why I've become so emotionally tired after more than 30 years as a teacher.

Josh Marshall: The Real Issue in the Run-Up to the War

The intelligence community was embroiled in the issue of whether Saddam had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. It was the Bush Administration that kept pushing this lie over and over again. Key graph:

[Among Bush's lies and distortions]

Longstanding effort to convince the American people that Iraq maintained ties to al Qaida and may have played a role in 9/11. This was always just a plain old lie. (And if you want to see where the real fights with the Intelligence Community came up, it was always on the terror tie angle and much less on WMD.) The president and his chief advisors tried to leverage Americans' horror over 9/11 to gain support for attacking Iraq. Simple: lying to the public the president was sworn to protect.

Remember, a substantial percentage of the American people are still convinced that Saddam orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. That misconception is OVERWHELMINGLY because Bush and his lying thugs kept spreading this lie. After the evidence became too overwhelming to ignore, Bush was forced (in a low-key statement not given the attention it deserved) to admit that he had been wrong. But the damage had been done.

Read Marshall's whole post. It's an excellent summary of the disgusting tactics Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all the rest of this contemptible administration used to drag us into an unneccesary war.

John Edwards Responds to Bush

An excellent answer to Bush's lying, dishonest Veterans Day statement. Key section:


Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.

George Bush won't accept responsibility for his mistakes. Along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, he has made horrible mistakes at almost every step: failed diplomacy; not going in with enough troops; not giving our forces the equipment they need; not having a plan for peace.

Because of these failures, Iraq is a mess and has become a far greater threat than it ever was. It is now a haven for terrorists, and our presence there is draining the goodwill our country once enjoyed, diminishing our global standing. It has made fighting the global war against terrorist organizations more difficult, not less.

Well said! Damned right! Sigh. If only John Edwards was Vice President right now, America could hold its head high. Instead, we have a vicious criminal in that office, a man so morally bankrupt that I sincerely believe him to be the most genuinely evil leader in our country's history.