Bend over for Bush!
Ads for hemorrhoid creams: check.
Vaginal ointments: check.
Erectile dysfunction: check.
Farting: check.
Ads for the release of the new Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD? Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

CBS, NBC and ABC all refused Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD advertising during any of the networks’ news programming. Executives at Sony Pictures, the distributor of the movie for the home-entertainment market, were stunned. And even more shocked when the three networks explained why.

“They said explicitly they were reluctant because of the closeness of the release to the election. All three networks said no,” one Sony insider explains.

[T]he networks increasingly look like they’re doing everything possible to help George W. win re-election.

Jebus, Mary and Joseph...

Marines: George W Bush a privileged, AWOL pussy

"Here I sit, cheeks a-flexin'
'Bout to make another Texan."

The writing's on the wall.

What debate?
Why let the facts get in the way?

The press will say everything in their pre-packaged “performance reviews” about appearance and demeanor, while ignoring the truth that contradict Bush’s brazen lies about national security.

We have entered a parallel universe, one in which media coverage of a so-called debate has nothing to do with the reality of what the candidates are discussing. Any cub reporter could debunk Bush’s statements as lies, mistruths and deceptions with a minimum of Internet research. Any debate viewer can just go on Google and assemble long lists of articles that make Bush appear a liar or a fool when he declares that everything is going just fine in Iraq, as he did last week.

In a non-corporate controlled television media universe, where “air talent” were actually practitioners of journalism, they would compare the statements of the candidates to the truth. But with Bush, who articulates a worldview that is the political version of fantasy island, the corporate-controlled “commentators” will almost completely focus on style versus substance.

from a BuzzFlash editorial.

He just plays a drunk on TV
Georgie did not have a drinking problem, his pitbull bitch of a mother explains.
He had absolutely no trouble at all finding liquor and pouring it down his piehole.

Clarity
Yes, it's perfectly clear he's a vacillating, lying asshole.

"Mass destruction-related program activities" - and the many other Bush flip-flops on going to war in Iraq.

Cesspool of greed
Honor, integrity, responsibility

Tom DeLay's Texas-size scandal
God, what a sleazy little scumbag -

Following the indictments of three top DeLay lieutenants last week, two other top DeLay associates Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, key members of the fundraising and lobbying empire known as DeLay Inc., are under investigation for questionable activities.

Today the Senate will hold hearings on the whether Jack Abramoff, a top lobbyist with close ties to DeLay, created charities to hide client payments and protect income from taxation. DeLay also created children's charities to cover his political activities.

[I]t stretches credulity to maintain, as Mr. Delay does, that even though he was actively involved in raising money for his Texas group, making fund-raising appearances, and discussing its strategy and effectiveness in supporting Texas races, he was largely in the dark about its day-to-day operations.

Hey, Martha Stewart's going to prison!
/disgusted

Other priorities during the Vietnam war
Partyin, drinkin, gettin high...

Bush got to resign from the military???

The AWOL, war-deserting slacker wrote that he had "inadequate time" to meet future Texas Air National Guard commitments in his Nov. 1974 letter of resignation conveniently released on the eve of the first debate.

In the one-page "Tender of Resignation," Bush hand-wrote the following reason for resigning: "Inadequate time to fullfill (sic) possible future commitments."

Some are questioning the authenticity of the document, as it was not written in crayon.

It's amazing how they keep finding these records of Bunnypants' 'service' - yet none of them have explained where he was or wtf he was doing during that time.

Stayin' the course
On the highway to Hell.

You say that we are winning in Iraq. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, says, "We're in deep trouble." Gen. John Abizaid is asking for more troops. Colin Powell admits the insurgency is getting worse. The CIA is pessimistic. Billions of dollars that were earmarked for reconstruction have been diverted for security. Insurgent attacks have quadrupled. Deaths of coalition troops are up. Significant chunks of Iraq are under enemy control. You have no viable military plan to make sure the January elections proceed peacefully and no political plan to reconcile competing factions.

So - what do you think of John Kerry's tan?

- Sorry. Madeleine Albright suggests some questions to ask of the lying Dictator-tot in a NY Times op-ed.

Big bad war preznit throwing tantrum over debates
Holding his breath till his stupid chimpy face turns blue, the unelected Dictator-tot threatened to take his toys and go home to boycott the debates if the rules - such as the networks doing reaction shots - were broken (via email from MikeD, who just saw it on CNN).

Chickenshit. What a spoiled, crybaby chickenshit brat. Is he afraid the cameras might pick up on his earpiece? Dick Cheney holding up cue-cards? The front of his pants getting wet?

Kerry should get all over TV and say he'll be happy to debate with no rules whatsoever. Smirky would blow an O-ring.


"Uhhhhhh... 'Merica's safer..."

I can dream...



Heh.

Are you really a Christian, Mr. pResident, or just an asshole?
The father of a kid serving in Iraq writes a letter to the editor:

Mr. pResident, I wanted you to know that I am against the war in Iraq... sir, I feel you put your own personal objectives ahead of my son’s life and the lives of those serving in the military just so you could “get even for Daddy.”

PSM
Bush's top ten flip-flops.

Bizarro universe
Rectum? Damn near killed 'em!
The whore media presstitutes' slavish devotion to the incompetant lying fuckwit occupying the WH:

It is bizarre that the punditry should be in greater moral outcry over a news organization that rushed a story to print on the basis of forged documents than a White House that rushed a nation to war on the basis of lies, distortions, fake documents and false intelligence.

[Dan] Rather rushed a story onto the air. Bush rushed a nation into war. Rather apologized, but we have yet to hear any apology from the president for taking America to war on false pretenses.

Instead, he has ducked - claiming for months that we still might find weapons. He has transformed the rationale of the war - from stopping the ''gathering threat'' that Saddam posed to nation building and bringing democracy to Iraq. He has intentionally misled Americans about Saddam's connection to terror.

Pundits all agree that the CBS mistake in judgment badly damaged the credibility of one of America's leading news organizations. But few write about how the president's credibility has been destroyed across the world.

Europe to Bush: go cheney yourself
'His re-election will be a catastrophe for the world and for America.' - those brie-eating terrrist-lovers at Le Nouvel Observateur.

Word.

It's gotta be a budget: it's got lots of numbers in it
Bunnypants talks to Faux Nooze gasbag Bill O'Reilly, September 28, 2004:

O'Reilly: How will the federal government ever pay off the federal deficit, in your opinion?
Bush: By being fiscally wise and growing our economy. {Chirp!}
O'Reilly: Do you think it can be paid off in our lifetime, though?
Bush: The deficit, yeah. You mean, for, - have the revenues exceed the expenses in the budget? Didn't Karl have you sign a loyalty oath?
O'Reilly: See, we have a big deficit here…
Duh-byuh: You're talking about the debt or the deficit?
O'Reilly: The deficit, touchhole!
The CEO preznit: Yeah. {Sound of synapses frying}
O'Reilly: Well people are saying that because we have to fight this war on terror, because of the tax cuts, oh and you know how the propaganda, it’s all over the place… {Ed: 'propaganda'??}
The MBA from an Ivy League school guy: No, I think we can - of course I think we can balance the budget - as a matter of fact, I put out a hand, a budget that says we’ll cut it in half in five years, now, that's going to mean that the Congress has got to be fiscally wise, with our money. 'Put out a hand'?? Well, at least I didn't say 'at the whim of a hat' again. Anyways, please let him change the subject, please, Jebus

...snip...

O'Reilly: All right, do you think you got any preferential treatment getting into the Air Guard during Vietnam?
Bush: Cool! Easy! No. I don’t. As a matter of fact, the general that - or the commander of the unit Buck Staudt, said, said the same thing. No.
O'Reilly: So you don’t think you got any preferential treatment because you were a Bush
Bush: I don't. If I did, I have, I’m not, - I’m not aware of it, and again, the, commander of my unit, Buck Staudt, said the other day, publicly, I got no preferential treatment. {So phthththththth!}

- transcript was "edited for clarity" by Fux.


Bill O'Reilly gets ready to
blow the pResident.

Karl! Where's muh cowboy boots?! He's taller'n me!
Li'l chimpbot scared of John Kerry's stature

One debate official said jokingly that the Bush campaign was so insistent about keeping the candidates in their designated spaces that organizers were "thinking of using flares or building a campfire" to satisfy the GOP handlers. Instead, the organizers will settle for strips of tape that are likely to be visible to television viewers, officials said.

Fun fact: Bunnypants' nannies insisted that the podiums be no closer than ten feet apart so that Poppy's Widdle Cokehead didn't come off as a midget compared to John Kerry.
{Snort...}

Repub president's son voting for Kerry
No, besides Ron Reagan.

"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... 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."

- Dwight Eisenhower's son John.

Growing pessimism on Iraq
As Bunnypants happily continues to lie to the American people, doubts increase within US security agencies.

The CIA is pretty pissed-off. "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments." Oh good.

A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.

"It is getting worse," agreed an Army staff officer. "There are things going on that are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year ago."


"They're just guessing!"

Report: Iraq war keeping thousands out of unemployment line

WASHINGTON, DC — A Department of Labor report praised the positive effect the Iraq War has had on the strained US job market, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said Monday.

"A whopping 140,000 U.S. citizens are gainfully employed as military personnel in Iraq," Chao said. "The war is not just keeping these young men and women out of the unemployment lines, but it's also teaching them such valuable skills as operating radar equipment, driving an M1A1 Abrams battle tank, or bagging and tagging bodies."

Chao said that most troops won't need to look for new work for another four to seven years.

- from The Onion.

How dare Kerry speak up!
'The suggestion that Kerry supports the terrorists is flat-out disgusting. '

The Los Angeles Times calls Jebus's favorite hypocrite a slimy little punk-assed coward.

Compared with Kerry, George W. Bush is a coward. This is not a reference to their respective activities during Vietnam. It refers to the current election campaign.

Bush happily benefits from the slime his supporters are spreading but refuses to take responsibility for it or to call point-blank for it to stop. He got away with this when the prime mover was the shadowy Swift boats group. Will he get away with it when the accusers are his own vice president, high officials of his own administration (Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage) and members of Congress from his own party (House Speaker [and Tom DeLay boytoy] Dennis Hastert or Sen. Orrin Hatch)? The answer is yes: Based on recent experience, he probably will get away with it.

PSM
Looks like Photodump crapped out again. If it doesn't come back soon I'll look for another pic hoster.

Feh.

Swagger vs. substance
Oooohh, he's so manly and resolute! And though he resembles a retarded chimp, at least he doesn't look French!

Or - horrors! - tanned.*

Let's face it: whatever happens in Thursday's debate, cable news will proclaim pResident Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.

But what will the print media do? Let's hope they don't do what they did four years ago.

With so much at stake, the public deserves better.

- Paul Krugman, on the miserable performance of the whore media presstitutes.

*See today's drudge report, if you want to puke from ennui.


Dignitude.



While we're on the subject...

Some of what we think will be GW Bush's talking points during the debates:
9/11 changed everything
Saddam used weapons against his own people!
If I have to choose between taking the word of a madman and protecting the 'Merican people, I choose the 'Merican people everytime.
The world is better off without Saddam in power
I inherited a recession
He's gonna raise taxes
We're turnin' the corner
Mixed messages embolden the terrists/hurt our troops
Saddam refused to let the inspectors in
Changin' his position

All said with that stupid squinty-eyed smirk as he's draped over the podium like a big bag of shit on a hot day.

Vote for me, fuckheads, or you're all gonna DIE!
Cheney, still linking Saddam with 9/11, threatens supporters with a coming Apocalypse if he is not elected. Even some hand-picked, loyalty-oath-signing mouthbreathers were not impressed.

For Dick Cheney's weeklong campaign swing, little was left to chance. Or so it seemed.

Campaign advance workers for each of the rallies and town hall or round-table discussions chose every participant, combing lists of Republican activists and donors.

But these advance workers could not control what Mr. Cheney said or predict that his dark message would be out of sync with what many in his ardently supportive audience wanted to hear: his stand on domestic social issues.

Being fuckheads, though, they still plan on voting reboob. Jebus...


"Suckers."

Keepin' us safer
Though 9/11 changed everything, the FBI still does not have enough translators to handle "a growing backlog of documents and intercepts" relating to terrorism, a federal audit said on Monday.

Yep

"It is becoming increasingly clear that the pollsters are producing the results that the people paying the bills want to hear. Even pollsters who were once thought to be above suspicion are now suspicious."

- Electoral Vote.com.

The village doesn't want its idiot back in the WH
Crawford TX newspaper endorses Kerry

The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.

Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.

Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq...

We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.

Whoa! You go, guys!

Yeah, but - they were guessing!
Uhhhh, remember that July report from the CIA saying how much worse things were likely to get in Iraq? Well, it wasn't the first time they warned the misadministration.

The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.

The report warned about things such as violent internal conflicts, possible insurgency against US forces, rogue elements working with terrorist groups, and guerrilla warfare.

Boy, were they way off!
/disgusted

Edwards slams Bush campaign's ads
VP candidate with huge pair uses the L-word.

"They will absolutely lie about anything," John Edwards said Monday at a rally in NH.


"It's Unca Dick's fault! He made me!"

"And the president says, don't worry, be happy, everything is going fine"

"It seems to me the only time pResident Bush ever changes direction in Iraq for the better is when the failure is so obvious, it can't be denied, or when political circumstances dictate it."

- Joe Biden, to CNN's WH asswhore Wolf Blitzer, 9/26/04.

Keepin' us safer
N Korea: Hi! We have nukes!

North Korea says it has turned the plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into nuclear weapons - but will shitcan it all if that incompetant numbnut in Washington abandons his "hostile policy" and is "prepared to coexist peacefully."


'Like we do with fish?' Bush asks.

The dildo of Turin

"Far be it from me and you to put our -- put words into the Savior."

Or anything else, for that matter.

- Gee Dumbya Bush to Bill O'Reilly, 3/6/00 (seen at Eschaton).

Ask pReznit Bush
Scenes we'd like to see...

As if: the families of three of the 1,050 soldiers killed in Iraq will hold a news conference Wednesday, Sept. 29 to unveil new TV ads and lay out questions they want the media to ask of the lying Dictator-tot concerning his decisions about the war.

Sit and rotate
"So, Mr pResident - looking forward to another terrific four years?"

Tonight through Wednesday, in the no-spin zone: hard-hitting journalist Bill O'Reilly "interviews" Squinty "Lines" McSmirkface, lying warmongering incompetant neofascist punk.

Teresa kicks heckler's ass as crowd cheers

PUEBLO, Colo. - Teresa Heinz Kerry delivered for her supporters when she talked back to a heckler who implied her husband's a flip-flopper.

During a question and answer session, a young man demanded to know why Kerry voted to give Bush authority to attack Iraq but voted against an $87 billion appropriation bill to support the war effort there.

"Is that the kind of thing he would do as president?" the man asked.

Heinz Kerry sharply asked the man whether he had read the legislation that was voted on.

When he said no, she told him that Kerry had supported $60 billion in military appropriations for Iraq, but would not vote for the full $87 billion because he considered it a "blank check."

"And we knew they'd already given Haliburton millions in no-bid contracts," she added, referring to the company "formerly" led by Dick 'Chicanery' Cheney. "That answer your question, a-hole? Now STFU."


Let freedom reign
Woman arrested at Dick 'dick' Cheney rally.

"When he said, `we've made the world a safer place,' I just had this primal need to say `no!' at the top of my voice," 54-year-old Perry S. Patterson said.

For that, even though she had a ticket for the event, she was cited for second-degree criminal trespass and escorted out by armed stooges.


Pic by ntodd.

Banana Rebooblic
Voting arrangements in Florida do not meet "basic international requirements" and could undermine the US election, former US President Jimmy Carter says.

Advantage Bush? That's debatable
Bunnypants holding up debates, arguing for "loyalty oaths."
/kidding

Bush hasn't had to face tough questions on the campaign trail, where his audiences are carefully screened to make sure he isn't challenged. In these situations he's looked smooth and relaxed, leading to fawning media stories about how he's "hit his stride."

But this lack of practice dealing with pointed questions could backfire on him. We got a glimpse of this Wednesday when reporters asked him about the criticisms of his Iraq policy by conservative Republican Senators Chuck Hagel, John McCain, and Richard Lugar, and a gloomy CIA report on the future of Iraq.

Bush's response to the former was pique and obfuscation: Both men "want me elected," as if that was the issue.

-Sean Aday, the Gadflyer.

Makin' progress
Three Shiite provinces apply for autonomy in Iraq.

Sending mixed messages to troops, terrists
"[I]t is clear the CIA's wrath has now extended to the White House."
About time.

Emboldening terrists everywhere, America-hater Bob 'Traitor' Novak says the CIA is 'at war' with the AWOL Lying Nincompoop.

The Bush-CIA tension escalated Sept. 15 when the New York Times reported a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was circulated in August, spelling out ''a dark assessment of Iraq'' with civil war as the ''worst case'' outcome.

The immediate White House reaction to the NIE, from spokesman Scott McClellan, was to associate it with ''pessimists'' and ''hand-wringers.''

With Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at his side at the United Nations, Bush said of the CIA: ''They were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like.''

Fun fact: totally without meaning to, I'm sure, Boob Novak just sort of compared Bush to Adolf Hitler.

Supportin' the troops
Army sends weaponless Reserve unit to terrorist-overrun hellhole

About 800 members of the 98th Army Reserve Division from Rochester, New York will begin a year-long mission in Iraq next month.

The unit, which normally trains reserve and active-duty soldiers in the US, will find itself training Iraq’s new army. The 98th is a non-combat unit that doesn't even have its own weapons or vehicles.

"This is a hard war and we, frankly, inside the Army Reserve have been not properly prepared for it,” said Lt. Gen. James Helmly, chief of the US Army Reserve.

They hate freedom!
Emboldening the terrists

As Bunnypants happily insisted Iraq was "on track," Colin Powell warned the Iraq insurgency is 'getting worse,' and will make elections difficult. Even the top US military commander, General Abizaid, cautioned that "we will fight our way through elections" in Iraq, and that he could not predict that the entire country would be able to vote.

Darth Rumsfeld had his own special take on the matter. "You have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet," he quipped. Great.

God, what a bunch of assclowns.

'On Fox News last week, Bush was asked whether he would still put on a flight suit and make the Mission Accomplished speech. 900 dead soldiers later, Bush's response was "absolutely."' - DU's Top 10 Conservative Idiots.

The invisible
"Bush is an idiot." - Col. Earl Hecker, a doctor caring for seriously wounded US soldiers at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany.

If Americans understood what was really going on in Iraq, they'd pressure Bush to be clearer about "why we're really fighting," says Sgt. 1st Class Larry Daniels.

"The war on terror wasn't in Iraq till we went there," he says. "We initially went there to topple Saddam and then all these damn terrorists came in."

As a soldier, he describes himself as "almost a political prisoner" in the sense that he can't express himself on whether he believes US soldiers should stay in Iraq.

George W Bush: un-American

“[A]t a time when the United States is supposed to be preparing the Iraqi people for a democratic election, it's appalling to hear the chief executive say that loyal opposition gives aid and comfort to the enemy abroad.”

- NY Times editorial.

Turnin' the corner
"The Americans keep criticizing Saddam for the mass graves. How many graves are the Americans making in Iraq?"

'Operations by US and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents.'

An "unmitigated disaster"
‘Staying the course’ isn’t an option

Iraq is probably already lost, says former military-policy planner and retired Air Force Col. Mike Turner:

To discern the truth about Iraq, Americans must simply look beyond the spin. This war is not some noble endeavor, some great struggle of good against evil as the Bush administration would have us believe. We in the military have heard these grand pronouncements many times before by men who have neither served nor sacrificed.

This war is an exercise in colossal stupidity and hubris which has now cost more than 1,000 American military lives, which has empowered Al Qaeda beyond anything those butchers might have engineered on their own and which has diverted America's attention and precious resources from the real threat at the worst possible time.

And now, in a supreme act of truly breathtaking gall, this administration insists the only way to fix Iraq is to leave in power the very ones who created the nightmare.

Bunnypants having some kind of hissy over debate provisions

A senior Republican official tells ABC News that the first presidential debate, scheduled for Thursday in Miami, could be canceled unless there is a breakthrough soon in negotiations between the two campaigns and the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The only remaining sticking point is the reluctance of the Commission to sign the agreement negotiated by the Bush and Kerry campaigns.

The commission and the campaigns have been negotiating a side letter the commission (and moderators) would sign instead of the agreement, but the Bush campaign finds the current draft of the letter too weakly worded.

Then there's this, from Chris Bowers:

However, what I really think is going on here is an attempt by the Bush campaign to shift the post-debate focus away from the content of debate itself and toward a "Biased Debate Commission" storyline. This would especially be the case if things do not go well in the debate for Bush, and would be very similar to what happened with the CBS memo story.

The Republican post-debate spin could center on how the commission and the moderators, who refused to sign the agreement, did not abide to the agreement and were unfair to Bush during the debate (a couple of lame examples will be offered up and hammered over and over again by the VRWC). It is an attempt to make the medium the story, and once again produce the culture war narrative of a small conspiracy of liberal elites working against the President and the majority he represents.

It will become impossible for Kerry to win any future debates, because the pundits will be frightened and many people will have the perception that Kerry has an unfair advantage due to the Protocols of the Liberals of Hollywood and Academia.

Keepin' us safer
CNN bimbette Paula Zahn interviewed Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf, a "key ally in the war on terror" last night:

ZAHN: Is the world a safer place because of the war in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: No. It's more dangerous. It's not safer, certainly not.

ZAHN: How so?

MUSHARRAF: Well, because it has aroused actions of the Muslims more. It's aroused certain sentiments of the Muslim world, and then the responses, the latest phenomena of explosives, more frequent for bombs and suicide bombings. This phenomenon is extremely dangerous.

ZAHN: Was it a mistake to have gone to war with Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: Well, I would say that it has ended up bringing more trouble to the world.

ZAHN: Even members of pResident Bush's party are saying that the United States is in trouble in Iraq and it's possible the United States won't win the war in Iraq. Is that the way you see it?

MUSHARRAF: Well, when you enter operations, you can go wrong in your calculations. That always is a possibility in any operation.

ZAHN: Has that happened in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: Well, there are difficulties. One can't predict. Maybe the difficulties are surmounted and then it ends up with a victory, with a success. But, at the moment, we are bogged down, yes, yes indeed.

ZAHN: Are you fearful the United States will pull out before it should militarily?

MUSHARRAF: That will be a folly. They must leave a stable, territorially integrated Iraq. We have people of Iraq hard administering themselves, governing themselves, and governing their own natural resources. That must be left intact. They must not leave a disturbed area there. The disturbance can spread to other areas.

ZAHN: Do you think that the war in Iraq has undermined the overall war on terror?

MUSHARRAF: It has complicated it, certainly. I wouldn't say undermined. It has further complicated it. It has made the job more difficult.

Paging John Kerry...

Outrage

In some circles, Dan Rather is public enemy #1. CBS affiliates around the country are receiving thousands of emails and faxes from wingnuts outraged citizens insisting that Rather be canned because of allegedly forged documents.

You'll notice these same people haven't mounted an email campaign against the Bush Administration for using forged documents* to gain public support for the invasion of Iraq.

Let's compare the results, Bush v. Rather, from the use of documents of questionable provenance:

U.S. soldiers killed:
Bush: 1,043+
Rather: 0

Other military deaths:
Bush: 135+
Rather: 0

Military wounded:
Bush: 7,290+
Rather: 0

Civilian dead:
Bush: 12,000+
Rather: 0

Cost to U.S. taxyapers:
Bush: $200 billion
Rather: 0

Yeah, I wonder how Dan Rather can sleep at night.

Indeed. From the Mahablog.

Why doesn't CBS News just pull it's own fucking plug right now?
The beleaguered, cowering chickenshits said yesterday that they had postponed a 60 Minutes segment that questioned the misadministration's 'rationale' for going to war in Iraq.

The segment was to have detailed how the administration relied on false documents when it said Iraq had tried to buy a lightly processed form of uranium, known as yellowcake, from Niger. The administration later acknowledged that the information was incorrect and that the documents were most likely fake.

The Iraq segment had been ready for broadcast on Sept. 8, CBS said, but was bumped at the last minute for the segment on Mr. Bush's National Guard service.

CBS said last night that the report on the war would not run before Nov. 2.

"We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election," the spokeswoman, Kelli Edwards, said in a statement.

Inappropriate? Airing the TRUTH about the lying incompetant BEFORE the election is inappropriate?? Good God. WTF is going on with this country...

The Mickey Mouse presidentiary

Bunnypants flip-flops on CIA comment
The Incompetant Fraud admitted yesterday he was wrong to call the CIA report on Iraq guesswork after John Kerry blasted him for writing that off after going gangbusters over the whole pre-war Saddam had WMD thing.

Bush responded with this rather ironic yet clueless statement:

"I understand what mixed messages do. You can embolden an enemy by sending mixed messages. You send the wrong message to our troops by sending mixed messages."

Joe Lockhart replied, saying Bunnypants is "unhinged from reality."

Heh
Newt Gingrich's sister working to "fire Bush."

Let freedom reign
Two Bowdoin students were ejected from the Fascist Punk's campaign appearance in Bangor yesterday on

Makin' progress
Four Marines were killed as the US went into Fallujah on Saturday. In Baghdad, a gunman killed six Iraqi National Guard applicants. The group had just left a recruiting center where they had signed up to join.

Also, a posting on an Islamic Internet site Saturday said that British hostage Kenneth Bigley had been killed. The claim could not immediately be confirmed.

News flash
AP actually busts Bush's bullshit

Bush twists Kerry's words on Iraq

He stated flatly that Kerry had said earlier in the week "he would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today." The line drew gasps of surprise from Bush's audience in a Racine, Wis., park. "I just strongly disagree," the [Lying Punk] said.

But Kerry never said that. In a speech at New York University on Monday, he called Saddam "a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell." He added, "The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."

More here, and it's about time, too.

Misadministration flip-flopping over Iraqi elections
Not sending mixed signals? Being strong and resolute? That's rich, coming from these clowns.

Get this, this is rich: Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is arguing with Donald Rumsfeld over whether Iraq's elections should cover the whole country or be held only in areas where security could be guaranteed.

Not only that, Rummy says Washington would not wait until Iraq "is peaceful and perfect" before beginning to withdraw troops "because it's never been peaceful and perfect and it isn't likely to be."

Seen at Chapel Perilous.

Honor, integritude
Tom DeLay (R-Insane) claims he did not have relations with that PAC. But the Houston Chronicle has the money-stained documents that say otherwise.

Lack of respect?
Yeah, he's sooooo credible on that subject.

All of a sudden Dick "go fuck yourself" Cheney cares about civility in politics.


Pic by ntodd.

Update on hostage story
Make that six Egyptians kidnapped.

Meanwhile, analysts are 'skeptical' of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's photo-op with the Smirking Idiot:

"It looked like a publicity stunt for Bush's election campaign. The reality on the ground does not conform to his wishful thinking," Baria Alamuddin, foreign editor of the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper, said of Allawi's speech.

"It will go down badly in Iraq, where people are being bombed and bombarded every day. Allawi may be a sincere man, but he will be seen more and more as an American stooge."

Home run!
Hell, it was a grand slam.

Just watched John Kerry's speech on terrorism, and my God, was he on fire. He laid out a tough, thoughtful and comprehensive plan, and also bashed the Incompetant-in-Chief. Wow. Very detailed and clearly stated.

Joe Biden, who had introduced him, said halfway through the speech "you're on a roll, buddy!"!

Some of the stuff he hit on:
Iraq was not a terrorist haven before the invasion.

Bush outsourced the capture of Bin Laden to Afghanistan warlords.

The misadministration is living in a fantasy world of spin.

"George Bush made Iraq his highest priority. I will make Osama Bin Laden my highest priority."

The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the war against Al Qaida. Bush's mismanagement has made the war harder to win.

"Well, I have news for you, president Bush: just because YOU can't do something doesn't mean it can't be done!"

Heh! On closing, Joe Biden stepped up to him and said "You did it pal! You did it!"

He certainly did!



On edit: link to the transcript of the speech.

Steady and resolute drunken coward
Janet Linke, whose husband replaced the AWOL Bush in the Texas ANG in the summer of 1972, remembers...

Contrary to some news reports that suggest Killian admired Bush, Linke says the officer didn't have much use for the young Lieutenant.

He mentioned that Bush appeared to have a drinking problem, she recalls, but he was most offended by another incapacity: his fear of flying. According to Linke, Killian said Bush was grounded in his fourth year of flying after he became incapable of flying or properly landing a plane.

"He was mucking up bad, Killian told us. He just became afraid to fly," Janet Linke said.

"He just couldn't cut it," she added. "I was let to believe he was kind of a coward."

Makin' progress
Two more hostages taken in Baghdad

Egyptian engineers working for a mobile phone company were kidnapped from their office yesterday.

Damn you, John Kerry!

Hey Bill Schneider: go fuck yourself, you pathetic partisan little shit
Sorry, dickheads, but last time I checked John Kerry wasn't the one allowing insurgents and terrorists to control several major cities in Iraq.

CNN should fire him and Boob Novak both. Disgraceful.

"These despicable comments cross the line from partisan politics to shameless fear tactics. Republicans should remember that the reason Osama bin Laden is still able to threaten the United States three years after the September 11th attacks is the utter failure of the Bush administration to catch him and destroy al Qaeda."

- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), responding to the shameful and un-American remarks made by “leading” rethugs and their pathetic asskissing toadies yesterday.

Somewhere - over the rainbow...
"I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. It's pretty darn strong. I mean, the people [in Iraq] see a better future." - Words fail me. Yes, that was pResident Stupid at his press con today.

And this:

"Talk to the leader. I agree - I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America, where it's nice and safe and secure."

In a related story, Generalissimo John Ashcroft has just urged "terror vigilance" to thwart a possible attack by al Qaeda in the weeks leading up to the November election.

Do YOU trust an idiot to keep you safer?
"The first part of the question was, how come we haven't found Zarqawi. We're looking for him. He hides. He is - he is - he's got a effective weapon, and that is terror. I said yesterday that our military cannot be defeated by these thugs, that - but what they do is behead Americans so they can get on the TV screens. And they're trying to shake our will and trying to shake the Iraqis' will. That's what they're trying to do." - Too Stupid to be President, at today's press conference.

Things you don’t see every day
“With all due respect, dumbass Sir, may I just follow, because I don't think you're really answering the question.” - David Gregory.

Idiot resident emboldens the terrists…
Karl Rove changes his panties, drinks heavily…

Not only did Cokehead McLiar have a press conference today, the usually supine press corps hammered him. Watch the whole embarrsssing fiasco at C-Span. Click "Pres. Bush & Interim Iraqi P.M. Iyad Allawi Joint Press Conference (09/23/2004)" under "Recent Programs". Questions begin at the 19:30 mark.

Did you know...
That 9/11 changed everything? And that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein?

Makin' us safer
Bunnypants: Terrists may plan more attacks

"If we stop fighting the terrorists in Iraq, they would be free to plot and plan attacks elsewhere, in America and other free nations," Bush said today.

Gee, thanks, Captain Cokespoon. And how the hell did all those terrorists get into Iraq, anyway? Uh-huh.

Dignitude


US resident George aWol Bush sits in the chair reserved for actual heads of state as he waits to address the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, September 21, 2004.

In letter to Bush, Moore clarifies Kerry's position on Iraq

[Y]ou have the audacity to criticize John Kerry with what you call the "many positions" he has taken on Iraq. By my count, he has taken only one: He believed you. That was his position. You told him and the rest of congress that Saddam had WMDs. So he - and the vast majority of Americans, even those who didn't vote for you - believed you. You see, Americans, like John Kerry, want to live in a country where they can believe their president.

That was the one, single position John Kerry took. He didn't support the war, he supported YOU. And YOU let him and this great country down. And that is why tens of millions can't wait to get to the polls on Election Day - to remove a major, catastrophic flop from our dear, beloved White House - to stop all the flipping you and your men have done, flipping us and the rest of the world off.

- Michael Moore.

Klingons for Kerry

The incumbent has staked his campaign on the war on terror. But those who speak the language of the Trek warrior race - known to disdain dishonor, or quvHa'ghach - seem alienated by Iraq and other issues.

According to the poll of eight local Klingons, a whopping 75 percent support the Democratic nominee.

Bush scored an abysmal zero percent in the poll.

"A good war is based on honor, not deception," says K'tok (Earth name: Clyde Lewis), a 40-year-old Klingon from Lair Hill. "The first warrior, pResident Bush, deceived us all with this war."

Portland Klingon speakers are increasingly influential. Last year, Multnomah County's mental-health services opened a search for a Klingon interpreter to work with speakers of the language. Though the Klingons polled all appeared to be registered voters, they emulate an unfamiliar political system.

"On the home world, if there had been a contested election between Gore and Bush, the honorable thing would be for Gore to kill Bush," explained Khraanik (Earth name: Jason Lewis), a 38-year-old from Southeast Portland.

Will John McCain be the October Surprise?
Whoa… this would be too cool:

[I]f he did want to continue being a GOPer in good standing, then he had to do right by the Family. (Think The Sopranos.) That meant putting aside the resentment and anger he must have felt toward the Bush clan, which - take your pick - ran or countenanced an ugly and vicious campaign against McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000 that included questioning McCain's commitment to veterans and spreading rumors that McCain had been brainwashed in a Vietnamese prison camp, that his adopted daughter was a love-child he had had with a prostitute, and that his wife was a junkie.

So this year McCain sucked it up and hit the trail for Bush, even as the Bush brigade was mounting the same sort of trash-and-slash attack against McCain's colleague, John Kerry. At least, McCain could point to the war in Iraq as a point of agreement with Bush. Though McCain, according to a McCain adviser, has not accepted the neoconservatives' argument (adopted by Bush) that the Iraq war is necessary as an initial step in remaking the region, he believed that because Saddam Hussein posed a possible threat and was such a tyrant he needed "to be taken out."

But maybe there was another reason beyond loyalty to the party and to the commander-in-chief why McCain saddled up with Bush. Perhaps he wanted to get near enough to knife Bush - metaphorically speaking, of course. As in, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. (Think The Godfather.)

Read more here.


"It's payback time, bitch..."

Jebus loves you
But everyone else thinks you’re an asshole.

Should Jimmy Swaggart be added to the do not fly list?


“You just don’t get it, do you, Swaggart?”

Word
"We begin tonight with a simple, indisputable fact: as a young man, pResident George W. Bush benefitted from family connections to get a place in the Texas Air National Guard, thus avoiding service in Vietnam. As you would guess, this has led to calls for the resignation of Dan Rather." - Jon Stewart.

Dems kicking butt
With half of Iraq in flames and terrorists “pouring over the border” the AWOL Cokehead's statement that 'a "handful" of people are willing to kill to stop progress in Iraq is another blunder that shows he's avoiding reality,' John Kerry told the AssPress.

Meanwhile, responding to Dick 'dick' Cheney’s continued attempts at fearmongering, John Edwards said that Bush and Cheney "are the last two people we need a lecture from about how to keep the American people safe."

"It is the height of absurdity for Dick Cheney, a chief architect of the Iraq quagmire, to talk about the leadership needed to fix the mess in Iraq that he created," said Edwards.

Makin' progress
The two Italian aid workers in Iraq, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29 - who were kidnapped Sept. 7 - have reportedly been killed.

Hey, look: Kerry went windsurfing on his vacation!

Privileged idiot wows youth at campaign photo-oop

Indeed

Seen at BartCop.

Heh
"The candidates are arguing over the exact format these debates will take. Kerry wants to stand behind a podium. Bush wants to stand behind Dick Cheney." - Jay Leno.

"pResident Bush addressed a national meeting of the National Guard in Las Vegas this week. Bush told the crowd he's proud of his National Guard service. He said, 'It was the best weekend of my life.'" - Leno again.

"The president finally explained why he sat in that classroom on 9/11 for 7 minutes after he was told the country was under attack. He said he was 'collecting his thoughts.' What a time to start a new hobby.'" - Bill Maher.

Email

Certain folks on the right are pontificating that Dan Rather must quit, CBS should shut down, etc etc etc, despite the fact that both have now acknowledged they made a mistake and acted on documents that they cannot verify.

And yet... and yet... isn't this PRECISELY what Bush did? From early on, he wanted to go after Iraq, perhaps for reasons best left to Freudians... and so he listened to the neocons and disregarded those who urged caution, and further investigation, and off we went to war, without waiting for the UN, without waiting for the inspection process to be completed - and at what price.

However, unlike Rather and CBS, long after it's apparent that he misled us into war, Bush will NOT admit there are any troubles.

I mean for chrissakes - while civilians are having their heads sawed off, Bush is still telling us how WELL things are going in Iraq, how he did the right thing, how he's still doing the right thing - and that if he had it all to do over again he would do everything EXACTLY the same way.

Umm... so... Rather should be canned, but Bush should be re-elected??? Didn't Bush do the same thing that Rather did? Though on a far vaster and pricier scale in every sense? He heard what he wanted to hear, ignored the warnings, and went where he wanted to go. We all are paying the price for Bush's mistakes.

I just don't get it.

- JudithA.

Kerry campaign blasts GOP on CBS bs
John Kerry's campaign fired back hard at the White House yesterday, saying Tipsy McStaggers was using the CBS documents scandal as a "gutless political attack" and smokescreen to duck questions about his alleged National Guard service.

"You have to question the motives of the people who are asking these questions," senior Kerry campaign adviser Joe Lockhart said. "The White House is raising questions about this because they don't want to answer questions [about the privileged dunce's non-attendance of duty]."

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe blasted Bush for shirking his Guard duty, saying the [Smirking Cokehead] did not deserve his honorable discharge.

"The president says he received an honorable discharge, but that honorable discharge seems less honorable every day," McAuliffe said.

Whoa! Woo-hoo!


"I stayed home and got high while others died!"

Keepin' us safer
Huntin' 'em down... bringin' 'em to justice... they can run but they can't hide...

Or get put away for life for terrorism, apparantly.

With the latest Detroit convictions overturned, Ashcroft has not convicted a single person of terrorism since 9/11.

On Sept. 2 a federal judge in Detroit threw out the only jury conviction the Justice Department has obtained on a terrorism charge since 9/11.

In October 2001, shortly after the men were initially arrested, Attorney General John Ashcroft heralded the case in a national press conference as evidence of the success of his anti-terror campaign. The indictment alleged that the defendants were associated with al Qaeda and planning terrorist attacks. But Ashcroft held no news conference in September when the case was dismissed, nor did he offer any apologies to the defendants who had spent nearly three years in jail.

269 - 253
Kerry ahead of Lying Chimpbot in today's Electoral poll count.

In other voting news, GFrogglet sends us the new electronic Florida ballot. ; )

Holy shit
ABC News calls out the Liar-in-Chief

"And now what Senator Kerry ACTUALLY said..."

Peter Jennings played a clip of Bush saying yesterday that Kerry supported keeping Saddam in power. Then Jennings showed what Kerry really said.

Here's the video of the segment. Damn! Talk about bizarro universes... not that I'm complaining, mind you. This is sweet!

Beh. I feel worse today than yesterday.

The plot thickens
Like the lining of Denny Hastert's rectum after a special all-nighter with Bossman DeLay.

DNC head calls out g-pukes on forged docs
McAuliffe: Will GOP Answer If They Know Whether Stone, Others Had Involvement With CBS Documents?

Washington, D.C. - In response to false Republican accusations regarding the CBS documents, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued this statement:

In today's New York Post, Roger Stone, who became associated with political dirty tricks while working for Nixon, refused to deny that he was the source the CBS documents. Will Ed Gillespie or the White House admit today what they know about Mr. Stone's relationship with these forged documents? Will they unequivocally rule out Mr. Stone's involvement? Or for that matter, others with a known history of dirty tricks, such as Karl Rove or Ralph Reed??

In a related story, the Dems continue to get tough...

The Bush campaign backs away from defending Bush guard service
Democrats.org reports:

Facing questions about [the Snivelling Liar]'s Guard Service and its own possible involvement with the disputed National Guard documents, the Republican National Committee has postponed a call scheduled to discuss the issue this afternoon.

And, in the last several hours, the Bush campaign has also cancelled scheduled appearances by Dan Bartlett on cable networks this evening. These cancellations came as the Bush operatives refused to appear live alongside Kerry campaign official Joe Lockhart.

“It’s clear that even the Bush campaign is having a problem defending the [war-deserting chimptard]’s National Guard service,” said Democratic National Committee Spokesman Howard Wolfson. “The Bush campaign has decided to once again duck the tough questions and avoid real debate. Given the [AWOL Cokehead]’s National Guard service, I don’t blame them for being camera shy.”

Kick ass!



On edit: the NY ComPost reports "The hot rumor in New York political circles has Roger Stone, the longtime GOP activist, as the source for Dan Rather's National Guard memos. The irony would be delicious, since Rather became famous confronting President Nixon, in whose service a very young Stone became associated with political dirty tricks. Reached at his Florida home, Stone had no comment."
Developing...

Kofi Annan to Emperor Snippy: get bent, cokeboy

Annan opened this year's annual debate of world leaders at the United Nations by critising Bush's plan to deliver democracy to Iraq through force in a pointed speech aimed at underlining the importance of the rule of law.

"Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it, and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it," Annan said in a speech that drew applause from the presidents and ministers on hand.

Heh
Why did it take so long for the Bush campaign to agree on a debate schedule?

"The big hang-up was George Bush wanted to get life lines, you know, so he could call somebody. " - John Kerry, appearing this morning on "Live With Regis and Kelly."

Ba-dum-bum.

Bunnypants' national guard docs can't be confirmed
... may be fake, just like his entire pResidency.
Feh.

Douchebag of the House: Al Qaeda will attack to help Kerry
House Speaker finishes trading the respect and dignity of his office for further fisting sessions with his party superiors.

The evidently insane Dennis "yes, Mr DeLay" Hastert said Saturday that he believes Al Qaeda will use terrorism to try to influence the election, to sway opinion toward John Kerry over Bush.

"I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another, [but] I would think they would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops," said Hastert, reading directly from the WH talking points.

Asked directly by reporters whether he believed Al Qaeda could operate better with Kerry in the White House, Hastert replied, "That's my opinion, yes."

Start greasin' it up, Denny!

What are neonazi goons, Alex?"
Traitorist contestant on Jeopardy slanders the Misadministration.

dedalus from the BC Forum reports:
The topic was about Botswana, and the clue was:

"The other name for the San tribe, it could also apply to Cheney and Ashcroft."

The answer was supposed to be "Bushmen."

Her answer was "What are Dicks."

Alex Trebek moved on quickly...

Sorry, I was pretty sick yesterday. I'm not so hot today either, but at least I can sit up for a bit.

John Kerry's "Top 10 Bush Tax Proposals"

10. No estate tax for families with at least two US presidents.

9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.

8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.

7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.

6. Attorney General Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.

5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.

4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa to cover the whole damn thing.

3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.

2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it "nuclear" instead of "nucular."

1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.

- John Kerry, on Letterman last night!

Loser
I finally remembered what Bush’s call that ‘the terrists/insurgents “hate freedom!”’ reminds me of: Navin Johnson yelling “The cans! He hates the cans!,” in Steve Martin’s movie The Jerk.

"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat."

— Too Stupid to be President, Washington DC, Sept. 17, 2004.



Makin' progress

For whom did my son die in Iraq?

According to the Army, he was killed on Aug. 13 in western Iraq when an IED - an "improvised explosive device" - detonated near his vehicle. According to me, he was killed by the arrogance and ineptitude of George W. Bush aided by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

- Diane Davis Santoriello, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

More Americans have now died in Iraq than in the past 20 years due to Iraq (including the first gulf war).

Kerry on fire
1,029.

"With all due respect to the president, has he turned on the evening news lately? Does he read the newspapers?" Kerry said. "Does he really know what's happening? Is he talking about the same war that the rest of us are talking about?"

Bizarro universe
Wuzzah?

"There are a lot of questions about the documents and they need to be answered," Bush told the Union Leader, after a week in which some experts questioned whether the documents had been fabricated by those seeking to damage Bush in his re-election race.

"I think what needs to happen is people need to take a look at the documents, how they were created, and let the truth come out," Bush added.

Let the truth come out? OK! And I suggest you start here!

Did your daddy use his influence to get you into the Guard?

Did you refuse a direct order from your commanding officer?

Were you suspended for failing to perform?

Why did you desert rather than have to take your physical as ordered?

Our power just came back on, nine hours or so after the storm last night knocked it out.

Partisan f*ckfard unmasked
The LA Times has discovered the identity of the assclown who 'posted the very first (and in some minds, very suspicious) blog blast at the credibility of the 60 Minutes Killian memos. But as the Times put it, "it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought."'

Buckhead, as he was known at [RimJob's Mouthbreather Central], has been unmasked as Harry MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes. He even helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

His identity, the Times says, "is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the efforts to discredit the CBS memos were engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard more than 30 years ago."

The Duh Institute concurs.

How... conveeeeenient
White House releases yet more documents from Gee Dumbya: the AWOL Years.

Our bud stranger just posted this at the BC Forum - what a hoot!

Oh, this will silence the critics...

In addition to the letter from Bush's father, the latest documents contain news releases that the Texas Air National Guard sent to Houston newspapers in 1970 about young Bush, then a second lieutenant and new pilot. "George Bush is one member of the younger generation who doesn't get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed,'' the news release said. "Oh, he gets high, all right, but not from narcotics.''

Snort! As if! Amazing that papers mentioning that Lines McStaggers doesn't do drugs just happed to surface! I smell FORGERY!!!

Jebus.

Only Democrats go to Hell
Emailer MikeB reminds us: Laura Bush has killed as many young women as Ted Kennedy.

Well, it would certainly explain a few things
Does Zell Miller have syphilis?

If I had to make a guess, I'd say yeah, but the very idea that anything had sex with such a oozing shitnozzle makes me want to heave my lunch.

Unease shadows Bush's optimism
Criminey, these headline writers are such pussies.

Chimp-in-Chief either outright lying or living in a fantasy world as Iraq continues descent into violent bloodbath.

''Freedom is on the march,'' he actually told a campaign rally yesterday, as three more Marines were killed, three people were taken hostage, and insurgents continued to bomb cars, police stations, markets, human beings.

A combination of escalating bloodshed, gloomy assessments and deteriorating security conditions in Iraq are challenging the Bush administration's upbeat view of the struggle to establish democracy in the beleaguered Middle East nation.

A growing sense of unease is visible among Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress as bombings and kidnappings continue to rise along with the death toll.

Campaigning Thursday, Bush acknowledged "ongoing acts of violence," but quickly returned to a positive message on Iraq: that US policies are succeeding and Iraq is on the verge of democracy and free elections.

Actually, more and more people are starting to admit that Iraq is heading toward a civil war, but hey, they're probably French.

John Kerry continued his attacks on the Smirking Liar, saying that Bush was trying to hide the truth from the American people.

"Two days ago, the president stood right where I'm standing and did not even acknowledge that more than 1,000 men and women have lost their lives in Iraq," he said. "He did not tell you that with each passing day, we're seeing more chaos, more violence, more indiscriminate killings."

Predictably, Dick 'dick' Cheney said he was "stunned by the audacity of that statement."

Ummmm... what part of that didn't you agree with, Dick? Which part of that comment is not true, you flaming asshole?? Gah.

The committee's moderate Republican chairman, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, expressed exasperation at the administration's rosy prewar assessments that as soon as Hussein was deposed, a euphoric Iraqi population would embrace democracy. "The nonsense of that is apparent," he said. "The lack of planning is apparent."

Fun fact: US weapons inspectors have finally concluded that Iraq had no WMD.

Fu*keroonies
Since my HP ate it , I've been trying to rebuild my music library - the legal way, because I'm too chickenshit to do anything else. I can find most of what I want thru Mac iTunes, except for a few that are killing me, like "Tijuana Jail" and just about anything from AC/DC. WTF's with that?? And the complete album-side version of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (yeah, I know, go figure!).

Question: who did "Venus"? The original, from the 70s. Haven't been able to find that either, but I did find a pretty cool version of "Mama Told Me Not to Come," by the Stereophonics and Tom Jones!

AWOL docs traced

To a copy center practically right next door to retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, who 'has been named as a possible source for the documents.'

"In news interviews earlier this year, Burkett said he overheard a telephone conversation in the spring of 1997 in which top Bush aides asked the head of the Texas National Guard to sanitize Bush's files as he was running for a second term as governor of Texas. Several days later, he said, he saw dozens of pages from Bush's military file dumped in a trash can at Camp Mabry, the Guard's headquarters.

The Bush aides Burkett named as participants in the telephone conversation were Chief of Staff Joe M Allbaugh, [chief nanny] Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett. All three Bush aides and former Texas National Guard Maj. Gen. Daniel James have strongly denied the allegations.

In a related development, White House propaganda minister Scott McClellan hinted that more documents regarding Bush's National Guard service may soon be released, even though he told us last month that all documents had been released. And those were some they pulled out of their ass after we had been told that everything had been released back then. Jebus...

Follow-up: Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Hypocrite) asked that a House subcommittee investigate what he called "the continued use of CBS News of apparently forged documents" intended to damage Snorty McStaggers' "reputation" and "influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election." But the panel's chairman, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), rejected the request, saying that the oversight of network news should be left to the viewing public and news media.

"The Republicans' latest attempt to intimidate the news media is a waste of taxpayer money and an egregious example of how this Republican House only exercises its oversight responsibility for partisan political reasons," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi added. "Clearly, Republicans will stop at nothing to distract the public from their miserable record."

Word.

Why Bush left Texas
"With respect: answer the questions." - Dan Rather, to the lying chickenshit AWOL coke-snortin' lazy-ass war deserter.

From Kos:

I think the sudden behavioral changes in early 1972 might partially have been Bush's response to an abortion performed on his girlfriend around that time. Something definitely happened that sent him into a sudden behavioral tailspin that quickly affected his performance. That he was becoming a potential liability for his father, as noted in this Salon interview of the widow of the man George H.W. Bush asked to find a place away from Texas for young George, is also a sure sign that something had happened and George W. Bush's behavior was spiraling out of control.

Should we really care about this? Is it important to hash out all these old details? Personally, I would rather be talking about the economy or Iraq or the War on Terror, and I will be talking about all that and more. But all this discussion of past events is also important because it gets at the heart of pResident Bush's credibility. I couldn't care less what he was doing 32 years ago but I do care that he insists on lying about it.

Yerp. As USA Today pointed out, "Neither the White House nor former officers in the Texas National Guard have challenged the central assertions in the documents: that Bush’s performance as a pilot was under scrutiny by commanders beginning in 1972 and that Killian, his supervisor, was unhappy with him."

Fun fact: The National Enquirer, sniffing around the Bush-cocaine connection, finds "more proof" of Smirky 'Lines' McDumbass's favorite hobby.

In other news...

Grapeland, Texas, football player turned into raisin.

Dumbya's former Harvard Business School professor remembers George W not just as a terrible student but as spoiled, loutish and a pathological liar.

Kofi Annan says the Iraq war was illegal, the Duh Institute reports.

Senate rebooblicans denounce Bush policy in Iraq as "pitiful and embarrassing."

Secret CIA report on Iraq's future: "They're fucked."

Iraq is likely headed for civil war.

George Soros blasts Denny 'yes, Mr DeLay' Hastert over drug slander, asks the House to probe him. Painfully, forcefully, and righteously.

The 'Boondocks' will be coming to the Cartoon Network next fall.

403,000 US high-tech IT jobs have been lost since mid-2001.

California reboob/douchenozzle Dana Rohrabacher introduces a constitutional amendment that'll make Ahnuld eligible to be President. Cool - I'd love to see him run against Madeline Albright.

Irony in action
"I think that as long as the Russian Federation goes after terrorists, legitimate terrorists, that's one thing. But I hope that some forces in the Russian Federation wouldn't use it as an excuse for other things."

- US Deputy Secretary of State/turdbrain Richard Armitage.

Keepin' us safer
A new report says the US may run out of guard and reserve troops for the war on terrorism.

Great job you're doing, Chimpboy.


"Bite me, infidel asstools!
Mwaaahahahahaha!"

Situation deteriorates in Iraq
US intelligence report pessimistic on future of Iraq. 'Pessimistic'?! They're being polite.

'Disaster on an unprecedented scale."

2 Americans and 1 Brit abducted in Iraq.

"The war is lost."
Military experts say they see no exit from the Iraq debacle - and that the war is helping al-Qaida.

TONY JONES: Seeing pictures of that as you speak, Peter, but are you starting to get the sense when you speak to US military officers in Baghdad that they're beginning to despair of ever getting a handle on this?

PETER CAVE: Look, you don't speak to American military officers as much as you used to. They're very fast when they move through town. They don't speak to you. The daily press briefings aren't happening. You know, they have coming under daily attack. I was out at a car bombing where a couple of soldiers were critically injured in a car bomb attack the other day. The Americans are very much under siege.

- from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

For the record: the Bush AWOL documents
Lt. Col. Killian's secretary, Marian Carr Knox, wiped the floor with the wonderchimp's arrogant AWOL ass last night on 60 Minutes. Here's part of the interview:

Knox says that Killian started what she calls a "cover-your-back" file - a personal file where he stored the memos about the problems with Mr. Bush's performance, his failure to take a physical, and the pressure Killian felt from upstairs.

She addressed one memo, and a reference to retired Gen. Staudt pushing for a positive officer training report on Lt. Bush.

"'Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it.’ Does that sound like Col. Killian? Is that the way it felt,” Rather asked Knox.

“That's absolutely the way he felt about that," says Knox.

She also talked about another memo which she doesn’t believe is authentic - but she says the facts behind it are very real. “It's just like a personal journal,” says Knox. “You write things. It was more or less that.”

“These memos were not memos that you typed, and you don’t think they came directly out of his files,” Rather asked Knox.

“The information, yes,” says Knox. “It seems that somebody did see those memos, and then tried to reproduce and maybe changed them enough so that he wouldn’t get in trouble over it.”

Yeah. See story below.


Fear of flying
... and fear of being Wellstoned.

Mr. Rather said that he and his longtime CBS producer, Mary Mapes, had investigated the story for nearly five years, finally convincing a source to give them the National Guard documents. He did not reveal the name of the source, but Mr. Rather said he was a man who had been reluctant to come forth with them because he’d been harassed by political operatives.

"Whether one believes it or not, this person believed that he and his family had been harassed and even threatened," he said. "We were not able to confirm that, but his fear was that what had already been threats, intimidation, if he gave up the documents, could get worse - maybe a lot worse."

Crap
I wanna be sedated...

Johnny Ramone has just died of prostate cancer.

Situation FUBAR
And how John Kerry can get Bunnypants to STFU:

The US military acknowledged the sobering fact that there were now "no-go" zones in Iraq, areas the US had ceded to the terrorists - which put a question mark on the [War pReznit]'s claim that he was aggressively fighting that war.

Bush has chosen not to fight in the Sunni triangle, and the war cannot be won until he does. "You can't allow the enemy to have sanctuaries and expect to win," John McCain told me. "You have to go in and dig them out."

Kerry could have challenged Bush: "Fight the war, Mr. pResident, or bring the troops home." It would have been blunt, strong, simple - indeed, simplistic, just as Bush often is - but it might also have put the [smirking little fuckwit] on the defensive for a change.

- Joe Klein.

Judge orders WH to open Iraq records
Suggesting the government was acting as if it had something to hide, federal judge Alvin Hellerstein Wednesday gave Washington one month to release records related to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq.

"Increasingly, the administration's response to requests has been to stonewall or delay as long as possible until documents are forced out of them by a court," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer. "Bets on how lomg it'll take them to appeal?"

- from the AP, mostly.

And another episode of Gee Dumbya Bush: AWOL Cokesnorter
Tonight: Karl Rove attacks and defames an 86-year-old woman.

"Bush felt like he didn't have to follow any rules" says Killian's former secretary. Also, she says, the other officers were resentful of Bush's attitude, and that the memos, though not typed by her, may have come from somebody's (Killian's?) private files, and that the information in them is CORRECT. In fact, she DID type memos containing the exact same information.

Dan Rather, in closing the segment, reiterated that the WH STILL has not denied or answered any of the charges.

Oh yeah - and, he added, "We will continue to investigate Lt. Bush's service."

Heh!

We now reurn to Camp David Cokehead...
CNN’s Heidi Collins interviewed Kitty Kelley today, and was probably sorry she did:

COLLINS: You write, "While there is no indication that George W. Bush was institutionalized for substance abuse, legitimate speculation arose after he failed to show up in 1972 for his annual physical with the National Guard and was suspended from flying." You talk about speculation here, but what evidence do you have of that?

KELLEY: Well, first of all, we have George W. Bush himself, who has never, ever denied his cocaine use. He was a drug addict and he was an alcoholic. His substance abuse is a matter of public record. And in this book...

COLLINS: Are you saying that George W. Bush has never denied that he was using drugs while in the Texas National Guard?

KELLEY: I am saying that. He has never, ever denied it. And he could easily settle this whole thing by opening up the flight inquiry board record.

Heh.

Ah'm barely showin' up fer preznintin'!
"According to a new book, when pResident Bush was on National Guard duty he would sometimes sneak off to smoke marijuana and snort cocaine. When he heard this, Bush said, 'That's ridiculous. I never showed up for National Guard duty.'" - Conan O'Brien (thanks to The Hamster).

Rep calls for investigation of CBS for Bush nonservice story
Chris Cox (R-Hypocritical Douchebag) has asked for a congressional investigation into the Bush AWOL/too stoned to fly memos used by CBS.

The letter asks Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., to "commence a subcommittee investigation into the continued use by CBS News of apparently forged documents concerning the service record of George W. Bush intended to unfairly damage his reputation and influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election."

Still no word on any investigations into whether certain other news outlets were complicit in perpetrating fraud by airing the sWift boat liar story.

PSM
Just heard that CBS will release a statement at noon, regarding Bush's national guard documents.

/biting nails...



Feh - it's 1329, and all I've seen so far is that Martha Stewart wants to start her jail term now, in order to get it over with.

Kerry blasts Bunnypants' 'excuse presidency'
John Kerry finally woke the fuck up and bitchslapped the Empty Flightsuit-in-chief, suggesting that it was time for the War pReznit "to take responsibility instead of playing the victim."

"The president would have us believe that his record is the result of bad luck, not bad decisions, that he's faced the wrong circumstances, not made the wrong choices," Kerry said from Detroit.

"In fact, this president has created more excuses than jobs. His is the Excuse Presidency - never wrong, never responsible, never to blame. President Bush's desk isn't where the buck stops - it's where the blame begins."

"You can even say that George Bush is proud of the fact that not even failure can cause him to change his mind."

Dick gets sand in his vagina
This is unbelievable - wtf is he thinking??

"I think some have hoped that if they kept their heads down and stayed out of the line of fire, they wouldn't get hit. I think what happened in Russia now demonstrates pretty conclusively that everybody is a target. That Russia, of course, didn't support us in Iraq, they didn't get involved in sending troops there, they've gotten hit anyway."

- total asstool Dick 'dick' Cheney, on the murder of those hundreds of little kids in Beslan - which, like the 9/11 attacks here, had nothing to do with Iraq.

Because they're worth it
With all the country's problems solved, Congress decides to vote themselves another pay raise.

The politics of failure have failed!'*
The CIA unit assigned to deal with Osama bin Laden is understaffed, a senior official tells Congress.

The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90 days, and they leave before they know enough to be able to perform any meaningful work, according to a letter written to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

pReznit Bush: keepin' us safer.

*

Well, I now have three spitting little hissballs in the house. I finally managed to catch the kittens last night when they came up to the back deck to eat, and now they're in one of the dog crates in the family room. Boy, are they pissed.

Hopefully I'll have pictures later, if they don't claw my eyes out.

Speaking of pissed, Photodump.com crapped out without telling anyone, so now I have to find and repost all the cool pics I had stored there. Grrrrrr....



Curiouser and curiouser
Yet another damning study of Snorty McStaggers: the AWOL Years:

Growing evidence suggests that George W. Bush abruptly left his Texas Air National Guard unit in 1972 for substantive reasons pertaining to his inability to continue piloting a fighter jet.

A months-long investigation... points toward the conclusion that Bush's personal behavior was causing alarm among his superior officers and would ultimately lead to his fleeing the state to avoid a physical exam he might have had difficulty passing. His failure to complete a physical exam became the official reason for his subsequent suspension from flying status.

One of the difficulties in getting to the truth about what really took place during this period is the frequently expressed fear of retribution from the Bush organization. Many sources refuse to speak on the record, or even to have their knowledge communicated publicly in any way.

- read more here.

The Bushes don't have family values'
'It's not the substance abuse in Bush's past that's disturbing, it's the lack of substance.'

Some hysterical - and some downright scary - stuff in the Kelley Bush bio:

New Yorker writer Brendan Gill recalls roaming the Kennebunkport compound one night while staying there looking for a book to read - the only title he could find was The Fart Book.

It is his wife, Barbara (whom the ex-wife of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray calls "bull-dyke tough"), and their eldest son, George, who are the true pieces of work in Kelley's book, a mother and son team brimming with such spite and ambition they would give the ruthless duo in The Manchurian Candidate the shivers. In one of the creepier passages of the book, a family gathering from hell at Kennebunkport, Maine, Barbara is shown mercilessly baiting her dry-drunk son, then governor of Texas, as a teetotaling "Chosen One," while he keeps pleading to skip the cocktails and put on the feed bag, and his elderly father "drools over [TV newswoman] Paula Zahn's legs."

These people can put the Sopranos to shame.

- from the Salon interview with Kitty Kelley.

He might seem a little dull-witted..."
God, people are fucking stupid.

From an article that explains why guys like Dumbya:

"Part of it is a Republican thing," says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker, "but a good part of it is a Bush thing. For guys who drank and loafed their way through college, he's a familiar figure."

So's my asshole brother-in-law, but that doesn't mean I want him to be president.

Makin' progress

'A huge explosion tore through a crowded market close to Baghdad police headquarters on Tuesday, killing at least 47 people in the deadliest single attack in the capital in six months.'

US planes bomb a suspected militant refuge in Iraq, at least 80 civilians are dead.

An oil pipeline junction is blown up by insurgents in Iraq.

Marine General in Iraq says US leadership doesn't know what the hell it's doing.

'Faced with mounting violence in Iraq, the Bush administration plans on Tuesday to propose shifting $3.46 billion from Iraqi water, power and other reconstruction projects to improve security, boost oil output and prepare for elections scheduled for January.'

'Iraq war is increasingly a loss as insurgency and American deaths mount, not to mention Iraqi civilians killed in the thousands.'

Powell: it's unlikely WMD stocks will be found in Iraq.

Update
The White House has still not responded to Dan Rather's five questions to the Empty Flightsuit-in-chief -
Did Ben Barnes use his influence to get Bush into the Guard?
Did Bush refuse a direct order from his commanding officer?
Was he suspended for failing to perform?
Did he take his physical as ordered, and if not, why not?
And did Bush complete his commitment to the Guard?

- other than to mumble 'honorable discharge, honorable discharge.' Why won't they answer the questions??

G-puke chairman demands paper fire poll director
The chairman of Minnesota's rethug party called on the Star Tribune on Friday to fire the long-time director of its Minnesota Poll, claiming that the poll results are 'consistently inaccurate,' in that they don't favor the repuke party.

"We have been operating one of the most respected and accurate polls in the country for more than half a century and always have been completely open and forthcoming about how we conduct our polls," Star Tribune editor Anders Gyllenhaal said. "Christ, what a bunch of crybaby neo-nazi hacks."

Taxpayers "would be shocked"
$3 trillion price tag conveniently left out as Bush "details" his agenda.

'The cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.'

The WaComPo reports: The 'expansive agenda' pReznit Privilege laid out at the rethug national convention was 'missing a price tag,' but misadministration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion. Yes, that's over three TRILLION dollars.

Partisan asshattery
Arrogant spoiler's name allowed on ballot in the Banana Rebooblic of Florida.

Thanks to the Boy King's little brother Jeb, Ralph 'no integrity' Nader can appear on Florida ballots for the election, despite a court order to the contrary.

"I'm in disbelief," said Scott Maddox, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. "This is blatant partisan maneuvering on the part of Jeb Bush to give his brother a leg up on election day."

"They are trying to get ballots printed with Nader's name on them," said Maddox. "I am astounded that Jeb Bush is willing to defy the judiciary to help his brother."

He's so naive.

GW Bush: Camp David Cokehead
Statement by Kitty Kelley's publisher, Doubleday, yesterday (paraphrasing): Sharon, like the rest of the Bushies, is a complete and utter liar, and her 'denial has already been utterly discredited by a third party.' Dumbya, even after 'finding Jesus,' was sucking up more white stuff than David Dreier at a Queer Eye bukkake party.

Oh, and FloorMatt Lauer spreads 'em for the GOP.

Supporting the terrorists
How the AWOL war preznit is encouraging terrorism and endangering the nation. And why Kerry had better start kicking some chimp ass.

[T]he losses aren't only in Iraq. Al Qaeda has regrouped. The invasion of Iraq, intended to demonstrate American power, has done just the opposite: nasty regimes around the world feel empowered now that our forces are bogged down. When a Times reporter asked Mr. Bush about North Korea's ongoing nuclear program, "he opened his palms and shrugged."

Yet many voters still believe that Mr. Bush is doing a good job protecting America.

- Paul Krugman.

Docu-drama

The White House is also acting very strangely in all of this. You'd think they would come out and question the authenticity of the memos publicly. Especially now that there are conflicting accounts on their authenticity.

But they aren't.

- Hesiod.

French as the planetary language

Turkey is pissed at us. Iraq isn't so happy, either. Poland is pretty damn upset, and Australia's getting worried. Meanwhile, the Arabs feel a bit... unsettled.

Sexually transmitted diseases
She not only smoked dope and sold dope, she married a dope.

Sex, drugs, cowardice, and cruelty: the legacy of Barb, Poppy and the Bush family hell-spawn. - link.

Traitorous hypocrite busted!
Bob "douchebag for freedom" Novak believes in revealing confidential sources, after all...

On the CNN panel show, Capital Gang, [Boob] Novak expressed grave doubts about the CBS documents, then said: "I'd like CBS, at this point, to say where they got these documents from. They didn't get them from a CIA agent. I don't believe there was any laws involved. I don't think we'll have a special prosecutor, if they tell. I think they should say where they got these documents because I thought it was a very poor job of reporting by CBS ...."

Fellow panelist, Al Hunt, from the Wall Street Journal, then replied: "Robert Novak, you're saying CBS should reveal its source?"

NOVAK: Yes.

HUNT: You do? You think reporters ought to reveal sources?

NOVAK: No, no. Wait a minute.

HUNT: I'm just asking.

LOL.

That wacky Boob... what a maroon!

Napoleon Bonehead, Stepford wife salute something

Judy, you ignorant slut

Oh, and a note to Judy Woodruff: shut the fuck up about Bush's "honorable discharge." John Muhammad got an honorable discharge from the National Guard. In case you didn't know, that was after he was court-martialed twice, went AWOL, and spent time in prison; and before he went on a sniper rampage in DC, Virginia and Maryland, leaving 10 people dead.

- DU again.


For Judy Whoredruff.

Matt, you ignorant asswhore
Matt Lauer grills Kitty Kelley on Today's Karl Rove Talking Points:

Matt: Who are you going to vote for?
Kitty: Who are YOU going to vote for?
DoorMatt: [silence.... then...] Why release the book now? During this highly divisive election season?
Kitty: Jesus, Matt, what are you, fucking stupid? Why not?

- thanks to emailer MikeB.

For Matt 'lower' Lauer.

Huge mushroom-shaped explosion in NKorea yesterday was not nuclear
But if it was, it was Clinton's penis's fault. Oh, and vote rebooblican: they'll keep us safer.

In an angry telephone interview with the NY Times, John Kerry accused the Bush misadministration of letting "a nuclear nightmare" develop by refusing to deal with North Korea.

"They have taken their eye off the real ball," Mr. Kerry said.

"The mere fact that we are even contemplating a nuclear weapons test by North Korea highlights a massive national security failure by pResident Bush. During his administration, North Korea has advanced its nuclear program and a potential route to a nuclear 9/11 is clearly visible. North Korea's nuclear program is well ahead of what Saddam Hussein was even suspected of doing - yet the president took his eye off the ball, wrongly ignoring this growing danger. What is unfolding in North Korea is exactly the kind of disaster that it is an American president's solemn duty to prevent."

"Senator Kerry wants to return to the failed policies of the previous administration," replied WH propaganda chief/asshat Scott McClellan.

Yes, heaven forbid we should go back to that national nightmare of eight years of peace and prosperity...



FWIW, North Korea has reported that the huge mushroom cloud was actually a "deliberate detonation of a mountain" as "part of a hydroelectric project... yeah...."

Unfit for command

Bush was transferred to the Alabama National Guard during the Vietnam war because his drunken behavior was a political liability to his father in Texas. But not one single person has come forward to say they remember seeing him there.

- DemoUnderground.

Was CBS's source Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges?
Two new memos from Lt. Col. Jerry Killian have been released, #s 1 and 5 in this pdf file. An intrepid poster at the BC Forum breaks them down:

The #1 memo and the #5 memo are the two newly-released ones. They are the missing pieces in the puzzle. Dan Rather has just buried the claims of forgery AND slyly revealed his source. Here's how:

(1) Read this new memo #5. It's obviously a letter from Killian to one of his superiors. The date is late June, 1973. He's telling this superior that he can't evaluate Bush because he hasn't shown up, and asks the superior what to do about it.

(2) It logically follows that Bush was contacted by either Killian or this superior sometime after the letter was written in late June, 1973. Bush realizes that he's in hot water and starts "talking to someone upstairs."

(3) Within a few weeks, Killian's superior writes back to him telling him to let Bush off the hook.

(4) Pissed off and suspicious, Killian "Covers His Ass" a few weeks later by writing that personal memo, in which he indicates that Hodges has been pressured by Staudt to let Bush off the hook. So Hodges was obviously the superior who Killian had written in late June, and Staudt was the one who Bush (or Poppy) had contacted sometime between that letter in late June and August.

(5) Since the #5 memo was written to Hodges (and SIGNED) by Killian, it HAD to have come from Hodges' files.

It gets better. The "Bath' in memo 1 refers to James Bath, Bunnypants' crackhead buddy, who also refused an ANG physical. He went on become a member of the BFEE and a pal of the Bin Ladens.

Bush: flip-flopper-in-chief
A handy list from the AP.

Texas Cokeheads for Truth speak out
Group challenges Smirky McAWOL on guard service

We speak from personal experience - our group includes men who partied with George W while he was supposed to be fulfilling his TexANG duties, keeping the US safe from invading VC. Though we come from different backgrounds and hold varying political opinions, we agree on one thing: George W Bush, though he lacks the potential to lead, can throw one hell of a bender."

A review of Bush's guard years raises issues about the time he served
US News & World Report digs up independent evidence showing Bush even more AWOL than we thought.

[L]ast week the controversy reared up once again, as several news outlets disclosed new information casting doubt on White House claims that [Bunnypants fulfilled his duties].

Some experts say they remain mystified as to how [George “Fortunate Son"] Bush obtained an honorable discharge. Lawrence Korb, a former top Defense Department official in the Reagan administration, says the military records clearly show that Bush "had not fulfilled his obligation" and "should have been called to active duty."

CBS memos authentic
Authenticity backed on Bush documents

Specialists interviewed by the Boston Globe and other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when Bush was an AWOL, coke-snorting deserter in time of war.

F*ck the memos, says Dan Rather
Red herring, says Dan, especially since most of the docs were supplied by the White House. Here's the REAL STORY:

Did Ben Barnes use his influence to get Bush into the Guard?
Did Bush refuse a direct order from his commanding officer?
Was he suspended for failing to perform?
Did he take his physical as ordered, and if not, why not?
And did Bush complete his commitment to the Guard?

The repuke stooges have not answered ANY of those questions. Instead, they keep parrotting the WH line that Snorty McCokespoon received an honorable discharge.

Oh please! As if the privileged son of a rich, powerful, connected politico wouldn't get one! Eat me.

Wiping the floor with the g-puke smegheads
Terry McAuliffe accused Drinky McDumbass of lying about his military record.

"It has become crystal clear that the president has lied to the American public regarding his military record," McAuliffe told a press conference.

"This is not about a war that was fought 35 years ago," said the Democratic leader.

"The issue that we are talking about today goes to George Bush's credibility. George Bush has lied to the American public. If he lies about these issues back then, he is going to lie about the issues that people deal with every single day at home."

He added: "It is not about what happened 30 years ago, it is about character, about integrity. It is irresponsable for the president of the United States to come out and say things that are not true."

Meanwhile, Dan Rather was also kicking some ass. Not only did he reiterate that the 60 Minutes story was true, he added

"If any definitive evidence to the contrary is found, we will report it. So far none has come forward."

Dude!

DemoUnderground has a transcript of the interview shown earlier on CNN. Awesome.

On edit: video of Dan Rather on CBS News this evening. Eat it, repukes.

On another edit: "Drudge scammed us again!" - a quote from Mouthbreather Central. LOL. Idiots.

PSM
Bush vs Jesus

Cheney flip-flops on Kerry terror statement
link.

F-ing Dems
They're letting the rethugs and the media whores run all over them again.

I can't believe I'm wasting my time with this nonsense, but here it is:

"As is standard practice at CBS News, the documents in the 60 Minutes report were thoroughly examined and their authenticity vouched for by independent experts," CBS News said in a statement today. "As importantly, 60 Minutes also interviewed close associates of Colonel Jerry Killian. They confirm that the documents reflect his opinions and actions at the time."

The White House distributed the four memos from 1972 and 1973 after obtaining them from CBS News. The White House did not question their accuracy.

Robert Strong was a friend and colleague of Killian who ran the Texas Air National Guard administrative office in the Vietnam era. Strong, now a college professor, also believes the documents are genuine.

"They are compatible with the way business was done at the time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being," says Strong. "I don't see anything in the documents that is discordant with what were the times, what was the situation and what were the people involved."

From DemoUnderground: CNN just aired a short interview with Dan Rather, who asserted that the story is true, the documents are authentic, and they wouldn't have gone to air if they were not.

When asked if there would be an apology or a retraction, Dan scoffed, "What? No retraction. No discussion of a retraction. The story is true."

He also said the press should be asking Tipsy "Lines" McStagger about the questions raised by 60 Minutes, not about the documents themselves.

Go Dan!

It's the dishonesty, stupid

The real issue in the National Guard story isn't what George W. Bush did three decades ago. It's the recent pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't, the White House's repeated claims that it had released all of the relevant documents when it hadn't.

It's the same pattern of dishonesty, this time involving personal matters that the public can easily understand, that some of us have long seen on policy issues, from global warming to the war in Iraq. On budget matters, which is where I came in, serious analysts now take administration dishonesty for granted. ....(snip)....

So what's the real plan? Some not usually shrill people think that Mr. Bush will simply refuse to face reality until it comes crashing in: Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, says there's a 75 percent chance of a financial crisis in the next five years.

Nobody knows what Mr. Bush would really do about taxes and spending in a second term. What we do know is that on this, as on many matters, he won't tell the truth.

- Paul Krugman.

Maybe he meant it in a good way
Did 'a deeply frustrated' Colin Powell really call Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz "fucking crazies"? Brit journalist James Naughtie says yes.

Cheney: economic stats miss EBay sales
In what's got to be the one of the most boneheaded statements to come out of Chicanery's yap, Vice President dick says the economic indicators 'miss the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.

'"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney told an audience in Ohio. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."

Yeah, I can live for god knows how long off that garden gnome and bag of ants sale I made last week.

Then there are all those people collecting aluminum cans - why aren't they being counted? Or the Will Work for Food-sign guys? Drug dealers? The metal-detector guys in the park? People who find change in pay phones! Or under couch cushions!

Jebus.

So take heart, all you unemployed economic girlie-men! Who needs that six-figure-a-year job when you can just sell your old tires on EBay!


"Why do you hate America??"

On edit: just saw this over at Eschaton:

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney’s comments show how “out of touch” he and Bush are with the economy.

“If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking,” Edwards said in a statement.

Heh.

If the documents are proven to be fakes, does this mean Bush didn't lose his flight status because he was a cokehead?



Repuke slime machine oozes again
Scared shitless over the new Kitty Kelley book, the rethugs are strong-arming the supine whore media into submission.

A Bush/Cheney campaign official confirmed yesterday that they called NBC and "expressed our concern." The republican party even sent operatives conservative radio shows e-mail messages listing talking points to try to undermine her credibility, headlined "New Kelley Book, Same Old Kelley Slime."

How ironic and pathetic.

"Kitty has never had to retract anything published in any of her books nor has she ever lost a lawsuit," Stephen Rubin, the publisher of Doubleday, said. "The GOP can KMA."

Peter Gethers, Kelley's Doubleday editor, said the publisher's chief counsel and Kelley's own lawyer went over the book "with a fine-toothed comb."

"It was as extensive a legal read as a publisher could give. Some things didn't make it, and we're 100 percent confident of the things that made it in," Gethers said. "Can Ed Gillespie be even more of a screaming douchebag?"

A Rumor...
From our buds at Blah3.com:

I talked to someone today who spoke to a friend of his who works at a certain major metropolitan news daily, which shall go unnamed for now.

My friend tells me that the current story that everyone is chasing comes down to the issue of Bush's refusal to take his physical - and the fact that had he done so, he would have undoubtedly flunked his urinalysis.

Nothing that we don't already know - but I figured I'd let you in on the story that the media is trying to crack open. If it happens, Bush will lose by a landslide.

This looming story may also have something to do with the White House releasing the TANG memos last night, as well as Ed Gillespie's hysterical email to GOP Team Leaders last night (see AmericaBlog to check out Gillespie's freakout), which tells Team Leaders to 'brace themselves' for an onslaught of charges from alcoholism to cocaine abuse.

There is more here than meets the eye, and the White House is trying desperately to get out in front of the story.

Wow... it is so cool to see that some in the media are ACTUALLY STARTING TO DO THEIR DAMN JOBS. Huh.

Deer in the headlights
... without the 'running over' part.

Bush refused to answer questions from reporters. He simply stared at a reporter who asked if he agreed with Dick Cheney's assertion that if John Kerry is elected, "the danger is that we'll get hit again" by terrorists.

- saw it on The Hamster.

Schadenfreude
Or: fuck you, assholes!

Cool. The Kitty Kelley tell-all, the Bush AWOL scandal, and Cheney-the-terrorist. Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove must be close to hysterics today.

A disgraceful campaign speech

There is a danger that we'll be hit again no matter who is elected president this November, as pResident Bush himself has said on many occasions. The danger might be a bit less if the current administration had chosen to spend less on tax cuts for the wealthy and more on protecting our ports, securing nuclear materials in Russia and establishing an enforceable immigration policy that would keep better track of people who enter the country from abroad.

- from a NY Times editorial.

Cheney spits toads

Mr. Cheney implies that John Kerry couldn't protect us from an attack like 9/11, blithely ignoring the fact that he and pResident Bush didn't protect us from the real 9/11. Think of what brass-knuckled Republicans could have made of a 9/11 tape of an uncertain Democratic president giving a shaky statement that looked like a hostage tape and flying randomly from air base to air base, as the veep ordered that planes be shot down. The Bush crowd played down terrorism because Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger had told their successors that Osama was a priority, and the Bushies scorned all things Clinton. The president shrugged off intelligence briefings with such headlines as "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States'' because there was brush to be cleared and unaffordable tax-cutting to be done.

- Maureen Dowd.

Somewhere, Joe McCarthy smiled

Iraq is a mess. And Cheney is one of the chief architects of that mess - pride of place after Bush himself. But rather than answer for what they have done, they both prefer to resort to odious scare tactics, an updated version of the old soft-on-communism charge. Even before McCarthy, this was standard stuff in politics. As Cheney knows, when you don't have any answers, it's best not to have any shame, either.

- Richard Cohen.

Inquiring minds want to know
Is g-puke Rep. David Dreier (R-Closet) gay?

Not that there's anything wrong with that, except for the fact that he voted for the Marriage Protection Act and the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned the federal government from recognizing gay partnerships, and for a measure that banned gays from adopting in Washington, D.C.

Activist Michael Rogers, whose site blogACTIVE outed and sparked the resignation of congressman Ed Schrock (R-VA) late last month and Hustler Magazine both say yes.

Bush's moral cowardice

A moral coward is someone who lacks the courage to tell the truth, to accept responsibility, to demand accountability, to do what’s right when it’s not the easy thing to do, to clean up his or her own messes. Perhaps we could say that moral bravery is having both the courage of your convictions as well as the courage of your misdeeds.

Bush refused to demand accountability from his own team because of how it would have reflected on him. He has preferred to continue on with demonstrably failed policies because to do otherwise would be to admit he’d made a mistake and open himself up to all the political fallout that would entail.

- Josh Marshall.

Kitty smells a rat at CNN

Kitty Kelley is suggesting that CNN's [hormonal cadaver] Larry King won't let her on his show to promote her upcoming book, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," because he's a toady of the Bush family.

"I realize how important the Bushes are to Larry," Kelley said. "He does not want to lose their friendship or offend them in any way. And having me on his show would probably anger the family, because they made their feelings clear from the beginning ... when the former President Bush called my publisher and said he did not want this book written and would not cooperate in any way. So I certainly understand Larry's refusal to book me."

King couldn't be reached for comment.

White House pressures media to ignore Kelley's book
A representative of the White House recently called the president of NBC News, to discourage the network from broadcasting interviews with Ms. Kelley about the book on its Today program and on Hardball With Chris Matthews, a network executive said.

Jebus.

Oooooh! Sounds like the campaign's in trouble!
/channeling Fuc Tucker Carlson.

Ferret-faced turd Ed Gillespie today announced that professional flake and Reagan nutlicker Peggy Noonan will join the RNC staff as 'Senior Advisor to the Chairman' beginning this week.

DNC head: Bush can kiss my ass
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said the release of more Bush military records, on the heels of repeated attacks on Kerry's military service, 'made the issue of the president's service, or lack thereof, completely fair game.'

'It goes to the credibility of George Bush, it goes to the credibility of our commander in chief, who has told misstatements to the American public about his own military record,' McAuliffe said.

White House, caught in cover-up, comes clean

The White House released memos Wednesday night saying that George W. Bush was suspended from flying fighter jets for failing to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard.

What else is the White House hiding?

- John at AmericaBlog, who also says the Bush campaign is "shitting bricks" over the AWOL story. Yes, the professional smear artists of the GOP have their panties in a wad because the Dems are finally starting to fight back. Pooh-pooh. Bite me, dickheads.

"How dare the Democrats field a candidate - and in an election year!" - Jon Stewart, channeling Zell Miller (paraphrasing).

Records say Bush balked at order
Prove Bunnypants to be a chickenshit, lying, cowardly, privileged little punk who didn't give a rat's ass about anybody but himself.

"George Bush ran and hid while tens of thousands of American service members were being sent to their deaths in Vietnam." - AmericaBlog.

"Well, I don't think that I had any right to have the power that I had to be able to choose who was gonna go to Vietnam and who was not gonna go to Vietnam. That's a power. In some instances when I looked at those names, of - maybe of - of determining life or death. And that's not a power that I wanna have." - Ben Barnes, from last night's 60 Minutes interview ( transcript).

"Bush 'didn't have the time' to serve. Shame he seems to now." - headline at fark.



Memos show Bush was suspended from flying
W’s squadron commander pressured to 'sugar coat' evaluations.
Bush refused to comply with direct order.

"Phone call from Bush," Col. Killian recorded in a "memo to file" dated May 19, 1972. "Discussed options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November."

Larry Korb, an assistant Secretary of Defense under Saint Ronnie of Reagan has reviewed Chimpy the Flightsuited Fuckwit's record and believes he did not fulfill his contract.

"Essentially, Bush gamed the system to avoid serving his country the way that most of his contemporaries had to," Korb said.

On August 1, 1972, Col. Killian grounded Bush for failure to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards and for failure to take his annual physical as ordered.

Later, Killian wrote another "memo to file." The memo, titled 'CYA' explains that he was being pressured by higher-ups to give the privileged, lazy coward a favorable yearly evaluation; to, in effect, sugarcoat his review. He refused, saying, "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job."

Frenchmen around the world agree
A majority of people in 30 of 35 countries want John Kerry in the White House, according to a survey released showing Emperor Snippy rebuffed by all of America's traditional allies.

On average, Kerry was favored by more than a two-to-one margin - 46 percent to 20 percent, the survey showed.

"Only one in five want to see Bush reelected," said Steven Kull, some international policy wonk. "But they may have been drunk." - from Yahoo News, more or less.

West Virginia GOP elector Robb's vote may not go to Bush
Richie Robb said today he may vote against the fascist punk in the Electoral College, even if the vacuous cokehead carries West Virginia's popular vote. Robb said he is considering protesting what he believes are misguided policies of the insane, power-hungry sap-heads currently in office.

Question
...of possibly hypocrisy
This came up on a list I'm on - has anyone heard anything about Jenna Bush's alleged abortion?

This was the first I've heard about it. If it happened.

Ad campaign to question deserter's time in guard
A new group will announce a television ad campaign charging that pResidunce Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard while on temporary assignment in Alabama.

The ad, funded by Texans for Truth, features Robert Mintz, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Alabama Air National Guard, who said he never saw the lying little #uckwit while serving in the same unit in 1972.

Evidently they were just on with Wolf Blister just now, but since his anal-lubing for Bunnypants in the previous segment got me so turned off, I turned off CNN before they came on.


Wolf Blitzer

"Unprecedented disloyalty"
Nobel peace prize winner rips Zell a new one.

From a letter from President Jimmy Carter to crazed, hatefilled twirp Zell Miller:

Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend.

But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause.

These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited.

You raving douchenozzle.
Respectfully yours,
Jimmy

PS: Stay away from me, you fucking psycho

Well, most of that was true.

Dick Cheney officially insane
VP makes terrorist threat by saying terrorists will hit the US if Kerry wins.

The scaremonger-in-chief actually warned Americans about voting for John Kerry, saying that if 'the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day' it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.

John Edwards replied, saying, "Dick Cheney's scare tactics crossed the line today, showing once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs. Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that."

Edwards added that he and Kerry "will keep American safe, and we will not divide the American people to do it."

"I have heard a lot of outrageous statements at various times in my president's elections, but I think this kind of scare tactic by the vice president of the United States is irresponsible," - former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Flashback: "It is the leaders who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Goering, Nazi Propoganda Minister.

Update: it didn't take long for Dick to flip-flop on his statement. Cheney's spokeswoman told Olbermann last night that Dick was 'referring to a choice in policies, not to Kerry personally.'

"What the vice president was saying was whoever is elected will face the possibility of a terrible attack."

Asked whether Cheney stood by his statement, Womack replied, "The vice president stands by my explanation of the statement."

Nice spin move, douchehole. Of course whore Wholf Blitzer is is parrotting the WH line, which is kind of hard to do while you're on your back with your legs in the air, but hey, he's perfected it.

Repost: "The Bush administration has bungled the war on terrorism, doing little to provide security at home while breeding legions of new enemies abroad." - the government's former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke.

Repost II: Senator Bob Graham accuses Bush of 9/11 Saudi cover-up.

This one's for Wolf:

GOP activists tell Bush to #uck off
They still like Dick, though.
/sorry

The Log Cabin Republicans voted 22-2 Tuesday night against endorsing Bush, because he favors a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, said a spokesman for the group.

"Four years of