Tag: Election 2004

Finding a Groove.

“‘It is outrageous and shameful to make the war on terror an instrument of their politics,’ Kerry said. ‘I defended this country when I was a young man, and they chose not to. And I will defend this country as president of the United States.'” John Kerry pushes back hard at Cheney for his indefensible remarks on Tuesday. Whatsmore, Kerry has keyed in on a way to concisely tie together two of Dubya’s most grievous sins. To wit: “George W. Bush’s wrong choices have led America in the wrong direction in Iraq and left America without the resources we need here at home.” Simple, eloquent, and effective.

Get your Gun On.

It seems that, for the Republicans, nothing says Homeland Security quite like easy access to assault weapons. “I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire,” notes GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill “Catkiller” Frist of the decade-old assault weapons ban set to end on Monday, despite the fact that 68% of Americans (and 74% of voters, in a separate poll) want to see it renewed. On the House side, perennial GOP freakshow Tom DeLay “dismissed the ban as ‘a feel-good piece of legislation’ and said flatly that it would expire Monday, even if Mr. Bush made an effort to renew it. ‘If the president asked me, it would still be no,’ Mr. DeLay said.” Don’t worry. I doubt he’ll ask ya, although the electorate just might come November.

You’re So Grounded.


Based on new information unveiled during last night’s 60 Minutes II, the big papers delve further into Dubya’s AWOL shenanigans. Apparently, not only was Dubya suspended from flying due to his missed physical (which we already knew), but he blatantly ignored a direct order from his commanding officer (Col. Jerry Killian, now deceased) to report for a medical examination. (Killian complained in a private letter, heretofore unreleased, that Dubya was “talking to someone upstairs” to get out of it.) Nor, as the Boston Globe noted yesterday, was Dubya — pictured at right wearing a ribbon he apparently never earned — ever called to active duty or otherwise punished for this insubordination, or for any of his later lapses (such as not showing up for reserve duty in either Alabama or Massachusetts, as ordered.) “‘It appears that no one wanted to hold him accountable,’ said retired Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., who retired in 2002 as the Pentagon’s director of the Air National Guard.” Yeah, what else is new?

Meanwhile, on the drug front, Sharon Bush is now trying to back away from her comments to Kitty Kelley on Dubya’s alleged cocaine binging at Camp David. But, Doubleday is standing by the charge – in fact, they’ve got written notes and two witnesses (Kelley and her publisher) to verify Bush’s original statement. Good for them…I would think Doubleday has planned very carefully for exactly this sort of thing prior to going public with any allegations from The Family.

Now, with the further details about Dubya’s disappearance and the extent of his alleged coke habit each gaining notoriety in separate news channels, how much longer will it take before the major media outlets are forced to comment on the obvious drug test angle connecting the two threads? One has to wonder if the GOP strategy gurus are starting to rethink their not-so-Swift-Boat decision to put Vietnam in play.

1,000 Points of Light.

Or, more to the point, 1002 points of light and counting have now been extinguished in the service of Dubya’s unnecessary and mismanaged neocon sideshow in Iraq, and that’s just the American count. (The Faces of the Fallen) As this site notes in an update of John Kerry’s famous question, how do you ask a man or woman to be the last person to die for a lie? Update: And now it appears we’ve already reached another dubious milestone. “With the latest spike in violence in Baghdad, more U.S. troops have died since the turnover of power to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June than were killed during the U.S.-led invasion of the country in the spring of 2003.“

Cheney goes Nuclear.

“[I]f we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States“…Um, say WHAT?!? You heard it straight from the mouth of the Vice-President, folks: vote for John Kerry and the terrorists will kill you. Cheney’s remarks are so low and un-American that I’m almost at a loss for comment. (Plus, since we’ve broached the subject, it’s also flat-out wrong…it’s Dubya’s missteps and budget cuts on Homeland Security, to say nothing of his idiotic and isolating diplomacy, that are more likely to add up to fatal embarrassment for our nation.) And this coming from a sitting veep…I mean, you must be joking. We’re through the looking-glass now, people.

George W. Bush, Coward.

It’s official…Dubya is trying to AWOL (again) his way out of one of the debates. What a hero. If he can’t face down John Kerry, how will he ever face down the (gasp) terrorists?

Killing the Kitty?

(No Bill Frist jokes, please.) With the GOP in full attack mode, the press weighs how to handle Kitty Kelley’s book. Newsweek, for one, has already passed on publishing excerpts from The Family. Yes, the same Newsweek who just published this ridiculous Evan Thomas puff piece about Dubya’s personal “transformation.” C’mon, now.

Payback’s a…Well, you know.

Play with matches, Mr. President, and you’re gonna get burned. With the Kitty Kelley cocaine allegations making the unofficial rounds (I’ve heard the book promotion begins in earnest on 9/14) and the Ben Barnes 60 Minutes interview coming up in short order, journalists start taking a harder look at Dubya’s missing years. Adding fuel to the fire, a group called Texans for Truth has created this ad that will apparently begin airing on Friday.

Mightier than the Sword?

Along the lines of the Washington Monthly forum posted last Friday, The Guardian asks a number of American writers — among them Paul Auster, Norman Mailer,and Richard Ford — for their thoughts on a second Bush term, and it ain’t pretty. (As you may have seen elsewhere, Mailer has birddogged a choice Goering quote which I won’t re-post here for fear of invoking Godwin’s Law.)