Tag: Republicans

That’s My President.

“He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that.” Harvard Business School professor Yoshi Tsurumi remembers young Dubya, and, yes, even back then he was a profile in character and courage. “[H]e was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, ‘My dad has good friends.'”

A Dubya-sized bender.

“A staple of Bush’s stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator’s campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.” As Dubya prattles on about the purported profligacy of the “Senator from Massachusetts,” the Post figures out the cost of four more years of Dubyanomics to be in excess of $3 trillion. I don’t know about you, but I for one don’t have that kind of money.

Letter Never Sent?

The dispute over the CBS memos rages on, with both sides digging in. I must say, the additional information offered by the Post does seem to suggest that the controversial Killian memos may in fact be bogus (although USA Today did independently obtain them “from a person with knowledge of Texas Air National Guard operations,” for what that’s worth.) Which, if so, leads one to wonder who out there could have been so base and stupid as to falsify these documents, when there’s already so much legitimate evidence of Dubya’s desertion. That’s the GOP’s racket, not ours. Still, I’m not yet 100% convinced.

Got Myself an Uzi and my Brother a 9.

The assault weapons ban expires tonight at midnight and, while it may not have been very effective anyway, somehow I get the sense that our homeland would be more secure with it in place. Shame on Dubya, and that goes double for the GOP Congress.

…and Splines.

“Now, would the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron have extravagantly purchased typewriters that contained the th superscript key? Would the military want or require typewriters with the ‘th’, ‘nd’, and ‘rd’ characters? Hmm. Ponder, Ponder. What would the 111th need with a th character… I’ll leave that to the enterprising among you to deduce.” So, as expected, the Bushies are pushing back hard on the 60 Minutes memos, and seem to have successfully managed shifting this news cycle from Dubya’s whereabouts to questions of possible forgery. Well, first off, The Daily Kos (quoted above) has written up a pretty good blow-by-blow explaining how all this new wrangling over font-technology adds up to less than its seems.

Regarding the documents’ authenticity, I think it’s entirely possible that somebody tried to “frame a guilty man” here, particularly given the depths to which we’ve already seen the Swift Boaters stoop. But, for now, I’m still thinking the docs are legitimate, as (a) CBS is strongly standing by them, and have a corroborative witness in Maj. Gen Bobby Hodges, Col. Killian’s (Republican) commanding officer, (b) unlike the Swift Boat allegations, they conform to what we already knew and to other information in the public record, and (c) Dubya’s White House, who knows the full story, certainly didn’t act like these could be fake documents when the story broke. At any rate, remove these Killian memos from the picture and the original question still stands: Where was Dubya, and why did he skip out on a required medical exam? Update: Experts in today’s Boston Globe back up the authenticity of the documents, including one examiner, Philip Bouffard, who had earlier suggested doubts to the NY Times.

To Steal Votes for Dubya, press 1.

“The system’s key vulnerability is that county election workers or others with access to the machines could type in a two-digit code and create a second set of results that would then be forwarded to the state as the county’s official tally, said Bev Harris, one of the activists who filed the case.” The State of California joins a lawsuit against Diebold Election Systems, the voting machine maker whose chief executive declared in 2003 that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” Now, doesn’t that seem like a strange Easter Egg to include in your voting machine? Between this and the Omega-DoD fiasco, the GOP endgame is starting to sound shady.

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.

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.“