Ten Top Reasons Why Bin Laden Tape Is A Fake

10 The BushMen needed a diversion 9 It doesn’t matter what the tape says, real news is worse 8 OBL is six-foot-eight-inches tall, the podium was built for GWB 7 Podium? Film production facility? The man is on the lam! Please! 6 If that’s OBL’s nose he’s had work done in his hidey-hole 5 OBL looked too healthy for a sick man with diabetes on dialysis 4 If those are OBL’s eyebrows he’s had work done in his hidey-hole 3 Bush couldn’t find OBL so he gave us a Halloween costume idea 2 This is Karl Rove’s after-the-election film school demo tape 1 OBL is dead...what else could Bush do? You have to give the Bush team credit, though. They’ve got the MSM by the nose and are jerking them around to a fare-thee-well. Has any one of them said, “Get outta town, we don’t believe this!”? No. It’s all: Will this hurt Bush? Help Kerry? What’s this do to the polls? I do wish I had fly-on-the-wall privileges at BushMen brainstorming sessions, though. Particularly in these last-days desperate times. Let’s produce a terror attack! Nah! They might think we’re not protecting them. Let’s get Ashcroft to put out another alert. Nah! That’s not working so good anymore. Let’s keep Dems from voting...yeah...that’s good. Let’s make a bin Laden tape. Really? Hey! Great idea! In the meantime, while the hokey bin Laden hoax has the attention of the gullible press, nine American marines were killed in Iraq yesterday...the worst day in six months for our guys. And there you have it. The real news. Need anything else be said?

Do Not Compare This Election With 2000

Anyone who thinks George W. Bush went into his presidency with any real support from either the Republicans or Democrats has misremembered the facts. We’re caught up in the awful prospect that John Kerry could either get the popular vote and lose the electoral vote, or get the electoral vote and lose the popular vote. And everyone is trying to compare the events of the 2000 election with the variable possibilities for 2004. There is no comparison. We must never forget that George W. Bush became a president on September 11, 2001, not on January 20, 2001. Without the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, George W. Bush couldn’t have managed to be even a fair-to-middlin’ Commander-in-Chief Bush did not come into his presidency as a powerful statesman ready to lead the world. He came into his presidency as a man who was put there by fraud and a biased Supreme Court. After he was declared the winner, no one wanted to follow the little wannabe into the bathroom, let alone into the rarified atmosphere of global politics. And then 9/11 occurred. The people who put the undistinguished Governor of Texas in the White House were the members of a club called The Project for the New American Century. Their statement of principles was written in 1997 by The Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and signed by 25 other movers and shakers in the Republican party. It stated that their aim was to “advance American interests in the new century”. In 2000 the group put out a report that stated that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor." They got their Pearl Harbor. And on September 12th they set about empowering the revolution they had plotted for four years. Among the 25 people who signed the PNAC Statement of Principles were Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Forbes Mag publisher Steve Forbes, former VP Dan Quayle, Middle East Policy head in the National Security Council Elliott Abrams, Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Louis (Scooter) Libby, Department of State Undersecretary Paula J. Dobriansky, Empower America co-founder and famous moralist/gambler William J. Bennett, Vice Chair of Empower America Vin Weber and Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter W. Rodman. So let’s not hear any more twaddle comparing this election with the one in 2000. There is no comparison. The fraud in Florida set up the Supreme Court’s scandalous vote to seat the unelected George W. Bush as President of the United States, which set up the scandalous unnecessary war in Iraq hatched by the PNAC. The PNAC's preposterous scheme for the United States to take over the world has failed. And whether the BushMen win or lose this election, they have lost the thing dearest to their hearts--global supremacy. There is no big prize to be won in this election. If Bush wins again because of Republican dirty tricks at the polls or even via another moral lapse in the Supreme Court, he wins nothing but fury at home and contempt abroad. What the PNAC may be planning for an encore is anyone’s guess. But their "revolutionary change" needs to be retooled. Tomorrow the World didn’t work in 1939 either.

October Surprise--Game, Set, Match

Not exactly what Bush supporters had hoped for, but film shown on CNN’s News Night with Aaron Brown last night revealed an October surprise of mammoth proportions. News Night showed footage filmed by a news crew from ABC affiliate 5 Eyewitness News in Minneapolis. The crew had been embedded with the 101st Airborne Division near the Al QaQaa site in Iraq. Reporter Dean Staley went to the site on April 18th, 2003 and filmed the bunkers. The footage shows hundreds of tons of the explosives which have gone missing. In Brown’s interview with David Kay (Iraq weapons inspector for the Bush Administration) last night, Kay said he could see the IAEA seals on the explosives in the film and that there were no other seals like them in Iraq. He confirmed that these were definitely the types of explosives (HMX and RDX) that are missing. When Brown asked if this was “game, set, match” on this controversy, Kay said, “Yes, game set and match.” And when Brown asked if these explosives would have been classified as WMD, Kay said, “Absolutely not.” It’s not enough that the BushMen have been caught in more lies and deceit over the missing explosives. But Prez Bush’s great and good friend Russia’s President Vladimir Putin must be a little out of sorts over John A. Shaw’s (Bush’s deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security) claim that he believes Russian troops, using Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” stole the missing explosives from the Al QaQaa site. Shaw also said that the explosives had to have disappeared before US troops arrived in Iraq. Want to take any of that back, Mr. Shaw? And how about Rudolf Giuliani’s off-the-wall assertion that President Bush shouldn’t be blamed for this lapse at the Al QaQaa site, it’s the troops who screwed up. Very nice from a man who agrees with the Prez when Bush says “any unflattering remark about our troops is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field”. Want to restate your comment, Mr. Giuliani? Oh well...never mind. Jon Stewart put it all in perspective on The Daily Show last night. He showed the Prez prating about how any “political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as the Commander-in-Chief” and then showed the Prez jumping to conclusions every time he opens his mouth. The more they spin the more they fly up their own bungholes.

Are They Insane or Just Hopeless Screwups?

Of the two possibilities, I lean toward insane. It looks to me like BushMeister Karl Rove thinks the 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” is a documentary. In the movie a Karl Rove type opts to handle negative publicity about the President by hiring a Hollywood producer to invent a fake war to distract the public. Fake footage is shot and fed to the media. But Karl Rove has one-upped “Wag the Dog”. He not only produced fake heroic scenes for Prez Bush to act in, he conjured up a fake President. And it has worked to a point. The only problem is that Karl Rove’s version of presidential heroics is starting to look like a plotline for the nine-year-olds in “South Park” with Cartman as Karl Rove. Newsflash to the BushMen: “Wag the Dog” was a movie. It can’t really be done. You’re amateurs. Just yesterday a blogger discovered (and published) a photo of Bush supporters where the pic of the same soldier had been inserted many times. Frank Rich’s New York Times October 31 column (available online today) once again tells it like it is about the Bush administration and its virtual reality news movies. But I would quarrel with Rich about his final conclusion that Kerry would be boring for the next four years and that boring would be a bad thing. Oh please God, let us be bored. Let us have four years of uneventful maid service. Let us have a president who methodically goes about cleaning up the mess the Republicans have left. We long for a president who does what a president is supposed to do without drama or fanfare. Let us have a president who tells the truth and doesn’t try to win us over with trumped-up photo-ops and fake news footage. And if that means we’ll be bored...we don’t mind. We are so tired of a barely-adequate actor playing President. We are so tired of fake news produced by Karl Rove and his Wacky Dog filmmakers. Give us John Kerry and for four years we’ll happily deal with the lack of fear and upheaval in our daily lives.

Yikes! What If George W Isn’t Dumber Than Grass?

Neocons have been saying all along that George W. Bush is no lightweight in the brains department. Yes, they say, he may be lazy intellectually. And yes, he may not be a bookworm. In fact, they say, he doesn’t like to read at all, but he’s not an airhead. Well okay. That means he’s been actively courting the image that he’s stupid. Why would he do that? This morning Slate ran an article by Steven Waldman of Beliefnet. He says, “The president repeatedly says he makes decisions based on "instinct" and "gut" and by looking into the hearts of world leaders. He lets it be known that he doesn't read the newspapers. He seems to discourage dissenting viewpoints. He jokes about his poor command of the English language and his lousy grades in school. He is America's most famous evangelical Christian–and he's proudly anti-intellectual.” But, Waldman says, the born-again image that Bush has crafted ”doesn't accurately describe Bush's decision-making process. By most accounts, the president's basic intellectual make-up was formed long before his faith conversion.” Okay. Bush wants us to believe he’s a simple man who relies on God to lead him to the right decisions, but that’s just political Bushwa. And we know Bush Jr. is no Texan. In Connecticut, he’s a Texan. But in Texas he ain’t no Texan. Alrighty then. The Prez wants to seem dumb even though he’s bright. He doesn’t actually let God make his decisions but likes to look as though he does. He’s all hat and no cattle in Crawford, Texas. And we know he refused to take his annual physical this year. What are we left with? Beats me. He wants the non-thinking, born-again, faux-Western, who-cares-if-Bush-has-health-problems vote. You guys vote for him. I’m voting for Kerry.

Bush Creed: Never wrong, Never to Blame

The latest foul-up in Iraq--380 tons of RDX and HMX explosives have gone missing--makes it difficult for the BushMen to maintain their never-wrong-never-to-blame stance. But they’re giving it a go anyway. Unfortunately, the spokesmen for the Bush administration can’t get their stories straight on who’s to blame. Pentagon apologist Larry Di Rita says the US government has known about the theft for 18 months and the explosives had already been stolen from the Qaqaa site when our troops got there. But White House spokesman Scott McClellan says the Pentagon only just learned about the theft on October 15th. He even said that the Iraq interim government reported the munitions were stolen some time after April 9, 2003. Um...we were still involved in military action then, weren’t we? The New York Times says National Security Adviser Condi Rice was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. Which raises the question, what did she do with the info? She must have put it in her “Keep it Quiet” file while she went on the stump for her boss. In articles in Salon.com, Josh Marshall says there’s a relatively small window of time when the stuff could have been carted away. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the material was at the Qaqaa site on March 8th. The first US troops arrived at the site on April 4th. It’s true that a month would be plenty long enough to effect a normal robbery. Except we’re talking about 380 tons of explosives which would take forty big trucks each loaded to the max with ten tons of highly dangerous material. And by the way, the administration is describing the explosives as “stuff you can buy anywhere” and it doesn’t see RDX and HMX as “a proliferation risk”. The BBC says HMX and RDX are key components in plastic explosives which have been widely used in car bombings in Iraq. What a dandy gift to terrorists, courtesy of the President of the United States who claims to be making the world safer. How long can the BushMen keep maintaining they are never wrong and never to blame? Every day a new revelation proves them always wrong and always to blame. Even Republicans must be tired of being treated like gullible fools.

Wild Possibilities in the Electoral College

Did you know there is no federal law that requires electors to vote according to state instructions? That being the case, 29 states plus the District of Columbia have made a law called the “Faithless Elector” law. The “Faithless Elector” law binds the electors of that state to vote according to the popular vote winner in the state. Or, said another way...in states with Faithless Elector laws, the electors can’t split their votes. However, 20 states have no Faithless Elector law and electors in those states can vote however they see fit. Now granted, even in Maine and Nebraska where state law gives the electors the option of splitting their votes, they never have. So of course it follows that in states that haven’t put that legality into their laws, the electors aren’t likely to go out on a limb and split their votes. But they could. That’s the point. Most people have the idea that no states but Maine and Nebraska can split their electoral votes and it’s not true. As a matter of fact, constitutional scholars have said that the electors of all states are free agents and the “Faithless Elector” laws would not prevail over a constitutional challenge. This election being the no-holds-barred free-for-all that it is, we could see the normally staid Electoral College thrown into a giddy vote-splitting ecstasy. Let’s put this vote splitting in context. In the election in 2000, Colorado had 8 electoral votes (this time around they have 9). The final tally in 2000 was Bush-271, Gore-266, Washington DC Abstention-1. Colorado gave all eight votes to Bush. But if they had split their votes along state popular vote lines, Bush would have gotten 5 and Gore would have gotten 3. The final tally would have been Gore 269 and Bush 268. The elector in totally Democrat DC who abstained because he was pissed off that DC has no representation in Congress would no doubt have given his vote to Gore and Gore would have been our Prez. Those who hate the idea of vote splitting say that it would almost guarantee that the 270 vote requirement to win would never be met. Fine. Perhaps what we need is a total whup-ass imbroglio in Congress over the Electoral College. Because it needs to be abolished. Go electors! Vote for freedom! Split your vote!

All America Has Amnesia About Iraq

Yesterday George Bush accused John Kerry of having "election amnesia" about Iraq. Everyone in America has amnesia about Iraq. Most of all George W. Bush. The Press has not reminded the American public often enough that the USA had a cozy relationship with Saddam Hussein from 1959 until the Gulf War in 1991. In 1959 the CIA hired Saddam as an assassin to shoot Iraq prime minister General Abd Al-Kaim Qasim. Back then he was a piss-poor shot...he missed. With practice his aim got much better. The agency had full knowledge that Saddam was an out-and-out gangster but they used him as a hired assassin for two decades. He was their dirty little secret in Baghdad. George H.W. Bush was appointed head of the CIA in 1976. More than 5 billion dollars in loans were guaranteed to Saddam during the Reagan-Bush Sr. presidencies. The United States played both sides against the middle during the Iran/Iraq war which lasted from 1980 to 1988. They funneled money to both sides. Although both President Reagan and President Bush Sr. publicly denounced Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, they continued to support him with money and arms right up to the Gulf War. For a full recounting of this double-dealing and calumny see Craig Unger’s “House of Bush House of Saud”. Perhaps the reason George W. Bush has not invited his father’s advice on Iraq is that the less said about Senior's sweetheart deals in Iraq, the better for Junior. Bush Sr. armed Saddam Hussein in order to protect the Iraq oil fields. When Saddam attacked Kuwait and proved he was the ruthless thug the CIA always knew him to be, President George H.W. Bush had to convince the American public that the man who had been our ally was now a degenerate who committed horrible crimes against humanity. It worked. We forgot that for forty years Saddam Hussein had been our friend and hired gun. George W. Bush continues the GOP policy of ignoring that America was once in bed with Saddam Hussein. Perhaps his own amnesia lets him forget that his father not only armed Saddam Hussein but aided and abetted his rise to power.

Another Fine Mess for Bush: Impeachment

Just before President Bush ordered his attack on Iraq on March 20, 2003, a draft resolution to impeach him was being circulated among anti-war lawmakers. The loudest voices advocating impeachment were those of former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and University of Illinois law professor Francis A. Boyle who had proposed impeaching President George Herbert Walker Bush for his war in Kuwait. If Bush wins this election, what are the odds that an impeachment resolution will be brought before Congress? The odds are good. But what are the odds that Prez Bush would actually be impeached? The GOP numbers in Congress are stacked in his favor. It would seem that if Bush wins this election any campaign to impeach him would easily be defeated. However.... One of the fun-things about a Bush win would be to watch the civil war in the Republican camp. And that’s a sure thing you can take to the bank. In which event, a vote to impeach Bush might have a surprising tilt to the left. Without Secretary of State Colin Powell (he says he’s had it) to make the BushMen look humanoid, and with National Security Advisor Condi Rice acting like a BushBot from Planet W, and Rumsfeld in line to be dumped, and Type-A heart-attack-prone Cheney on shaky health turf and Bush’s own mental and physical health being questioned...well, guys...if Bush wins, the people who put him in will surely get what they deserve. Oh...and then there’s the mess in Iraq, and the soaring deficit, and the Health Care mess, and the Social Security mess, and finding ways to pay for the war while lowering taxes. Not to mention soldiers beginning to tell the truth about the ill-conceived war in Iraq and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle feeling emboldened to rat-out George W. Bush. If Bush wins, the only thing to decide will be: Should President Bush be impeached for war crimes or misdemeanors?

God Said What?

Around 90 AD a group of men decided, Enough already! And the canons were closed on what Christians have come to call the Old Testament. In 473 AD the council in Hippo reaffirmed that the 27 works which had been listed in councils in 367 AD, 382 AD and 393 AD were indeed the last word on what would ever more be the canonical books of The New Testament. The canons were closed. It didn’t mean that men would stop saying God talks to them. It just meant that whatever they claimed came from God’s mouth to their ear would not be added to the canonical works of the Jewish and Christian faiths. Back in the good old days when theocracies ruled the world, the one who had the most political clout could declare that his Ambassador to God had the only bona fide two-way connection. And whatever the inspired prophet reported God said became gospel. It also usually benefitted the Ruler of the World at the time. That’s the way it worked. And that’s the way religious zealots would like for it to work today. The interesting thing about people who say God speaks to them is that nothing has changed since the year aughty-aught. People made claims about God’s partisan politics then as they do now. And God doesn’t seem to get exercised about pronouncements of his political endorsement one way or the other. But having political power plus a personal 800-number to God surely ain’t what it used to be. The words of a King’s favored prophet used to end up inscribed in Greek and Hebrew calligraphy in books revered by millions for millennia. Now we know it’s just Karl Rove talking in Bush’s earpiece again.

Does Anything Trump Defeating George Bush?

While listening to former New York City Mayor Ed Koch on The Daily Show Tuesday night, I suddenly understood something that had been a mystery before. I understood it...doesn’t mean I agree with it. I still wonder how any Democrat can vote for George Bush. And more to the point, how can any intelligent person vote for George Bush? A huge segment of voters, like me, are rabid in their zeal to either dump Bush or keep him in office. But apparently, not everyone views the upcoming election in those black-and-white terms. Ed Koch says he’s switching his allegiances to Bush because he thinks Bush is the most pro-Israel President since Reagan. And the New York Times’s Tom Friedman feels that winning the war in Iraq is more important than all other issues in this election. To Friedman, the big decision is, or should be, which candidate will accomplish this end? All right. I concede that these points of view may be valid. But, to paraphrase Jon Stewart on another topic, when we wake up on November 3rd, The Israel/Palestine morass will still be a morass and George Bush will still be a dick. There may be a desperate situation in Israel but it can’t take precedence over the desperate situation here at home. Bush has failed miserably to create decent jobs with wages a family can live on, he has failed to make Americans feel safer against the threat of terrorism, his lowered taxes do little to help the poor but make the rich richer and he has failed to solve the escalating problems of health care. Kerry gives us hope at home. The war in Iraq is a swamp. We can no more win in Iraq that we could win in VietNam. The real question before us about Iraq is: Which candidate is capable of bringing that disaster to an honorable conclusion without further damaging US credibility abroad? And the answer is Kerry.

Bush Says Kerry Playing “Politics of Fear”

Huh? I know...I know. I’m acting as though the Bush campaign has one foot in reality. But the tactic of the BushMen accusing Kerry of Bush’s own worst failings is getting ridiculous. First, Bush accused Kerry of flip-flopping when the Bush administration has continually reversed its position on key issues. They said they would not agree to a 9/11 Commission. We know how that worked out. They said the 9/11 commission could not see the President’s Daily Briefs. The Commission got the Daily Briefs. They stonewalled an investigation into their claim Iraq had bought uranium oxide in Niger. The investigation was held and they had to admit the claim was false. They said Condoleeza Rice would-not-could-not-and-never-ever would testify to the 911 Commission. She testified. They said members of Iraq’s Baath party were Nazis, thugs and sadists and would not be involved in the reunification of Iraq. The Baath party was used to “democratize” Iraq. They were adamant that Americans could not be allowed to get cheaper drugs from Canada. Last May they announced Americans would be allowed to get drugs from Canada. Now they say Kerry uses scare tactics when he says Bush will ruin Social Security and restore the military draft if he's elected. Correct me if I’m wrong. But isn’t it Bush’s Attorney General John Ashcroft who trots out a new dire terrorist alert every time the BushMen step in a cow pie? Wasn’t it Vice President Cheney who said the United States would be attacked by terrorists if Kerry is elected? And what administration was it that kept repeating the lie that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack and had to be stopped before he used Weapons of Mass Destruction (which he didn’t have) on us? You want policies of fear? Here’s what it boils down to: If the majority of people in the United States trust and believe in a man who lies, cheats, uses fear as a governing tool, wages an unnecessary war killing thousands of good people, favors the rich, penalizes the poor, mortgages the nation and contrives to make our children and grandchildren pay for his folly, then the people of the United States deserve George W. Bush. For the rest of us who have worked so hard to get the man out of office, if the troglodytes in the US prevail, then we deserve to get to watch George W. Bush come apart at the seams in front of our eyes, which he most assuredly will do, given another four years in office. And think about this, as I’m sure George Bush thinks about it during his rare lucid moments. If he is elected he will have to face impeachment proceedings as surely as day follows night.

Cheney: Flu Shot Mess Due to Everything But GOP

Cheney says the shortfall in flu shot vaccine is due to lawsuits over flu vaccine, low profits by drug companies and the fact that people don't want flu shots. Well, my-my! I didn’t realize that all those seniors and pregnant women lining up to get their flu shots didn’t actually want them and were going to turn around and sue the manufacturers after they received them. And it hadn’t occured to me, Mr. Cheney, that low profits on the manufacture of medically necessary drugs would curtail their production. But now that it’s been brought to my attention, let me ask you, what is the Bush administration doing to stop the rampant greed and price-gouging in pharmaceutical companies? Other than promoting legislation that encourages rampant greed and price-gouging in pharmaceutical companies. As has been made clear during the last four years of BushMen rule, Vice President Dick Cheney is talking out his ass again. MSNBC is carrying an AP wire story in which a doctor asks why this flu vaccine shortage is happening again. “It’s not the first year we have had a problem with supply,” Dr. Adam Aponte, medical director for North General Diagnostic and Treatment Center in New York says. “Why is it we are dealing with this problem over and over again? Now we are stuck in the middle of flu season with a shortage of supply and that’s not a good position to be in.”   In January of 2001, the American Medical News carried an article in which the shortfall of flu vaccine for 2001 was discussed. “There were other challenges, too,” the story stated. ”Two of the three domestic vaccine producers experienced manufacturing problems that added to the setback and triggered a domino effect of problems throughout the supply chain.” In August of 2004 the Bush Administration was warned that there were problems at the Liverpool England Chiron plant with the manufacture of flu vaccine. An article in the Washington Post on October 8th reported that the British officials said there had been regular communication with American public health officials at the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since Aug. 26, when Chiron announced it would delay releasing supplies of the vaccine because about 4 million doses had been tainted. A recurring theme of the BushMen is, It’s not our fault. Okay, then...the debacle in Iraq happened on your watch, the soaring national debt happened on your watch, the ridiculous and incomprehensible Medicare Drug Plan happened on your watch, pandering to pharmaceutical companies and HMO’s happened on your watch, the shortfall on flu vaccine after you’d been warned it was going to occur happened on your watch. So why isn’t it your fault? You were so charmed with your virtual reality that you forgot to check in with the real world? You were so engaged in denying the problems you’d made that you didn’t have time to fix the problems you made? All your energies were used up by intimidating the press and tv media and you had nothing left to deal with the global mess you had caused? Is that why nothing is your fault? As Jon Stewart of The Daily Show said to Tucker Carlson on Crossfire, YOU’RE HURTING AMERICA, STOP IT!!!!! BushMen, you’re hurting America. Stop it!

A Benign Plotline Morphs into Dr. Strangelove

We all have seen the movies where know-it-all-wiseacres decide to put a naive stooge in a top job. The stooge is supposed to do what the backroom guys tell him. But the clueless stooge wises up and turns the tables. The backroom guys get their comeuppance and the stooge turns into a whiz at his job. Up until the stooge in the White House started talking about his “crusade” against Iraq, the familiar scenario was proceeding on-cue. The day after 9/11, President Bush looked very Presidential. And the fraud perpetrated in Florida to get him elected which was given a boost by the Supreme Court didn’t look like such a travesty of justice after all. For nearly a week it seemed as though the ne’er-do-well scion of the Bush family dynasty might be a halfway adequate Commander-in-Chief. But then, on September 16th President Bush began speaking in religious terms about waging a crusade against the terrorists in Iraq, and his mania to utterly destroy Iraq emerged. Soon egregious lies were being told by the BushMen to justify a military takeover. And before you could say Weapons of Mass Destruction, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center had been turned into a rationale for President Bush’s official fatwa against Saddam Hussein. It’s easy to look back over the last four years and see the early stages of George Bush’s growing fanaticism. And we used to laugh at his mispronunciations, gaffes and fumbles. But now the increased evidence that he’s wearing some kind of device to either aid his thought processes or alleviate a medical condition is alarming. It’s only two weeks before the election and President George W. Bush seems to be having a mental meltdown. Why hasn’t the Mainstream Media jumped on his deterioration the way they jumped on President Clinton’s moral lapses? Journalist Dan Elias covered the third debate and asked questions of people in the know about Bush’s wire and batterypack. He told IsBushWired.com that he was brushed off by everyone he queried. When he approached CNN’s Jeff Greenfield about Bush using a listening device during the debates, Greenfield said, "I don't want to go there. That's "Area 51" kind of stuff.” The reference to Area 51 couldn’t be more apt. It’s a secret military base with a huge air field about 90 miles north of Las Vegas which the government won’t discuss and it's linked to UFO sightings. The MSM may not want to confront the implications of Bush wearing a medical appliance or an info-feed device, but the suspicions and questions aren’t going away. For President Bush it’s worse not to confront the rumors than to make some kind of public statement about his health. Absent any information, we are left to speculate. Is he bipolar, schizophrenic, impaired by a stroke, drug dependent, drinking again? What?

Cheney's Lesbian Daughter

The Bush/Cheney duo is against gay marriage. They opine that homosexuality is against God’s law. They not only agree with the far-right religious antipathy toward homosexuality but they use it as a campaign issue. During the October 13th Kerry/Cheney debate moderator Bob Schieffer asked whether homosexuality is a choice. Kerry said he believed that the Cheney’s lesbian daughter Mary would say she was born a lesbian and had not chosen to be a lesbian. The Cheney’s reacted as though Kerry had said their daughter was a serial killer. George Bush and Dick Cheney have made homosexuality an issue in the presidential campaign. And ignoring that Mary Cheney is a lesbian is like ignoring the proverbial elephant sitting in the living room. Mrs. Cheney said that Kerry was not a good man. She said talking about her daughter was “a cheap and tawdry political trick". Elizabeth Edwards, wife of VP candidate John Edwards said that Mrs. Cheney had overreacted and that she treated the issue “as if it's shameful to have this discussion”. Mrs. Edwards went on to say, “it indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences”. In August, 2000, ABC’s Cokie Roberts said to Lynne Cheney, “You have a daughter who has now declared that she is openly gay.” Mrs. Cheney said, “Mary has never declared such a thing.” However, Mary had declared such a thing. Mrs. Cheney chastised Roberts, saying, “I’m surprised, Cokie that even you would want to bring it up on this program.” So what’s the deal, Mr. and Mrs. Cheney? You’re ashamed of your lesbian daughter and you urge anti-gays to vote for the Bush/Cheney ticket because it’s a vote for family values, but John Kerry saying that your daughter is gay is off-limits? It was you, Dick and Lynne Cheney, who chose to aid and abet gay-bashing as a campaign issue, in direct opposition to your daughter’s life-style. And so be it. But using the “angry father” and “Kerry is is not a good man” whine is not only disingenuous, it’s pure political hokum.

Bush's Health

The mystery bulge story won’t go away. And as conjecture runs wild, we now have a curious choice. Is the hump on Bush’s back a listening device or is it the business-end of a medical appliance? Take your pick. Either our President is a cheat or he’s sick. The idea that Bush may have had a stroke is a more benign explanation than he’s too dumb or too lazy to do his homework and gets information via an earpiece in his ear canal. But it’s also much more unsettling to think that not only is Vice President Cheney at risk for sudden death--he’s already had umpteen heart attacks. But the man who will do anything to be re-elected as President may also have serious health problems. Doctors on the Blogs are now weighing-in on this What-Is-It? question. A few have said they have used medical appliances on stroke victims such as the one apparently strapped to Bush’s back. So what are we to make of this? It explains why the President has refused to have a medical check-up. It explains why he fumbles for words and flies off on tangents. It explains the spittle in the corner of his mouth during the last debate and why his face sags on the left side. And if he had a stroke it may be genetic. George Herbert Walker Bush had a “slight” stroke on-camera while he was President which was vigorously denied at the time. In the end, it doesn’t matter if this intriguing question is ever answered. What we know for sure is that right now we have the halt and the lame-brained in the two top positions in US government. And they are seriously endangering the welfare of the entire world. It’s time for a change.

Smiles of an Autumn Night

Who was the idiot among President Bush’s advisers who told him to keep smiling during his third and final debate with John Kerry? This morning Tom Shales reported in the Washington Post, “Last night, it looked as though his (Bush’s) handlers had told him to smile, smile, smile, especially when Kerry was trying to make points, points, points.” The men who wind Bush up and point him toward the stage apparently have never heard the line in Hamlet , “...one may smile and smile and still be a villain...”. Listen up, BushMen, when Bush grins like a fool despite the content of what he’s saying, he looks devious and worse, moronic. All the instant polls are giving the edge to Kerry in last night’s debate. Slate.com has given the edge to Kerry in all three debates. Letterman is having a field day over the mystery bulge on Bush’s back. Leno asked VP Candidate John Edwards about it and Edwards said it’s “Bush’s battery”. CNN asked its viewers what they thought the bulge was. Eighty-eight percent said it was an electronic listening device. And yet...the ubiquitous TV pundits and analysts won’t touch the issue with a ten-foot pole. And they uniformly contend that despite instant viewer polls to the contrary, Bush and Kerry are neck-and-neck in the race for President. TV anchors have colluded to engage in an annoying “on-the-other-hand” way of reporting. It’s not balanced or fair-handed. It’s deceitful, mealy-mouthed, and cowardly. As long as the sponsors of news shows control content and as long as officials in the government use fear as a tool, TV news will have no credibility and will not reflect the news. Currently, TV news reflects the way sponsors and the Bush administration want the news to be reported. They seem to think we are easily-lead sheep. Are we?

Bush's Batterypack

The big story is that last night Jay Leno trumped the major news media like the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times by addressing the rumor that Bush is wired. Leno asked his guest Vice Prez Candidate John Edwards about Bush’s mystery bulge. It’s been a scandal waiting to erupt into the bigtime ever since October 8th when Salon.com posted pics of President Bush during the debates that showed a lump on his back. The Internet blogs went into buzz overload with conjecture about whether the Prez is wearing an earpiece to get information while doing not only the debates but summit meetings and press conferences. The major newspapers had small items noting the rumor and left it at that. But it took Jay Leno to query John Edwards about what in the world was that bulge? And Edwards said it was Bush’s battery and that Kerry should pat him down before tonight’s debate. The Leno interview was picked up by the Associated Press and now is running on everything from Yahoo News to the Miami Herald. The Bush camp initially pooh-poohed the allegations with explanations about creases in the President’s suit. Now Bush loyalists are saying, Where’s the proof? Proof may be on the way. Salon.com is offering a free subscription to anyone who sends in video of tonight’s debate with positive evidence that Bush is wired. What a beautiful prime time moment if both Kerry and Bush were searched for wires on camera before tonight’s debate. Talk about the horns of a dilemma. What would be worse for Bush? Wearing a wire or not wearing a wire?

Bush's State/The Pope's Church

The October 12th New York Times reports that a group of Catholic Bishops is trying to decide the November election. It’s nothing new that religious organizations have their druthers about politicians. It’s nothing new that preachers and priests often give voting advice and guidelines to their congregations. But what is newsworthy is that Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Colorado and a group of Roman Catholic prelates are telling Catholics it’s a sin to vote for John Kerry. They say that anyone who plans to vote for Kerry must confess that sin before receiving communion. Chaput’s group argues that Kerry is pro-choice and pro-stemcell research and therefore, he advocates the killing of US citizens (that is, the unborn, to use a right-of-center phrase). When Bush visited the pope this year he asked the Vatican to get American bishops to support conservative issues. According to the NYT, one-quarter of voters in the US are Roman Catholics. How many of these Catholics are conservatives and may be swayed by Bishop Chaput is unknown. George Bush got less than half of the Catholic vote in 2000 and is banking on doing better...much better this time around. Even if it means supporting the Roman Catholic Church’s plan to dictate government policies. Since Great Britain has a state-sponsored church (the Church of England), the United States came into being because of a desire to practice religion as one sees fit and not as dictated by the government. Most Americans believe that the separation of church and state is a tenet of our Constitution. It is not. The First Amendment only states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. Nevertheless, even after 228 years, it is repugnant for any organized religion to try to influence politics. Particularly by using such a loaded phrase as, “it’s a sin to vote for...”. Incredibly, that very religion makes no public outcry that unnecessary wars are a sin or that the death penalty is a sin.

Bush's Brain Feed

Let's hear it for Averell Harriman's second wife, Marie, who called all political functions "Philadelphia Ratfucks". The Ratfuck Diary wants to know: Will George the Lesser wear a wire or try to wing it for the next and final debate?