Uncle Horn Head

The Swift Boat Veterans for Lies is but a tiny piece of a schematic Rove has been carrying in his head since his salad days in Texas. Bush’s Brain will die happy the day he achieves his two greatest goals. The first of these is to turn the U.S. into what is fundamentally a one-party system. Secondly, he wants the federal government to have so little money that it can do nothing to get in the way of business interests; nor will it be able to sustain any kind of socially progressive assistance for disadvantaged Americans.

Disdain for the Constitution
Mayor Giuliani routinely disregarded the First Amendment as he rejected requests for information from news organizations and civic groups and opposed public access to city hall steps and parks for demonstrations. "Freedom is about authority," Giuliani said, responding to critics in 1998. "Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it." The following year, after the mayor cut funding to the Brooklyn Museum because it displayed a work of art that offended him, federal judge Nina Gershon ruled that Giuliani violated the First Amendment and ordered funding restored. "There is no federal constitutional issue more grave," she wrote, "than the effort by government officials to censor works of expression and to threaten the vitality of a major cultural institution as punishment for failing to abide by governmental demands for orthodoxy." Giuliani called Judge Gershon's decision "the usual knee-jerk reaction" and said he would order the city's lawyers to appeal.

Today Scott McClellan went on the offensive against Ben Barnes for describing the "shame" he feels over helping President Bush duck service in Vietnam.

"It is not surprising coming from a longtime partisan Democrat," he said. "The allegation was discredited by the commanding officer. This was fully covered and addressed five years ago. It is nothing new."

It turns out that Barnes is such a down-the-line partisan that he supported Texas's Republican State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn for reelection in 2002.

Strayhorn is Scott's mom.

One of the 2,509 delegates to the Republican National Conventions has dropped out because of dissatisfaction with President Bush.

Congressional Quarterly reported Friday that after attending four previous conventions, Philadelphia's Jesse Walters was chosen as a delegate to this year's GOP convention in New York only to resign the position, saying he could not support Bush and expressing concern with the rightward move of the Republican Party.

Calling the decision to drop his position one of the five hardest he has had to make in his life, Walters said he plans to cast his first-ever vote for a Democrat for president in November.

On environmental issues, Mr. Bush appeared unfamiliar with an administration report delivered to Congress on Wednesday that indicated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades. Previously, Mr. Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of global warming.

The new report was signed by Mr. Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce and his science adviser. Asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming, Mr. Bush replied, "Ah, we did? I don't think so."

"Ah, we did?" Yes, you did.

It gets worse. The president is asked about North Korea:

Showing none of the alarm about the North's growing arsenal that he once voiced regularly about Iraq, he opened his palms and shrugged when an interviewer noted that new intelligence reports indicate that the North may now have the fuel to produce six or eight nuclear weapons.

He "opened his palms and shrugged." He shrugged. The strong, decisive, tough-on-terror leader man freaking shrugged.

President Bush wants to watch the Republican convention from a New York City firehouse and "bond" with the city's Bravest, officials said yesterday.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is also scouting out firehouses so he can watch it with the heroes of 9/11.

"Both Bush and Schwarzenegger want to bond with city firefighters," said one city official who asked not to be named...

New Yorkers yesterday slammed House Speaker Dennis Hastert for claiming the Big Apple was guilty of an "unseemly scramble" for cash after Sept. 11 — and one city councilman demanded he return his FDNY cap.

"I want to let Hastert know we want our FDNY cap back," fumed Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., referring to the baseball cap given to Hastert three years ago when the powerful Illinois lawmaker toured Ground Zero shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

...The controversy between the olympic and political powers is not one between equals. However the IOC possesses at least one indirect means of retribution. One IOC member had this to say regarding the competition to host the 2012 Olympics, which is to be decided in July of next year: "The chances of New York City to host the games were already not very good. Now they have dropped to near zero."

When you realize you have forgotten to submit an order to the kitchen, go to the table and mournfully say, “Did you just hear that crash?” Nine times out of 10, the customers not only will say “yes,” but actually will believe they just heard a noise of some sort. You can then sigh sadly, and say, “Unfortunately, that was the chef dropping your food,” and then scurry back to the kitchen to hand in the neglected order.

An announcer fired by a minor league team for making a joke about Gov. James McGreevey's sexual orientation was rehired Thursday at the governor's urging.

Greg Maiuro lost his job with the Atlantic City Surf after dedicating the 1970s song "YMCA" to McGreevey during a game Aug. 17. The Village People hit is widely considered a gay anthem.

McGreevey -- who announced earlier this month that he is gay, had an affair with a man and plans to resign Nov. 15 -- urged the team to accept an apology and reinstate Maiuro "so we can move beyond this incident and get back to enjoying America's favorite pastime."

NEXT WEEK, people who hate Republicans plan to release swarms of mice in New York City to terrorize delegates to the National Republican Convention.

Republican-haters plan on dressing up as RNC volunteers, and giving false directions to little blue hair ladies from Kansas, sending them into the sectors of New York City that are unfit for human habitation.

They plan on throwing pies and Lord knows what else at Republican visitors to the city. Prostitutes with AIDS plan to seduce Republican visitors, and discourage the use of condoms, according to liberal journalist Ted Rall...

...Look at the wrong direction/right direction poll numbers and you see pretty clearly that the country is looking to fire George W. Bush. The president's only hope is to get the debate on to issues like these, shift the dynamic of the race, and convince voters that, whatever their dissatisfactions with his administration, John Kerry isn't an acceptable alternative.

When this stuff comes down the pike, Kerry has to fight back mercilessly. And he can win those fights. But, fundamentally, every day of this campaign that isn't spent talking about the sluggish economy and the president's debacle in Iraq is a day wasted, a strategic failure for the Kerry campaign.

But Democrats don't have to choose between hard-hitting lines of attack on the president himself and focusing on the main issues that are facing the country today. The most damning attacks turn out to be the most compelling, the most relevant for what the country faces, and the most difficult for the president to combat.

(...)

The current debate about these two men's military service has put the spotlight on physical courage. But that really is a side issue in this campaign, if we're talking substance. The real issue isn't physical bravery but moral cowardice.

President Bush is an examplar of that quality in spades. And it cuts directly to his failures as president. Forget about thirty years ago, just think about the last three years.

Before proceeding on to that, one other point about the two men's service. On the balance sheet of moral bravery, as opposed to physical bravery, the two men are about as far apart as you can be on Vietnam. On the one hand you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went, and put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have George W. Bush who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go; just not him. It's the story of his life.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice.

(...)

The president didn't think he could convince the public of the merits of his reasons for going to war. So he lied to them. He greatly exaggerated what was thought to be the evidence of weapons of mass destruction and completely manufactured a connection between Iraq and al Qaida. He couldn't get the country behind him on the up-and-up. So he took the easy way out; he took a shortcut; he deceived them. And now the country is paying a terrible price for it.

He and his advisors knew that if they levelled with the public about the costs of war -- in dollars, years, soldiers -- he'd have a very hard time convincing them. So he didn't level with them. He took the easy way out.

The sort of forward planning that would have made a big difference in post-war Iraq was scuttled or attacked because it would make the job of selling the war harder. Those who sounded the alarm had their careers cut short.

Once we were in Iraq and it was clear that we had been wrong about the weapons of mass destruction -- a judgement that's been clear for more than a year -- he wouldn't admit it. And he still hasn't. A year and a half after we invaded Iraq and he still can't level with the American people about this. He still relies on his vice president to try to fool people into thinking Hussein was tied to al Qaida and the 9/11 attacks.

(...)

The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face, those are the same qualities that led the president to lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due.

That's the argument John Kerry needs to be making. And he needs to make it right now.

From at least early August, our prime minister in Iraq, former Baathist Iyad Allawi, has been calling the [chose one: young/ambitious/anti-American/fiery/rogue/radical/renegade/rebel/populist] cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers "outlaws." Strangely enough, so has our Secretary of State Colin Powell. It's lovely, isn't it, that Allawi and Powell not only see things in such an eye-to-eye way, but are coordinating in such a mouth-to-mouth manner, linguistically speaking. We know this is so, because translation from the Arabic never gets in the way. Allawi, a former exile who like many of his confreres in the "interim administration," has planted his roots abroad (not to speak of possessing a British passport), expresses himself regularly in English. In fact, as our nightly TV news so often makes clear, the PM gives numerous news conferences in English (as do others among his colleagues). This evidently seems so natural to our press corps in Baghdad that no one even thinks to comment on it. But for just a moment, imagine the unimaginable. The President of the United States steps to the podium to begin a White House press conference and launches into Arabic. Oh well, I know it's too ridiculous to consider. But it certainly tells us something about where Allawi's prime audience lies and where he is trying hardest to solidify his base. Perhaps one day someone in the press will find this curious enough to make something of it.

...A nation has to honor its war veterans whatever their political party, while remaining realistic about the horrors of war. If some Americans do otherwise, all Americans are shamed. McCain has also called on Bush to denounce the attacks on Kerry and condemn that kind of low-life negative campaigning. It's time the President complied in no uncertain terms, and it's time he meant it.

Q Scott, subject once again, the Swift Boat ads, et cetera. You've seen the New York Times article this morning which gets into quite a lot of detail, and they allege that there's a web of connections to the Bush family and high-profile Texas figures and Karl Rove. So how can the White House say that there's no connection whatsoever between the campaign and White House and --

MR. McCLELLAN: We've already said we weren't involved in any way in these ads. We've made that clear. I do think that Senator Kerry losing his cool should not be an excuse for him to lash out at the President with false and baseless attacks. I mean, where has the Kerry been -- Kerry campaign been for the last year while more than $62 million in funding through these shadowy groups has been used to negatively attack the President. The Kerry campaign has been noticeably silent, and in many instances, they have actually fueled these kinds of attacks by these shadowy groups that are funded by unregulated soft money.

..."There has been a lot of telephone traffic between the White House and Downing Street over the medal in recent week," the Sunday Mirror quoted a senior government source as saying.

"George Bush wants the prime minister to come to Washington and pick up the medal, which is the highest honour America can bestow on a foreigner.

"But he has refused for more than a year now and for good reason. He cannot possibly accept an award for the Iraq war when British and American troops continue to risk their lives there."

Mr Blair is concerned also that a trip to the US now would effectively be giving a boost to Bush ahead of November's presidential elections...

..."A Democrat can't win a statewide election in Florida without a high voter turnout - both at the polls and with absentee ballots - of African-Americans," said a man who is close to the Republican establishment in Florida but asked not to be identified. "It's no secret that the name of the game for Republicans is to restrain that turnout as much as possible. Black votes are Democratic votes, and there are a lot of them in Florida."...

It makes sense for W. to use surrogates to do his fighting, just as he did when he slid out of Vietnam and just as he did when he sent our troops to fight his administration's misbegotten vanity war in Iraq.

State officials have said that the investigation, which has already frightened many voters and intimidated elderly volunteers, is in response to allegations of voter fraud involving absentee ballots that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March. But the department considered that matter closed last spring, according to a letter from the office of Guy Tunnell, the department's commissioner, to Lawson Lamar, the state attorney in Orlando, who would be responsible for any criminal prosecutions.

The letter, dated May 13, said:

"We received your package related to the allegations of voter fraud during the 2004 mayoral election. This dealt with the manner in which absentee ballots were either handled or collected by campaign staffers for Mayor Buddy Dyer. Since this matter involved an elected official, the allegations were forwarded to F.D.L.E.'s Executive Investigations in Tallahassee, Florida.

"The documents were reviewed by F.D.L.E., as well as the Florida Division of Elections. It was determined that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud concerning these absentee ballots. Since there is no evidence of criminal misconduct involving Mayor Dyer, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement considers this matter closed."

Well, it's not closed. And department officials said yesterday that the letter sent out in May was never meant to indicate that the "entire" investigation was closed. Since the letter went out, state troopers have gone into the homes of 40 or 50 black voters, most of them elderly, in what the department describes as a criminal investigation. Many longtime Florida observers have said the use of state troopers for this type of investigation is extremely unusual, and it has caused a storm of controversy.

State officials deny that their intent was to intimidate black voters. Mr. Tunnell, who was handpicked by Gov. Jeb Bush to head the Department of Law Enforcement, said in a statement yesterday: "Instead of having them come to the F.D.L.E. office, which may seem quite imposing, our agents felt it would be a more relaxed atmosphere if they visited the witnesses at their homes.''

...Sadir had a message for U.S. president George W. Bush, who is using the Iraqi Olympic team in his latest re-election campaign advertisements.

In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes."

What's it like for men in uniform? Little or the media coverage looks into this. That's why I invited Dwayne (who has given me his last name - though I decide to withhold it), the soldier who courageously wrote to us to tell us a little bit more about life in the Army of One. He writes:

I must begin with what I hope is a worthy submission somewhat off topic. I am a little upset by the fact that my comments were immediately believed to be some type of intentional governmental ambush, simply because I admitted that I am a soldier and the nature of my comments.
Understand this, simply because I am an enlisted soldier in the US military and do not posses a Bachelor's in anything that I, we (soldiers), do not ponder issues of politics with depth and intelligence. Make no mistake, we do. Many of us are articulate and can structure a sentence to some degree of "respectability"; we also know how to use a dictionary for the spellings that elude us.

Now having said that, I hope these comments are not mistaken for extremely petty anger on my part. I did not attempt to encourage, or engage, Mr. Schechter in any illegal activity. Also, I did not attempt to solicit any personal or sensitive information regarding him or his activities; I simply submitted my personal comments to him and I stated the reason why: "the ironic fact that I obtained EMBEDDED from my base library and am currently working my way through a damn good and informative book." Furthermore, I am the one that is waiting for the FBI's axe to drop on my neck because of the comments I submitted using their website terrorist tipline.

Late April, 2004:

As always, it's extremely early in the morning and we have already had an intense physical training session and are now crammed into a classroom, fighting off fatigue and nervousness. Today's task, we are about to learn, and practice, the important skills of ESCAPE & EVASION. For reasons I still do not understand, our briefing will conclude with a lecture by the Regimental chaplain, Captain "Y." For the moment, we quickly use grease pencils to scribble important training information on our laminated maps, code names for roads, final destination points and anything else we believe is relevant and can be used to our advantage; when the soldiers who will play the role of our enemy pursers catch us their treatment will be.... realistic.

Soon the Chaplain's assistant, Specialist "Z", enters the class. He comes bearing gifts of chocolate bars, bananas, apples and bottled water. Without question, we will need the energy and hydration they provide and these treats are quickly snatched up; goodies that a soldier can acquire without pulling money from our pockets always creates a frenzy.

Enter the Chaplain:

After a brief introduction, the chaplain proceeds to ask a few questions about faith, who believes (in God) and who does not. He also asks if the prospect of being a soldier, and possibly having to kill another human, is causing anyone a moral conflict. If so, the chaplain wants those who may be suffering a crisis of conscience to be comforted by the knowledge that "the Ten Commandments (God) does not say that killing is wrong, but that thou shall not murder." Yes, he said that, this representative of a God, a religion, supposedly of peace, love, kindness and generosity preaches that killing for a military goal is okay. To be honest, I was not shocked, but I do remember thinking about how people outside of the military would find the chaplains words of compassion extremely interesting. I furiously focused on my Snicker's bar and assorted goodies to prevent myself from responding and literally biting my tongue. I guess that's the true meaning of "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."

...Over the last week or so, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been attacking me. Of course, this group isn’t interested in the truth – and they’re not telling the truth. They didn’t even exist until I won the nomination for president.

But here’s what you really need to know about them. They’re funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They’re a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won’t denounce what they’re up to tells you everything you need to know—he wants them to do his dirty work.

Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam.

As firefighters you risk your lives everyday. You know what it’s like to see the truth in the moment. You’re proud of what you’ve done—and so am I.

Of course, the President keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: “Bring it on.”

I’m not going to let anyone question my commitment to defending America—then, now, or ever. And I’m not going to let anyone attack the sacrifice and courage of the men who saw battle with me.

And let me make this commitment today: their lies about my record will not stop me from fighting for jobs, health care, and our security – the issues that really matter to the American people...

...Suppose that some of the electors -- the people who under our constitutional system conduct the real presidential election some weeks after voters go to the polls -- aren't actually selected by the voters.

Impossible? Not if you give a close reading to the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Bush v. Gore, which finally settled the presidential election of 2000, if not to everyone's satisfaction. Under that decision, there is no guarantee that the electors who are decisive in choosing the next president of the United States will themselves be selected by the people of the United States. That's because the justices ruled in that case that state legislatures have unlimited authority to determine whether citizens in their respective states shall be allowed to vote for president at all.

"The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States," the court said, "unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College."

Imagine, now, a state in which the same party controls both houses of the legislature and the governor's office. There would presumably be no partisan impediment to the state legislature, with the governor's approval, deciding that the majority party in state government shall control the state's electoral vote, regardless of any popular vote in the state. If the Supreme Court's declaration is an accurate statement of the law, there would not be any legal impediment either...

An unidentified supporter of President Bush tries to silence protester Kendra Lloyd-Knox (right) outside Southridge High School in Beaverton. Elsewhere in Portland, supporters of Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., rallied on the waterfront.

KERRY’S POSITION: I voted to give President Bush the authority. Then President Bush f*cked it up.

...And Bush certainly doesn't want to talk about the facts laid out by a Congressional Budget Office report on Friday that one-third of his tax cuts over the past three years went to people who earned an average of $1.2 million annually.

Households with incomes in the top 1 percent received an average tax cut of $78,460 this year. Households in the middle 20 percent -- they average about $57,000 a year -- received an average cut of $1,090. That is a 72 to 1 ratio in favor of the millionaires...

I am a soldier in the US Army. I want out of this nightmare, this emasculation of my humanity, my needs, my desires, the right to voice my opinion. Ironically, I obtained a copy of Embedded from my base library. I also just sent a letter to the FBI, via their webpage for submitting tips about possible terrorists, and informed them of my disgust about their interregation of people who intend to protest at the RNC in NYC. Please forgive any mispellings, I am typing this much quickly than normal; you guessed it, I am using a highly monitored computer. Fuck it, I don't care anymore.

Sincerly,

Dwayne