Mind Vomit by the ikss ~ a journal
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Thursday, Sept. 09, 2004promised political bru-ha-ha
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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
REGISTER TO VOTE
"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
*
Just a reminder that polls are only as accurate as the questions asked. By that I mean � don�t believe the hype.
Kerry is back in the race, says latest poll
Analysis of swing states gives challenger small lead
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday September 8, 2004
The Guardian
Forecasts of John Kerry's political demise may have been exaggerated in recent days, and he could still be clinging to a narrow lead in the US presidential race, according to a poll published yesterday.
The poll, by Zogby International, reflected the state of play in 20 swing states, and found that the surge in George Bush's support there after last week's Republican convention, was less pronounced than the double-digits suggested in two weekend polls.
Those surveys, in Time and Newsweek, triggered alarm and finger-pointing in the Democratic camp, and a reshuffle in the Kerry team. But other surveys have since suggested the Bush convention "bounce" was much smaller and the contest remains a close one.
The Zogby poll says the president has made up ground in many of the 20 battleground states, but Mr Kerry retains a slim lead in most of them - enough to give him a majority in the electoral college, if the vote was held now.
The college, which chooses the president, is made up of 538 delegates drawn from the 50 states and Washington DC, according to population. Assigning electors according to the way each state is leaning now, the Zogby poll gives Mr Kerry a lead of 273 to 222, down from the past two months, but a significant edge all the same.
"There's no doubt that Bush got a bounce ... but no way is he up 11 points," John Zogby, the head of Zogby International, said yesterday. . .
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
~~~
Here�s a lovely little email I received from Senate Majority Leader William H. Frist, M.D. (R) (hey, at least he responded to what I�m sure were many emails he received on this matter. And that�s about as complimentary as I get. His using the words �further federal regulation� makes me wonder if he even knows what the current regulations ARE, seeing as these weapons are already banned and the ban is simply coming up for renewal):
Dear Friend:
Thank you for contacting me to express your thoughts on the semi-automatic assault weapon ban. It is an honor to serve you in the Senate and a privilege to respond to your concerns.
Gun control is a controversial issue. People acting in good faith will very often disagree on the most effective way to address violent crime while recognizing the rights of law abiding gun owners, and I respect the diversity of views on this important matter.
I have long believed that further federal regulation of gun ownership is not the best answer to preventing violent crime, and I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Our enemy is the criminal, not the weapon. A person intent on committing a violent crime will not be stopped by more gun control laws. Instead, Congress and the States should work to ensure that violent crimes are vigorously prosecuted, to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and to better enforce our existing laws. Through this common sense approach, we can continue to reduce violent crime across the nation and protect the rights of law abiding gun owners.
Again, thank you for contacting me. As the Senate continues to face many complex and challenging issues, I hope you will continue to give me the benefit of your thoughts and advice.
Sincerely,
William H. Frist, M.D.
Majority Leader
United States Senate
*
Again I ask (nay, plead) that you contact your elected officials to ask that they vote to continue the ban on assault weapons. These are not weapons we need on our streets. The weapons ban expires in just a few days.
~~~
I am very sick of hearing about both John Kerry�s and George W. Bush�s war record (or non-existent record, as the case may be), but since Dubya and Company keep trying to discredit John Kerry, I feel the need to post the following information about our chicken-shit President:
REPORT SHOWS BUSH WAS AWOL
Earlier this year, President Bush told the nation "I did my duty" in the National Guard in 1972 when he was supposed to report for service.[1] But according to a major new report, that is not true.
As a new examination of documents by the Boston Globe shows, "Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation." Twice during his Guard service - first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School - Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty. But "he didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show."[2]
Bush also has claimed "I did show up in Alabama"[3] in 1972 when he was supposed to report there for duty. But as the Globe notes, "Bush's service records do not show him logging any service in Alabama until October of that year." Furthermore, "even that service is in doubt" as "no one has come forward with any credible recollection of having witnessed Bush performing guard service in Alabama or after he returned to Houston in 1973."
A new group called Texans for Truth will begin airing 0:30 second television ads featuring a National Guardsman who in 1972 served in the very same Alabama unit Bush was supposed to have joined. That Guardsman testifies that he never saw Bush show up for service - a story corroborated by others. See the ad here.[4]
Sources:
1. Transcript for Feb. 8th airing on "Meet the Press", MSNBC, 2/13/04
2. "Bush fell short on duty at Guard," Boston Globe, 9/08/04
3. Transcript for Feb. 8th airing on "Meet the Press", MSNBC, 2/13/04
4. TexansforTruth.com, 9/04
Visit www.Misleader.org for more about Bush administration distortion.
*
Required Records Missing From Bush's Nat'l Guard File
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press.
WASHINGTON (Sept. 5) - Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.
For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.
No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.
Outside experts suggest that National Guard commanders may not have produced documentation required by their own regulations.
View the rest of the article.
~~~
BUSH HAMPERED FIGHT AGAINST AL QAEDA
President Bush [on Sept. 6] said that because of his leadership, "America and the world are safer."[1] But almost three years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden remains at large, while the U.S. government admits top al Qaeda leaders are planning attacks on America from the Afghan-Pakistan border region.[2] And now a new book confirms the President actually shifted key resources away from the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Knight-Ridder reports that in his upcoming book, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) disclosed that General Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, said the administration moved things like the Predator drone aircraft out of Afghanistan even though it is "crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders."[3]
Graham's account is consistent with reports from earlier this year. In March 2004, USA Today reported that the White House in 2002 shifted special forces off of the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan and into preparations for an Iraq invasion. The administration also took intelligence "specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered."[4]
Sources:
1. "President's Remarks at a Victory 2004 Rally in Poplar Bluff, Missouri," WhiteHouse.gov, 9/06/04
2. "Officials: Bin Laden guiding plots against U.S.," CNN.com, 7/08/04
3. "9/11 hijackers tied to Saudi government, Graham says in book," Boston Globe, 9/05/04
4. "Shifts from bin Laden hunt evoke questions," USA Today, 3/28/04
Visit www.Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion.
~~~
Catching Al Qaeda
Bush now claims that 75 percent of the group�s key members are out of commission. Some experts say that number is meaningless
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 4:58 p.m. ET Sept. 8, 2004
Sept. 8 - Without any public explanation, President George W. Bush last week increased the estimate of Al Qaeda leaders who have been killed or captured after receiving a revised U.S. intelligence analysis delivered the day before his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, NEWSWEEK has learned.
In his nationally televised speech to the convention last Thursday night, Bush for the first time claimed that �more than three quarters of Al Qaeda�s key members and associates have been detained or killed.�
For the past year, the president and senior administration officials have repeatedly used a lower figure to measure the U.S. government�s progress in the war on terror. Bush in his State of the Union speech last January asserted that �nearly two thirds� of Al Qaeda�s �known leaders� had been captured or killed.
Pressed to explain how and when the estimate went up, a White House official told NEWSWEEK that the revised figure was based on a new CIA analysis that had been repeatedly sought by the White House in recent months and was provided to presidential aides only on Sept. 1, the day before Bush addressed the convention.
But the official insisted the timing had nothing to do with the need to have new numbers for Bush�s convention speech. �This was being watched for some time irrespective of the political calendar,� said the official.
White House and U.S. intelligence officials declined to provide any back-up data for how they developed the new number�or even to explain the methodology that was used, which they said was classified. The absence of any explanation, as well as the timing, prompted some counterterrorism experts to deride the figure as �meaningless� and predict the revision could fuel allegations that the administration is massaging terrorism data for political purposes.
�It�s like a shell game,� said Vince Cannistraro, a former top CIA counterterrorism official. �This kind of thing is susceptible to all kinds of manipulation.�
An official with the recently disbanded 9/11 commission also dismissed the new number, noting that it was impossible to get a firm handle on precisely the number of Al Qaeda �leaders� that were in place at the time of the September 11 attacks�the definition that the CIA says it used as its baseline for the estimate.
�It was meaningless when they said two thirds and it�s meaningless when they said three fourths,� said the official, who asked not to be identified. �This sounds like it was pulled out of somebody�s orifice.� . .
It�s far from clear that any of these figures would qualify as �known leaders� of Al Qaeda, the formulation that was used by the president to measure progress prior to last week�s convention speech. Cannistraro noted that the term �leaders� generally implies an ability to exercise �command and control� over an organization. While the U.S. counterterrorism effort has unquestionably netted major �leaders� of Al Qaeda�such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, the operational commander of the group�it has not yielded anybody of a comparable leadership level for some time. In any case, Cannistraro noted, �when you say three fourths have been caught,� it leaves out an important point that wasn�t addressed by the president: �Every one of these people have been replaced.�
� 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
~~~
Also from Newsweek, excerpts from an article by Melinda Henneberg:
. . . So the president, in his convention speech, told us that �because we have made the hard journey, we can see the valley below � because we acted, children are making sustained progress in reading and math, America�s schools are getting better � because we acted, our economy is growing again and creating jobs.��
Hearing this, I almost wondered if there is any such a thing as a fact any more�or if, at this point, there is only religion and art. Such violence to context done by pols and polemicists. For this I blame not only Republicans but reporters, too. It�s all a matter of taste, now. As a high-school friend told me when we were arguing over whether WMDs had or had not been located in Iraq, �You have your sources of information and I have mine.�� Even our compulsive depiction of alternative realities as equal possibilities lets Bush get away with a line like, �We are defeating the terrorists where they live and plan, and making America safer.�� . .
This isn�t escapism. This is the kind of hope that starts in the dark, denying nothing and offering no shortcuts. This is a view in which the hard journey the president spoke of at the convention is not eternally behind us, requiring no further effort. This is a world in which the possibility of cutting taxes while restraining federal spending and expanding job training and health benefits is...admittedly limited. And this is a planet on which the choice was never, �Do I forget the lessons of September 11 and take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our country?��
John Kerry cannot defeat George Bush by competing with him in the telling of such dramatic whoppers. In part that�s because, unlike the president, the senator does not even seem to believe his own spin. (And he won�t win by proving himself the bigger smarty pants, either. Anyone who still thinks Bush is unintelligent is not even worth arguing with.)
But Kerry does, I think, have the maturity and depth of feeling required to express real hope as something we can only come by the hard way. The audience may like a happy ending, but they know when it�s been tacked on.
� 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
~~~
Voter ID Problems in Florida
The New York Times
September 7, 2004
There is no excuse for turning away eligible voters at the polls, but that is what apparently happened in Florida's primary elections last week. Under Florida law, registered voters can vote without showing identification...
In Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, poll watchers from People for the American Way saw voters being turned away after being told about half the law - the photo-identification requirement - but not the other half, the affidavit option. In some cases, said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way, poll workers insisted on identification even when they were shown voting-rights leaflets citing the state election law. Some people may never have cast ballots because they were not informed that they had the option to file affidavits...
In the weeks leading up to Nov. 2, we will hear many times that all Americans should exercise their right to vote. Election officials have an obligation to do everything they can to ensure that when citizens show up, misapplied voter-identification rules do not prevent them from casting a ballot.
View the full article
Also see Bob Herbert�s column in the New York Times on the intimidation of scores of African-American voters by armed law enforcement personnel in the Orlando area and
"The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today,"
According to the People for the American Way:
Dirty tricks at the polls and voter intimidation and suppression have been with us for decades. But as our report shows, there have been many examples in recent years.
� This summer, Michigan state Rep. John Pappageorge (R-Troy) was quoted in the Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election." African Americans comprise 83% of Detroit's population.
� In South Dakota's June 2004 primary, Native American voters were prevented from voting after they were challenged to provide photo IDs, which they were not required to present under state or federal law.
� Earlier this year in Texas, a local district attorney claimed that students at a majority black college were not eligible to vote in the county where the college is located. It happened in Waller County - the same county where 26 years earlier, a federal court order was required to prevent discrimination against the students.
� In Kentucky in July 2004, Black Republican officials joined to ask their state GOP party chairman to renounce plans to place "vote challengers" in African American precincts during the coming elections.
� In 2003 in Philadelphia, voters in African American areas were systematically challenged by men carrying clipboards, driving a fleet of some 300 sedans with magnetic signs designed to look like law enforcement insignia.
� In 2002 in Louisiana, flyers were distributed in African American communities telling voters they could go to the polls on Tuesday, December 10th - three days after a Senate runoff election was actually held.
� In 1998 in South Carolina, a state representative mailed 3,000 brochures to African American neighborhoods, claiming that law enforcement agents would be "working" the election, and warning voters that "this election is not worth going to jail."
For those of us who cherish the accomplishments of the civil rights era, and who honor the memory of the men and women who sacrificed so much in the fight to secure voting rights for every American, our report is a timely reminder. We must stay vigilant. Threats to our voting rights have never wholly disappeared - they've just taken on new and more cynical guises, and are employed with new tactics. Constant vigilance is required.
That's why this is such an important year for Election Protection. With our more than 60 national coalition partners, Election Protection will provide services around the country:
� A toll-free hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE, for voters to access free, immediate and multi-lingual assistance with registration, voting and barriers at the ballot box.
� 25,000 trained poll monitors, including 5,000 lawyers and law students, to watch for problems and assist voters on the spot at more than 3,500 predominantly African American and Latino precincts in at least 17 states.
� Civil rights lawyers and advocates to represent voters in lawsuits, preserve access to the polls, expose and prevent voter intimidation, and solve problems with new voting machines and ballot forms.
� More than five million Voters' Bills of Rights with state-specific information for distribution in almost all 50 states.
This year, Election Protection is the nation's single largest and most far-reaching effort to protect voter rights EVER! And your support makes it possible.
Please help by volunteering to become an Election Protection volunteer and by making a generous tax-deductible contribution today.
Thank you for helping us make sure every voter can vote and that these votes will count!
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~~~~~~~~~~~peace, love and smooches~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't know why you'd wanna, but on the off-chance you may feel tempted to steal any of my words and claim them as your own, please be advised:
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Copyright 2002-2005, Howl-at-the-Moon Words
***DISCLAIMER: These are my thoughts and my thoughts alone. If you know me in my "real life" off the net and have come across this page purely by accident, please keep in mind that you were not invited here and I would suggest you leave this page now. However, should you choose not to do so, please be warned that reading my thoughts here is not an invitation to discuss them off-line. You may discover things you do not know about me and may not like very much. Such is life. Again, this is MY space and I will use it as I see fit. If you are offended by anything here, well that's pretty much your own fault at this point.
I say all of this with love, of course, but there it is.
