disconnect

It's official, the CIA was wrong about Iraq's weapons capabilities before the war. I imagine the Bush team will try to spin this by saying that this confirms that they were mislead by bad intelligence before the war, but that the war was still right. Maybe this is just my opinion here, but perhaps this is a good example of why you don't launch pre-emptive wars in the first place based on intelligence that Ahmed Chalabi's boys gave you? Perhaps this was why the rest of the world was telling us we should slow down and let the weapons inspectors do their job? I mean, even Tony Soprano waits to be 100% sure before whacking someone who he thinks is ratting him out.

Also, this was thrown in as an apparent afterthought:

On one important point, the committee found the C.I.A.'s conclusions reasonable — that there had been no significant ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorists.

I'm sure Dick Cheney is preparing his response to that as we speak.

Seriously though, you look at this and you wonder what the 1000 coalition deaths and 12,000 civilian deaths were all for. I imagine there were a lot of independents who've seen "Fahrenheit 9/11" and were wondering if Michael Moore was right about us invading Iraq for nothing. Bush ought to think about what a headline like "Report Says Key Assertions Leading to War Were Wrong" makes them think. Or does their political campaign assume that people don't think, and only vote for the candidate who they presume "shares their values"? Not that sharing values isn't important, but the difference in "values" between Bush and Kerry is not a wide gulf.

Another fun story tells us that Bush's military records have been destroyed. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that one.

With headlines like this I always picture some Bush spokesman saying, "Well, these have been some hard months for the president, but even with all this bad news John Kerry still has yet to open a big lead, so we think we're doing well." I could point to polls saying that Kerry-Edwards is leading Bush-Cheney 49 to 41 percent, but you could always say that that's a biased poll, or that it's a post-running-mate-selection bounce. What I don't get is, does the Bush-Cheney campaign think the string of bad news is going to end? There's a reason all this bad news is coming out now - they've been doing a bad job running the country. The only really good news I could even see happening for Bush between now and November would be the capture of Bin Laden or other high-ranking Al Qaeda fugitives, and although good news, the timing of the capture before the election would be extremely dubious given the story I mentioned yesterday. The only other hope of good news I can think of would be if the economy charged ahead and created a million new jobs in the next four months. That would leave us with.... no net new jobs created since Bush took office (and a real loss of 6+ million given the jobs that must be created to keep up with population growth). And this ignores the $90 million in advertising so far that Bush has spent to try to make Kerry look bad. What I'm saying is, they'd better get used to the bad news, because it's not going to stop until we elect someone to come in and clean up this mess.

When "Fahrenheit 9/11" came out, I didn't really think it was going to have much of an effect on getting anyone to change their vote. But I was listening to ESPN radio today on the way to get some lunch and I heard something that's been echoing other signs that the movie may be having an effect.

Kirk Herbstreit was on the Dan Patrick show talking about college football - he's on ESPN's College Gameday if you don't know who he is. After they were through talking about football, Kirk mentions that he'd gone to see F9/11 last night with another guy on College Gameday. He said he was an independent and that he voted for Bush in 2000 and that he wanted to vote for him again, but that he was going to have to do some soul-searching between now and November in order to be able to do it. He said that he wished that Tim Russert (of "Meet The Press") would go through and analyze the things Moore showed in the movie.

I guess I didn't fully understand the lack of knowledge that people had on these topics and also their willingness to learn more about it. I've been documenting these ways in which Bush doesn't deserve another term on here (in fact I have another one a few paragraphs down), and I figure that those who look for this kind of information can find it, and that everyone else just doesn't care. But the media has done such a poor job reporting on these things that there are a ton of people out there who don't know any of the things Moore has in his movie, don't have the time to go sifting through the Internet to find them, but still know and care about the issues. Heck, I don't even think I had really seen that footage of Bush sitting there for seven more minutes after he was told that the second plane hit the WTC.

I don't blame Herby for not switching his vote after seeing the movie (Dan Patrick asked him if he had switched and that's when he made the "soul-searching" comment). You probably should not change your vote based on a Michael Moore movie, or any documentary or news magazine or something of that nature. The thing is, Michael Moore lays the facts out there, and they're not really disputed. You can look them up for yourself if you're curious, like I did with the Bush/vacation statistics. Do your own research if you don't believe or trust him and come up with your own conclusions. If people actually do this, and it sounds like lots of moderates and independents who see the movie are waking up to these facts, it will have more of an impact than I imagined it would.

Finally, this story has been floating around today and I thought I'd link to it. It's about how the Bush administration is reportedly putting pressure on Pakistan to capture high-value targets before the election or during the Democratic national convention. Again, just like most of the content of F9/11, this is not on the major news sites. Here's an excerpt.

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

I doubt anything will be proven with regards to this, I mean, you're not going to get Cheney to confess to this with or without the word "probably" involved, but assume this is true. Even the thought of putting off capturing Al Qaeda targets, or not fully committing to capturing them until election time should make you sick. And in the end it doesn't matter if they intentionally said, "Gee, it would be nice if you could catch these guys during the Democrats' convention," because they already indirectly put it off for a year or more while they were preoccupied with Iraq.

Is Dick Cheney under some kind of quota to do at least one thing that makes him look like an ass every day? Let me run down the latest story for you.

Last month, the 9/11 commission reported that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. As you can imagine, this didn't sit too well with Cheney, who's been peddling the "Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked" story since 9/11. So the administration furiously emphasized the part of the report that talks about how Iraq agreed in the mid-90's to rebroadcast some of Al Qaeda's anti-Saudi propaganda. But just in case the public didn't feel that rebroadcasting anti-Saudi propaganda several years ago was quite strong enough to justify a massive invasion of the country, Cheney appeared on TV and said that he "probably" had some info that the 9/11 commission didn't have about Iraq and Al Qaeda. Cheney likes using the word "probably" - it allows you to say pretty much whatever you want since you're not explicitly confirming or denying anything. For example, saying you "probably" swore at Senator Leahy means that you told him, "go fuck yourself" and you want to brag about it without actually taking responsibility for your words. And saying that you "probably" know some things about Iraq and Al Qaeda being bosom buddies means that you really don't have anything else, but you want people to think that you do.

As you can imagine, the commission wasn't too pleased that Cheney was "probably" sitting on loads of juicy intel describing how Saddam and bin Laden used to have pool parties together, so they asked his office to produce these additional reports. Apparently someone clued them into the Vice President's definition of "probably", because today they issued the following statement: "After examining available transcripts of the vice president's public remarks, the 9/11 commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9/11 attacks."

That's kind of the nice way for the commission to tell Cheney what Cheney told Senator Leahy.

What's really fun is how Cheney's spokesman spun the statement:

We are pleased with today's statement from the 9/11 commission, which puts to rest a nonstory. As we have said all along, the administration provided the commission with unprecedented access to sensitive information so they could perform their mission. The vice president criticized some press coverage of the draft staff report. He did not criticize the commission's work.

Now here's where I get confused - what exactly is the nonstory? Is it the nonstory of Iraq's non-existent involvement with Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks? Or is it the nonstory of how much Dick Cheney lies, which was confirmed to be a lot? Oh wait, I'm sorry, he never technically lied. He didn't say that he had information linking Iraq to Al Qaeda that the 9/11 commission didn't have, he just said that he "probably" had it. Just like he implied that Iraq "probably" had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. Or, perhaps how Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame is "probably" a CIA agent. If only this technique had been around sooner, it could have salvaged so many presidencies. Bill Clinton could have told us, "I probably did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." Richard Nixon could have declared, "I am probably not a crook."

But we can't replace him as Vice President, because John Edwards is evil. He's a trial lawyer. Right...

In my previous post where I mentioned wanting to talk more about reasons why you should vote for Kerry as opposed to simply voting against Bush, Brett helpfully gave a brief list of reasons in the comments. One thing he kind of touched on but never mentioned explicitly is the economy as a whole (or at least the budget in particular, since the economy is a tricky subject to cover in one post), which is OK because I wanted to talk about that more in depth.

This is one area where it's especially difficult to talk about specific things Kerry will do when he gets elected because the situation may be different when he finally takes office. There's about six months until inauguration day, and the economy could be totally different by then, rendering specific plans moot. I don't know if anyone still remembers the bygone days of 2000, but Bush's "plan" during the election was that his tax cuts would only affect a small amount of the surplus (remember surpluses?), something like 1/4 of it, and wouldn't touch the Social Security surplus. People thought that was a pretty good idea; I mean, if the government's running a huge surplus, there's nothing wrong with taking a chunk of it and giving it back to the people, right? Except the surplus quickly vanished, and the "only take a portion of the surplus" pledge became ancient history (of course, it didn't stop taxes from being cut... twice).

To discuss what Kerry will do with the economy, it's helpful to detail what he'll likely have to deal with, thanks to Bush, and to mention what Bush wants to do with four more years. First off, we're running $300 billion a year deficits. Second, Bush wants to make his tax cuts permanent. This must imply one of two things - that the deficit can be made up with spending cuts, or that deficits can be made permanent. Since the latter is impossible for anyone with the faintest idea of how economics work, the first option must be Bush's plan. So let's look at how that might work.

Spending in the U.S. budget is largely comprised of three things - defense, entitlements and interest on the debt. Defense spending under Bush is hardly likely to be cut, especially given that Kerry's votes against specific defense funding bills have come under vicious attack already in commercials. Also, there's the little matter of Bush's friends who benefit from defense contracts. So we'll have to assume that will stay the same. As for entitlements, Social Security is actually running a surplus at the moment, so it hardly needs to be cut. That doesn't mean that Bush won't try to cut it, either through privatizing part of it or cutting benefits outright as Alan Greenspan has suggested, but suffice it to say that Social Security, since it's paid through a separate payroll tax, is one of the stronger parts of our budget at the moment. The only other major entitlement I'm aware of is Medicare... which Bush added a great big chunk to this year and lied to Congress about its cost. I'm sorry, "lied" is too harsh of a word... let's use "forced an actuary to withhold the actual numbers under threat of firing". Isn't that better? One of these days I should get Robyn to write a whole post about the Medicare prescription drug plan; it's one of her pet peeves. Anyway, Social Security is already relatively financially sound and Medicare has just been added to, so we'll have to assume this won't be cut. Finally, there's interest on the debt. Obviously, under a second Bush term this is highly unlikely to go down any time soon.

That leaves discretionary spending as the only option to cut. This is mostly things like welfare, social programs, education, NASA, highway funding and the like. Many of these programs are already underfunded despite how Bush likes to tout them on the campaign trail. Even if they were bloated with money and there were things to cut, this is such a small portion of the budget that cutting it would not solve the deficit problem enough. But we've already established that eventually, the deficits will have to come down. And it doesn't look like spending cuts will be sufficient to do it, but Bush will not raise taxes. So Bush's economic plans have something of a hole in them, to put it mildly.

This all leads up to the complaint some people have about Kerry, "I don't want to vote for him because he'll raise my taxes." Will Kerry raise your taxes? Maybe. It mostly depends on whether or not you make over $200,000 a year. Unfortunately, since the deficit is mostly due to lower revenues and can't be solved by spending cuts, revenue will have to be where the shortfall is made up. Yes, that means higher taxes. I personally think that the deficit will be so large that all the Bush tax cuts will have to be rescinded, but that's up for debate. Even in that case, we're talking about taxes at the level they were under Clinton, which I don't recall putting the brakes on any economic growth. Think of it as your "we shouldn't have elected Bush in the first place" tax. But this is my personal opinion and is not even the platform of John Kerry, so I'm getting ahead of myself.

When some people hear "we're going to roll back the tax cuts on people making more than $200,000", they start yelling about "class warfare" and things of that nature, as if Karl Marx was running Kerry's campaign. Let's be clear here, John Kerry is pretty far from being that far left. He was one of the more conservative of the Democratic candidates in the primaries. It's not like he wants to collectivize private property under the state or redistribute all assets equally among the people or anything. We're talking about repealing tax cuts implemented under Bush. The Bush tax cuts have led to $300 billion a year in deficits, yet the biggest economic success he points to is "1.5 million jobs created over the past ten months". That's enough jobs to cover the increase in population over that span, but no more. And of course the number of jobs prior to those past ten months fell 3 million. That's like bragging that you got a 4% raise at work when inflation is 4%, and you were demoted last year to boot. Yet the economy has indisputably grown by GDP measures in the past three quarters. So where's all that money gone?

By most indicators, it has been the well-off who have benefited from the "economic recovery" over the past year or two. Corporate profits are up, etc, etc. I don't want to start a discussion as to the fairness of this distribution of wealth and I only bring it up because it justifies rolling back tax cuts on the wealthy. If you're going to receive the lion's share of the economic recovery, you need to be prepared to pay the lion's share of the deficit. In other words, we're in this mess because we gave you so much money, now you have to help get us out. Raising taxes on the middle class and poor would be pointless because their share of wealth in the past three years has not substantially improved. It might still be necessary, but it wouldn't do much anyway since they received so little of the Bush tax cut. In any case, my point is that if you're in the position to complain that "John Kerry will raise my taxes", you're certainly in position to shoulder that load. And it's not like you were living in a cardboard box until Bush came along and cut your dividend tax rates.

My general point in all this is that Bush has no plan to reduce the deficit or get our budget under any kind of control whatsoever. Raising taxes is the only feasible option, yet Bush will never consider it and any time Kerry brings up the general idea he's attacked for it. I would like to know what the Bush plan is to actually pay for what we spend without gutting our nation's institutions or accumulating more debt as a share of our GDP than a third-world country. There are other points I could make in more detail about the inequal distribution of our economy's modest growth over the past two years, or the current job situation or other topics that I briefly touched on and that I believe John Kerry will improve in office. I just wanted to point out the general mess the budget is in, how little it's really accomplished as far as improving most people's economic conditions, the non-existent plan Bush has to address it, and Kerry's commitment to a return to sound fiscal management.

Throughout the campaign so far, one of Bush's central points was to portray John Kerry as a flip-flopper. From all indications this has been successful, though whether or not this will affect votes in November has yet to be determined. Thinking about it however, Bush's record on taking a position and then quietly backing away from it or ignoring it altogether has been more striking in the past 3 1/2 years than Kerry's record over the past several years. Let me explain.

As far as I know, the main flip-flop accusation against Kerry deals with his votes on Iraq. He voted to authorize the President to deal with Iraq in the fall of 2002, then he voted against the funding resolution in the fall of 2003. The explanation for this is that it was understood that Iraq was a threat in 2002, and although how much of a threat it was had yet to be determined, it should be addressed in some way. In the fall of 2003, it was apparent exactly what Bush had in mind for dealing with Iraq and a vote against the funding resolution was, in effect, a protest vote against the way Bush conducted the war and the post-war situation. Essentially, there was a lot of pressure from Democrats for Kerry to vote against the $87 billion in 2003, so he did. There may be other notorious instances of him changing positions but I'm not aware of any as serious. For this he is portrayed as a spineless flip-flopper.

As far as Bush is concerned, other than Iraq he has been steadfast in one thing - tax cuts. The two times he's pushed for tax cuts he's been remarkably effective in pushing them through with a determined focus. In other proposals though, his record shows a different level of effort. The vaunted "No Child Left Behind" act which was a cornerstone of the 2000 campaign was passed, but he left it largely unfunded and it's considered to be a failing program. Late in 2003, someone decided that Bush needed to look like more of a "visionary", so he proposed some manned missions to the moon and Mars. The funding for these missions, however, was not part of the plan. You may not have heard much about them since then, and that's because no one seemed to care, so it's been left to founder with no budget and no real push behind it. Then, this spring, the urgent matter before the country was... amending the constitution to prevent gay marriage. Predictably, with millions of Americans out of jobs or with no health insurance, and with hundreds of soldiers dying in Iraq, no one really cared, so the issue has been largely dropped.

Some have likened Bush's style as President to that of a CEO, setting goals and letting his employees work to fulfill them. Even if you accept that hands-off style for the leader of the free world, you would expect him to see that his visions become reality. Instead, it's almost like Karl Rove is setting a fall TV schedule, floating pilot programs and cancelling the ones that don't rate high enough in the Nielsens. John Kerry makes a vote to deal with Iraq, and under pressure from Democrats who didn't like how Iraq was being dealt with (understandably), he rethinks his position. Thus, he's a wishy-washy waffler who can't be trusted to lead the country. George W. Bush takes a stand on amending the Constitution, presumably a fairly important matter, and under pressure from moderates who didn't warm to the idea of editing the charter guaranteeing our freedom to institutionalize discrimination (understandably), he rethinks his position, or at least postpones it until it's politically convenient. Thus, he's a straight shooter and someone who you know where he stands on an issue. Or that's what we're supposed to believe. Half the time, however, he'll shift his position just like any politician will do, including Kerry, Clinton and his dad. The other half of the time? Usually he simply sticks to whatever idea he started out with, like that Iraq posed an imminent threat, or that the Iraqi people welcome us as liberators, or that tax cuts are needed, create jobs and don't pose a threat via increasing debt. I'll stick with Kerry's flip-flops, thank you.

The following is an extended version of one of my favorite quotes (also available at bartleby.com). The shorter version, which I've italicized, is the part that I knew before. I emailed it to Brett (who everyone who reads the comments on here already knows), who emailed it to KFAN radio in Minneapolis in the midst of a politically-related discussion, and it was read on the air. This is the first time I've seen the larger context of the quote though, which feels especially relevant in a time where so many so-called "patriots" attack Michael Moore for Fahrenheit 9/11 (and try to keep it from being shown).

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. 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. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

- President Theodore Roosevelt

I turned on CNN this morning after I read the news online that John Edwards was going to be Kerry's running mate, and the reporter was saying that within minutes of hearing the news, the Bush/Cheney campaign was sending out emails attacking Edwards, calling him inexperienced or something to that effect. Since Edwards has roughly the same amount of experience that George W. Bush had when he was nominated for president, I'm not sure what they're getting at exactly. But it's stunning the way the Bush campaign works over there. You knew they were digging up dirt on whoever Kerry was going to pick, that they were going to have some line of attack no matter what, but it's almost like they're scared to death that someone might develop a positive impression of Kerry/Edwards before they get the chance to smear them. You can tell that Karl Rove must be seeing the declining poll numbers for Bush and know that the only chance they have of hanging on to power is if people view Kerry (and Edwards) as negatively as they view Bush and Cheney.

One thing they said was that Bush is going to have commercials with John McCain, presumably to remind viewers that Kerry wanted him for VP. I think that's a good idea - have one shot of Kerry telling McCain, "John, I want you to work with me across the aisle to help put an end to all this partisan muckraking." Then have another shot of Dick Cheney and Patrick Leahy showing how Cheney works with senators of another party to get things done in a bipartisan fashion.

This site's been around for a couple of months now and I feel like I've done a decent job of cataloging reasons why Bush and his administration are doing a terrible job, as well as debunking any attacks I've heard against Kerry (and now Edwards). What I need is some more positive stuff about Kerry and reasons to put him in office. In other words, I've listed plenty of reasons to vote against Bush, but not enough reasons why you would vote for Kerry. For most of you I'm preaching to the choir and you're going to vote for Kerry-Edwards regardless, but if I can get just one person who was going to vote for Bush or was on the fence to vote for Kerry, I'll feel like I've done my part. In order for that to happen, it's not just enough to compile reasons why Bush is ruining the country, I need solid reasons why someone should cast their vote for Kerry-Edwards. It's difficult to do that without sounding off campaign platforms and pledges that sound like they could come from Kerry's website ("he's a uniter, not a divider!"), so any help would be appreciated. In the meantime I'll still try to archive here the reasons why Bush and the rest of the administration is incompetant, as that is much easier.