Thursday, September 30, 2004

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GOP works behind scenes in state

Efforts to re-elect President Bush are driven by 22,000 volunteers who are working -- sometimes under wraps -- to boost turnout

GOP works behind scenes in state

Efforts to re-elect President Bush are driven by 22,000 volunteers who are working -- sometimes under wraps -- to boost turnout

Idaho Mountain Express: Angels fly into Hailey - September 29, 2004

Angels fly into Hailey
Movie screening urges women to vote

In the 2000 presidential election, 22 million single women did not vote. In the last 6 months candidates for both the Democratic and Republican parties reported that in approximately 50 percent of the households they have canvassed in Boise, the women have not registered to vote, nor do they intend to.

What ever happened to Girl Power? Not the slightly embarrassing 1990s spectacle spearheaded by British popsters The Spice Girls, but the real girl power embodied by the suffragette movement in the early 1900s. Women died to gain the right to votel. Surely women today would be honored to embrace that, right? Apparently not.

Local resident Pirie Grossman was astounded when she heard about the apathy of these Boise women, and, after seeing the HBO movie “Iron Jawed Angels,” realized that there was something she could do about it.

“Iron Jawed Angels” chronicles the little known story of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who led a small group of passionate women in the battle for female suffrage in America.

Starring Oscar winners Hilary Swank and Anjelica Houston, the movie, which aired on HBO in February, depicts the harsher side of the suffragette movement in this country. When their fight for the vote landed them in jail, Paul and her ardent supporters’ did not give up. They protested their false imprisonment by embarking on a painful hunger strike, causing the prison officials to force feed them using metal clamps to hold their mouths open.

Once the press learned of the treatment of the women they proclaimed them the Iron Jawed Angels, earning them ample publicity to further, and eventually achieve, their cause.

Grossman received an email from a friend about the movie and after watching it decided that this was the vehicle to use to motivate women to register and vote.

“It’s such a moving film that I felt if we could fill the seats, whether in a theater, home, church or school, women would watch this film and be moved to fill out a registration form!” Grossman said.

In conjunction with the Idaho Women’s Network, Grossman has arranged for 23 special screenings of the movie to take place across the state of Idaho.

“Iron Jawed Angels” comes to The Wood River Valley Oct. 2 at the Liberty Theatre on Main Street in Hailey. The movie begins at 7 p.m. and those in attendance will have the chance to win door prizes.

There will be voter registration forms at the screening, as well as volunteers available to answer any questions. The event is non-partisan, free of charge and refreshments will be served. There will also be a screening in Spanish at 6 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 3.

The deadline to register to vote in Idaho is Oct. 8; however, in this state you can turn up on Nov. 2 with a photo ID and a utility bill that has your name and current address on it and you will be allowed to vote.
Idaho Mountain Express: Angels fly into Hailey - September 29, 2004

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

LA Times says "Compared with Kerry, BUSH IS A COWARD"

The suggestion that terrorists support Sen. John F. Kerry for president is ugly, but basically silly. The suggestion that Kerry supports the terrorists is flat-out disgusting. President Bush has allowed surrogates to spread the former idea, but he himself has helped to promote the latter.

Since election day 2000 and through his first term, Bush has talked a better game of democratic values than he has played. And he is not one for nuances in any event. But the point here is not subtle: The right to criticize the policies of those in power is not just one of democracy's fringe benefits; it is essential to making the democratic machinery work. And questions of war and peace — dead young Americans, dead Iraqis, a radicalized Middle East, billions of dollars: Was it worth all this? — are the ones that need democracy the most.

Bush's own campaign strategy has put the events of 9/11 and their aftermath at the center of this election. The president asks to be reelected based on the claim that his response to that event has been a success. It would be convenient for him if any challenge to this notion were considered beyond the pale. Increasingly convenient, in fact, as the word "success" seems less and less applicable. But Bush's convenience is not what this election is about.

This attempt to delegitimize criticism rather than rebut it comes as part three of a three-part Republican strategy. (At least we hope there are only three parts.) Part one was the first wave of Swift boat ads (and the ridiculous hoo-ha around them), raising questions about Kerry's Vietnam service. From there it was an easy leap to part two, the second Swift boat wave and the accompanying fuss about Kerry's leadership of the Vietnam antiwar movement. Part three drives it all home: As during Vietnam, so during Iraq. The guy is still at it, disloyally attacking his own country in wartime and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

As this page noted during the second Swift boat attack, the Vietnam antiwar movement (or at least the part of it Kerry was associated with) was the essence of patriotism, trying to rescue our country from a terrible mistake and to prevent the waste of any more young lives. Those who attack Kerry today for opposing the war back then overlook the fact that the country came to agree with him. If Kerry and others had refrained from criticism out of a crude notion of patriotism and a misguided "respect" for American troops, many more of those troops would be long dead today.

And, as with Vietnam, the nation's policy is gradually shifting Kerry's way. Would Bush have made even the halfhearted efforts of recent weeks to share the burden and direction of the war with the United Nations if he hadn't been looking over his shoulder at the Democratic candidate for his job? To accuse Kerry of aiding the enemy while taking his advice is despicable.

Compared with Kerry, George W. Bush is a coward. This is not a reference to their respective activities during Vietnam. It refers to the current election campaign. Bush happily benefits from the slime his supporters are spreading but refuses to take responsibility for it or to call point-blank for it to stop. He got away with this when the prime mover was the shadowy Swift boats group. Will he get away with it when the accusers are his own vice president, high officials of his own administration (Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage) and members of Congress from his own party (House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert or Sen. Orrin Hatch)?More from LA Times

If Only Poor Lil' Georgie Could Read

In his memoirs, "A World Transformed," written five years ago, George Herbert Walker Bush, our current President's father, wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq... There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

If only his son could read.

Monday, September 27, 2004

Idaho women hope to boost voter turnout

HBO film on suffragists will be shown locally

Local get-out-the-vote group targets single women

Printed One Vote at a Time!

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

92 percent of Iraqis see Coalition Forces as occupiers. Two percent see them as liberators.

92 percent of Iraqis see Coalition Forces as occupiers. Two percent see them as liberators. Those statistics, needless to say, bespeak a foreign policy disaster. The United States has lost Iraqi hearts and minds, which has made it infinitely harder for us to fight the insurgency that threatens to plunge the country into theocracy or civil war (or both).

Bush largely ignores the substance of Kerry's critiques of the Iraq war. Instead, he turns the variation in Kerry's critiques into an indictment of his opponent's character. Rather than asking voters to make a judgment on the wisdom of the war, Bush poses a choice between Kerry's "flip-flops" and what he called last week in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, his "clear moral purpose."

But clear moral purpose only produces moral results when it is rooted in reality. And today, just as before the Iraq war, the Bush camp dismisses facts that intrude upon its favored view of the world. In this campaign, President Bush and his allies describe the United States of our dreams--an America always beloved by the people we conquer, an America that never fights mistaken wars and that never loses its moral way, either in Vietnam or Iraq. And, if Democrats dare point out where reality diverges--that the Iraq war was based on a colossal factual miscalculation and that few Iraqis still see it as a moral enterprise--they are savaged for not believing in America.

Behind the Bush campaign's defiant, happy talk about Iraq is a strange indifference to the world we are supposedly saving. It doesn't matter that Iraqis don't see us as liberators as long as we do. It doesn't matter that the world increasingly lacks faith in the United States as long as we have faith in ourselves. "I want you to know that I believe with all my heart that America remains the great idea that inspires the world," Schwarzenegger said in his closing crescendo. He may want to believe that. I do, too. But recent polls suggest that, while people around the world still believe in democracy, fewer and fewer see the United States as its champion. The only way to change that is by understanding why others don't see us as we see ourselves and by adjusting our policies so they better reflect our creed.

That, however, would require admitting that this president and this country are not always right. And that, according to Bush and his supporters, would be a sign of poor character.

The New Republic Online: Character Acting

If Bush is reelected, ''he will repeat, somewhere else, the same reckless mistakes that have made America less secure

''Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell," Kerry told anaudience. ''But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."

He blamed Bush for ''colossal failures of judgment."

''This is stubborn incompetence," he said.

Even some prominent Republicans, including Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, have openly questioned the rate of progress on the ground in Iraq.

Boston.com Kerry accuses Bush of 'reckless mistakes':

Talking Sense, at Last, on Iraq

The New York Times

This is President Bush's war, and he's botched it.

Kerry said allies should be pressed harder to provide troops, cash and training for Iraqi security forces, postwar efforts should focus on quick projects with big payoffs, and those who mismanaged reconstruction should be fired... Kerry discussed an administration blinded by ideology and hobbled by incompetence... “National security is a central issue in this campaign,” he said. “We must have a great and honest debate on Iraq.”

He said Bush has had, by one count, 23 different rationales for the war. It was a reference to a senior honors thesis by Devon Largio of the University of Illinois, who found Bush and his aides had offered 23 rationales between Sept. 12, 2001, and Oct. 11, 2002.

“No more Mr. Nice Guy. Those days are over. Thank God,” “What John Kerry did today was put it right back in George Bush's lap: Here's where you went wrong, and here's what I can do to fix it,” she said. “I liked the urgency. I saw fire coming out of his nostrils.”USATODAY.com:

Kerry's "Top 10 Bush Tax Proposals"

10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.

9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.

8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.

7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.

6. Attorney General (John) Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.

5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.

4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa (Heinz Kerry) to cover the whole damn thing.

3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.

2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it “nuclear” instead of “nucular.”

1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.

Kerry's "Top 10 Bush Tax Proposals"

Thursday, September 16, 2004

James Fallows: Bush's Lost Year

By deciding to invade Iraq, the Bush Administration decided not to do many other things: not to reconstruct Afghanistan, not to deal with the threats posed by North Korea and Iran, and not to wage an effective war on terror. An inventory of opportunities lost. More.:

Monday, September 13, 2004

Not This Time...

John Kerry suggested Saturday night that Republicans may try to keep black voters from casting their ballots to help President Bush win in November. 'We are not going to stand by and allow another million African American votes to go uncounted in this election,' the Democratic presidential nominee told the Congressional Black Caucus.

'We are not going to stand by and allow acts of voter suppression, and we're hearing those things again in this election.

Kerry has a team of lawyers to examine possible voting problems to try to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election disputes. He also has said he has thousands of lawyers around the country prepared to monitor the polls on election day.

"What they did in Florida in 2000, some say they may be planning to do this year in battleground states all across this country," Kerry said. "Well, we are here to let them know that we will fight tooth and nail to make sure that this time, every vote is counted and every vote counts."More.:

Sunday, September 12, 2004

Girls Gone Riled: Will Single Women Break Bush's Heart?

Trend-conscious candidates beware: Do not get caught courting soccer moms or NASCAR dads. They’re so over. This year’s hot new swing voter is the single woman.

And with very good reason: Although single women account for one-fifth of the U.S. electorate, they historically turn out to vote in much smaller numbers than married women or, for that matter, married or single men.

The stats are simply stunning: According to Women’s Voices, Women Vote, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to engaging unmarried women in the electoral process, 22 million unmarried women didn’t vote in the last presidential election.
And what’s more, they are seriously ticked off: Over two-thirds of them believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction and want real change

Although it’s impossible to pigeonhole a group as diverse as single women there’s a reason they tend to have the political opinions they do: The vast majority of them find themselves living on the economic edge, radicalized by the struggle to provide for themselves, their children and their older parents, mostly on one income.

They occupy the front lines of the Other America. They know what it means to have a child in a failing school. They live the reality of being forced to use an ER as the family doctor because they can’t afford health insurance. They understand the feeling of being one paycheck away from poverty. To them the WalMartization of our economy is not a theoretical concept.

The issues single women are most concerned with — job security, affordable health care and decent educational opportunities for themselves and their children — also skew heavily in the Democrats’ favor. When you’re barely making ends meet, another round of tax cuts for millionaires doesn’t tend to be very high on your political must-have list. Neither is spending mega-billions fighting preemptive, ideological wars based on misleading premises — especially when, more often than not, it’s your loved ones coming home in body bags.

It can’t be helping Karl Rove sleep at night to know that single women are also more likely to support gun control, gay rights and, especially, abortion rights. Talk about your potential culture war blowback.

So if untold millions of single women voters are likely to reject Bush faster than a bucktoothed blind date with bad breath and a crummy car, why isn’t the Kerry campaign busy drawing up the guest list for its Inaugural Ball?

Because the trick is getting these progressive-minded women to turn up at the polls. More.:

Einstein on Militarism

It is horrifying to realize that the poison of militarism and imperialism threatens to bring undesirable changes in the political attitude of the United States….What we see at work is not an expression of the sentiments of the American people; rather, it reflects the will of a powerful minority which uses its economic power to control the organs of political life.

~Einstein

TIME.com: Mission Still Not Accomplished

The U.S. military has been here before: caught in a conflict where the thing it does best—fighting—can't win the war. In Iraq today, brute force is a wasting asset. The U.S. death toll since sovereignty was returned to Iraq on June 28 has eclipsed the number killed in the invasion, and the total tally just passed 1,000. The wounded number more than 7,000. The Bush Administration would prefer to avoid any bloody showdowns until after the U.S. presidential election in November, but it faces hard decisions now. "If you do go in," says a senior U.S. intelligence official, "you cause resentment and anger" that breed more support for the insurgency. More.

Kerry: "I've Been in Worse Situations"

TIME talks with John Kerry about the upcoming presidential election": "

Feds place Idaho fish and water in jeopardy The Idaho Statesman

The plan makes the wild assertion that man-made dams are part of the natural environment fish must navigate on their way to and from the Pacific Ocean. Now the agencies say the dams do not jeopardize the long-term survival of the species, although the dams kill many fish. Agencies use legal maneuvering to defend this scheme. They say they can consider the lower Snake River dams a natural part of the river system because they were built from 1962 to 1975, and Snake River salmon were added to the federal government's endangered species list years later.

This is illogical. The dams aren't coincidental to the salmon's precarious future; the dams are the central reason the salmon are in trouble. There's no debate here. Treating the dams as a fact of life, or of death, ignores decades of science. The Statesman in 1997 recommended breaching the Snake River dams. We said then that this was the best way to preserve Idaho salmon and defend Idaho water.

More.

What Goes Up...

Sept. 11 - One week after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention in New York, the latest NEWSWEEK poll shows George W. Bush’s double-digit “bounce” narrowing by to six points. Bush-Cheney had enjoyed an 11-point lead over the Kerry-Edwards ticket coming out of their convention, but in the latest poll, taken on the eve of the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the incumbents now lead 49 percent to 43 percent in a three-way race. The poll also found that as convention buzz subsides, Bush’s approval ratings have again dropped below the 50 percent mark . Bush’s favorability ratings have also slipped slightly.MORE.

Saturday, September 11, 2004

Political Wire: Quote of the Day

Political Wire: Quote of the Day:

'The Republicans have the best propaganda out there since Lenin, and they just make stuff up and they keep repeating it, and hope people are going to believe it.'

-- Howard Dean, to the Associated Press. "

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Bill COPE: Dirt Poor Politics

Send $ now: Ada Dem:

Ms. Heinz Kerry Is A New Flavor Of Election Mate

"It speaks well of John Kerry that he married Teresa—it means he’s not intimidated by other people’s intelligence," said 28-year-old Anna Wahrman, the copy chief at Stuff magazine. "As opposed to a certain lying imbecile who needs his wife to be seen and not heard."

"Teresa seems to have a genuine curiosity about the world," said Deborah Orr, a 35-year-old music publicist. "That’s in complete contrast to the sort of suspicion with which the current administration views so many other nations. Or New Yorkers who don’t for a minute believe that the war in Iraq, or domestic anti-terrorism money distributed pork-barrel style, is really and truly all for the sake of our safety."

For those who feel hopelessly trapped by this administration, Ms. Heinz Kerry seems like the only one ballsy enough to take things in a whole new direction. A Hillary wouldn’t be enough. Many women expressed admiration for Mrs. Clinton but qualified it: They felt somehow put off by her stridency, her lack of warmth, and felt a little apologetic about not being able to relate fully to someone who, in theory, they should hold in high regard. They also felt sorry for Mrs. Clinton—for the fact that she has had to compromise so much to get to where she is, that she’s had to muffle her feminism and highlight her hair. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Ms. Heinz Kerry, who claims she has no political aspirations of her own, can afford to shake things up in a way that most female leaders have not and can not.

"She’s out there looking like herself, talking about what interests her, talking about what has been an interesting and unpredictable life," said Democratic political consultant Jen Bluestein. "And you think, ‘Well, thank you!’ It’s like watching TV and flipping through 65 channels of banal made-for-TV movies and finally finding The African Queen on."

Women seem nostalgic for stars who had guts, style and sex appeal, wisecracks spilling out of their mouths like ticker tape—weathering as we are the storm of plastic blonde skanks and ditzes like Paris, Jessica and Britney.

"When women speak, especially in politics, they have to disarm, to charm," Ms. DiBattista said. "We’re missing the element of directness. And so I think that there’s a secret need and real hunger for women who are direct." Ms. Heinz Kerry may serve as some small reprieve from all the Stepford Wivery that is exacted from female politicians and the female relations of politicians—and from the women of our current administration specifically. Laura Bush took pains in her R.N.C. speech to invoke the living room and dining room, making it clear that her influence went no further than that. Mrs. Bush could only mention women’s rights in the context of an Afghan Olympian finally being able to wear pants to compete in the Games.
Ms. Heinz Kerry Is A New Flavor Of Election Mate: "

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Kerry is back in the race, says latest poll

Analysis of swing states gives challenger small lead More.:

The Curse of Dick Cheney

Should George W. Bush win this election, it will give him the distinction of being the first occupant of the White House to have survived naming Dick Cheney to a post in his administration. The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch. It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992. The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.

This pattern of misplaced confidence in Cheney, followed by disastrous results, runs throughout his life -- from his days as a dropout at Yale to the geopolitical chaos he has helped create in Baghdad. Once you get to know his history, the cycle becomes clear: First, Cheney impresses someone rich or powerful, who causes unearned wealth and power to be conferred on him. Then, when things go wrong, he blames others and moves on to a new situation even more advantageous to himself.

"Cheney's manner and authority of voice far outstrip his true abilities," says Chas Freeman, who served under Bush's father as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "It was clear from the start that Bush required adult supervision -- but it turns out Cheney has even worse instincts. He does not understand that when you act recklessly, your mistakes will come back and bite you on the ass." More.:

'W' stands for WRONG

'The 'W' stands for wrong, Wrong choices, wrong judgment, wrong priorities, wrong direction for our country.'More.:

Monday, September 06, 2004

"This is as close to McCarthyism as you can get in a campaign."

"'What has surprised me is the voracity with which they have tried to attack his heroism,' McKean said. 'I have never seen people lie so egregiously and get away with it. This is as close to McCarthyism as you can get in a campaign. The print press has worked hard to discredit it, but television just replays the charges over and over.'"More.:

A Trailing Kerry Has Been There, Won That

John F. Kerry has been here before.

Turning into the final eight weeks of the presidential campaign, the Democratic nominee faces doubts within his party and pundits increasingly skeptical of his chances against a resurgent President Bush, who seems to have momentum heading his way.

It is reminiscent of the Democratic race last winter, when Kerry was counted among the living dead and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was romping to the Democratic nomination — or so it appeared.

"He's at his best when he's cornered," said Paul Watanabe, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and a longtime Kerry watcher. "Putting him in that fighting mode is key."
The 1996 contest revealed a steel core within Kerry, observers say, along with an agile mind and tenacity that carried him through eight arduous debates.

"The key to understanding Kerry is that he fights best from an underdog status," said Lou DiNatale, a University of Massachusetts pollster who has followed Kerry's career for years. "You can't underestimate his ability to find the crease, the cutting issue, at the right moment and ride it all the way to election day."
More

Candidates Get Down To Specifics

"Dowd said most of the undecided voters are in suburban precincts, most are white and they tend to be older. There are roughly equal numbers of men and women, and more of the undecideds are churchgoers than in the partisan ranks, he said. Traditionally, undecided voters split heavily against an incumbent president. But Dowd said that, compared with April, when the undecided pool appeared tilted in Kerry's direction, they now are as likely to support Bush as the Massachusetts senator.

Polling shows that jobs and the economy are the No. 1 concern of voters, and they have been the staple of Kerry's campaign all year. Democrats contend that overall, incomes have declined since Bush took office, and they say that the tax cuts at the heart of his economic policy have increased inequality and left millions of workers and their families struggling to pay bills. "More.:

BUSH SNORTED COCAINE AT CAMP DAVID

She quotes his former sister-in-law Sharon Bush who claims: "Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was President, and not just once either."

Other acquaintances allege that as a 26-year-old National Guard, Bush "liked to sneak out back for a joint or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine".

Bush has admitted being an alcoholic but, asked during the 1999 election if he did drugs, he said: "I've told the American people that years ago I made some mistakes.

Kelley says that the Bush family covered up scandals because of their wealth and influence. She claims George W started drinking at school and continued at Yale university to overcome shyness.

Former student Torbery George says in the book: "Poor Georgie. He couldn't relate to women unless he was loaded."

Another says: "He went out of his way to act crude. It's amazing someone you held in such low esteem later became president." More:

Bush has "no sense of reality"

And that "lack of reality is something people feel" in their jobs, in their health care, and in their schools that are "not performing."

Sunday, September 05, 2004

Dirty Tricks and Swift Boats - The History of "Rat Fucking"

Back before the Watergate break-in, Republican operatives had a name for their unique brand of below-the-belt campaign attacks: "rat fucking." Part character assassination, part collegiate pranks, the dirty tricks -- conducted in utmost secrecy -- were designed to throw Democrats off balance, create confusion, and tarnish reputations. Three decades later these attacks have been perfected. Except now they're practiced out in the open for everyone, including the compliant media, to witness.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth became the latest multimedia incarnation. Launching the most bitter, and perhaps most deliberately misleading Republican-backed campaign attack since the racist Willie Horton ad of 1988, the group, bankrolled by a wealthy Bush donor, aired hollow, secondhand allegations that John Kerry lied about his actions in Vietnam that won five military medals. Not one charge about Kerry's medals has withstood the slightest scrutiny, but thanks to the inaction of the national press corps, which again appeared in awe of the mighty Republican attack machine and its conservative media echo chamber, the Swift Boat's dirty trick succeeded in disrupting the presidential campaign for several weeks this summer.

Frustration also simmers around the press, and the double standard it seems to have adopted toward the candidates. "Bush has run the most issueless, negative campaign in modern politics," notes Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network. "Yet nothing is written about the fact that a sitting president is offering no agenda for his second term. He should be getting fucking skewered in the press for the kind of campaign he's running, but there's nothing. Republicans are held to a different standard."

Nowhere has that that double standard been more apparent than when contrasting the way the media have covered the two parties' conventions. Compare the coverage of Bush's colossal blunder on Monday -- telling NBC's Matt Lauer that he didn't think the war on terror was winnable -- with Teresa Heinz Kerry's trivial "shove it" remark during the Democratic Convention in Boston last month. So far, Bush's gaffe has garnered far less coverage than Heinz Kerry's.

"Cable TV is like the creature in 'The Predator,'" says the Los Angeles Times' Ronald Brownstein. "It's drawn to heat and conflict. It looks for things with the most edge to it."

"It used to be we as the press would adjudicate the facts of the battle," says Scott Shepherd, a political correspondent for the Cox newspaper chain who is covering his fifth presidential election. "We don't do that anymore. Now we present attacks. That's troublesome to me. We've gotten the idea if we say something is 'fact,' then somehow we're biased," he says, referring to the constant charge on the part of conservatives that the press shows a liberal bias. "The attacks have worked. People are intimidated."
More.:

Bush twins swill vodka, stiff the help

A galloping sense of entitlement, apparently, isn’t the only thing that runs in the Bush family. Salon:

Ridenbaugh Press

Ridenbaugh Press: " Battlegrounds

As the nation has its battleground states in this presidential election, so Idaho has its battleground legislative districts.
Not many of them, to be sure. But there are a few.
They can be summarized fairly efficiently: Three where margins may change a bit in the Panhandle, and three where they may change with some significance in Boise.
Up north, the three districts are those based around Sandpoint, Coeur d'Alene and Lewiston. (There is a serious legislative race at Moscow, where Democratic Representative Shirley Ringo is being seriously challenged, and another at St. Maries where Republican Representative Dick Harwood may be ousted, but these are unlikely to have a major effect on local politics.)
In District 1, the race of note is for the House seat being vacated by Republican John Campbell. This district, Boundary and most of Bonner Counties, was dominated legislatively by Democrats until just about a decade ago; for the last few cycles, Democrats have been shut out here. But maybe not this time. Sandpoint Democrat Steve Elgar reputedly is running a solid contest, the best by a Democrat here in a decade or so, and is thought likely to win over Republican Eric Anderson. If he does, this area could turn more competitive; this one race could have that effect. If he loses, that may be an indicator that the area is turning its back on Democrats generally, and may be written off for a few years more.
Something similar is happening in the central Coeur d'Alene District 4, where in 2002 both House seats shifted from Republicans to Democrats. Those were narrow races, though, and hardly conclusive. There's a change that the Democrats (one an incumbent, George Sayler, and the other, Mike Gridley, the primary winner over a Democratic incumbent) might be swept aside in a presidential election year. If they su"

Finally A Proven Link Between the 9/11 Hijackers and a Foreign Govt... and the Bush Coverup.

Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship...

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers "would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration..."
More

Saturday, September 04, 2004

George W. Bush's missing year

The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father.

Did they see him do any National Guard service?

'Good lord, no.'

While Kerry earned a Silver Star and a Bronze Star after saving a crewmate's life under fire on the Mekong River in Vietnam, by contrast, the Georgie that Allison knew was a young man whose parents did not allow him to live with the consequences of his own mistakes.

Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he'd yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he'd rented in Montgomery trashed -- the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. "He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people's possessions," Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house.

Salon.com :

Bush Behind The Swift Boat Ads

A plurality of Americans believe the Bush campaign is behind the television ads run by critics of John Kerry over his service in Vietnam Annenberg Polling Data Shows

Friday, September 03, 2004

Students split in support for Bush

The Times-News Online -- Twin Falls, Idaho:

Home, Home on the Range? Shoshone Grapples with CAFOs

Agriculture or Industry?

At what point does a farm become an industrial plant?

5,000? 10,000? 15,000 mature milk cows? On a small piece of land?

Neighbors against neighbors

This is not the typical urban/agricultural interface problem, Albright says.

"It's not that we don't want the Fitzgeralds where they are. But we don't want them to get any bigger," he said. "Most of the people complaining are agricultural people. It's pitting farmers and ranchers against dairymen."