What Ralph Nader was fighting in 2000 and what Ross Perot was fighting in 1996.

BUSH: Yeah, I agree. I just — I think there has been — some of the scientists, I believe, Mr. Vice President, haven’t they been changing their opinion a little bit on global warming? A profound scientist recently made a different —

MODERATOR: Both of you have now violated — excuse me. Both of you have now violated your own rules. Hold that thought.

GORE: I’ve been trying so hard not to.

MODERATOR: I know, I know. But under your own rules you are not allowed to ask each other a question. I let you do it a moment ago.

BUSH: Twice.

MODERATOR: Now you just — twice, sorry. (LAUGHTER)

GORE: That’s an interruption, by the way.

MODERATOR: That’s an interruption, okay. But anyhow, you just did it so now —

BUSH: I’m sorry. I apologize, Mr. Vice President.

MODERATOR: You aren’t allowed to do that either, see? (LAUGHTER) I’m sorry, go ahead and finish your thought. People care about these things I’ve found out.

BUSH: Of course they care about them. Oh, you mean the rules.

MODERATOR: Yeah, right, exactly right. Go ahead.

BUSH: What the heck. I — of course there’s a lot — look, global warming needs to be taken very seriously, and I take it seriously. But science, there’s a lot — there’s differing opinions blah blah blah…

Re-elect the Skull of Richard Nixon!

I didn’t know that the skull of Richard Nixon was running.

The bald man is watching.

This bald man?

Why did gary hart drop out of the election?

Because he dared the media to destroy him.

Jon Stewart Shadow Government Poster.

I wasn’t able to pull that out when leafing through his book at “Countermedia Books”. I assume it’s not featured in the cd version.

bad things george w bush has dun

I don’t know. How do I narrow the field?

standing by the dumpster and the eagle has landed.

Part of the great Moon-Landing Hoax? Next to the studio-shot, there was a dumpster?

george bush jeans pictures

You want Bush to start appearing in Levis commericals?

norman thomas 1948 presidental slogan i have nothing…

I… have nothing.

black dick porn

Cheney’s not black! I guess in your fantasy he is.

Bouncing about on AM right-wing talk radio, we hear the commercial for a web site accumulating signatures for a consitutional amendment (or law or something) to protect the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

We have a grandson visiting his grandpa in prison. The grandpa tells the grandson how he got there. “Things were much different in the old days.” But then: First they banned the words “under god” from the Pledge of Allegiance, then they took the words “In God We Trust” from the money, and the next thing we knew: he was in prison!!

I can’t figure out how that puts anybody in prison. That must be one hell of a slippery slope!!

So the ad ends this way:
“Bye, grandpa!”
“Bye, grandson! I’ll be praying for — ”
The guard interjects “Quiet! This is how you got here in the first place!!”

Last week, the House of Representatives — with plenty on the table (Homeland Security, an unbalanced budget, health care, and the list goes on) went to work on (1) political tax cuts (2) a law to keep state courts from ruling on the words “under God” in the Pledge, and (3) the annual (sometimes more than annual) Flag-Burning Amendment.

I laugh. I cry. But mostly I sigh.

Bush: Saddam was a threat

Threat? With what? SPITBALLS???

I eye aiie. I googled the name of Sheila Bilyeu a few days ago, and got squat. Today I google her name again, and I see that she, for what it is worth, is getting her message out a little bit.

I’ll go ahead an relay the more sensational parts. She believes, for various reasons, that the portrait described by the media piece here was unfair.

In the 1990s, Bilyeu unsuccessfully sued Ponca City schools, game show host Alex Trebek, CBS anchor Dan Rather and others.

She said the device was stuck in her head during an operation in the late 1970s at a military base in Arizona.

In her D.C. lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts wrote in 2001: “Plaintiff has filed a narrative, stream-of-consciousness complaint that, as best as I can tell, revolves around the plaintiff’s belief that a conspiracy led by President Clinton has implanted a transmission device in her head, ‘gassed’ her and stolen her dog.”

A brain implant? Anonymous gassings? Fine. But stealing a dog? Has Bill Clinton no shame?

Here’s an interview:

Some news media has portrayed you as crazy, citing your claim that a radio receiver was implanted in your head. Have you, or are you willing to, have a doctor verify this?

I am really rather embarrassed that I sued him;others have done such worse things.I should sue the Daily Oklahoman and Nolan Clay for his lies. Nolan Clay did lie. Perhaps he misunderstood ,but there are lies and he deliberately tried to destroy me on behalf of Carson is my belief;anyone who asked themselves why he did that would surely agree.

Upset by this “revocation” of endorsement, she’s peppered that message board:

TRY TO HELP VICTIMS. DO NOT DO AS CLAY (media-person) DID AND TRY TO RUIN MY CHANCES. HE OBVIOUSLY IS IN BED WITH CARSON OR SOMEONE WHO HAS BAD MOTIVES.WHY WOULD HE OTHERWISE NOT GO AFTER THE FRONTRUNNERS INSTEAD OF A POOR PERSON WHO JUST WANT THIS COUNTRY TO BE WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE.

AND:

My only question is that is she successful in her bid for the Senate, won’t she now be responsible for the conspiracy she is fighting against?

Okay. At a certain point it ceases being amusing and just becomes depressing.

For Oklahomans who find the Democratic candidate too… Republican… for their tastes, and want to throw a protest vote somewhere… I guess you could close your eyes, pretend that you didn’t read about the Conspiracy, and just run off of this article.

“Well, so be it, nothing is perfect in life, so you have an election that’s not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet.”

You know, if the Confederate States had been able to vote in the 1864 election, Abraham Lincoln would not have won a second term.

Think about it.

You want to keep the peace, you’ve got to have the authorization to use force. But it’s — this will be — this is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It’s a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration’s ability to keep the peace. AND

Our goal is not merely to limit Iraq’s violations of Security Council resolutions, or to slow down its weapons program. Our goal is to fully and finally remove a real threat to world peace and to America. Hopefully this can be done peacefully.

Bush said those things. Kerry’s caveat-filled comments, in defense of his “yea” vote, echo that reasoning (I’d have to pull it from his Senate website, and I don’t feel like it right now). Kerry’s position, therein, giving Bush a big stick to use to force Saddam to comply is intellectually defensible. Except that… well… I don’t believe Bush (I didn’t believe Bush at the time) and I don’t believe Kerry.

Ted Rall puts the general problem here. Political calculations are us. I think that a “no” vote would put Kerry in a more tenuable position electorally right now, even if a “yea” is intellectually defensible, but it didn’t look that way to Kerry at the time. (As it stands, every response from the Bush Administration to any criticism made by Kerry about Iraq is He voted for the war resolution.) There’s a weird trick to understanding swing voters, which has to do with “gutso” more than position statements.

Explaining Hans Blix, and why the Iraq War hawks think he’s “completely backtracked” to a position that “Saddam was giving us everything we wanted”, is a matter of probing simple office politics. Hans Blix is a diplomat, and in his diplomatic demenor to the US and Iraq and the UN, he’s going to offer caveats to everybody’s position… particularly the most powerful of nations, which was then on his back constantly. I have not reread Hans Blix’s testimony. But, remember some of those UN battles. Recall that a week after the Colin Powell testimony (universally heralded throughout the US media), Hans Blix blasted the testimony… in diplomatic language. (Which sent Iraq War hawks’ heads exploding in righteous anger… recall that the Washington Times (or it might have been the New York Post) published in what would otherwise be a photograph of Hans Blix a cartoon of Inspector Magoo.

I’ve been thinking of spooling together a page of “most important” pieces from this blog. Chronos, an entry posted on September 4, is entry #1 on the list. The point there is that Colin Powell, in March of 2001, said that Saddam didn’t have any “weapons of mass destruction”, and Bush’s State of the Union speech in 2002 did not say that he had any. You can go from there any direction you want…

“We knew what we had to do and we went about it and did it. Great Britain is great again.”

Margaret Thatcher said that. Yes. Great Britain. Great agan. Because they won a war against Argentina for the Falkland Islands.

Hm.

My only reference point to the Falkland Islands War, to be honest, is from The Simpsons. Krusty the Clown puts in a tape of an old show because he has to be leaving for one reason or other, and says “I hope nobody notices.” The broadcast goes, Krusty juggling — and someone hands him a cuecard. “Breaking news. The Falkland Islands have been invaded! I repeat: The Falkland Islands have been invaded.” (whips out a map of the action and goes on). Krusty, watching the tape, says “Oy oy oy”, or whatever.

I wonder: did Reagan say “The United States is Great Again” after successfully bombing Grenada? We know that George H W Bush said that the “Vietnam syndrome has been wiped away and buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula” after Operation Desert Storm.

I neither condemn nor condone.

For those staunch Kerry supporters who want anyone but Bush, I encourage you to vote for Kerry and do what you have to do to get him out . . . a change would be real nice . . . . yet I really hope that there is tie like last election and a real showdown this November and total chaos arrives where Kerry doesn’t back down this time and starts his own revolution.

at this moment. . . I can’t consciously vote for anyone right now, except for maybe Johnny Depp because Reagan proved beyond a shadow of a doubt a good underrated but extremely charismatic actor is the only shred of unity the American voter’s ever agreed on.

“Mixed signals are the wrong signals to send to the enemy,” Bush said on Monday. “Mixed signals are the wrong signals to send to the people of Iraq.” (quote found here, along with other places and from other Administration officials.)

Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go. This prospective policy is based on Iraq’s national elections in late January, but not predicated on ending the insurgency or reaching a national political settlement. Getting out of Iraq would end the neoconservative dream of building democracy in the Arab world. The United States would be content having saved the world from Saddam Hussein’s quest for weapons of mass destruction.
Robert Novak wrote that. Seems to be a trial balloon from Bush Campaign… an attempt to placate what anti-war Republicans there are. (Who all read the semi – anti-war Robert Novak.)

The advance of freedom always carries a cost, paid by the bravest among us. America mourns the losses to our nation, and to many others. And today, I assure every friend of Afghanistan and Iraq, and every enemy of liberty: We will stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes of freedom and security are fulfilled.” That was said by President Bush at the UN on September 21.

“At some point the Iraqis will get tired of getting killed and we’ll have enough of the Iraqi security forces that they can take over responsibility for governing that country and we’ll be able to pare down the coalition security forces in the country.” Rumsfeld said that. I think that’s a riddle… an onion that you keep peeling, paring down meaning after meaning.

Costa Rica is no longer a member of the “Coalition of the Willing”.

“Forty-three days before the election, my opponent has now suddenly settled on a proposal for what to do next, and it’s exactly what we’re currently doing.” Bush said that. He also said that Kerry was sending “Mixed Signals.”

“John Kerry’s latest position on Iraq is to advocate retreat and defeat in the face of terror.” This was a statement issued by the Bush Campaign concurrently with the “exactly what we’re currently doing” statement.

Do I dare dredge up everything from Administration spokespeople, Administration Apologists, and “Those in the Know” on the subject of Iran?