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[However, Kennedy adjusted the numbers to account for undecided black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, and said the runoff election currently stands in Blanco's favor. With that adjustment, Blanco would get 53 percent of the vote, compared to Jindal's 47 percent]
Republican Primary Trial Heat (among Republican voters): Cecil Underwood 30% Robin Capehart 8% Sarah Minear 8% Dan Moore 3% Monty Warner 3% Doug McKinney 2% Other 3% Undecided 43%
Democratic Primary Trial Heat (among Democratic voters): Joe Manchin 46% Darrell McGraw 11% John Perdue 5% Jim Humphreys 4% Lloyd Jackson 3% Jim Lees 3% Spike Maynard 2% Robin Davis 2% Other 1% Undecided 25%
Anxiety about the 2004 presidential election that suddenly has grasped Republican hearts, from the White House to the grass roots, can be traced to President Bush's two important speeches on Iraq delivered over 15 days. They were both duds. His Sept. 7 speech to the nation was regarded by Republican politicians as a stylistic and substantive failure. His Sept. 22 address to the United Nations was worse, breeding discontent among his own supporters.
Until now, George W. Bush always had risen to the occasion. But failure marks current efforts of the president and his vaunted political team, headed by Karl Rove. This judgment was made to me by a well-known Republican operative experienced in two presidential campaigns: ''For the first time, there doesn't seem to be a plan.''
Last week's Gallup Poll putting Bush's approval rating at 50 percent and showing him trailing Wesley Clark and John Kerry in trial heats is dismissed by the president's managers as the dreaded third-year presidential syndrome that was overcome by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan with fourth-year landslides. However, those poll numbers take on new meaning in light of Bush's altered 2004 outlook. Replacing the old mantra that there is no way for Bush to lose, Republicans studying the electoral map wonder whether there is any way they can win.
Dramatic deterioration in the outlook over the last two weeks is reflected in the experience by a Republican businessman in Milwaukee trying to sell $2,000 tickets for Bush's only appearance this year in Wisconsin on Oct. 3. In contrast to money flowing easily into the Bush war chest everywhere until now, he encountered stiff resistance. Well-heeled conservative businessmen offered to write a check for $100 or $200, but not $2,000. They gave one reason: Iraq.
The clamp on their wallets, they said, derived from their feeling that Iraq was ''an albatross,'' and that ''there is no end in sight.'' The performance by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld particularly came under fire. The U.N. speech made matters worse, in the eyes of these non-contributors, with the president going ''hat in hand'' to the General Assembly. In fact, Bush was not begging at the U.N., but this mistaken impression reflects a breakdown in the White House propaganda machine. On the network broadcast programs the Tuesday morning after the speech, Wes Clark and Howard Dean were blasting the president, without anybody representing the administration position.
The Wisconsin experience is not unique. Republican members of Congress report that their constituents complain about $87 billion going to Iraq when they cannot get anything for their own states and districts. These lawmakers wonder why the White House was not skillful enough to divide the package between $67 billion for the military and $20 billion for nation building.
While a skillful sales job for aid to Iraq would not guarantee success, it has been anything but skillful. In his Sept. 7 speech to the nation, Bush looked uncomfortable standing in the Cabinet Room instead of seated in the Oval Office. The Sept. 22 U.N. speech convinced soft-liners that the president was defiant and convinced hard-liners that he was cringing. Republican political pros have expected that Bush would pivot and turn the nation's attention to a domestic issue. He did finally pivot last Thursday, but in the wrong direction by demanding action from Senate-House conferees. Such action would mean more federal spending, undermining support from the conservative base.
Another domestic issue is continuing loss of industrial jobs, and that does not ease Republican anxiety. It causes hard analysis of electoral maps that poses difficult questions. Is it realistic to think about Bush winning big industrial belt states won by Al Gore in 2000: Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania? Would Missouri slip to the Democrats if Richard Gephardt is on the ticket? No wonder the arrogance quotient at the White House is diminishing. Reporters regularly on that beat say they have been getting their telephone calls returned the last two weeks. - Source
The U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base inflated budget proposals at the Pentagon's request last year to hide $20-million from Congress, according to documents obtained by the St. Petersburg Times.
Special Operations officials divided the money among six projects so the money would not attract attention. They also instructed their own budget analysts not to mention it during briefings with congressional aides, the documents show.
The Pentagon's inspector general has launched an investigation. House Appropriations Chairman C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, said he will ask Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a hearing Tuesday whether the Pentagon intentionally deceived Congress.
"That doesn't set well with me," Young said. "We don't operate like that."
The investigation centers on an agreement between the Pentagon comptroller's office in Washington and the Special Operations Command comptroller at MacDill.
The plan, according to defense officials and documents obtained by the Times, called for Special Operations to pad its proposed budget by $20-million so the money could be used later by the Pentagon for some other purpose. The Pentagon initially wanted Special Operations to hide $40-million. The Special Operations Command, which oversees the nation's secret commando units, refused.
It is unclear what the Pentagon intended to do with the $20-million, or what became of the money. Young surmised that the money could have been used as a contingency fund, available to Rumsfeld to use at his discretion. While $20-million is relatively modest in a Pentagon budget of almost $400-billion, Young said, if all the armed services are doing it the amount could grow significantly.
"I don't know if it's been done before," he said, "or if it's common practice with the secretary."
Gen. Bryan D. "Doug" Brown, who became the Special Operations commander at MacDill earlier this month, declined to comment and cited the ongoing investigation. Brown, who had been the deputy commander, said he requested that the Pentagon inspector general investigate the allegations.
Col. Samuel Taylor, the Special Operations spokesman, said the command is cooperating with investigators.
"The only thing I can tell you is it is not a standard practice for SoCom to improperly utilize funding," he said, "and the IG investigation will determine if there is something inappropriate in this situation."
The agreement between the Pentagon officials in Washington and Special Operations officials in Tampa is spelled out in an e-mail distributed by SoCom comptroller Elaine Kingston to colleagues on Feb. 11, 2002.
In the e-mail, Kingston wrote that she received a call from someone in the Pentagon comptroller's office. The caller, who is not identified in the e-mail, asked if the Special Operations Command could "park" $40-million of research and development money in its proposed budget for the 2003 fiscal year, which ends Tuesday.
"They needed an answer in 5 minutes," Kingston wrote. "The agency they had it parked with had a problem and couldn't do it."
Kingston wrote that "there was no way for us to park $40M." She wrote that she and Deborah Kiser, SoCom's investment appropriations budget chief, found six programs where they could add $20-million.
The programs listed in the e-mail include improvements to missile warning systems on Special Operations aircraft, infrared equipment on helicopters and radar systems. The $20-million was distributed in amounts as small as $2-million and as large as $5-million.
In her e-mail, Kingston coached colleagues on how to account for the additional money and avoid attracting attention to it in congressional briefings.
"I just wanted to follow up with an e-mail to ensure that the staffer briefing slides for these programs DO include these funds and that the briefer not highlight or discuss them during the staffer briefings," she wrote.
"In other words, we can't say "my original program was XX but OSD parked some money in it so now it's YY,' " Kingston wrote, using the abbreviation for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. "We are doing a favor for OSD which we hope will benefit the command if we should need additional (research and development) in FY03."
Special Operations chose programs that already were getting spending increases and added small amounts so they would not stand out, Kingston wrote.
Young said he is confident Special Operations got the additional $20-million it requested. He said he would investigate what became of the money.
The Anti-Deficiency Act says money appropriated by Congress can only be used for the purpose authorized by Congress. There are other federal laws and regulations that prohibit submitting fraudulent budget documents to Congress.
Young said he plans to ask Rumsfeld about the case during a hearing Tuesday on President Bush's $87-billion funding request for Iraq.
The Pentagon's inspector general began an audit, or a preliminary investigation, in August. In a letter dated Aug. 6 to Gen. Charles Holland, the Special Operations commander who has since retired, the inspector general said, "Our objective will be to review the allegations to the Defense Hotline concerning funds "parked' at the U.S. Special Operations Command by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)."
Special Operations officials said inspector general investigators have visited MacDill.
Young said he did not know if "parking" money as described in the Special Operations e-mail is common throughout the Department of Defense or an unusual occurence.
"What bothers me is that Congress wasn't notified," Young said. "Constitutionally, Congress needs to be notified of things like this."
But Kingston, the Special Operations comptroller, began her e-mail by assuring colleagues that the request by the Pentagon comptroller was not unusual.
"It is common practice for OSD comptroller to keep small withholds of funds in each appropriation to cover pop up emergencies throughout the year of execution," she wrote. "So OSD goes out to all of the services and (defensewide) agencies to ask for help in justifying these dollars against existing programs in the budget."
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said it was not familiar with the practice outlined by Kingston.
Winslow Wheeler, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information and a former national defense analyst with the Senate Budget Committee, said Kingston's use of the term "park" to describe hiding Pentagon funds suggested it was common practice.
"It is the consequence of an overstuffed budget," Wheeler said.
He characterized Pentagon recordkeeping as "incompetent," with budget officials routinely unable to keep track of expenditures.
In the wake of 9/11, the special operations forces have become favorites of Rumsfeld and the White House. The 46,000 elite commandos have been at the forefront of the war on terror and played crucial roles in the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rather than relying on large armies, the Bush administration says unconventional forces are best prepared to fight terrorists. As a result, the SoCom mission is shifting, with more responsibility, more people, more weapons and a lot more money.
Announcing the changes earlier in the year, Rumsfeld said, "The global nature of the war, the nature of the enemy and the need for fast, efficient operations in hunting down and rooting out terrorist networks around the world have all contributed to the need for an expanded role for the special operations forces."
Last year, special ops units operated in more than 150 countries. Often in concert with the CIA, special operators are chasing terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and drug runners. - Source
The U.S. again bears honored witness to the Scare-O-Matics ratcheting up the fear factor we have come to daily expect, and pungently so, as a prelude to election 2004 - namely, that terrorists are essaying, 24/7, to vaporize the U.S.
The current administration has been frantically milking this theme of Terrorism Rex for all its worth (without garnering a sliver of understanding that terrorism is a tactic, not a nation, or is simply ignoring such understanding to further its PNAC vision of a new world order) by grotesquely using 9-11 as a pretext in pursuit of a reactionary and foreign policy agenda, as well as stark profiteering (note how Iraq will now be divvied up to investors, marketeers, and privatizers), none of which are in the best interests of the American people who finally appear to be turning toward this perception. As Carol Norris writes in a recent CounterPunch.org article, "Remember 911! is the catch-all response that replaces any obligation to account for their actions. It is the cozy, protective cloak that has made the Bush administration all but impervious to questioning and doubt." Amen.
The T-Rex theme remains a smokescreen. From Bush's installation into the White House to a suspect, and as yet murky, 9-11 attack, (note a rapidly movin'-on Bush here), the bin-amBushed U.S. has witnessed nothing but the spectacle of a long day-to-day scam. What to make of a so-called president who from the get-go, along with VP Cheney, asked Sen. Tom Daschle to curtail a fully unfettered investigation of the Day-That-Changed-Everything Forever, and who wanted such an investigation about as much as he wanted a bag of Texas rattlesnakes let loose under his bed, while the nation's sensational murders derive far more investigation? Or of a president and corporate administration who immediately began capitalizing on the tragedy for ideological and political purposes?
In a real democracy, Bush would be obligated to stand before La Gente and forthrightly and unrehearsed answer each and every disrespectful, impolite, unspun, pointed, embarrassing, putting-him-between-the-cross-hairs question for hours and days on end, if need be, from a genuinely investigative media rather than from our present pom-pom boosters. However, reality must receive its acknowledgment: When it comes to answering questions, Bush isn't exactly what would be deemed a "bring-em-on" kind of democratic guy. In his own words to journalist Bob Woodward, Bush crows, "I am the commander, see. I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they need to say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
Alas, Bush eschews even modest and compliant news conferences, and if he does show up, like a cockatiel he unendingly jaws the same, and only, rhetorical, buzz-worded, feel-good-about-America platitudes and vocabulary he's been told to memorize or read aloud. Bush's withering political past is now far older than its future, unless, if history repeats itself, voter-roll tampering again, in 2004, prevails without even a whiff of a mainstream investigation. - Source
The widely heralded fund-raising advantage enjoyed by Republicans could be significantly mitigated by the success of Democratic-leaning "527" committees, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.
Known by the section of the tax code under which they fall, 527 committees can accept unlimited donations from corporations, unions, and the rich -- just the kind of "soft money" federal candidates and the national parties have been barred from collecting under the 2002 McCain-Feingold bill.
The center's study, which covered the period from August 2000 to August 2003, found that money going to Democratic-leaning groups -- such as unions and environmental and abortion-rights organizations -- was more than double that going to Republican-affiliated groups, $185 million to $81.6 million.
In terms of "hard money" fund-raising that remains legal for the parties and candidates, the Republican advantage is clear based on the results from the first six months of this year. In that period, the three major GOP committees -- the Republican National, Senatorial, and Congressional committees -- raised $115 million, some 2 1/2 times the $43.5 million raised by their Democratic counterparts. Hard money can be given only by individuals, not corporations or unions, and is limited to $2,000 to federal candidates and $25,000 to a party.
These figures, along with the announced plans of the Bush reelection campaign to raise at least $160 million, have provoked widespread fears among Democrats and liberals that Republicans will swamp the opposition with a tidal wave of cash.
But if the Center for Public Integrity data are accurate, the $228 million advantage the GOP committees had over their Democratic counterparts in 2001-02 could be reduced by as much as $103.4 million, to $124.6 million.
Not surprisingly, the Republican National Committee has been closely tracking the 527 groups. An RNC study noted the plans of America Coming Together, a new group, to spend $75 million on voter mobilization, including a $10 million contribution from international financier George Soros. - Source
The most underplayed story of the past month was the one about the events of September 11 and Saddam Hussein.
There is no link between the two. This despite the fact that George W. Bush and the members of his administration have labored tirelessly to suggest one ever since they decided to invade Iraq. This despite the fact that they’ve been spectacularly successful at convincing American citizens of this fiction: more than two out of three believe the Iraqi leader was personally responsible for the terrorist attacks. “No evidence,” the president finally was forced to admit publicly, that this was so.
The Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune ran this extraordinary exercise in backpedaling on page one, where it belonged, but most other major papers buried it inside. The New York Times gave the story barely 300 words on page A22. The New York Post didn’t mention it at all, perhaps because it happened soon after it turned out the link between Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck had also been overstated.
Until now George W. Bush has been uncommonly lucky. He has managed to turn a budget surplus into the most monumental deficit in history, in part because of ill-conceived tax cuts. He mounted a war in Iraq with the promise of weapons of mass destruction that have never materialized. He went after two sworn enemies, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and has managed to apprehend neither despite the most expensive intelligence-gathering apparatus on earth. He used Saddam and Al Qaeda in the same sentence in his State of the Union address, then had to confess that his innuendo had false underpinnings. He traveled the other day to the United Nations to ask for help from a body whose members he treated with utter, unilateral contempt not long ago.
To truly appreciate what a free pass the president has gotten, it is necessary only to imagine what the response from Republicans—and reporters—would have been if Bill Clinton had been responsible for one of those things, much less all of them.
Clinton is one reason George W. has developed a Teflon coating slicker and thicker than that of Ronald Reagan. Bush’s predecessor set the bar low: as long as the American people were convinced that the president was not having sex in the Oval Office, they felt mollified.
The tenor of the last election also gave President Bush little to live up to. If there was one prevailing theme, it was that he was none too bright. He may be the only Yale grad ever to give a speech at the school in which he boasted of his lousy average. The result was that the president could not easily be seen as duplicitous or even particularly responsible. Rummy, Wolfie, Condi: it was as though the president and his advisers were a ventriloquism act.
But the Teflon has begun to show telltale scratches. The war is dragging on and soldiers continue to die, and increasingly Americans—even Americans in the military—are asking what the point was. The economy is a mess, the tax cut a sop. There was never a better time to ask for sacrifice from the American people than in the wake of September 11. Except for that of the soldiers, no sacrifice was demanded except the sacrifice of removing your shoes in airports and ceding your civil liberties to John Ashcroft.
This is what happens when personality trumps positions. It’s also what happens when the major parties are pinatas, bright and empty. The Republicans genuflect to the right wing, wink at the millionaires and ignore the moderates who used to be their base. The Democrats are afraid to be the party of the disenfranchised, to demand a real working wage and to take a strong stand against unnecessary aggression.
Wesley Clark, who has suddenly become a white-knight candidate in this time of conflict because of his military experience, has had a hard time giving a straight answer (or even a single answer) to the question of whether he would have voted for the Iraq war resolution. In the most recent debate he said, “If I’ve learned one thing in my nine days in politics, it’s you better be careful with hypothetical questions.” That’s what we’ve come to, a time in which it is possible to confuse the hypothetical and the principled, since the bottom line is the electable.
Someone once described to me the admissions standards of a prestigious public high school to which students are admitted based on a single test. On your test paper you don’t put a name or address. No one knows your neighborhood or ethnicity. There’s just an ID number and your answers, right or wrong.
Maybe that’s how presidential elections ought to be handled. Just a long checklist of positions: the minimum wage, free trade, tax policies, the use of force, the Supreme Court, entitlements. Then people, including us news people, wouldn’t spend so much time on the candidates’ chins or whether a spouse was going to be a liability and instead could concentrate on what matters. That is, finding a leader who is willing to take straightforward positions and support them with facts, not innuendo and suggestion and then the disingenuous coda “no evidence.” Instead of a Teflon president with a phalanx of frontmen, the opposite is what is called for: a person willing to say, “The stuff sticks here.” - Source
President Bill Clinton was impeached by a Republican-controlled Congress for lying about sex. President George W. Bush and aides lied the United States into a stupid, unnecessary colonial war that has so far killed more than 305 Americans and seriously wounded more than 1,400. It has also cost many thousands of Iraqi dead, and $1 billion US weekly.
Lying about sex is an impeachable offence; lying the nation into war apparently is not.
I was no Clinton fan, but give me his iffy morals any day over Bush's Mussolini-like strutting. Sen. Edward Kennedy is absolutely correct when he calls Bush's Iraq war a "fraud" concocted to win the next elections.
A fraud and an epic blunder.
Last week, Bush received a glacial and scornful reception at the United Nations that symbolized the world's contempt and disgust for his administration. Not since Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the speaker's rostrum has a major leader so embarrassed himself and his nation before the world body.
In his UN speech, Bush again claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and "ties" to terrorism. Days later, U.S. intelligence teams that scoured Iraq for four months reported no traces of weapons or terrorism links - the pretext used by Bush and his neo-conservative handlers for unprovoked war against Saddam Hussein.
The White House was left choking on its own grotesque lies.
Incredibly, VP Dick Cheney, a prime architect of the Iraq war, actually claimed recently that Iraq still had mobile germ labs, though U.S. and British inspectors debunked this claim last June. The "special" intelligence network created by neo-conservatives is still apparently feeding disinformation to America's leadership.
This latest humiliation came only days after Bush finally admitted Iraq was not, as most Americans were misled into believing, behind the 9/11 attacks.
No wonder world leaders gave Bush the cold shoulder, and even usually timid UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned against "dangerous acts of unilateralism" - a pointed reference to the bellicose Bush administration.
Unfortunately, many Americans still do not understand how gravely the Bush White House has damaged and sullied their nation's once noble reputation.
Dangerous aggressor
Recent polls show that even among traditional friends abroad, America is no longer regarded as a champion of freedom, democracy and human rights, but increasingly as a dangerous aggressor bent on imperial domination and exploitation.
America's most precious and proudest asset, its moral reputation, has been gravely damaged by the Bush White House. The only positive note: rising anti-Americanism is largely associated in the eyes of non-Americans with the persona of George Bush, a man who projects almost all the negative stereotypes foreigners hold of Americans.
Bush's blinkered core supporters in middle America simply don't understand or don't care what the rest of the world thinks of their nation, which, since 9/11, has wrapped itself in a cocoon of xenophobia and self-righteous rage.
The White House's mouthpiece media, led by Fox News, have simply blanked out world opinion and endlessly chorused administration war propaganda.
A fascinating March study of network TV news by New York's Fairness and Accuracy in Media shows how Americans were misled into war by outrageously biased programming on Iraq.
The analysis found: a) 76% of all commentators about Iraq on TV were present or former government officials; b) only 6% of commentators expressed skepticism regarding the need for war - when 61% of the public supported more time for diplomacy and inspections; c) on the four TV networks, less than 1% of sources were identified with anti-war groups.
And more than two-thirds of commentators were from the U.S., 75% either present or former government or military officials. The small number of foreign commentators mostly came from nations like Britain and Israel which were backing Bush's war policy.
In short, the major networks, under White House prompting, beat the war drums and blatantly excluded commentators with contrary views, giving Americans a badly warped view of world events.
No wonder so few Americans understand what is going on abroad, how the outside world really sees them, or why America has so many enemies overseas. Small wonder many Americans are turning for balanced news to the CBC, BBC and the Internet.
Citizens of the old Soviet Union suffered the same information isolation. Like Americans since 9/11, they were force-fed agitprop and patriotic pap disguised as news, and deprived of all knowledge of the real world around them.
Back to reality. Bush's UN speech was another attempt to mislead Americans into believing the horrid mess in Iraq - entirely the creation of Bush and the neo-cons - is somehow the fault of the UN.
French President Jacques Chirac proposed the U.S. hand Iraq over to UN control. But Bush, still lusting for Iraqi oil and fearful his family foe, Saddam Hussein, would return to thumb his nose at him, foolishly scorned this wise proposal.
Bush is praying his hit teams will assassinate Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein before next year's elections. But even that may not save him from the growing anger of defrauded Americans who are slowly realizing that his Iraq war was a political version of the giant Enron swindle. - Source
Few ever have accused Gov. Kenny Guinn of being a professional writer. That may be wrong. His grasp of irony would inspire a Nobel laureate.
Recently, Guinn joined other Republicans--Rep. Jon Porter and Attorney General Brian Sandoval--to kick off the Bush-Cheney re-election effort for 2004. The other two co-chairs, Sen. John Ensign and Rep. Jim Gibbons, were absent, presumably preparing for a cage match to decide which of them will run for governor in 2006.
Sandoval, the lead dog in this sled race, feels his campaigning doesn't compromise his duties in suing the federal government over the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. You may recall that when Guinn, Ensign and Gibbons backed the same ticket in 2000, they produced a letter in which Bush assured Nevadans that any decision on that subject would be based on "sound science."
Without any significant new scientific evidence, Bush since has chosen Yucca Mountain. That decision could, in theory, present problems for Nevada Republicans. But Guinn said he could get around that because voters should consider "the totality of the man."
Fair enough. Let us consider the totality of George W. Bush.
Almost immediately after the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, his administration began demonizing anyone who dared to disagree with his interpretation of reality. That meant accusing anyone who doubted the need for war with Iraq of encouraging terrorism. Or agreed with U.N. inspectors obviously unwilling to find weapons of mass destruction or admit to being lackeys for Saddam Hussein. Or questioned the wisdom of experts who knew Iraqis would welcome us with open arms to guide them to democracy, just like in Florida. Or reminded Bush he derided the Clinton administration for "nation-building."
Since then, Bush finally admitted what everyone but those who want to believe anything he says has known: No evidence exists to link Saddam to Osama bin Laden's bloody work. Once considered a model of rectitude, Secretary of State Colin Powell demonstrated before the United Nations that he fell for Bush's lies or would lie of his own volition. The United States has yet to find weapons and now wants United Nations help, provided the U.N. puts up money and the U.S. has control. And oddly enough, Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, won numerous contracts for rebuilding Iraq without any formal bidding process.
Meanwhile, Bush--and several of his fellow chickenhawks--spent time in the National Guard avoiding any kind of service, but he sure was willing to try to land a plane on an aircraft carrier so he could be shown declaring the war over. More American soldiers have died in Iraq since that pronouncement than they did beforehand. To those who say their policies are wrong, Bush and his lackey, Condoleeza Rice, claim it's just "revisionist history."
Well, that hits historians where they live. But before historians revised their interpretations of the past, some of my most illustrious predecessors claimed slaves enjoyed slavery and all women wanted to be barefoot and pregnant. Of course, considering how much Bush admires Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who would have felt very comfortable wielding a whip on a pre-Civil War Southern plantation, Bush still may feel that way.
On the domestic front, Bush claimed all would benefit from a tax cut. My tax cut was spent on higher gasoline prices with no basis in economic theory or fact, except how it benefits the oil companies Bush represents. Thanks in part to that tax cut, the budget is no longer balanced. The deficit is in the trillions and the cost of rebuilding Iraq at the expense of needed domestic programs will make the deficit worse.
And I say all this with some fear. What used to be called the "PATRIOT Act" might entitle Attorney General John Ashcroft to think I am a terrorist for doubting his veracity. It's no longer called that, by the way, because Bush's handlers figured out that Americans increasingly associate the PATRIOT Act with their effort to destroy our civil liberties; what matters is selling the product. Given how they have protected his association with energy companies, Dick Cheney appears to be the only American with a right to privacy; the rest of us are too great a threat to truth and honesty to be trusted.
Indeed, that is the key point about otherwise decent men like Guinn, Ensign, Gibbons, Porter and Sandoval. It's too easy to say that since Bush lied about Yucca Mountain, no Nevadan should trust him. "The totality of the man" is that he cannot be trusted on any subject at any time. And to those who think other presidential liars were worse, no one died at the Watergate building or under Bill Clinton's desk; only Lyndon Johnson's lies about Vietnam have approached this kind of deadliness, and at least he tried to do something to help victims of poverty and discrimination. Bush's lies have helped get young Americans killed and increased the wealth of his closest friends for reasons that he has yet to be able to explain without his nose growing.
Some Democrats have whispered the "sound science" letter Nevada Republicans produced from Bush in 2000 never was seen and thus never existed. These men wouldn't lie. They would only live a lie, and campaign for it. - Source
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Sun Tzu Files 
and 
indicate whether the poll numbers are up or down from the previous poll. Incumbents are in italics. (prior results in '()')