Nat Hentoff asks:
"Who Made George W. Bush Our King?"
*He Can Designate Any of Us an Enemy Combatant*




"This is an unprecedentedly serious assault, folks, on the core of our system of justice. As Judge Motz said in her passionate dissent, "[This court's] decision marks the first time in our history that a federal court has approved the elimination of protections afforded a citizen by the Constitution solely on the basis of the Executive's designation of that citizen as an enemy combatant, without testing the accuracy of the designation. Neither the Constitution nor controlling precedent sanctions this holding." (Emphasis added). "

(see Village Voice article here)

July 26, 2003- Oil executive was found dead at his ranch..Ruled a suicide(here)

Oh---
he was also the Secretary of the Navy.

Cancer is rough stuff. I know from personal family experience. My heart goes out to this family.
I can't help but wonder if the stress regarding the stretching of our military and the exposed lies about Iraq contributed to this man's sorrows and burdens.
Do you agree?

From the Howard Dean Weblog: "The President Has Misled Us"

"Last week I asked sixteen questions about the war in Iraq that must be answered if the American people are to understand the truth around the rush to war and the failure to plan for peace.

"These questions are, however, only one piece of a far broader practice by this administration of misleading the American people and breaching the fundamental trust that they have placed in their elected leadership. This practice goes far beyond misleading the country and the world about the reasons for taking us to war in Iraq, this practice extends into the state of the nation's economy, its environment, its schools and beyond...."

DLC's From and Reed Shut Out Candidates from DLC Meeting in Philadelphia
Or: How to Sabotage, Damage, and Divide Your Own Political Party

Reed and From are at it again.
Creating "news" that is totally out-of-touch with most Democrats today.
They should be fired.
Immediately.

It all boils down to this point...a point which Reed and From are sorely mistaken and misleading:

They say, in this AP article from the NY Times:

"His {Howard Dean's} staunch opposition to the U.S.-led war against Iraq does not go over well with centrist Democrats, however, whose leaders circulated a memo in May that suggested Democrats could lose badly in 2004 if the former Vermont governor were their candidate.

On the eve of a Democratic Leadership Council summer meeting in Philadelphia, From said it was essential that the Democrats have a nominee strong on national security to be competitive with President Bush.'

A look at most recent polls will tell you that Americans are extremely doubtful about Bush's position on the Iraq war.
I dare say that Reed and From are being disingenuous, at best, to say that a Democratic candidate would have to cave in and agree with Bush on
Iraq in order to be competitive with him in 2004.

That is so far off-base it makes my head spin faster and more fluidly than Linda Blair's Exorcist dome.


The Democratic Party Needs An Exorcism

I hate to say this, but new RNC Chairperson Ed Gillespie is more accurate here than the DLC:
"In particular, Gillespie accused Senators John Edwards of North Carolina, Bob Graham of Florida, John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut of switching their views on Iraq after the regime toppled in order to appeal to their party's liberal base. ''Their new rhetoric may be good positioning in a Democratic primary, but it will not make us safer as a nation,'' he said...."

To their detriment, the GOP is sucking every bit of mileage from 9-11 as possible: "Several Republicans who spoke made it clear that Bush's handling of Sept. 11 will be used as a shield against any criticism of his foreign policy." I wonder how long they'll go on thinking we're fooled and that we will forgive their criminal lies about Iraq's connection to Al Queda and Iraq's "great and imminent threat to America".

The DLC allows the GOP to duly criticize their wobbly stand on the wrong-minded Iraq folly.
The weak, unquestioning Democrats are now paying for the sin of not standing for what was right all along.
We need the Howard Deans to spit out the truth...unafraid..unashamed.

Read this snipe from a DLC candidate and be ashamed:
''Conspicuously absent from their attacks is Howard Dean. Eddie Gillespie goes to bed every night praying for the Howard Dean campaign,'' Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan said..."

It is easy to see through the DLC Democrats who voted for the Iraq resolution and, without serious question, helped to sell Americans down the wrong road to the unilateral preemptive strike on Iraq.The thing that would have made us safer as a nation would have been sticking with the United Nations instead of going off half-assed into a war for which we had the poorest intuitive strategy and a zero-endgame.

FIRE AL FROM AND BRUCE REED BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE TO REVIVE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!!!

"I SEE DEAD PEOPLE"

Is it me..or is anyone else tired and disgusted at seeing Uday and Qusay's ever-swelling and bloating deadheads on the news every half-hour on the half-hour?

Using a Buzzflash quote, has anyone noticed that the 'gory photos of alleged sons of Saddam weren't meant for the Iraqi audience? They were meant to suck up television and headline coverage so that the 9-11 report wouldn't be seriously discussed?'


Good quotes from a recent Washington Post article (here):

"The idea is not to exploit but to report."



"As grim as the photos were, all the debate about the status of the brothers brought to mind a line sung by the Munchkin coroner in "The Wizard of Oz" regarding a wicked witch who had been crushed by a house:
"She's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead."

A Taxi Driver's Conversation With A Burly Bostonian

“To tell you the truth,” he continued, “any one of the current contenders would work for me. I just think your guy Dean has the balls to take on the Repub-lican machine. The thing is, we got to make Bush a one-timer. The greed, the lies — it’s killing the country.”



Scooting out towards Jericho, I glanced at this gruff old guy sitting next to me. This is a Democrat, I thought to myself. More than half the country voted for Gore in 2000, and they weren’t all effete, latté-sipping Volvo drivers. Not that I have anything against overpriced coffee or Swedish cars, but the media caricature of the “liberal Democrat” makes me want to scream.

That got me thinking about the tired mantra, “get government off our backs.” Ain’t that the biggest scam going? What — so unregulated corporate interests are free to shape every aspect of our country’s future?
Is that the deal?