Eric Boehlert writes: "But on Friday the Pentagon, in yet another attempt to explain the story, sent out an Army major for a press conference. He said his unit had removed 250 tons of equipment, ammunition and explosives from somewhere in the Al-Qaqaa facility in early April 2003, and before the Minneapolis TV crew showed up. But so many questions surrounded his story - questions even the Pentagon cannot answer - that it was impossible to determine how his sketchy information plays into the ongoing story... a '60 Minutes' story [will be] broadcast on Sunday night, perhaps triggering a new cycle of controversy less than 48 hours before Election Day: 'In Harm's Way - Even though roadside explosive devices account for half of all the war's U.S. casualties, soldiers are still getting killed and wounded by them because the Pentagon hasn't provided enough fully-armored vehicles to protect them.' The Bush campaign and the conservative media will have precious little time for denials."

Boston Globe: "United Nations weapons inspectors pressed for permission to return to Iraq to help monitor weapons sites on the heels of the US-led invasion but were denied entry by the US-led coalition, according to a former inspector, UN officials, and a letter from the International Atomic Energy Agency...The sites included Al Qaqaa, a sprawling facility about 30 miles south of Baghdad. At least 377 tons of powerful explosives, including the particularly dangerous substance known as HMX, have vanished from that location. 'They wanted to go. They were begging to go,' said David Albright, a former weapons inspector who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security and who lobbied in vain for the UN agency in April 2003 to be allowed to resume work in Iraq. 'They would have gone to Al Qaqaa and said, 'Here's the HMX. Burn it.' They would have been a driver of efforts to find these things. . . . They would have provided a tremendous service."

Knight Ridder: "The more than 320 tons of missing high explosives at center stage in the presidential election are only a fraction of the material that's disappeared in Iraq since the invasion last year. Huge amounts of arms and ammunition were stolen from military sites, and there's 'ample evidence' that Iraqi insurgents are firing looted weapons at U.S. troops and using some of them in car bombs and improvised explosive devices, said a senior U.S. intelligence official. U.N. officials also are concerned about the disappearance of sensitive equipment and controlled materials that could be used to develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. 'If this equipment is finding itself on the open market, then anybody with money can buy it,' said Dimitri Perricos, UNMOVIC, the U.N. weapons inspection agency. The CIA has convened a 'mini taskforce' of experts to assess precisely what equipment is gone and what threat it could pose if it fell into the wrong hands."

New Zealander John Roughan writes: "Like most guests of the US Government, I have attended those security seminars in Washington where there were always one or two nuts who imagined military force could work miracles in places they didn't know much about and didn't care to know much about. But I never imagined they would get the chance to mobilise unprovoked and march into a country where, predictably, they would not be welcome and their occupation would strengthen the hand of the militant strand of Islamic nationalism. I suppose it was always on the cards that one day America would elect a substandard President, but somehow I'd imagined the system would prevent it. Previous occupants of the White House had their faults but there were always compensating strengths. This one is a blowhard when there is an army behind him but as weak as dishwater on every issue requiring political strength. "

MSNBC: "Rumsfeld, in one radio interview, also cast doubt on the suggestion of one of his subordinates that Russian forces assisted the Iraqis in removing them. John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for international technology security, suggested to The Washington Times in an interview that the Russians may have been involved, prompting an angry denial from Moscow. Rumsfeld said, 'I have no information on that at all, and cannot validate that even slightly.' " When it's too wacky for even Rumsfeld, you know it's a bunch of bushit. By the way, let's not forget about the OTHER looting scandal -- at Tuwaitha -- also thanks to Bush's failure to secure THAT site. "[Melissa] Fleming said the IAEA -- which had put storage bunkers at the site under seal two months before the war -- alerted the United States about the Al-Qaqaa site after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted. The IAEA said it informed U.S. officials separately of the Tuwaitha looting on April 10."

KSTP/Minneapolis reports: "The news crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa, and drove two or three miles north of there with soldiers on April 18, 2003. During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labelled 'explosives.' Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get into the bunkers and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords. 'We can stick it in those and make some good bombs.' a soldier told our crew. There were what appeared to be fuses for bombs. They also found bags of material men from the 101st couldn't identify, but box after box was clearly marked 'explosive.' In one bunker, there were boxes marked with the name 'Al Qaqaa', the munitions plant where tons of explosives allegedly went missing. Once the doors to the bunkers were opened, they weren't secured. They were left open when the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew and the military went back to their base."

NYT: "Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after US troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday. The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks. Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa - one a chemical engineer and the other a mechanic - and the third was a former employee, a chemist, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of American hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility."

This shows just how desperate Karl Rove is to spin away Bush's failure to secure the Al Qaqaa facility. He has sent out a Bush shill to dictate a ludicrous story to Bill Gertz, a rightwing propagandist for Rev. Moon's Washington Times. This Moonie Times farce claims that Russian troops moved the explosives from Al Qaqaa to Syria -- oh -- before Bush's disastrous invasion in March 2003. Wow, that really let's Bush off the hook! NOT! Only gullible rightwing sheep will buy this fairy tale. Gertz is a total hack -- he helped push the bogus Chinagate scandal with his deceptive articles about the Clinton administration. In truth, the secrets were lost to the Chinese under Reagan-Bush, not Clinton, possibly as a result of Iran-Contra deals (For details, enter 'Chinagate' in our search engine). Hey Gertz, we're surprised that you didn't just blame it all on Clinton -- and say it was the Chinese who moved the weapons for him -- to embarrass Bush!!! A Drudge Report Exclusive! Developing...

AP: "A U.S. military unit that reached a munitions storage installation after the invasion of Iraq had no orders to search or secure the site, where officials say nearly 400 tons of explosives have vanished [including] key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb attacks.... The disappearance of the explosives - first reported in Monday's New York Times - has raised questions about why the United States didn't do more to secure the facility and failed to allow full international inspections to resume after the invasion. It has also become a heated issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. The Kerry campaign called the disappearance the latest in a 'tragic series of blunders' by the Bush administration in Iraq." The UN knew where explosives were, but Bush ignored them, threw out inspectors, then rushed to war with no plan. Bush's 'blunders' got American troops killed. No sane, honest person can contradict Kerry on that, although Bush and Cheney try to.

AFP: "Democrat challenger John Kerry's campaign demanded answers from President George W. Bush about the disappearance of nearly 400 tonnes of conventional explosives in Iraq... In a campaign underpinned by the basic question of who will make Americans safer, the Kerry camp pounced on revelations of the missing explosives, on a day when it also expects a boost from the return of former president Bill Clinton to the campaign trail. 'Today, the Bush administration must answer for what may be the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq,' senior Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart said in a statement dispatched before sunrise... Kerry meanwhile seized on Bush's comment in an interview to be broadcast Monday that whether Americans will ever be safe from extremists was 'up in the air'... 'You make me president of the United States, we are going to win the war on terror, it's not going to be up in the air whether or not we make America safe,' Kerry countered."

AP: "Bush, presenting himself as the best candidate to keep America safe, was accused by John Kerry on Monday of 'unbelievable incompetence' in the disappearance of hundreds of tons of powerful explosives in Iraq. 'Every step of the way, this administration has miscalculated,' Kerry said in Dover, N.H. He spoke shortly before traveling to Philadelphia for a rally with former President Clinton, who was making his first political appearance since heart surgery nearly seven weeks ago. Kerry said the Bush administration had 'miscalculated about how to go to war, miscalculated about the numbers of troops that we would need, miscalculated about sending young Americans to war without the armor they needed, without the Humvees they needed that were armored.' 'And the incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and put this country at greater risk than we ought to be,' Kerry said." Bush is a National Security Disaster!

Josh Marshall: "Though we cannot in the nature of things have absolute certainty about bin Laden's whereabouts, there is little doubt that bin Laden was there. We had a 'reasonable certainty' he was there when the critical decisions were being made. And subsequent intelligence has only tended to confirm that belief. As to the issue of 'outsourcing,' the claim is unquestionably true. And it is widely believed that this was a key reason for the failure to capture bin Laden... What you simply cannot say is that the whole thing never happened. And yet that is precisely what the president and the vice president are now doing: Simply denying everything. Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes? They are, in old fashioned English, lying. And the major news outlets covering the campaign -- as nearly as I've seen so far -- are just treating the disagreement as a he said/(s)he said in which both sides' arguments have equal merit. Sums up the whole campaign."

NY Times "Dozens of Iraqi army recruits were slaughtered Saturday.... 'This is Vietnam,' said Daniel Planalp, a 21-year-old Marine corporal [adding] 'I don't even know why we're over here fighting.' [T]he stock market has tanked, in part because of record-high oil prices. The Dow Jones ... closed at its low for the year on Friday as world oil prices streaked [up] more than 75 percent in the past year.... The flu vaccine shortage has led to price-gouging and long lines of sick and elderly patients.... [T]he index of leading economic indicators had moved lower in September, the fourth successive monthly decline.... Unable to counter the bad news with stories of major successes, the Bush campaign has turned almost exclusively [to telling voters] be very afraid [and] doing what it can in key states to block as many Democratic votes as possible ... a reprehensible practice. It's a bullet aimed at the very heart of democracy. But the G.O.P. evidently considers it an essential strategy...."

Wash Post: "March 2002 ... Deputy CIA Director John E. McLaughlin brought an unexpected message to the White House Situation Room. According to two people with firsthand knowledge, he told senior members of the president's national security team that the CIA was scaling back operations in Afghanistan [marking] a year-long drawdown of specialized military and intelligence resources from ... combat with Osama bin Laden. As jihadist enemies reorganized ... the CIA closed forward bases.... Task Force 5 - a covert commando team that led the hunt for bin Laden... lost more than two-thirds of its fighting strength. [H]igh-tech ... assets would instead surge toward Iraq.... Retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who was summoned to lead the White House Office for Combating Terrorism a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, said the war has been least successful where it has the highest stakes [adding] 'We have done little or nothing. That is the big failure.'" That's from Bush's anti-terror chief!

Last week, several senior citizens in Florida had to be taken to the hospital after passing out from the heat while standing in horrendously long lines hoping to get a flu shot. One senior died. In New Jersey, the state is contemplating having a lottery so everyone at least gets a chance at a shot. Meanwhile, pharmacies are being ripped off by middle men charging as much as 10 times the market value of vaccine. But on Oct. 17, Bush's Health and Human Service Secretary Tommy Thompson said the shortage of vaccine "is not a crisis." Oh, but wait! That's right: the Bush administration adheres to the pharamceutical industry's warped "philosophy": a few thousand dead or injured consumers, a few multi-million-dollar lawsuits for pushing harmful drugs on the public for a few years before they are finally caught - it's all just the "acceptable cost of doing business." AMERICA DESERVES BETTER!

Political Gateway: "John Kerry on Sunday castigated George W. Bush for a "toothless" response to the Darfur crisis, and promised to stop the "genocide" if he was elected president.Kerry called for tough United Nations sanctions against Sudan's government and more US humanitarian aid for the crisis-torn region. "Months ago, I urged the president to call the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, by its rightful name: genocide," the statement said. "The Bush administration finally did so in September, but shamefully it has done nothing effective to halt this genocide. Words without deeds are meaningless especially when people are dying every day. Rarely have the costs of the Bush Administrations inaction and failed leadership been clearer. What has been Bushs response? Toothless US-sponsored UN Security Council resolutions. These empty threats serve mainly to embolden the Khartoum government and underscore the administrations loss of international moral authority."

Steve Weissman writes: "War is a wondrous thing. Against mere logic, it justifies itself. We must stay the course, the battered Mr. Bush keeps repeating. Or those who fell in battle will have died in vain. No retreat. Line in the sand. More must kill and die in Iraq to give meaning to the deaths of the poor GIs who perished there before them. No matter that Bush and Cheney sent American troops to save us from non-existent nukes and other WMDs. Or to avenge 9/11, in which Saddam Hussein played no part. Or to bring the Iraqis 'democracy' with hand-picked collaborators, rigged caucuses, postponed elections, and - at least so far - a stubborn refusal to allow the non-secular Shiite Muslim majority to govern. No matter that Bush and Cheney...acted in bad faith with both the UN and U.S. Congress. Or knowingly lied to the American people. Or failed so miserably to prepare for the long guerrilla war that now saps so much blood and money. "

Yes. THAT Bob Barr. Bob "House Manager" Barr, one of the most rabid partisans ever to disgrace the halls of Congress, is telling "true conservatives" that George W. Bush is not one of them and their consciences should not permit them to vote for him. He writes that Bush has failed the country in three areas: fiscal responsibility, physical security, and civil liberties. As painful as it is to admit that Bob Barr is right about anything, we endorse his conclusion that conservatives should not vote for Bush. We'll even take it one step farther and say that NOBODY should vote for Bush.

William Rivers Pitt writes: "Exactly 30 minutes into the debate, Bush became so agitated by Kerry's description of the 'back-door draft,'... that he lunged out of his chair and shrieked over moderator Charles Gibson... 'You tell Tony Blair we're going alone,' Bush roared. 'Tell Tony Blair we're going alone!'... Perhaps the most telling moment came when questioner Linda Grabel asked Bush, 'Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it.' As with his April prime time press conference... Bush absolutely refused to admit to any errors in judgment, beyond a cryptic quip about mistakes in personnel appointments which he would not elaborate upon. He opened himself up to the judgment of history, a sad straddle given the simple fact that no President can avoid such a judgment. That was all he was willing to offer. Ms. Grabel did not hear about three mistakes. She did not even hear about one."

Nothing is working more to John Kerry's advantage than just how far out of touch Bush and co. are with the American people! Now Bush is poised to all but commit political suicide by using, as weapons, issues that are doomed to incite disgust, not support from Americans. Case in point: Bush thinks the public will rally behind him by accusing Kerry of pushing America toward 'Hillary-care" (a stupid Repug euphemism for universal health care). Trouble is, a very recent national poll showed that a stunning 75% of Americans FAVOR universal healthcare. Not only that, a huge majority admire Hillary Clinton! More suicidal still - Bush plans to use flow charts to "illustrate" Kerry's economic plans - a scheme that will SCREAM corporate board room and Ross Perot (whose flow charts are now a stock comedy routine joke). Go for it, Dubya! We'll be cheerin' ya on!

Amit Yoran was director of the National Cyber Security Division within the US Department of Homeland Security created following the 9/11 attacks. The division's goal was to improve US defenses against malicious hackers, viruses and other net-based threats. The trouble is - the Bush administration's serious interest in cyberterrorism prevention is nil. Yoran stated recently: "The Department of Homeland Security doesn't have a formal or published definition of cyber-terrorism." Now Yoran has quit in frustration, giving just one day's notice. Why? Because (say insiders) he'd had it with White House indifference to cyber security. Even with lobbying by concerned businesses vulnerable to attack, Bush refused to give Yoran sufficient authority or money to implementing adequate protection programs.

It's a sad commentary on the state of the media when an actor who once played a journalist is now doing a far better job of covering the issues than the folks who are supposed to be the real thing! This well-sourced, comprehensive article by Ed Asner details how Bush mishandled the war on terror and how the 9/11 commission let the White House off the hook for gross failures. Says Asner and co-writer Burt Hall: "Bush's diversion of our military power to Iraq has made us less safe. Al-Qaeda is still alive and well, and our unprovoked invasion has inspired a whole new generation of terrorists. According to an independent survey, al-Qaeda's ranks have swollen to 18,000 spread over more than 60 countries. They periodically attack around the globe and remain a constant threat to us. "

The Guardian U.K. "Bush had to stand alone in an unpredictable debate. [After] appearing before adoring pre-selected crowds [and] approv[ing] tens of millions of dollars in TV commercials to belittle his opponent ... onstage the president ran out of talking points. Unable to explain the logic for his policies, or think on his feet, he was thrown back on the raw elements of his personality and leadership style.... Kerry responded with a devastating deconstruction of Bush's epistemology.... 'It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong' [and] 'The president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important ... he just said, 'The enemy attacked us'. Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us.' [Kerry showed] Bush had retreated into a substitute reality, a delusional version...."

Mike Hersh writes: "Voters have a clear choice between Kerry's clear thinking, honesty and leadership ability versus Bush's odd mix of vacillation when we need clarity and stubborn refusal to change course when his simplistic stabs at policy blow up in our faces. Bush's lies, denials and excuses won't bring the dead back to life or prevent future attacks. Bush tries to excuse his horrendous record by blaming 'bad intelligence.' That's not good enough. Bush ignored sound advice and followed only the 'intelligence' that supported his snap judgments and prejudices. We must hold Bush accountable for his fatal mistakes. Bush showed he won't stop endangering our lives with his bad decisions. He refuses to adjust or reverse the bad choices he keeps making based on ignorance, false information and poor planning. Kerry can keep us safe. Bush can't. We have to vote Bush out before he gets more Americans killed. What more is there to think about?"

William Rivers Pitt writes: "There was a President on that stage in Florida on Thursday night, and his name was not George. This was supposed to be the debate that played to the strengths of Bush and his administration. Foreign policy in general and the protection of the United States from terrorism in particular, according to all the polls and every talking head within earshot, are the areas where George supposedly commands the high ground. That illusion came crashing down on the stage in Coral Gables. How else can one describe the demeanor and behavior of Bush, as seen by 40,000,000 television viewers and heard by millions more radio listeners? Shrill. Defensive. Muddled. Angry, very angry. Repetitive. Uninformed. Outmatched. Unprepared. Hesitant. Twenty four minutes into the debate, Bush lost his temper, and spent the remaining hour and six minutes looking for all the world as though he were sucking on a particularly bitter lemon."

Like a Class 5 hurricane, George W. Bush destroys everything in his path. He's even ripped the roof of the "special friendship" between the United States and Britain. Ripping the political right for lack of compassion, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott singled out the current U.S. government for treating compassion as a mere sound bite.

International Herald Tribune writes, "Over the past month, more than 2,300 attacks have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants." Hey George, is this "Iraqi Progress"?

While Bush strides around hurricane disaster sites and makes big claims as to how he's "helping," and all the billions he plans to give Florida and Alabama, thousands of victims of the smaller, 2003 hurricane Isabel are STILL waiting for justice. A site called FEMAinfo.us is working to protect flood/hurricane victims from being screwed in the aftermath of disaster. A new report released this week reveals the devastating conflicts of interest and manipulations within the Bush administration agency that will negatively impact some Isabel victims for the rest of their lives. But thanks to these activists, the victims of 2004's unprecedented disasters may be able to avoid the same fate. (see esp. right hand side of page, red "ALERT")

This week, a report is being released in Maryland on FEMA's performance following hurricane Isabel of 2003.: "FEMA's response has deteriorated to the point of stonewalling the victims and attempting to mislead our representatives into thinking the victims have received the compensation they are entitled to," says flood insurance activist Steve Kanstoroom. "Recently it has become abundantly clear FEMA is attempting to quiet the squeakiest wheels rather than implement policies to correct its problems." Despite months of protest from storm victims and demands from Congress, many problems have not been corrected, and many who lost their homes in last year's storm still have not received fair compensation. "Victims are hearing misinformation, and they're making life decisions based on that misinformation," Kanstoroom said. "These are things they are going to live with for the rest of their lives."

From AmericaBlog: "Here's something I REALLY hope John Kerry and Senate Democratic candidates will use in their attack ads. EVERY GOP SENATOR save one voted AGAINST legislation sending body armor to our troops, and George Bush threatened to VETO the body armor legislation TWICE. How did that happen? It happened when John Kerry voted FOR the legislation but the Republicans almost unanimously voted against it, and Bush threatened to veto it twice. The legislation (Biden amendment #1796 to S. 1689) had everything President Bush and the military wanted for Iraq, but on October 2, 2003 the Senate Republicans opposed it and President Bush threatened to veto it because it gave new federal employees union rights, something that has NOTHING to do with the body armor our troops dearly needed. Oh, but it gets better than that. Bush also threatened to veto the final legislation EVEN AFTER the Biden amendment was defeated. Yes, Bush threatened to DENY BODY ARMOR TO OUR TROOPS."

AP: "Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Tuesday that President Bush failed to present a true picture of Iraq to the United Nations and 'does not have the credibility to lead the world.' 'The president really has no credibility at this point,' Kerry said in his first news conference since Aug. 9. 'He has no credibility with foreign leaders who hear him come before them and talk as if everything is going well, and they see that we can't even protect the people on the ground for the election.' Roughly three hours after Bush defended his Iraq invasion decision to the world community, Kerry told reporters, 'The president needs to live in the world of reality.' "

Daily Mislead: "In his effort to claim he is the strongest candidate on national security, President Bush has lately been speaking a lot about how he is doing everything possible to track down terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - the man thought to be responsible for escalating attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq. But according to NBC News, it was Bush who in 2002 and 2003 rejected three plans to strike and neutralize Zarqawi because he believed a successful strike would undermine the public case for targeting Saddam Hussein. As NBC News reported, 'Long before the war, the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself - but never pulled the trigger.' "

Patrick Healey: "Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry yesterday called Bush's term in office 'the excuse presidency,' arguing that the Republican has 'blamed just about everybody other than himself' for a weak US job market, record budget deficits, a loss of respect after the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, and other problems. Kerry asserted that Bush has a stubborn streak that amounts to a character flaw, causing the president to stand by an economic strategy of tax cuts at the same time the economy has lost 1 million jobs. His is the excuse presidency: never wrong, never responsible, never to blame. Bush's desk isn't where the buck stops -- it's where the blame begins. 'He's blamed just about everybody but himself and his administration for economic problems, as well as for other problems like Abu Ghraib and other things that have taken place,' he continued, referring to the Iraqi prison where US soldiers abused detainees."

"Two leading Republican legislators yesterday attacked the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, in one of the strongest indictments of the administration's Iraq policy from" the GOP. During a hearing about diverting 20% of Iraqi funds into security, Senator Richard G. Lugar blasted "what he called the 'dancing-in-the-street crowd' that wrongly predicted that Iraqis would be celebrating after the fall of Saddam Hussein a year and a half ago. He said the same White House officials have repeatedly failed to make necessary course changes. 'Now, the nonsense of all [the predictions] is apparent; the lack of planning is apparent,' he said. Senator Chuck Hagel [at the same hearing] said the pace of reconstruction has been 'beyond pitiful. It's embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous.' "

AP, May 13, 2004: "With so many National Guard troops in Iraq, officials in some states are worried they could be caught short-handed if an emergency flares up at home." ONE-FOURTH of the US Nat. Guard is now deployed overseas. "Their more frequent and longer overseas deployments 'ABSOLUTLELY' affect states' emergency response, said Chris Reynolds, a battalion fire chief in Tampa, Fla., who also teaches disaster management at American Military University. The effect is critical, Reynolds said, not just because so many National Guard members are gone, but because so many reservists work in public safety and emergency response. 'It's the tenure and experience that's missing, and you can't simply fill the hole with someone,' Reynolds said. Governors rely on the Guard to serve as a last line of defense during natural disasters and civil emergencies. And as the hurricane and wildfire seasons begin, many states are uneasy and uncertain."

Bush is refusing to debate Kerry more than twice. And more pathetic still, he has whined to Daddy's friend James Baker to intervene - just as he did in Florida when he needed to insure a rigged vote. Oh waaaaaah! Kerry has been willing to face Bush anyplace, anytime, every week if he wants in man-to-man debates. But Bush has refused. Oh, well - It wouldn't have been man-to-man anyway...not when there's only one MAN (Kerry) involved.

Unless the Repugs who made this comparison are referring to Bugsy Churchill, owner of the Shady Deal Used Car Lot, this takes the prize as as the most delusional fantasy of the year! Reports the Scotsman: "George Bush is tackling international terrorists just as Winston Churchill took on Hitler, the Republican National Convention will hear today. The party convention opened in New York City, just a few miles from where the twin towers were destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. Winston Churchill saw the dangers of Hitler when his opponents and much of the press characterised him as a war-mongering gadfly." Yeah, right - the 1930s/40s equivalent of Rupert Murdoch's Post, maybe! This is getting more pathetic by the hour! Because Bush himself is a big fat ZERO, the Repugs either have to tear better men down to make him look better, or make ridiculous comparisons between him and better men. Give it up, GOP! You have picked a turkey and you're stuck with him!

The Nation opines, "If the war were Bush's only failure, it would be enough to require his departure. But it is not. By withdrawing the US from international treaties and conventions, mishandling crises in the Middle East and North Korea and diverting resources from the pursuit of Al Qaeda, Bush has left America more isolated and less secure. And the detention camps made infamous by the crimes of Abu Ghraib have stripped America of the pride we once had in our country and the role it played, however imperfectly, as a champion of human rights, economic opportunity and the rule of law. At home, Bush's failures are equally manifest. He has amassed the worst jobs record of any President since the Great Depression, the worst budget deficits ever and the most precipitous decline in America's fiscal position--from $5 trillion in projected surplus to $4 trillion in projected deficit. Bush... exacerbates, with top-end tax cuts, the greatest inequality since the Gilded Age."

Jang: "The threat of more al-Qaeda terror attacks demands an organised global response but UN-led sanctions and other measures are not working, according to a damning new report by experts at the United Nations. The experts call into question many of the basic assumptions in the war on terror, including efforts to cut off the flow of money [Bush's only coherent effort] to would-be terrorists even though all but the most spectacular attacks, such as September 11, can be carried out at little cost. Meanwhile al-Qaeda and its supporters are making effective use of the media to drum up support in the Muslim world, capitalising on anger over the war in Iraq and continuing to try for a potentially devastating chemical or biological bomb attack." Meanwhile, "Efforts to block the sale of weapons and the movement of terror suspects...have not been effective" - in fact the US remains the NUMBER ONE supplier of illegal weapons.

Doesn't Bush get it? All of us have had the corporate ooze machine turned on us often enough to recognize it a mile away. You know - like the bank manager that "admits" arbitrary holds on paychecks is a "miscalculation" of the system, but ya gotta pay those $30-dollar-a-pop overdrafts anyway. Or the used car salesman that admits the car he just sold you was "a little rough" - but don't expect your money back. So no one with half a brain is impressed by this latest Bush "admission" of "miscalculations" in Iraq - esp.when it's followed by the idiotic statement the ongoing bloody chaos is just a "byproduct" of his "swift victory" against Saddam and that he has been "flexible enough" to respond to problems in a way that is just dandy. Just one question: Who does he think he's fooling?

The Star: "[The seign of the Iman Ali mosque was a confrontation al-Sadr could not have lost and America could not possibly have won, and should never have got dragged into. That it did, shows, yet again, its imperial arrogance as well as ignorance of the history and culture of a nation it's trying to subdue mostly with brute force. Would America have dared turn the Vatican or the Wailing Wall into a war zone, regardless of circumstance? That is the issue, not who started the battle at the Imam Ali Mosque, and who won how many metres when. It does not really matter that U.S. Marines avoided directly hitting the shrine. Or, that in case of a showdown, it would be Iraqi, not American, troops who would storm in. Or that Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, not Bush, has been calling the shots, even if that were believable.The real news is that America thought nothing of violating the sanctity of a sacred Muslim site."

ABC: "Increasing numbers of National Guard and Reserve troops who have returned from war in Iraq and Afghanistan are encountering new battles with their civilian employers at home. Jobs were eliminated, benefits reduced and promotions forgotten. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Labor Department reports receiving greater numbers of complaints under a 1994 law designed to give Guard and Reserve troops their old jobs back, or provide them with equivalent positions. Some soldiers, however, are finding the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act can't protect them.Larry Gill couldn't return as a police officer in Thomasville, Ala., because a grenade injured a foot, making it impossible for him to chase criminals or duck bullets.Jerry Chambers, of Oberlin, Kan., discovered budget cuts had eliminated his job as a substance abuse prevention consultant.

Korean Times: "The U.S. military here ended its 10-day airlift operation on Wednesday to shift its 3,600 frontline troops from the Korean peninsula to Iraq, according to the U.S. Forces Korea on Thursday. "The final planeload in the airlift of the 2nd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team departed from the U.S. Air Base in Osan, about 70 kilometers south of Seoul, Wednesday morning, to be airlifted to the Middle Eastern gulf nation. The U.S. military has said the operation was one of its biggest logistical undertakings on the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean War. "The pullout is part of Washington's new U.S. military strategy known as the Global Defense Posture Review, which calls for a leaner and more flexible overseas troop deployment to better deal with various contingency situations. [Which, of course, is just military brass-D.C. politico speak for "We don't know where the hell we're gonna get enough soldiers to go around without starting a new draft."]

Virginia Hoffman writes: "The average US citizen has no grasp of what US actions and policies in the Middle East mean to those who suffer from them, and no grasp of the hatred they inspire. We need to know this: as long as our government uses strength in a heavy-handed, bullying way, that strength will continue to spread hatred and hopelessness. And it is hatred and hopelessness in response to a bully that breed vengeful suicidal attacks. After the 2001 attacks, the US had a choice: we could have used intelligence to find and bring to trial those who planned and subsidized the attacks (they are still free) while reaching out to the larger Arab and Muslim community... We could have joined with all the other nations that shared our shock and grief, reaffirmed the treaties we had just renounced, and invested our billions in attacking hunger, disease, and other causes of despair...Instead, we repeated the kind of bullying that inspired hatred in the first place."

Bill Maher, writing in the NY Daily News observes that Bush didn't just wait seven minutes the am of 9/11 reading to kids "but 20 more at a photo op afterward. [It] was, in my view, the most outrageous thing a President has done since Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court. Watergate was outrageous but it still did not carry the possibility of utter devastation. Republicans are tying themselves in knots trying to defend Bush's actions that morning. The excuses they put forward are absurd: He was 'gathering his thoughts.' There is no time in the nuclear age for a President to sit like Forrest Gump 'gathering thoughts' after an attack has begun. 'He didn't want to scare the children.' Better not to scare 20 children momentarily than to react immediately to an attack on the country! We're lucky Al Qaeda had done its worst by the time he pulled himself away from the photo op. Next time, it might not be that way."

A coalition of 22 national environmental groups has released a warning on the anniversary of the largest blackout in U.S. history: Thanks to the Bush Administration and his GOP-dominated Congress, it could happen again. Bush has done nothing to "increase the reliability of the electricity grid, reduce demand via energy efficiency, or spur renewable energy." Instead, what Bush policy has accelerated is the deregulation and downsizing of power facilities. Deregulation leads to less money spent on disaster prevention upgrades, while downsizing has led to the forced early retirement of the most experienced power workers who are most knowledgeable of the equipment and potential problems (see Vol 1., Issue 1 of The Int'l Journal of Critical Infrastructures).

The Progress Report: "Last week, U.S. officials revealed their major terror warning -- timed one week after the Democratic National Convention -- was based on old information. Now, it appears that the Bush administration was so eager to reap political gain from the war on terror, it exposed an undercover al Qaeda mole who was providing authorities with key leads to nab the terrorist group's top leadership. According to MSNBC, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, the suspect whose computer information led to the recent increased terror warning level, 'had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al-Qaida operatives.' The Bush administration told reporters Khan was the source of the information that led to the terror alert level being raised. 'By exposing the only deep mole we've ever had within al Qaeda, it ruined the chance to capture dozens if not hundreds more,' said former Justice Department prosecutor John Loftus."

Harold Rosenfeld, editor of the Times-Union writes: "Public support is essential to warding off the terrorists, both at home and abroad. Yet George Bush's self-proclaimed incapacity to acknowledge mistakes, which never served him well, is in these times of growing disbelief even more self-destructive. [The Bush administration] did not field enough forces to maintain the war's aftermath in Iraq, although it was forewarned by competent military advice. It did not nab Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan because of insufficient forces on the ground... It did not act to halt the rioting and looting that disrupted Iraq's cities after Saddam's battlefield defeat.... All this adds up to an enormous credibility gap that can be overcome only by first acknowledging the insufficiencies of previous policies and taking potent actions to remedy them. This is not likely in an election year."

AP: "The Pentagon will need an additional $12.3 billion through September to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...congressional auditors estimate. That is TRIPLE what Gen. Richard Myers projected in April he would need to make it through September. "[Bush] has grossly mismanaged the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq," said Mark Kitchens of the Kerry Campaign. Kitchens called the study "another example of how George W. Bush planned for best case scenarios and failed to prepare for the realities of war." Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., who requested the study, said it underlined "another in a long line of miscalculations" by Bush on Iraq. The White House defended its failure: When it comes to making decisions about resources for our men and women in uniform, the only thing that matters is ensuring they have what they need to get the job done." Yeah, right - that's why soldier's families have to have bake sales to raise money for protective gear!

Reuters quotes Billionaire Donald Trump: "Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the country? C'mon. Two minutes after we leave, there's going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he'll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn't have ... What was the purpose of the whole thing? Hundreds and hundreds of young people killed. And what about the people coming back with no arms and no legs? Not to mention the other side. All those Iraqi kids who've been blown to pieces. And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing! ... Bin Laden would have been caught long ago. Tell me, how is it possible that we can't find a guy who's six-foot-six and supposedly needs a dialysis machine?"

World perceptions of the role of the U.S., (and, particularly, the Bush Administration), are plummeting, and economists are beginning to wonder if this could hurt U.S. business opportunities worldwide. So far there seems to be no great drop in activity for US businesses, although mergers with foreign companies have declined markedly. The question is whether Bush's extreme unpopularity worldwide could begin to have repercussions on international U.S. brands like McDonald's and Eastman Kodak.

Joe Klein writes, "The torture investigation is one of four major defensive battles the Administration is facing. In the weeks to come, the White House will also have to deal with the 9/11 commission's final report, the congressional investigations into the CIA's bungled assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and a special prosecutor's hunt for the White House leakers who blew the cover of CIA secret operative Valerie Plame. Not only is the Administration defending itself against the Democrats, the investigators and the media. Two other serious, surreptitious-and quite possibly unprecedented-battles are going on: the intelligence community is at war with the White House, and the uniformed military is at war with the civilian leadership of the Pentagon. "

IHT: "A new book by the senior CIA officer who headed the Osama bin Laden station warns that the United States is losing the war against radical Islam and that the American invasion of Iraq has only played into the enemy's hands.In the book, "Imperial Hubris," the author is identified only as "Anonymous," but former intelligence officials have identified him as a 22-year veteran of the CIA who is still serving in a senior counterterrorism post at the agency and headed the bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999, they said."There is not now, and never has been, a shortage of knowledge about the nature and immediacy of the bin Laden threat, but only a lack of courage to tell the truth about it fully, openly, and with disregard for the career-related consequences of truth telling," the autor writes.

"Thomas B. Griffith, President Bush's nominee for the federal appeals court in Washington, has been practicing law in Utah without a state law license for the past four years, according to Utah state officials. Griffith, the general counsel for Brigham Young University since August 2000, had previously failed to renew his law license in Washington for three years while he was a lawyer based in the District...Under Utah law, Griffith's only option for obtaining the state license was to take and pass the state bar exam, an arduous test that lawyers try to take only once. He applied to sit for the exam, but never took it, Utah bar officials confirm. Utah State Bar rules require all lawyers practicing law in the state to have a Utah law license. There is no general exception for general counsels or corporate counsels."

UK Guardian: "A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an 'avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked' war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands...In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as 'Anonymous', described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would 'inevitably' acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them...The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit anonymously and without naming which agency he works for, may reflect the increasing frustration of senior intelligence officials at the course the administration has taken."

Eric Margolis writes: "In a dazzling coup, Russian President Vladimir Putin stole a march on the Bush administration, which was so busy trying to tear apart Afghanistan to find bin Laden it failed to notice the Russians were taking over half the country. By charging like an enraged bull into the South Asian china shop, the U.S. handed a stunning geopolitical victory to the Russians and severely damaged its own great power ambitions. Moscow is now free to continue plans to dominate South and Central Asia in concert with its strategic allies, India and Iran. The Bush administration does not appear to understand its enormous blunder, and keeps insisting the Russians are now our friends. Dear President Bush: Ask your dad. He will tell you that where oil is concerned, there are no friends, only competitors and enemies."

Capitol Hill Blue: "Sources close to the Bush family say the elder Bush thinks his son has mishandled the war in Iraq. Says a family confidante: 'Former Pres. Bush believes the U.S. should have sought more support before invading Iraq and feels his son did not work hard enough to secure the support of allies.' Bush I faults his son for pressuring the CIA to provide hastily-prepared and faulty intelligence to support plans to invade Iraq. Bush I has told his son that he 'messed up big time' in trying to tie Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks against the United States. The elder Bush points out that a State Dept. assessment released after the 9/11 attacks lists 45 countries (including the US) where al-Qaeda operated and notes that Iraq was not one of those countries... As public support for the war wanes, political strategists have urged [Bush I] to come out publicly for his son's war but their arguments have fallen on defiant ears."

"A bi-partisan group of distinguished former diplomats and military leaders are calling for the ouster of the Bush administration in November. Members of the group, called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change include retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East during Bush I; retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., ambassador to Britain under Clinton and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan; and Jack F. Matlock Jr., a member of the National Security Council under Reagan and ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991. 'We agreed that we had just lost confidence in the ability of the Bush administration to advocate for American interests or to provide the kind of leadership that we think is essential,' said William C. Harrop, the first President Bush's ambassador to Israel, and earlier to four African countries. 'The group does not endorse Kerry, although it more or less goes without saying in the statement,' said Harrop."

Independent: "Bush yesterday was bluntly told by European and Arab allies alike that a serious new push for a Palestinian-Israeli peace solution was vital if his vision of a stable Iraq at the heart of a reformed Middle East were to have any chance of success. Boosted by the unanimous United Nations vote on sovereignty, Mr Bush used the first day of the G8 summit here to try and advance his agenda for Iraq, seeking to widen the role of Nato, gain relief for Baghdad's debt, and launch a much-touted initiative to promote democracy in the Middle East and the Islamic world. But the Palestinian-Israeli conflict quickly leapt to the centre of proceedings, as Tony Blair attempted to secure a US commitment to revitalise the virtually moribund "road map" towards a comprehensive settlement." But Bush showed little interest in rethinking his Middle Eastern policies or his support of Sharon's controversial plan to withdraw from Gaza.

"The United States and its allies are winning some battles in the terrorism war but may be losing the broader struggle against Islamic extremism that is terrorism's source, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Saturday. The troubling unknown, he said, is whether the extremists -- whom he termed 'zealots and despots' bent on destroying the global system of nation-states -- are turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them. 'It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this,' Rumsfeld said at an international security conference. His remarks showed a level of concern about the long-term direction of the U.S.-led global fight against terrorism that Rumsfeld rarely addresses in public."

John Kerry says Bush policy left U.S. forces ill-prepared for the war on terror. "Despite all its talk of transforming our military, [Bush] has done far too little to adapt our forces to the new missions they have to undertake." He said the U.S. went into Iraq with hardly any international support and too few troops who "failed to secure nearly a million tons of conventional weapons now being used against our troops." Kerry blasted Bush's refusal to let tens of thousands of soldiers nearing the end of their enlistment leave the military - a cruel policy that compensates for Bush's failure to plan by punishing "men and women who've already fulfilled their obligation to the armed forces and to our country - and it runs counter to the traditions of an all-volunteer military.'' Kerry would add 40,000 more troops to the military by more efficiently using soldiers already in the US pool of 496,000 active duty soldiers and 557,000 reservists and National Guard members

John Ashcroft points with pride to the fact that in 2003, one in every 75 American men were behind bars. That's why the crime rate has decreased, he gushes. But this is a lie. The violent crime rate in the US was decreasing from 1993 on (aside from a jump in murders the year Bush was sworn in). Yet the rate of incarceration under Bush has skyrocketed - with the highest increase for nonviolent offenders. More evidence: other nations with much lower incarceration rates have much lower crime rates than the US. Also, under Bush, the number of citizens jailed in Texas skyrocketed until 1 in every 20 men were behind bars, while the crime rate failed to decrease. Today, thanks to Bush, Texas has the highest percentage of people jailed and the most abusive prison system in the nation.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey writes: "George Bush has a simplistic, at-a-stroke solution for his many troubles - sweep them under the carpet, smile broadly and pretend they did not happen. Hand over power in Iraq, demolish the medieval torture chamber called Abu Ghraib and hey presto! What a wonderful new world we live in! The bad guy has gone, so have his sons, the regime has been defeated, the Iraqi people are free, welcome to freedom and democracy, Washington-style. So...Let's party! However, the real world is not so limited, the real world is not a rosy-coloured perfect scenario which George Bush will have read in his comics in his childhood (it is well known he prefers books with lots of pictures). The real world is not based on the cowboy-type "You are with us or against us" approach...Much as George Bush would like to be John Wayne, he has neither the class, not the intelligence, instead appearing more like the drunken low-lifes at the OK Corral."

CNN: "ABC, CBS and NBC decided not to offer live coverage of Bush's speech about Iraq Monday, although the cable news networks planned to pre-empt their regular programming for the address.The broadcast networks took an unusual amount of time to tell viewers their plans for Bush's speech -- ABC did not decide until Monday afternoon -- because the Bush administration did not formally request the time...It's a difficult decision for the networks, forced to weigh the newsworthiness of the event, when it is left up to them. In that case, the three networks often take their cues from one another. Monday was one of the last nights of the May "sweeps" period, when television ratings are used to set local advertising rates. NBC had two editions of "Fear Factor" scheduled on Monday. CBS had season finales of its popular Monday-night comedies and ABC was showing the theatrical release "A Beautiful Mind."

Historian Robert S. McElvaine surveyed 415 historians; 15% rated Bush as the "worst ever", close to 17% for Nixon. McElvaine writes, "My assessment is that George W. Bush's record on running up debt to burden our children is the worst since Ronald Reagan; his record on government surveillance of citizens is the worst since Richard Nixon; his record on foreign-military policy has gotten us into the worst foreign mess we've been in since Lyndon Johnson sank us into Vietnam; his economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover; his record of tax favoritism for the rich is the worst since Calvin Coolidge; his record of trampling on civil liberties is the worst since Woodrow Wilson. How far back in our history would we need to go to find a presidency as disastrous for this country as that of George W. Bush has been thus far? My own vote went to the administration of James Buchanan, who warmed the president's chair while the union disintegrated in 1860-61."

One of the most popular lines given by active addicts and abusive spouses or parents is that people should just forgive and forget what they did yesterday and "move on". Move on, of course, to the next round of "using" or abusing, while the wounds made "yesterday" still remain undressed. It's no surprise to us that Bush is now resorting to that tactic. On Monday, he is expected to exhort the public to just forget what's happened in Iraq so far - all of it unresolved, most of it uninvestigated - and try to pass the buck to someone else (the UN): "We'll start talking about the future, not the past, by focusing on the U.N. resolution and Brahimi's transition process. Sure there'll still be plenty of arguments, but it will be about the future, and that's a healthy change," gushed a senior State Department official. Spoken like a true codependent!

Andrew Miga writes, "Less than six months before the November election and six weeks before the handover of political power in Baghdad to an interim Iraqi government, Bush is foundering. The pRresident's pep rally on Capitol Hill made for some favorable news coverage, but it can hardly begin to blunt the torrent of grim headlines for the White House. Bush's upbeat message masks the political peril he faces. Bush must find a way to convince skeptical Americans that he has a clear plan for success in Iraq - a way to stabilize the war-torn nation and bring home weary U.S. troops. Clearly shaken by the latest setbacks, Bush plans a series of weekly speeches aimed at reassuring voters the sacrifices made in Iraq are worth the price tag." But if Bush can't even reassure his own syncophants in Congress, we predict that hollow-centered, platitude-coated speeches dished up the public on a weekly basis will be just the length of rope Bush needs, if ya get our drift.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lashed out at President Bush on Thursday, saying his Iraq policies show incompetence and the only conclusion to draw is that "the emperor has no clothes." "I believe that the president's leadership and the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience," ..."This president should have known ... when you decide to go to war you have to know what the consequences of your action are... "The emperor has no clothes. When are people going to face the reality?"

Robert McElvaine writes: "A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University's History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure. Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush's administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush's presidency is only the best since Clinton's and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success."

Here's a question from Civics 101: Who is the top commander of the US Military? Is it A. Secretary of Defense, B. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or C. The President of the US? The answer is C. The President of the US, as Commander in Chief, sits at the top of the US military chain of command. Thus any and all actions taken by the US military that affect national security in any way are the ultimate responsibility of the President, not the Sec. of Defense. A "war time president" (as Bush boasts he is) is one who assumes the full time job of Commander in Chief. For Dubya to beg ignorance of and pawn off responsibility for the outrages in Iraq is a disgrace is just another case of Bush gone AWOL. He has, in short, disgraced the office of the President of the United States.

AP: "The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money, documents show. In addition, the Office of Foreign Assets Control said that between 1990 and 2003 it opened just 93 enforcement investigations related to terrorism. Since 1994 it has collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations... Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., threatened Thursday to start an effort in Congress to eliminate some funding for OFAC if more resources weren't put toward the bin Laden and Saddam efforts. 'This is really astounding,' Dorgan said. 'I hope somebody in the administration will soon come to his or her senses [Dream on!] and start directing our resources where they are needed. Politics is clearly diverting precious time, money and manpower away from the war on terrorism here.' "

W. David Jenkins III writes: "You have to feel some sympathy for many American conservatives lately. They've spent so much time gaily harping over how unhappy the liberals are because we finally have a real war president who's not afraid to take the fight to 'them' - and on and on - but lately they've started to realize that things aren't quite working out so well. You have to wonder with the escalating violence in Iraq and Condi Rice's filibustering in front of the 9/11 commission if they are delusional, desperate or just having too much fun living down there in that rabbit hole. Well, I've been listening to the supporters of this administration in the aftermath of recent events and I've noticed something: The conservatives are running out of 'ammo.'"

The general conclusion of the media about Bush's press conference on is that he did a pretty good job, since he actually showed up and didn't drool on himself! Diane Rehm gave Bush points just for having answered a few questions posed by the press - as if this were an exciting development for a US president! The Guardian: "Anyone tuning in and expecting to see an American idol saw an American president instead - one who didn't exactly seem confused but who at times appeared to be teetering on the very brink of confusion. And yet people responding to polls today will probably give Bush points for just showing up. By having so few televised news conferences, he's made the ones he does have into big events. By expressing tremendous confidence in his own judgment and actions, even to the point of not being able to recall a single mistake, it's likely Bush made Americans [Bush supporters with IQs equal or less than room temperature, anyway] feel a renewed confidence as well."

"Given the President's unhesitating willingness to send more and more of our young men and women to a war that was launched on lies and exaggerations, how long will it be before he resorts to a reinstatement of the draft to feed the demands of a thoroughly flawed and totally failed foreign policy? We went to war for the wrong reasons. We continue to be at war for the wrong reasons. And it's time to ask the United Nations to assume responsibility so our troops can come home! This can only come about when the US takes an entirely new direction, reconnecting with the world community through the United Nations, letting go of ambitions to control the oil and the contracts, trying to privatize Iraq, and run the government by remote control."

The Progress Report writes: "In a nationally televised press conference last night, President Bush 'steadfastly refused to admit mistakes and passed up opportunities to explain what it will take to achieve his goal of a free and stable Iraq.' Additionally, while he 'acknowledged a good deal of introspection after all the questions about his actions before the Sept. 11 attacks,' he offered 'not a whiff of contrition' for his Administration's role in the worst national security breakdown in American history. The event was 'more theater than substance' in which the President 'offered no shocking new policy initiatives' and instead used 'the language and zeal of a missionary' to implore Americans to continue on his increasingly chaotic and directionless path in Iraq. But with Bush's approval ratings hitting a new low, the event did nothing to quell the growing questions Americans have about the Administration's national security credentials."

The text of this speech proves what an April 12 "Variety Magazine" article predicted: "Here's a hint for pRresident Bush: Don't apply for a job as network scheduler after your political career ends. You also may want to forget Simon Cowell's vote." The speech was little more - and in fact a whole lot less - than a tired rerun. Nothing new was said, no plan was offered. Just more Bushie platitudes: "We seek an independent, free and secure Iraq"...there is no widespread conflict - it's all just a "power grab" by a few "extremists." And so forth, ad nauseum. We've heard it all before...and we would have preferred to hear Simon Cowell's straightshooting quips.

NY Times opines, "This is not a time for more secrecy and presidential isolation. Mr. Bush is asking Americans to simply take his word for the need to stick to an increasingly bloody and chaotic mission in Iraq that he won't even define clearly. (When asked by NBC's Tim Russert yesterday what Iraqi leaders the coalition planned to hand over the government to on the target date of June 30, the American proconsul Paul Bremer III chillingly began his answer with 'That's a good question.') Mr. Bush needs to speak out fully in public, both about 9/11 and about Iraq. He is chief executive of a country that once trusted him to lead in perilous times. The public supported his decision to go to war in the Middle East because most Americans believed his judgment was sound. That kind of faith is not just what he needs to win an election in November. It is what he needs to run the country, and he is in grave danger of losing it."

On August 6, 2001, reports AP, "It was a classic dog day of summer in Crawford, Texas. Despite the 100-degree temperature on Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush laced up his running shoes to go for a four-mile jog, roamed his sprawling ranch and fished a pond for bass. Bush was on a working vacation, about as close to a real vacation as presidents get. On that day, after a dusty morning run, the president put on faded jeans with a big belt buckle, a short-sleeved, button-down shirt, cowboy boots to get down to work. He met with aides for 45 minutes. He took the call from Rice." Did he then call the FBI, CIA, or organize a conference call to advisors? Nope. "Bush put on a white cowboy hat and drove his pickup to the canyons. He was building a nature walk."

Toronto Star: "It is still possible for George W. Bush to escape from Iraq before it destroys his re-election bid. It is also still possible for Iraq to emerge from all this as a more or less democratic and united country, though that will be trickier. Both things depend on the same man: Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, has to break the stranglehold of the neo-cons who surround the president and persuade him that to save his presidency he must ditch their policy. There is no sign of it happening yet, and time is running out. U.S. casualties are mounting, and so is Iraqi anger. To Arab eyes, the U.S. Marine assault on the city of Falluja looks eerily like the Israeli army smashing its way into one of the West Bank cities, complete with gunships firing rockets into houses and mosques."

"Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism. Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks. Some also left because they felt Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the 'war on terror,' former counterterrorism officials said. 'I'm kind of hoping for regime change,' one official who quit told Reuters... At least eight officials in the office - which numbers a dozen people - have left and been replaced since 9/11. The office has been run by four different people since the attacks, and at least three have held the No. 2 slot."

The son of Orange County Chairman Rich Crotty is getting nationwide attention after being featured on David Letterman's "Late Show" yawning, twisting his head and falling asleep at a rally for President George W. Bush. Letterman's comedy piece called "George W. Bush Invigorating America's Youth" was edited video from an Orlando rally in March where several people stood behind the president during a 45-minute speech...

A statement by Scott McClellan on March 31 reveals the latest brain fart from the White House: Blame OPEC for the floundering US economy! Whined Bush mouthpiece Scott McClellan: 'It's important for [OPEC] producers not to take actions that hurt our economy." What a hoot! Too bad no one gave Bush the same warning about three years ago! But it is clear that the White House is pouncing on OPEC's decision to cut production as a scapegoat for Bush economic failures. Scotty didn't bother to mention that one of the chief reasons for OPEC's action is the plummeting of the US dollar due to Bush's bad economic decisions - like keeping interest rates artificially low.

A new report, "Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health in the Age of Bioterrorism," reveals that "after 2 years and nearly $2 billion of federal bioterrorism preparedness funding, states are only modestly better prepared to respond to health emergencies than they were prior to September 11, 2001. Nearly 75% of states received poor assessments, earning positive marks for only half or fewer of the 10 possible indicators of readiness. The major problems include 'Cuts to public health programs in two-thirds of states; an impending shortage of trained professionals in the public health workforce; disagreements between state and local health agencies over resource allocation; and tie-ups of much of the federal bioterrorism funding due to bureaucratic obstacles.' In addition, states' readiness for other health emergencies, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or a pandemic flu, is seriously inadequate."

Josh Marshall reports: "More dirty scoundrels who won't give Condi Rice and the president their due... '[Outgoing Deputy National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick], who stayed through the first four months of the Bush administration, said, 'candidly speaking, I didn't detect' a strong focus on terrorism. 'That's not being derogatory. It's just a fact. I didn't detect any activity but what Dick Clarke and the CSG [the Counterterrorism Strategy Group he chaired] were doing.' General Hugh Shelton, whose term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff began under Clinton and ended under Bush, concurred. In his view, the Bush administration moved terrorism 'farther to the back burner.'
America Unbound, p. 76
Ivo Daalder & James Lindsay
Who knew how far the Clarke cabal stretched?"

James Webb writes, "Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the US and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence. There is no historical precedent for taking such action when our country was not being directly threatened. The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will affect the economic and military energy of our nation for decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military [and the Right Wing Media] that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh judgment he deserves."

Not only did Bush ignore repeated warnings of impending spectacular terrorist attacks before 9/11, he made sure that the FBI was hamstrung AFTER 9/11: "In the early weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request from the FBI for counterterrorism funds, an internal White House budget document indicates. The document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, indicates that the FBI requested $1.5 billion in additional funds to enhance its counterterrorism efforts with the creation of 2,024 positions. But the White House OMB cut that request to $531 million. Ashcroft, working within the White House limits, cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half, reduced a cybersecurity request by three-quarters, and eliminated a request for 'collaborative capabilities.' " In short, Bush cut out the most critical and effective anti-terrorism tools. The big question looming: WHY?

To cop a media moment, Bush has, once again, placed the lives of thousands in grave danger for nothing because he failed to listen to the warnings of good intelligence reports. "Pakistan's army has arrested over 100 suspected militants after five days of intense battles near the Afghan border but said it was unlikely al Qaeda number two Al-Zawahri was among those still surrounded. Instead a senior commander said the 'high-value target' whom the militants were thought to be protecting was probably an Uzbek or Chechen militant leader. 'All the intercepts we have been receiving have been in the Chechen or Uzbek language,' Lieutenant-General Safdar Hussain told reporters in the western town of Wana, near the fighting." Even as reports of the failure emerged and were picked up by foreign news services, the US Bush media has continued to do just what it did during the Iraq war and its run up: push false information spoon-fed to them by the White House.

Terrorism expert Roger Cressey (now an NBC News analyst) has spoken out for the first time about Bush's failure to take the threat of Al Queda seriously. MSNBC reports: "Cressey and other witnesses have told the 9/11 commission of long gaps between terrorism meetings and greater time and energy devoted to Russia, China, missile defense and Iraq than al-Qaida." In the spring of 2001, Bush learned bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors. "Why was there no retaliation? 'You would think after an attack that almost sank a U.S. destroyer there would have been [a mandate] for some type of action. Yet we never saw that from the Pentagon,' Cressey says." In the MSNBC story, Condi Rice said no attack occurred because "we didn't have good military options." Yet NBC's sources say the United States at that time had opportunities to strike active Al Queda camps in Afghanistan, taking out many terrorists.

Millions of tax credit-created jobs...a gay marriage constitutional ban....manned missions to Mars...hydrogen cars....What do these things all have in common? They are promises made by Bush that he has no intention of keeping. They just sound good - at least to him. The disturbing thing is that these empty vows are all he has to offer! At the same time, reports USA Today, "He's not wielding much of his clout to make those goals a reality...these proposals aren't likely to be realized during Bush's presidency, even if it lasts through 2008." While some argue that it's "visionary" to set lofty long-term goals, "None of Bush's ideas has generated great public interest or support. Polls show that creating jobs and balancing the budget, not same-sex marriages or space missions, are voters' top concerns.'" Guess Bush's response must be: "Let 'em eat cake from Mars!"

"Russert: Biggest issues in the upcoming campaign? Bush: Who can properly use American power in a way to make the world a better place, and who understands that the true strength of this country is the hearts and souls of the American citizens, who understands times are changing and how best to have policy reflect those times. And I look forward to a good campaign. I know exactly where I want to lead the country. I have shown the American people I can lead. I have shown the American people I can sit here in the Oval Office when times are tough and be steady and MAKE GOOD DECISIONS, and I look forward to articulating what I want to do the next four years if I'm fortunate enough to be their president." George, are you SURE you want to run on your "GOOD DECISIONS?" Name ONE!!!!!!!!

The Moonie Times reports: "Growing frustration over Bush's immigration plan and lack of fiscal discipline came to a head behind closed doors at last weekend's Republican retreat in Philadelphia. House lawmakers, stunned by the intensity of their constituents' displeasure at some of Mr. Bush's key domestic policies, gave his political strategist Karl Rove an earful behind closed doors. ...Many of the 218 Republicans at the retreat said immigration and overspending had emerged as the top two issues in their home districts. 'I just got the results of a poll in our district, and it's 2-to-1 against the president's immigration plan,' a House member said confidentially."

The Denver Post reports: "To many people, President Bush - tax-cutter, born-again Christian, invader of Iraq - is the face of American conservatism. But here at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, many of the assembled are questioning whether he is conservative enough. Conservatives complain about the administration's spending on Medicare and education and its proposed spending on space exploration, its expansion of law enforcement powers to fight terrorism and its proposed guest-worker program for immigrants. To underscore the discontent, the American Conservative Union, which organizes the conference, held a dinner in honor of Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted against the president's Medicare bill."

Scripps News reports: "Big government is back. Since President Bush took office, the federal government's domestic civilian work force has increased by more than 79,000 jobs, nearly a 5 percent increase. And the number of government workers paid at least $130,000 annually has tripled. Much of the increase came with the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security two years ago. But the nation's war on terrorism does not account for all of the rise. The Department of Health and Human Services, for example, has added 1,445 employees since President Clinton left office. 'We are seeing a general growth in the size of government. That is just a fact,' said Bob Moffit, former deputy assistant health secretary during the Reagan administration and now a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation. 'And the increases did not all go to Homeland Security. The rise in federal discretionary spending, frankly, has been breathtaking.'"

After lying to America about conditions in Iraq this week, after years of bashing the UN as useless, now Bush has been forced to admit just how bad things have become in the war zone and is pleading for the organization to come clean up the mess he has made before it's too late to salvage. Reports ABC: "'It's a comeuppance,' said Joseph Montville, a U.S. diplomat to Baghdad in the 1960s who now heads a diplomacy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The US has asked the UN to settle a U.S.-Iraqi dispute over how to select leaders to rule the country after U.S. occupation authorities hand over sovereignty on June 30." It is an issue that has pushed a bad situation into the red zone. ABC says Bush hopes to pull out all but 100,000 troops as soon as the UN "fixes" things. At present, more than half of the nation's 450,000 active military personnel are tied up in Iraq - a situation that has severely stretched US resources.

"It was a chastened Bush we saw,' Haroon Siddiqui, editorial page emeritus of the Toronto Star. 'He is discredited and he knows it. Hence the many rationalizations. He is weak on the domestic front - a jobless economic recovery that may not last until the fall. He has little choice but to keep exploiting fear and pose as the war president with the mantra of battling 'terror,' 'terrorism' and 'terrorists.' But the act is wearing thin and he will increasingly be seen as a one-trick pony.' The Democratic response to his speech, especially by Senator John Kerry and Gen. Wesley Clark, was tough. Similar sentiments last year would have got them labeled as unpatriotic. They should be saluting Howard Dean. By being bold enough to speak the truth, he has liberated them. He may not go any further in the primaries, but he has already served his party and his nation well."

Consider this after Bush's annual address. As the election battle begins, how does his first term add up?
232: Number of American combat deaths in Iraq between May 2003 and January 2004
501: Number of American servicemen to die in Iraq from the beginning of the war - so far
0: Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender to the Allies in May 1945
0: Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush administration has allowed to be photographed
0: Number of funerals or memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq
100: Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003

"Young Americans in the past two years have lost some of their trust in government, other people and their own ability to make a difference in their community, according to a poll out Thursday," reports USA Today. "While it's not fair to say it's a dark mood, there's no question young people continue to have questions about the direction of the country and doubt whether there are good plans to solve our problems," Ed Goeas said. The Republican pollster, along with Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, conducted the poll for two groups focused on civic engagement. The poll of 1,000 Americans ages 15 to 25 found that those who say they trust the government to do the right thing a lot or some of the time fell from 62% in January 2002 to 50% in November 2003.

Don Williams writes, "Why won't you tell us about those daily briefings you received in the nine months or so leading up to Sept. 11, 2001? Would you please acknowledge that it was mostly elements in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - not Iraq - who worked with al-Qaida to bring down the World Trade Center? Why is it taking so long to get to the bottom of the Valerie Plame Wilson affair? Does some fundamental religious belief - say, that the end of the world is coming soon - influence your policies on the environment and on nuclear weapons? Does it worry you that the dollar appears to be in freefall just now?" Great questions, Don!

"Pentagon auditors spent 1,139 hours altering their own files in order to pass an internal review, say investigators who found that the accounting sleuths engaged in just the kind of wasteful activity they are supposed to expose. When the auditors in the NYC office learned well in advance which files a review team would check, they spent the equivalent of more than 47 days doctoring the papers and updating records from several audits. Administrative staff, audit supervisors and other employees also participated in the scheme... The agency 'is supposed to be the watchdog for defense contracts,' said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. 'Altering audit work papers could undermine the accuracy of the Pentagons cost reports. Falsifying official reports is a crime, and those involved must be held accountable.' Discipline was proposed for the manager who directed the alterations, but was never imposed because the official resigned." What were they scrubbing - Halliburton overcharges???

"Sometimes it's difficult to find all the information you need to make an informed choice as a voter. That's why we're bringing you a collection of facts that reflect the policies and practices of the Bush administration, and detail some discrepancies you may not be aware of." This is an outstanding site for fair-minded Americans who believe what TV news says about Bush.

On 1-1-04, "The [Loya Jurga] adjourned in disarray, leaving the entire process of drawing up a new constitution badly damaged. The crisis has revealed a bitter struggle between the leaders of the country, with resident Hamid Karzai and his Pashtun kinsmen on one side, and on the other the Islamist leaders and ethnic minorities of the north, who are seeking to preserve some of their wartime power. Officials in the American-backed government tried to break the deadlock by putting five amendments to the vote. But the tactic backfired when a great number of the 502 delegates, mostly from the ethnic minorities of northern Afghanistan, refused to vote... 'We want a strong parliament alongside the president, equal rights for men and women, democracy among all the ethnic groups, and recognition of all the languages,' said Habiba, a teacher from Kabul and another boycotter. 'The constitution is not for one tribe or one people,' she said. 'It belongs to all the people of the country.'"

Bush is my shepherd, I shall be in want. He leadeth me beside the still factories, He maketh me to lie down on park benches, He restoreth my doubts about the Republican party. He guideth me onto the paths of unemployment for the party's sake. I do fear the evildoers, for thou talkst about them constantly. Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy deficit spending, They do discomfort me. Thou anointeth me with never-ending debt, And my savings and assets shall soon be gone. Surely poverty and hard living shall follow me, And my jobless children shall dwell in my basement forever

Josh Marshall writes, "Read this lede from an article in the Times and tell me with a straight face that these guys have any idea what they're doing: 'President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects. White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq.' I mean, it defies ridicule (what will I do?). The tone? How were they supposed to sugar-coat it? And you wonder why they're bringing Jim Baker into the mix? Forget about Rove's phone records. I want the last month's phone records between Dubya and Pops."

"Bush yesterday deployed his budget director to write an op-ed claiming 'We can cut the deficit in half'... [This] is just one in a long line of empty reassurances and dishonest statements on the deficit issue. In 2001, when he was pitching his tax cut, the President reassured the country that, 'we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens.' After his tax cuts passed and a deficit ensued, he promised, 'Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term.'[Then came his Trifecta LIE]... Bush then tried to shift the blame for the deficit, saying, 'This nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war.' While that sounded good, he was contradicting his own budget director... Because the resident has decided to focus on dishonest rhetoric - instead of action - the deficit now sits at $374 billion - the highest in history. "

Ruy Teixeira writes, "So, do you feel safer yet? If you don't, you're not alone. According to this just-released PIPA poll, 70% disagree with the statement that 'the threat of terrorism has been significantly reduced by the war.' This is up from just 43% who held this view in April. In addition, 56% disagree with the statement that 'the war will result in greater peace and stability in the Middle East,' up from 32% in April. And here's another critical finding: the public overwhelmingly believes capturing Osama Bin Laden and breaking up Al Qaeda (75%) should be the central front in the war on terrorism, not capturing Saddam and establishing democracy in Iraq (21%). No wonder the public is becoming so worried about the costs and aims of our continuing occupation of Iraq: we're not even aiming at the right target. A couple of other interesting findings: the poll has Bush losing to an unnamed Democratic nominee for president, 48% to 42%."

Juan Cole writes: "W. doesn't have his father's experience with the world, and is, frankly, an ignoramus. If he is letting the US effort in Iraq be tarred with the brush of Israeli occupation, he is actually acting as the world's most prominent recruiting agent for al-Qaeda in the Muslim world. Because that is al-Qaeda's message to angry young Muslim men who feel humiliated by US power and by Israeli brutality in the West Bank and Gaza. Al-Qaeda says, the Americans are not in Iraq to bring democracy. They are bringing Israeli hegemony to the Middle East... This is about the most stupid move I have ever seen the US military make. I have enormous respect for the US officer corps and for military thinkers. These professionals are most often really bright and well informed. They very frequently get over-ruled by civilian political appointees who are either not bright or not well informed... I have a sinking feeling that Bush just lost the war on terror."

"Four Army divisions - 40% of the active-duty force - will not be fully combat-ready for up to six months next year, leaving the nation with relatively few ready troops in the event of a major conflict in North Korea or elsewhere, a senior Army official said yesterday. The four divisions - the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Airborne, the 1st Armored and the 4th Infantry - are to return from Iraq next spring, to be replaced by three others, with a fourth rotating into Afghanistan. That would leave only two active-duty divisions available to fight in other parts of the world... This dip in readiness could have political consequences for President Bush, who sharply criticized the Clinton administration during the 2000 campaign for allowing two Army divisions to fall to the lowest readiness category in 1999 because of peacekeeping obligations in the Balkans. 'Obviously, this is much worse in terms of the numbers,' said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.)"

"A search for the phrase 'miserable failure' on the popular search engine Google brings up the biography of George W. Bush on the official White House Web site, in one of the more prominent search-engine manipulations with political overtones. The phrase appears nowhere in the bio. But computer users rigged the search engine results by posting the phrase on Web pages and linking it to the Bush bio, in a technique called Google bombing. 'I thought it was absolutely one of the funniest ideas I've ever heard,' said Don Waller, owner of Don Waller Interactive, a Web design company in Islip Terrace and a blogger who joined the prank in late October. 'I just decided to jump in with it.' 'This is just one of those spontaneous things that a blogger will post something and other bloggers will say, 'This is a great idea.'" Try it yourself by clicking below!

Remember how Bush denounced "nation-building" during his losing campaign against Al Gore? Well, get over it. PentaPost reports, "The Pentagon has begun to look seriously at creating military forces that would be dedicated to peacekeeping and reconstruction after future conflicts... The move marks a reversal for the Bush administration, which came into office strongly resistant to peacekeeping missions and intent on trying to get Europeans and other allies to shoulder more of that burden. "

NYT opines, "This year's end-of-session binge has gone way beyond pork, saddling the country with long-term obligations of mammoth proportions and inviting censure not only from the usual good-government types but also from economists who genuinely fear for the future of the economy. Goldman Sachs, not given to hyperbole, warned in its most recent newsletter that the 'U.S. budget is out of control.' This sentiment was echoed by the bipartisan Concord Coalition, which called 2003 'the most irresponsible year ever' in terms of fiscal discipline. This spending comes courtesy of a Republican Congress and White House. Though the Republicans are historically the party of budget restraint and smaller government, these Republicans have presided over an orgy of tax cuts and benefit increases that... will not only boost this year's projected deficit but also add as much as $800 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years." Defeat ALL Republicans!

Tom Engelhardt writes, "More than two years after the World Trade Center towers came down and the President declared his 'war on terrorism,' it seems reasonable to offer a little scorecard on the 'war(s)' of choice for this administration... First and foremost, of course, was Osama bin Laden (still free); then the man who reputedly kept him safe, Mullah Omar, head of the vile Taliban (still free); add in the man/men or woman/women who sent anthrax through the mail along with letters implying that it came from some anti-Israeli Arab cell in the United States, though it now seems certain that he/they were actually human fallout from our own Cold War weapons labs (still free, still nameless); finally, Saddam Hussein, fingered by the administration as the most dangerous potential terrorist of all, linked by them to al-Qaeda and proclaimed ready to turn over to any terrorist in sight a massive trove of weapons of mass destruction (still free)." Impeach Bush Now!

"The biggest difference was in style, with an almost complete role reversal of what might be expected. The Chinese leader was gregarious; the American resident, aloof. Mr. Bush left after 21 hours in Australia, stuck to this sleepy capital, and was whisked around in motorcades on routes swept clear of ordinary people. He declined to hold a news conference, and was criticized in the usually pro-American press here for offering little beyond a pledge to complete the outline of a free trade agreement with Australia soon. Mr. Hu is lingering for three days. He took the traditional outing for visiting dignitaries - a cruise on Sydney's splendid harbor. He met with Australian business executives at a working lunch, and, in an unusual move for a Chinese leader, held a news conference, albeit a fairly scripted affair. 'Bush came, Hu conquered,' headlined the Financial Review, the conservative, business newspaper."

"A leaked internal memo by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the US faces what is described as a 'long, hard slog' in Iraq and Afghanistan. The memo, which was sent to the Pentagon's senior civilian and military leaders last week and was first reported in the USA Today newspaper, also questions if the US really knows whether it is winning the war on terrorism. Posing a number of challenging questions, the memo says the record against the al-Qaeda network is mixed, and suggests the US does not have the right mechanisms to know whether it is capturing, killing or deterring more terrorists than are being recruited." Rummy's people say the memo was just "sounding out" senior colleagues. Sounds a whole lot more like a plea for new ideas on how to plug up the holes in the sinking ship.

Bob Novak writes that Sen. Richard "Lugar, an elder Republican statesman who usually minds his words, was the talk of Washington after his 'Meet the Press' performance. As his Democratic counterpart on Foreign Relations, Sen. Joseph Biden, delivered partisan slashes, Lugar offered no criticism. When Biden commanded Bush to 'take charge,' moderator Tim Russert asked whether that was good and necessary advice. 'Yes it is,' Lugar said. 'It's very necessary.' Republican insiders have been talking all week about what came next from Lugar: 'I concur with my colleague. The resident has to be resident. That means the resident over the vice resident and over these secretaries [of state and defense].' Lugar had just had enough of the administration's divided voices, especially Dick Cheney's, which he called 'very, very tough and strident.' Other senior senators share Lugar's concern."

"The Defense Department sold equipment to the public that can be used for making biological warfare agents, according to a draft report by the General Accounting Office. The Defense Department agency responsible for the sale of excess property to the public, the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service, halted the sale of such items September 19 while the practice is reviewed. 'Many items needed to establish a laboratory for making biological warfare agents were being sold on the Internet to the public from DoD's excess property inventory for pennies on the dollar, making them both easy and economical to obtain,' the GAO draft report said." Are you safer than you were 3 years ago? Impeach Bush Now!

"Check out what Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staffer who dealt with the crisis in Israel had to say about Bush's efforts, and see if it sounds slightly familiar: 'The administration has laid out a transformative agenda for the region, and achieving a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was supposed to be an important part of that vision. In pursuing such a solution, the administration has never been willing to do what it needed to on the ground. They always flinched when they ran into difficulties.' Hmm, announcing a huge plan with tons of political fanfare, but then never following up with the promised money or requisite attention? Why, the Bush team only pulled that strategy with No Child Left Behind, the African AIDS Initiative, AmeriCorps funding, and the Clear Skies Initiative. Five proposals ranging from foreign aid to the environment doesn't necessarily constitute a pattern, does it? (Yes, Mr. President, it does.)"

"More than 2 million customers lost electrical power last night, including nearly 1 million in the Washington region, as Hurricane Isabel snapped utility poles, toppled trees and tore down power lines. Gusting winds, which reached more than 50 mph, also pinned down some utility crews for hours before they could head out to make repairs. Officials said it could be days before all the power in the area is restored. 'It's beginning to look like it will be the worst outage in our company's history,' Pepco spokesman Robert Dobkin said. As the storm pushed northwest, virtually every part of the region reported outages. Virginia was hit particularly hard, with well over 1 million houses and businesses without power in the state. Dominion Virginia Power said 360,000 of those were in Northern Virginia, and most of the rest were along the coast. Also without power were about 486,000 customers in Washington's Maryland suburbs, from Frederick County to St. Mary's County."

"A study conducted by the American Civil Engineers Society has indicated that all U.S. infrastructure systems, from highways, railways to electricity and water works, are neglected, broken-down or damaged, and that the situation is getting worse. Educational services were said to be the worst, in terms of infrastructure, with three out of four schools in the U.S. deemed not fit to house students. The power outage in New York last month was said to be an indication of deficiency in the energy sector. Presenting the report to the public, the Society Leader Thomas Jackson said terror was a real threat, but that did not make it right to neglect infrastructure systems. Jackson said, 'Whether a dam collapses because of a terrorist attack or because of bad maintenance does not change the outcome in terms of the cities and people that will be trapped under the water.'"

PentaPost's Richard Cohen writes, "Bush's foreign policy is a shambles - a war against the wrong enemy (Iraq and not worldwide terrorism), for the wrong reasons (where are those weapons of mass destruction?), a debacle in postwar Iraq (who are those terrorists?), a Middle Eastern road map to nowhere (wasn't Iraq going to make it all so easy?) and a string of statements about nearly everything (the cost of rebuilding Iraq, for instance) that have proved either untrue or just plain dumb. To make matters worse, truth-tellers have been punished while liars and fog merchants have remained in office... For Bush, the danger is that this sorry record will revive the cartoon persona of a dummy - not the steady custodian of our national security, as he seemed in the aftermath of Sept. 11, but a man without judgment, a naif who was manipulated by a cadre of hawks. For the rest of us, the danger is that the caricature was spot on, so obvious it was disregarded."

The Daily Kos reports: "We officially have the worst budget deficit in the nation's history, and we still have two more months to go in the fiscal year... My warmest congratulations to the Bush Administration for this stunning achievement. Rank incompetence wasn't enough. You have to work hard to achieve results this extraordinary. ... Suicide bombers struck the UN HQ in Baghdad, killing the UN envoy to Iraq and at least 14 others. The attack on the UN was likely intended to humiliate the US, who is responsible for security in the country. Lucky for the world, Bush said he wouldn't be intimidated by the Iraq bombing. He further added he was on vacation in Texas surrounded by Secret Service personnel, so why would he be intimidated? But he did share in the pain of those dealing with his mess in Iraq by cutting short a game of golf."

Rob Kall writes: "Maybe it's terrorism, maybe it's a problem in the power grid... Either way you look at it, this disaster, affecting over 20 million people, is a screaming example of the failure of the Bush administration to protect the people and resources of the US. Assume the Bush Admin will deny any terrorist connection, since this would show total failure of the Homeland Defense Program. Of course, if it's not terrorism then it is due to massively incompetent energy system design and Planning-- also Bush's Fault... If you think that the Bush administration would admit that there was any connection to terrorism, you have to be kidding yourself. They will cover this up and brush it off with vague references to power grid problems. We will never know, unless a whistle blower comes forward to reveal the truth." Instead of securing the infrastructure, Bush's priorities have been to fund War, Big Brother surveillance systems and tax giveaways to the Rich.

Boston Globe reports, "The organization responsible for preventing massive blackouts in the United States has been warning for months that the nation's system of voluntary compliance with electricity standards is inadequate and could result in just the kind of widescale power outage that occurred yesterday. Indeed, in a document written just days ago, the North American Electric Reliability Council said there has been 'a marked increase in the number and seriousness of violations' of guidelines governing the nation's power companies and that 'the very stability of the electric system upon which our economy and our society depends' has 'no effective recourse today to correct such behavior.' The document goes on to warn that 'the longer it takes to establish this new system, the greater becomes the risk and magnitude of grid failures.'" Bush was AWOL again, causing massive economic damage - Impeach Bush Now!

Once again, Elizabeth Bushlover of the NY Times is twisting history and fact to make AWOL Bush look in command. "Bush was having lunch with troops at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station when Joe Hagin, his deputy chief of staff, told him of the massive blackout on the East Coast. But UNLIKE the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when news of another New York catastrophe sent Mr. Bush on an odyssey on Air Force One, today he continued his lunch and went ahead with plans to attend a $1 million political fund-raiser here this evening. " This is EXACTLY like the morning of 9-11, when Bush saw the first plane crash at 8:46 (he said this twice) yet still entered the Booker Elementary school classroom at 9:00. When the second plane crashed at 9:03, Bush was immediately told by Andrew Card; yet he sat on his ass in the class for another 20 or so minutes. If he had ordered fighter jets scrambled at 8:46, he might have prevented the second crash in NY, and certainly the later crash into the Pentagon.

Jester_Fermaggio writes of Bush's accomplishments in office: "I spent the U.S. surplus and shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history. I set the all-time record for biggest annual spending increases, more than any other president in US history. I set a record for the most private bankruptcies in any 12-month period. I set the all-time record for the most foreclosures in any 12-month period. I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market. * I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any country in the history of the world. After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history. In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs. I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any president in US history." There's much more!

Wow - there's a possible pulse at the NY Times! "Mr. Bush should have been able to come up with better responses to two big and obvious questions: why he ordered the invasion of Iraq and why he pushed for tax cuts that have left the nation sinking into a hopeless quagmire of debt. Mr. Bush's vague and sometimes nearly incoherent answers suggested that he was either bedazzled by his administration's own mythmaking or had decided that doubts about his foreign and domestic policies could best be parried by ignoring them. Mr. Bush will simply not engage the issue of whether his administration exaggerated the Iraqi threat in the months leading up to the American invasion... Bush still hung onto his most well-worn buzzwords, however. Iraq was a 'threat' - just as the tax cuts were 'a job-creation program.' Bush and his advisers obviously still believe that the constant repetition of several simplistic points will hypnotize the American people into forgetting the original question."

"American Nobel Prize laureate for Economics George A. Akerlof lashed out at the government of George W. Bush, calling it the 'worst ever' in American history, Der Spiegel magazine reported Tuesday. 'I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extradordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in social and environmental policy,' said the 2001 Nobel Prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley. 'This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for (American) people to engage in civil disobedience. I think it's time to protest - as much as possible,' the 61-year-old scholar added. Akerlof has been recognized for his research that borrows from sociology, psychology, anthropology and other fields to determine economic influences and outcomes. His areas of expertise include macro-economics, monetary policy and poverty."

Rob Kall writes, "Blair's on the coals. Bush and Condi and Cheney are shuffling and fumbling, looking like the arrogant fools we always knew they were. Finally, the real patriotic Republican Conservatives are speaking up. They must be, should be ashamed of the leader they have representing them. It's the smell of melting power, seasoned with too much hubris. The neocon eggheads are finally being seen for the narrow sighted egomaniacs with fantasies of Neonazi, neofascist Empire Building that they've always been... Bush is already bloodied, walking in a daze. The sharks are circling and there WILL be a feeding frenzy. It will bloody anyone who stays near Bush... Ted Stevens of Alaska, who said that this isn't watergate, will probably regret that remark. Of course, this is much uglier than Watergate, which was only about spying for political reasons. Bush sent men to their death and has done untold damage to the USA's reputation as a trustworthy ally."

Matt Miller writes, "The shocking mix of fiscal madness and duplicity Bush unveiled on July 15 with his updated budget is more than depressing. It shows this Bush to be a thousand times less responsible a national steward than his father. The deterioration in the nation's fiscal outlook since Bush took office is stunning. In April 2001 the Bush White House forecast a surplus of $334 billion for this year. On July 15 it announced the deficit would instead be $455 billion. That's a swing of $789 billion in just two years. Bush says next year the deficit will rise to $478 billion -- and that's before taking full account of the ongoing costs of Iraq and Afghanistan. Over a decade, the change from the projected surpluses Bush inherited to the deficits he now expects is roughly $9 trillion. But amazingly, the White House says the three tax cuts it has passed have nothing to do with this historic reversal. It's war. It's recession. It's 'big spending.' It's poppycock."

American soldiers killed in Iraq: 212
Iraqi civilians killed in Iraq (IraqBodyCount.net): 6071-7780
Billions of your tax dollars spent in Iraq (costofwar.com): $68
Days since Bush vowed to capture Osama Bin Laden:
Days since a 5 Republican judges stole the White House for Bush (Democrats.com): 982

Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect, writing in the Boston Globe, reminds us that no president since Herbert Hoover has presided over a more dramatic loss of jobs, and that people respond politically how they feel rather than how the statistics tell them they ought to feel. Instead of pursuing policies that would stimulate the economy, Bush has rewarded his wealthy contributors at the expense of the American taxpayer, who can be expected to be very aware of this in 2004.

"George Bush has started his campaign for reelection. Although many Americans believe his first term has been a success, many others -- this site included -- are convinced that he is fouling our environment, ruining our economy, waging endless war for the wrong reasons, and stealing our liberties. A huge volume of evidence supports this view; in fact, a close look reveals a thousand reasons to vote him out of office. The rest of the world already knows Bush for what he is, but Americans have been particularly forgiving -- or apathetic -- of this man who seems to be nice enough. But he really is a fraud, and as Americans, it is up to us to do the world a favor, to vote this dangerous little man out of office. Review the entire list, or click on one of the categories to the left to read supporting evidence. If you still believe Bush is qualified to lead our country, click on his picture to read his resume."

Kelley Kramer in a Buzzflash Reader Commentary: "I recently had an email exchange with a right-winger from my local newspaper, and of course the war with Iraq came up pretty quick. But he said something in defense of George Bush that really surprised me. In defense of the attack on Iraq he said 'between Hussein and Bush, Hussein is the bad guy'. My first response was ... So your guy is better than a third world dictator, Wow! what an accomplishment! Does he put that on his resume? And with that in mind, I started wondering ... what would a George W. Bush resume look like exactly? Listed below is what I came up with."

Paul Krugman writes: "even skeptics about this war expected a military victory... Instead, we worried -- and continue to worry -- about what would follow. [There] is a pattern to the Bush administration's way of doing business that does not bode well for the future -- a pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect. One has to admit that the Bush people are very good at conquest, military and political. They focus all their attention on an issue; they pull out all the stops; they don't worry about breaking the rules... But after the triumph, when it comes time to take care of what they've won, their attention wanders, and things go to pot... The scary thing is that this slash-and-burn approach to governing may continue to work for Mr. Bush's people because the initial triumphs get all the headlines. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has to live in the wreckage they leave behind."

Mary MacElveen writes, "I mainly preach to the choir in my articles, but this one, I intend to reach out to those who support George W. Bush. A megalomaniac that rules and does not serve. Bush hasn't gotten Osama bin Laden, as he promised, 'Dead or alive', 'Well that's okay.' He has not found yet any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? 'Well that's okay.' Many of our servicemen have died in duty to country. Some from friendly fire. 'Well that's okay'... Well, America, I am asking you now. When will it NOT be OKAY? He is about to use your tax dollars to rebuild a country that he has bombed. Where we had no right to invade. Because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. Well where the hell are they? Where is Osama bin Laden? Funny, this man George W. Bush always believed, America first. Yet, he will rebuild Iraq using your tax dollars, instead of putting that money where it will most certainly help. In America first. How long will you continue to say, 'Well that's okay'?"

Tad Bartimus wrtes, "Acting in my name - and yours - on orders from Bush, our troops will win the battle for Baghdad but lose the hearts and minds of 1 billion Muslims, who see our attack on an independent Arab state as an assault on Islam. As a jihad escalates against us abroad and at home in years to come, we will look back on this time and wonder: How did it happen? One answer is that the man giving the order for war was a C student who didn't like history, never served in combat and... never traveled outside his own country... He ignored the protests of millions of his own citizens and alienated allies who dated back to the American Revolution. He brushed aside the United Nations because it would not do his bidding and arbitrarily declared, on March 17, 2003, that: 'The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now.' Why then? Because George W. Bush had run out of patience. Such a reason does not justify the taking of a single human life."

Russ Baker asks Bush: "You yourself have constantly (and justifiably) criticized Saddam Hussein for saying one thing but doing another. The time has come to hold you to the same standard. How can you condemn the role of one brutal totalitarian Arab regime in fostering terrorism but ignore the more obvious role of another such regime? [Saudi Arabia] Why do you challenge "axis of evil" countries that constitute weak threats while accommodating the strong ones? [North Korea] How can you decry the threat of Iraq to our energy supply, yet advocate domestic policies that threaten that same energy supply? How can you insist that your goal is to introduce democracy into the lives of Iraqis while you move steadily to erode democracy in the United States? How can you criticize Iraq for its weaponry without explaining the role of the United States as one of that country's chief arms suppliers and ardent associate in its war with Iran?"

"Tony McPeak, a four-star general who headed the U.S. Air Force during Desert Storm, believes that Bush should publicly admit personal failure and restart diplomatic negotiations for a possible war against Iraq. McPeak, who retired to Oregon in 1995, says Bush has botched the crucial process of building a coalition, of enlisting the United Nations and of rebuilding Afghanistan as a model of reconstruction. 'The world would breathe a sigh of relief, and we'd go back and do it right, if Bush admitted failure,' says the 67-year-old McPeak. 'I mean, the world would fall in love with this guy. It's not that hard to fix.'" The best fix would be BushCheney's resignation and the commencement of a war crimes tribunal...

Bill Berkowitz writes, "Even with the looming war on Iraq, the Bush Administration can't be accused of ignoring the domestic front. There's a war against the poor; there's a war against the unions; there's the ongoing war against drugs -- with the Bush battle plan focused on growers, suppliers and users of medical marijuana; there's a war against affirmative action; there's a war against civil liberties; there's a war against the environment; there's a campaign aimed at packing the courts with right-wing jurists; there's a war against the separation of church and state, and there's a war against the Bill of Rights. And if world opinion cannot stop Resident Bush, there will be a very hot and bloody war against Iraq." Impeach Bush Now!

Wage Slave Journal writes, "The Scorecard of Evil is pretty inflammatory stuff, and I get my share of hate mail from fans of Bush. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these messages rarely defend any of Bush's actual policies, or attack any of the specifics listed among Bush's misdeeds. They all say Bush is a good president, but almost never say why. The rare messages that actually try to defend Bush inevitably rest their arguments on the imagined moral superiority of a resident who has done virtually nothing worth bragging about. I recently received one such missive from a reader who asserted that in the wake of the September 11 attacks, 'Bush's morals and decisions are the only thing that have kept this country going.' Huh? What has Bush done since September 11 that is so remarkable that conservatives fawn over his performance? How does Bush's post-9/11 record stack up against what we would expect from a truly great after such a disaster? Let's take a look..."

Geov Parrish writes that Bush W-ar I in Afghanistan "has carved that country into war-riddled, terrorized bits, mostly run by the same Northern Alliance warlords whose mass campaigns of theft, rape, torture, and murder drove the country into the Taliban's arms in 1996. America's puppet Karzai government, installed, you'll recall, to improve Afghan women's lives and restore democracy, has done neither; it's a joke in Kabul and irrelevant elsewhere. And in late-breaking War on Drug news, after disappearing under the Taliban, Afghan poppy cultivation reached record levels this year. And there's plenty of CIA personnel on hand to help take it to market. [But] the harvest was contaminated, by the un-depleted uranium we Americans carpet-bombed the entire countryside with. That'll persuade Muslims we mean no lasting harm. Meanwhile, famine continues, and as the irradiated country slides into more civil war, U.S. soldiers are caught each day in the crossfire." And this is the model for Iraq!

John B. Judis writes, "With the Cold War's end, many Americans thought we could close our air raid shelters and take the trillions of dollars that had gone into the military and put them into making our lives better by turning toward the pursuit of happiness rather than the defense of our liberty. And some of that did happen in the last half of the 1990s, during the Clinton-era boom. But only three years into a new century, the United States finds itself plagued by rising unemployment, soaring budget deficits, constricted civil liberties, the threat of terrorist attack and the prospect of a war with, and occupation of, Iraq. We've gone from the best of times to the worst of times. The Bush administration tells us that it is entirely because of Al Qaeda and now Saddam Hussein that we face these difficulties, but the dark clouds that hang over our country are largely the result of Bush administration policies."

Ron Callari writes, "What is at stake here is not just the importance of a popular adhesive, but a system of values. Duct tape is analogous to the easy fix that requires little thought. 'It's perfect for the lazy guy that doesn't know how to fix things the right way', said Tim Nyberg, a co-author of the satiric 'Jumbo Duct Tape Book. 'If you see anything fixed with duct tape,' he added, 'it says the person didn't know what he was doing.' Perhaps the leaders in charge of taping our War on Terror together should think twice before trying to placate a nation with quick-fix schemes. We are little wiser and lot more cynical about a world that is no longer black and white. And no shade of gray (tape or otherwise) is going to make us feel better about that. Duck and cover me once, shame on you! Duct and cover me twice, shame on me!"

Chicago Tribune reports, "The millions who flooded the streets of Europe over the weekend were protesting more than the prospect of a U.S.-led war against Iraq. With passion and vituperation, they were decrying the policies of Resident Bush--and the man himself. 'Bush murderer' and 'Bush terrorist' read some of the signs carried by the varied crowds of Europeans appalled by actions in Washington... 'It's not anti-Americanism; it's anti-Bushism,' said Kristof Scheller, a 26-year-old graduate student in Berlin, in words that are echoed across the continent... Bush's style has been a gift to European cartoonists, who often lampoon him as a missile-slinging cowboy from Texas. 'They regard him as an idiot; a lot of people in this country do,' political editor Andrew Marr reported on the BBC in Britain." IndyMedia.org now reports 12 MILLION protesters around the world!

"On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war. Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing...And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world...This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time...It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter...making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our - or some other nation's - hit list."

The Institute for Public Accuracy invited several policy experts to analyze every sentence in Bush's SOTU. If you suspected Bush was lying through his teeth, here's your proof.

Howard Kurtz writes, "Imagine President Gore [how dearly we wish!] standing in the House chamber and delivering his annual address to the nation. He calls for spending $400 billion over the next decade to strengthen Medicare and launch a prescription drug program. He calls for $450 million to bring mentors to disadvantaged students and children of prisoners. He calls for $600 million for treatment programs for drug addicts. He calls for $15 billion over five years to combat AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. He calls for $1.2 billion to develop clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. What do you suppose the Republicans would be saying about Al Gore? Big spender? Wild-eyed liberal? ... Wouldn't there be lots of accusations of fiscal irresponsibility - especially when the $417 billion in new spending is coupled with $674 billion in tax cuts? But no one in the GOP that we've seen is suggesting that George Bush's brand of compassionate conservatism is, well, kind of expensive."

Ellis Henican writes, "Just once, a U.S. president should step into the well of Congress and deliver an honest SOTU address.... like this: 'To be perfectly honest with you, the state of our union stinks. Unemployment is shooting up like Dick Cheney's blood pressure. Consumer confidence is as clogged as Harvey Pitt's veins. Obviously, our economy is wheezing now. Forty million Americans can't afford health insurance. Eight million can't find a job. And all of a sudden, my performance numbers are dropping faster than Strom Thurmond's chin. I understand the pressure this puts on all of you. So I've decided to steer our nation to the very brink of war, a war I haven't been able to sell at home or abroad. But Karl Rove tells me Americans rally 'round their president at wartime, and that sounds fine with me... whenever people say, 'Do something,' I respond, 'Tax cuts for the rich.' It doesn't do squat to stimulate the economy. But it sure is popular with the Republican base."

Public Campaign writes, "Just as our new poster 'State of the Union: Congress Meets Wall Street' shows, last night Bush addressed many of his proposals directly to satisfying the needs of big corporate campaign contributors. There was Social Security silver for the stock market, wealth for the well-off, paybacks for polluters, and manna for managed care." Impeach Bush Now!

William Rivers Pitt writes, "Bush failed to mention how the American economy could handle the billions of dollars needed to support the war, the inevitable oil shock that would come as a result of the war, the billions more needed for his missile shield, the billions needed to push his new tax cut through, the billions needed to make his old tax cut permanent, and the billions needed to pay for the new programs he proposed. Bush failed to explain why so many Admirals and Generals, including Generals Zinni and Schwartzkopf, have spoken about the recklessness of this war plan. He failed to mention the inevitable blowback of terrorism that America would suffer should this war take place, especially if it takes place with a 'coalition of the willing' that does not include a UN sanction. At no time, and in no way, did George W. Bush mention the name Osama bin Laden... There was so much left unsaid during this speech. Those empty spaces may prove, in the end, to be his downfall."

The Democratic National Committee has compiled an excellent series of reports about the real State of the Union under Bush. Included are tidbits on 2.4 million jobs being lost since Bush stole the White House, Bush being the first president to lose jobs on a monthly basis in 60 years [since Truman!], the Dow Jones under Bush having its worst September since the Great Depression of 1937, and the truckload of Bush's broken promises, from not raiding Social Security, to providing for Medicare prescription drugs and more education spending, to his tax-cuts-for-the-rich plan not leading to budget deficits.

Daily Brew writes, "Despite the best efforts of the corporate media who stand to profit mightily from the conflict, Bush's falling poll numbers stand as a stunning indictment that more and more Americans aren't buying Bush's rationale for war. The spectacle of UN inspectors freely searching an entire country makes the administration's claim that Iraq poses a dangerous and immediate threat to the American public comical at best. Only the most stupid have failed to reach the obvious conclusion that no third world country decimated by twenty years of nearly continuous war and ten years of UN sanctions, and so humiliated that inspectors are picking through Saddam's underwear drawer at the presidential palace, represents any real threat to anyone, except perhaps its own citizens. None of this will be lost on the millions of Americans whose brothers, sons, cousins and uncles Bush plans to offer as cannon fodder for urban combat in Baghdad."

Salon writes, "Bush faces trouble everywhere he turns. War with Iraq seems inevitable even as crises in Venezuela and North Korea simmer, and al-Qaida remains menacing and elusive. On the domestic front, unemployment is still rising, the stock market continues to slump, budget deficits are climbing again -- and the [chimp's] only answer is a massive tax cut for the rich, while states and cities slash funds for public safety, healthcare and education. A broad spectrum of scientists agree that global warming is getting worse, but the administration insists the issue needs more study. It's hard not to notice a disconnection between the challenges facing the U.S. and the Bush administration's response. And what if, against this already gloomy backdrop, things get worse on several fronts at once? Salon asked six writers to look at worst-case scenarios on the domestic and international scenes." Better take some Prozac before you click...

It has almost become an article of faith that this administration is somehow more "professional", or "grown up" than the last one. But the facts show differently. Jeffrey J. Mariotte writes, "In its annual year-end issue, TIME Magazine labeled the Bush/Cheney team 'Partnership of the Year.' The article gives a glowing review of the value Dick Cheney brings to the White House, painting virtually every move the administration makes as carefully choreographed for maximum effect. The truth, though, seems to be that the Bush administration is stumbling from one crisis to another, and that the only thing that it has successfully accomplished is manipulation of the media to give it this aura of accomplishment."

Rightwing mouthpiece Robert Novak writes that GOP Senators started the new session by reading Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card the riot act. "They complained bitterly of arrogance by the Bush administration, especially the Pentagon, in treatment of Congress along the road to war... [Armed Services chair John Warner (R-VA) boomed], 'I will not tolerate a continuation of what's been going on the last two years.' He cited cavalier treatment that denies information even to the venerable top Senate Republican on Armed Services." The new Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Pat Roberts (R-KS) said megadittoes. Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) demanded proof of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties. [Card said 'don't worry' - which explains the NY Times front-page story about Ansar al Islam, blaming Iraq for a group sponsored by Iran.] Ted Stevens (R-AK) is furious that Rumsfeld cut spending mandated by law. When will WashPost, NYTimes, and CNN report on the Anti-Rumsfeld Revolt?

Robert Kuttner writes: "Bush got a free ride in 2002. Men like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld looked competent. They were tough-talking grown-ups, seasoned and tested in the worlds of government, business, and making war. They were the kind of people you wanted in a national crisis, and they usefully upstaged comic opera yokels like Ashcroft. Colin Powell, likewise, could paper over the foreign policy extremism and seem reassuring. Karl Rove could master political cross-dressing and simulate support for popular liberal social programs. Despite all this artifice, at some point the public has to notice the threadbare economy, the assaults on privacy and liberty, the homeland insecurity, and the reckless foreign policy. At least you have to hope that it does and that we get through the year intact."

Arianna Huffington writes, "While so many year-end publications tend to focus on what we should remember about the year now slouching to a close, I prefer to continue this column's contrarian tradition of identifying all the sad and sordid things we'd all be better off never having cross our minds again. Here then is a list of those things I'd like to forget, circa 2002: Trent Lott, toastmaster. That the president still believes an $8 billion a year missile defense shield will protect us from terrorists with box cutters, suitcase nukes and vials of smallpox. That Dick Cheney was able to find a judge -- albeit one appointed by the president -- to side with him in the General Accounting Office suit."

"United States forces have not only failed to hunt down Osama bin Laden while they are preparing for war in Iraq: they are finding it almost impossible to crack the al-Qa'ida network because Bin Laden's men have resorted to primitive methods of communication that cut individual members of al-Qa'ida off from all information. This extraordinary, grim scenario comes from an American intelligence officer just back from Afghanistan who agreed to talk to The Independent - and to supply his own photographs of prisoners - on condition of anonymity. His prognoses were chilling and totally at variance with the upbeat briefings of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Even in Pakistan, he says, middle-ranking Pakistani army officers are tipping off members of al-Qa'ida to avoid American-organised raids." So reports Robert Fisk.

William Rivers Pitt writes: "There are times when history seems to drift idly from one year to the next with no profound milestone to mark its passage. The decade of the 1990s was such a time; after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world seemed to pause for breath. The Clinton administration saw a number of moments pass that have revealed their importance over time - the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the war in Bosnia, the coup in Russia, the passage of the budget that heralded the Wall Street boom, the shut-down of the government - but in their chapter, these moments came and went with the flick of a page. Even the historic impeachment of a sitting President collapsed under its own turgid weight into sordid, tabloid nonsense. There are also times when history finds a fifth gear and puts the go pedal to the mat. It is our common fate to live within such a chapter, and it serves to remember all that we have experienced in the last 700 days:"

Jackson Thoreau's phone rang this morning, and he isn't happy about the message Senator Phil Gramm of Texas left him urging him to vote Republican on November 5th. Jackson writes: "You urged me to vote for the 'great' Republican candidates who are running for U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and Texas and local offices. Here is the 'great' job Republicans like you and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and U.S. Rep. Dick Armey and Bush and Cheney and others have done since y'all - as we say in Texas - stole the White House in late 2000..."

"With control of both the House and Senate in the balance in the Nov. 5 elections, Daschle said Democrats would focus on the economy under the Bush administration's watch, with trillions lost in the stock market, personal pension funds shrinking, unemployment up and administration officials continuing to insist that the economy is on the rebound. 'I can't find a success story in this administration to date, and I think that is something that this administration is going to have to explain, not only in the next two weeks but in the next two years,' Daschle (said). Bush 'came to Washington promising to change the tone, and he did: It's worse. He promised compassionate conservatism and the only thing we've seen is compassion for conservatives.'...Daschle said Bush has only recently realized that unilateralism wasn't working. 'I don't know if we have ever seen a more precipitous drop in international stature and public opinion with regard to this country as we have the last two years."

Molly Ivins writes, "The economy is a mess. We are now in the second dip of a double-dip recession. ('Looks like a W,' say the economists...) Six and a quarter trillion dollars has disappeared from the stock markets. We have so far to go in cleaning up corporate corruption, it makes the Augean stables look like spilt milk... How many disasters does it take to get Washington's attention?... Poverty is up, unemployment is up, 40 million Americans don't have health insurance, we have allowed unrestrained greed to ruin the economy. [Republicans have institutionalized 'infectious greed' with right-wing free-market claptrap, and corrupted our political system - they've been getting elected on these mantras for years.] The most commonly asked political question in America today is, 'Where the hell are the Democrats?'... I suggest the gutless wonders that pass for an opposition party in Washington get up off their fat duffs and get to work."

"In just the past few weeks, news reports in prominent and medium-sized newspapers have revealed royal screw-ups on the part of the Bush administration...Just a month ago, a Washington Post story inspired a commentary on this site lamenting how the Bush administration wasted six months for upgrading aviation security by hiring a former Secret Service agent, John W. Magaw, to run the Transportation Security Administration which was established last winter to protect travelers. Quitting after six months, Magaw was blamed for employing an authoritarian management style, denying information to airport officials, hiring people with no expertise in aviation issues and spending lavishly. Come Aug. 16, USA Today's Blake Morrison zeroed in on the defections of 80 air marshals who were fed up with working conditions as undercover officers assigned to stop hijackings on commercial flights. The newspaper upped that number to 250 in an update a few days ago." So writes Bruce Ticker.

Time.com's Michael Duffy writes: "As a senior Bush adviser bluntly declared earlier this year: 'The way to win international acceptance is to win. That's called diplomacy: winning.' If other countries get restive, U.S. officials say, who cares? Even ganged up, they will be weaker than the U.S. alone...A presidency based on moral principles requires consistency, and Bush has not always displayed it. He calls for democracy in Iraq and Palestine—but not in such U.S.-friendly autocracies as Saudi Arabia. He is an avowed free-trader, but he has boosted domestic farm subsidies and protectionist tariffs on foreign steel... Many of these Republicans were surprised in January when Bush's strategist Karl Rove said the g.o.p. will make the President's 'handling of the war on terrorism the centerpiece' of its plan to win back the Senate and keep the House in November...No man who lost the popular vote can ignore his re-election (sic) for very long..."

Robert Scheer writes, "Doomed by the incoherence of a foreign policy defined largely by biblical notions of the struggle between good and evil, the Bush administration thrashes about in its hunt for the devil. Sadly, all that has produced are shopworn enemies that were once our surrogates in battles we would rather forget... [It is] time to forgo the biblical allegories of good and evil and recognize that in the 21st century, smiting one's enemies is an elusive goal requiring patience and subtlety, as well as timely heroics. The enemy, whether it be global warming, addictive drugs, endemic poverty, religious fanaticism, terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, is best thought of as a dangerous disease succored by ignorance, pride and avarice--sins of which the U.S. too is sometimes guilty. That is why we will continue to be tormented by monsters of our own creation."

Paul Krugman nails it again. "There is an inexorably growing gap between the image and the reality of the Bush administration's policies. Mr. Bush is a master of photo-op populism; his handlers seek out opportunities to show him mingling with blue-collar workers. But the reality is that this administration loves 'em while the TV crews are around, then leaves 'em when it comes to actual policy. And that reality is becoming ever harder to conceal... behind the photo-ops, the administration is busy squeezing programs that benefit firefighters, police officers, coal miners, veterans and other 'humble people of America' (Mr. Novak's phrase), in order to make room for tax cuts that mainly help a handful of not at all humble people. That's not demagoguery, it's the plain truth. And it's a truth that will become ever harder to disguise."

The Webguild Sentinel keeps an eye on Washington - and it is a sharp eye indeed! From land mines to church politics to prescription drugs to Enron to terrorism, this site covers the full landscape of Bush/Republican disasters. Check it out!

Joshua Micah Marshall writes: "The confidence man is a stock figure in American culture, originating--perhaps not coincidentally--in the boomtowns of the Old Southwest. He's the snake-oil salesman, the wildcat land speculator who mixes boundless optimism with quick talk, bluff, and bluster. The administration is led by such men... Karl Rove sold the campaign on a pet theory of his: [It was a bandwagon strategy.] The stunt almost cost Bush the presidency [He wouldn't have "won" if not for the Supreme, Jeb and Cruella DeHarris stealing the election]... When you look past the promises and the tough talk and the spin, you see an administration whose major policy initiatives are stalled or postponed to some unspecified point in the future... But that leaves them in the position of a company that borrows against future profits (Enron, for instance) or an overextended investor who is buying stock on margin. When the bubble bursts, they will have a long way to fall."

David Teather writes, "About 15 minutes' walk from Mr Cheney's former $3m home lies Highland Park Village. This is no typical US retail centre: its 40 or so shops include Prada, Gucci and Calvin Klein - no Wal-Mart, Kmart or Piggly Wiggly here... But even in this affluent part of Texas, in what should be a Republican stronghold, doubts about the administration are beginning to creep in. 'The scariest thing to me is you really can't trust people,' said Bob Johnson, a 44-year-old database manager. 'I think most people who have voted Republican were happier with an ideologue like Reagan. Some of these guys talk the talk but walk the self-interest walk instead of being a little more high-minded and principled. Reagan may have had his problems but no one thought he was lining his pockets.' The White House is scrambling to deflate what some aides refer to as the 'Cheney problem'."

Mark Shields writes, "During the fall of 2000, many of [my Republican friends]... bluntly warned that if I did not wholeheartedly back Republican George W. Bush, the following terrible things would happen: The Dow-Jones average would lose 4,000 points; the nation's unemployment rate would climb higher than it had been in eight years; historic U.S. budget surpluses would be replaced by budget deficits as far as the eye could see; and worse. Well, I have to admit that a) I did not back Bush in the fall of 2000 and b) every dire change they predicted has come to pass" - thanks to Bush's corruption.

Thomas L. Friedman writes: "we have all the same excesses that other capitalist nations have, because fear and greed are built into capitalism. What distinguishes America is our system's ability to consistently expose, punish, regulate and ultimately reform those excesses — better than any other[?]...After his own E.P.A. issued a report in June linking fossil-fuel use to global warming, Mr. Bush dismissed the study by saying that he 'read the report put out by the bureaucracy,' as if that explained why it couldn't be credible... the real George Bush…trusts his C.E.O. cronies more than the bureaucratic regulators who oversee them...count me among those naïve fools with a fundamental belief in the federal government — not because I have no faith in ordinary Americans, but because I have no trust in ordinary Big Oil, ordinary Enron or ordinary Harken Energy to do the right thing without proper oversight."

Ryan Lizza writes: "The biggest problem in this bleak political season has been Bush himself. With the vice p-resident hobbled by the Halliburton investigation and the Treasury secretary afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease, the p-resident has become, by necessity, his administration's economic point man. Every time he has spoken off-the-cuff about the economy during the last few weeks, however, his fortunes have worsened. He resisted attempts [to properly prepare for] his July 8 press conference, and the session turned into a debacle... the White House was finally returning to a more disciplined message of avoiding comment on the markets; but... Bush scuttled the momentum with six minutes of incoherent banter about the value of stocks while speaking to reporters... The Dow dropped 235 points that day, and much of the effort White House aides had made to stop reporters from connecting Bush's remarks to the markets was undone."

The Economist UK has given up on Bush. "Can it really be happening again? A decade ago, George Bush senior let a seemingly simple re-election slip out of his grasp, as economic problems and a perception that the president was out of touch obscured his triumphs abroad. Now the son for whom that defeat was a cataclysmic experience also appears to be drifting, as the war against terrorism has given way to corporate scandals, falling stockmarkets and the idea that a rich Republican president is out of touch."

Our stock market keeps falling lower and lower every day. We know that there is major corporate corruption, bad securities reform legislation passed in 1995 by the republican congress over Bill Clinton's veto, and complete lack of enforcement under the Bush Adminisration's Harvey Pitt. The question you have to ask is "Does this fall into the plans of Al Queda?" Bin Laden wanted to destroy the US economy and the worldwide markets. It is not a coincidence that the target chosen was the World Trade Center. King George, as Americans, we need you to step up and take action immediately to stop the decline of our markets. We need leadership, honesty and enforcement. If you can't handle it, resign.

Robert Kuttner writes: "Bush is suddenly in trouble...his is now a Cinderella presidency. He was abruptly transformed from dubious and untested pretender into steely wartime leader, only to be suddenly turned back into a bumpkin. And how utterly fitting. Bush's own financial biography, on a pettier scale, epitomizes the corruption that now threatens the whole system. His Wall Street speech of July 9, intended both to reassure investors and get ahead of the Democrats, was one of his weakest ever. The Dow responded to his platitudes by plunging nearly 500 points in two days. Rhetorically, the speech lacked passion and conviction. Politically, [Bush] was crippled by his need to walk a fine line between condemning wrongdoing but not attacking the larger Republican corporate culture...Bush irrevocably symbolizes the tawdriness of crony capitalism, right down to his insider self-enrichment based on the sale of fraudulently inflated Harken Energy stock."

We all know these famous words that came out of George W. Bush's mouth. We can't argue that he did in fact change the tone in Washington - by destroying our Constitution, Bill of Rights and separation of powers, giving us war without end, destroying our economy with tax cuts and financial fraud, alienating the world by illegally pulling out of every treaty the US had previously signed, trying to use Social Security in the stock market to make sure his friends get their huge last minute bonuses before real legislation comes down hard on the accountants and companies and before individual investors smarten up to this game. Scandal after scandal... King George, here is a hint: resign now, so we can change the tone in Washington back to how it was under the Clinton Administration!

ConsortiumNews.com writes, "It is becoming obvious to many Americans that George W Bush is not up to the awesome job of the presidency of the United States... there can be little dispute that his 18 months in office have been among the most disastrous in U.S. history. From Bush’s swearing-in despite losing the national popular vote, through the first act of war on the U.S. mainland in modern times, to the shattered confidence in U.S. securities markets and the resurgence of the national debt, the slide has been steep and seemingly unstoppable. In particular, Bush appears clue-less what to do about the economy. Still, no one seems willing to ask two relevant questions: What further damage can the nation expect over the next 30 months of Bush's term? And is there a constitutional way to spare the country that experience by easing Bush out of office, especially given that a plurality of American voters wanted Al Gore in the White House, not Bush?"

Martin Crutsinger from AP writes, "Last year, when Congress was faced with a similar need to bolster the bottom line, lawmakers simply voted to shift the date by which corporations had to make a quarterly tax payment. The result: $33 billion in revenue badly needed to cover the costs of President [sic] Bush's big tax cut... The White House also once again cut the projected surplus for the next decade, to $827 billion. That is a far cry from the $5 trillion surplus projection Bush made when he took office, before a recession, a war on terrorism and his $1.35 trillion 10-year tax cut saw $4 trillion of that amount evaporate." Let's make it simple, George: If you were being graded on your performance, your honesty, and your work... You fail.

Sam Parry writes, "Less than 18 months into Bush's presidency, a nasty mixture of economic and international problems is facing the American people: a sinking dollar and a sagging stock market on one side and soaring budget and trade deficits on the other, with a backdrop of Bush's intent to press ahead with an ill-defined 'crusade' to rid the world of 'evil' over the advice of traditional allies in Europe and elsewhere. One might call this predicament – the combination of a depressed economy, an inability to address pressing domestic needs, the alienation of key allies and an endless war – the Bush Effect... The tarnishing of the U.S. image abroad arguably began with the circus-like impeachment of President Clinton in 1998-99 and worsened with the flame-out of some dot-com high-fliers in 2000. But Bush's theft of the presidential election in December 2000, with Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court stopping the counting of votes in Florida, proved to be a watershed."

Gene Lyons writes: "President Junior has kept at least one campaign promise. He said he'd run the country like a business, and that he has surely done. The Bush administration looks more like Enron or WorldCom everyday: all smoke and mirrors economic projections, make-believe accounting, bigshots cashing in while everybody else's savings vanish, and zero accountability... Anyway, it's the story of George W. Bush's life. Last week, with the stock market closing its worst two quarters in 30 years, and the dollar sinking on currency markets, nervous traders were starting to wonder if what billionaire investor George Soros called the 'Bush factor' -- part dogma, part sheer incompetence -- could throw the world economy into crisis... Back before Bill and Monica discovered sex and invented sin, see, nobody ever heard of insider trading or cooking the books. Well, OK, nobody except George W. Bush."

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, visiting Iowa Democratic activists, was "asked where he would find fault with President [sic] Bush, and he replied, 'As far as domestic policy is concerned, I can't think of anything he's done that I agree with.' He ticked off a list of Bush 'outrages,' ranging from an education bill he called the 'largest unfunded mandate in history' to Bush's 'appointment of ideologues to the courts.' Heads were nodding in agreement. And then he added, almost as a throwaway line, 'I think he's done a good job on the war on terrorism.' [A veteran Democratic worker responded], 'Are you sure? A lot of us think we are wasting a lot of money on trying to find the guy with the beard. We have to find a new way to fight terrorism.'...The exchange brought vividly into focus for me a realization that was slowly dawning...what I heard convinces me that the nine-month moratorium on dissent from Bush's war on terrorism is coming to an end."

Ira Chernus writes, "In a major policy shift, I have decided that George W. Bush is irrelevant and must be replaced as leader of the United States... Bush has also made himself irrelevant by denying basic democratic and constitutional rights to his own people. He came to power in an election that appeared to be free and fair. But even his own Justice Department now admits that many voters in Florida were illegally disenfranchised. Since last September 11, he has suspended numerous civil liberties that used to be considered basic to a democracy, using his parliament as a rubber stamp to give his measures an appearance of legitimacy. If Bush expects me to consider resuming contacts with him, he must first show himself capable of running a genuinely democratic government. If he can not (which seems likely, given his long history of ignoring individual rights), then it is time for him to go."

ABC's 'The Note' writes, "We DO have to wonder how a free-market, free-trading, anti-McCain-Feingold guy like Bush, just 16 months or so into his presidency, could have turned the clock back on the farm bill; turned his back on free trade - on the steel protection initiative - more than Bill Clinton ever did; and signed into law a campaign finance bill the White House maintains to this day is at least partly unconstitutional... We can't overstate the spitting disgust that a lot of businesspeople and conservatives openly express with [Bush]'s actions on these scores. They understand and appreciate that a president [sic] sometimes has to be political, but the combined effect of all of these compromises is turning some conservative stomachs. And maybe when Bush says he wants to 'change the tone in Washington,' he really JUST means Washington (not to parse words or anything), which would get him off the hook for [attacking] Texas Democratic Senate nominee Ron Kirk as an 'obstructionist.'"

Robert Freeman writes in Salon, "Bush's own economic policies [are endangering] long-term recovery... Not since Lyndon Johnson tried to run both the Vietnam War and the Great Society at the same time has spending grown so prodigiously. Johnson's runaway spending, and lack of fiscal discipline needed to pay for it, produced the economic train wreck of the 1970s. The Bush tax cut betrays a hauntingly similar lack of discipline [which] will drain almost $4 trillion from the U.S. treasury by the end of the decade. That's when baby boomers begin retiring and start making record demands on Social Security... we need the government to be in the best financial shape possible [instead of Bush's] increased spending and lavish tax cuts/payoffs for the rich... If there is a single lesson we should have learned from the supply-side debacle of the 1980s, it is that you cannot raise spending and cut taxes without producing massive deficits."

David Broder writes in the Washington Post, "Karl Rove's midterm campaign analysis isn't working -- As you may remember, President [sic] Bush's political counselor made headlines in January when he told a meeting of the Republican National Committee that the war on terrorism would be the key to GOP victories in this November's congressional elections...That was then, but it's different now. Just ask the leading candidates in the race for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Jesse Helms. Former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the front-runner in a nine-person Democratic primary field, told me that down-home issues -- education, Social Security and especially health care -- are uppermost in voters' minds. No surprise that a Democrat would want to play down Bush's strong suit, you say?" Guess What, Karl? Even Liddy Dole -- another right wing retread -- says that your analysis was dumber than a box of rocks!

Michael Berube writes, "Imagine the 43rd Presidency without... September 11. It's January 2002, one year after Bush's controversial inauguration, and the White House is a shambles [and] George W. Bush is in deep doo-doo... Enron's spectacular collapse has [led to numerous investigations, including] corruption and influence-peddling in the new administration. [All] have been denounced by Rush Limbaugh, William Kristol, and the Wall Street Journal... but nobody is listening to these toadies anymore. [The] review of the Florida election returns... indicated beyond all doubt that more Floridians intended to vote for Gore than for Bush in November 2000--and that Florida Republicans... deliberately struck thousands of black voters from the rolls while filling out fraudulent absentee and military ballots months before the election. And since more Americans voted for Gore than for Bush nationwide in the first place, the new President's legitimacy hangs by a thread."

"This band of mean-spirited, greedy, determined power-seekers ran roughshod over the Constitution, the institutions of democracy, over real and imagined 'enemies' abroad, etc. Instead of governing from the middle and seeking consensus in this new struggle -- which would have been appropriate anyway, given that Bush lost the presidential popular vote by half-a million ballots and reached his office only through a political maneuver on the Supreme Court -- Bush behaved as if he had an enormous mandate and didn't need to consult anybody, on anything…The cracks already are starting to show in domestic policy,… In foreign policy, the veteran team surrounding Bush thought itself unchallengeable as well, representing the only superpower in the world. Until it started to falter again and again, when running up against the many-layered complexities of the real world, as opposed to Bush&Co.'s simplistic black-and-white-you're-with-us-or-with-the-terrorists point of view…" writes Bernard Weiner.

"Bush is under fire from some friends, foes and pundits for his handling of the Middle East, the administration's confusing response to upheaval in Venezuela and the demise in Congress of some of the president's domestic priorities, such as last week's Senate vote against oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge… Republican strategist Scott Reed says the White House doesn't have to worry about GOP criticism as long as it's coming from "the self-appointed, non-elected wing of the Republican Party" and not from lawmakers. Besides, polls show more than nine in 10 Republican voters approve of Bush's performance. What ever happened to the idea of a White House occupant serving ALL of the people?

In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Bush wrote, "In the wake of the failed attempt to overthrow President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, I too have taken time to reflect on my actions in office. In the course of my Presidential campaign, I made many promises that I have failed to keep. These included preserving the Social Security Trust Fund and giving seniors a prescription drug benefit. I also promised to restore honor and integrity to the White House, by imposing the strictest ethical standards on my appointees, including those from Enron. I promised the world a 'humble' foreign policy, and peace in the Middle East. By these standards, I believe I have presided over a failed Presidency, and have therefore decided the only way I can honor my promises to the American people is to resign."

The Washington Post's Dan Balz writes: "The case the Democrats make is familiar: that Bush and the Republicans squandered the fiscal surpluses of the Clinton administration with a tax cut tilted to the wealthy; that they abandoned a bipartisan consensus on the environment going back years; that they violated the Social Security and Medicare trust funds after vowing not to; that they favor big corporations over the average American." He noted that the same accusations were made against Bush during the campaign, but now that Bush has actually lived up to the Democrats' worst nightmares, there is an "I told you so" quality to the party's critique.

"His Middle East policy (a charitable description) is feckless: While violence raged on the West Bank and in Israel last Saturday, the President appeared clueless. U.S. goals in Afghanistan and Iraq are under siege. It's only a little better domestically. The self-styled apostle of free trade turned craven and protectionist when confronted by the potent steel and lumber industries. In signing a campaign finance reform bill - in the dead of the morning with few around - Mr. Bush was graceless. After terrorism, what is the Bush message? To be sure, George Bush's poll ratings have slipped only slightly from the stratospheric post-Sept. 11 levels. But conventional Washington wisdom underrates his vulnerabilities. 'We may be seeing a reprise of Bush One,' ventures independent pollster John Zogby. Six months after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, that President Bush was still riding high, but a collapse was on the horizon." So writes Al Hunt in the Wall Street Journal.