9/18/2006:   As an American -- forget that I'm registered as a Democrat -- I have certain expectations of the Democratic Party should the electorate turn out in sufficient numbers that the Republicans can't successfully defraud the elections again, and they are as follows:

1. The elections of 2000 and 2004 will be fully investigated, including but not limited to the removal of valid voters from the voting rolls, voter registration fraud in which registration cards for Democrats were destroyed, missing, tampered, or destroyed ballot boxes, and election returns that could not possibly have been generated for districts in question.

2. The run-up to the Iraq War will be fully investigated, to determine a clear and extremely detailed timeline showing what the Bush cabinet members knew, when they knew it, and how they reacted to the information, with the intent of discovering whether Bush misled Congress, the American people, and the United Nations when he made his case for war.

3. The signing statements in which George Bush indicated he would not enforce the law as set down by Congress will be fully investigated. George essentially put into writing that he intended to break the law. That cannot stand.

4. The exposure of a CIA agent's identity will be reinvestigate. The findings of the current commission will be thrown out, and a new investigation will commence.

5. Impeachment proceedings will commence immediately. There will no longer be any illusion that George Bush's policies were condoned by the people of the United States. He held ultimate power for a season, and that season has passed.

6. All legislation that allowed the President to skirt the Bill of Rights will be rolled back. No domestic spying without a warrant, period. And get rid of the damn "Patriot Act." What a bit of marketing that was...

7. Our troop levels in Iraq will be highly reduced. High incentives and pay will be offered to Iraqi army recruits. They will trained in small groups, and the trainers will either be fluent in the Iraqi language or have plenty of translators. The army's orders will be simple: for every Iraqi army soldier created, one of ours goes home. And a quota will be in place such that, regardless of whether their army's growth is keeping pace, every month 10,000 of our soldiers will leave. If they are truly in the middle of a civil war, it won't matter what efforts we put into building their army, and this policy recognizes and embraces that. The slogan has been, "As they stand up, we'll stand down," but nothing effective is being done. It's time that changed.

8. The borders will be closed and a fast-track system for processing immigration requests will be enacted. In an age when I can locate a rare part for my iPaq in China, pay my bills, change my stock portfolio, research esoteric particle physics theory, reconnect with an old high school friend, and practically start World War III on a chat forum, all in about 15 minutes on my computer using the internet, we should be able to use current technology to research and vett people wishing to come into this country quickly and with a fair amount of accuracy. My desire is not to eliminate immigration, it's to eliminate illegal immigration.

9. Human rights will be secured while shoring up the Geneva Convention. Our Bill of Rights pertains strictly to citizens of the United States, and the Geneva Conventions pertain strictly to behaviour during times of war, including the treatment of prisoners of war. We need to clarify the Geneva Conventions where they are vague in such a way that we take a morally higher position than is required by those conventions rather than a morally vacant position. Bush is fighting as hard as he can to get permission to treat the current crop of detainees as horribly as he can get away with. We should lead the world in treating people better, not set examples of the very treatment we would not tolerate if the captured soldiers were our own.

10. Diplomatic relations and treaties broken by the Bush administration are to be restored with all possible haste. Screw the President. Our Democratic Congressional leaders and Presidential candidates should be using their time laying the ground work for restoring the diplomatic relations that Bush has worked so hard to ruin. Peace is not found in the barrel of a gun, only murder and antipathy. Bush doesn't get that, but he doesn't speak for most Americans anymore.

11. Legislation is to be formulated to limit the powers of the President to those given him specifically by Congress and no more. In other words, make sure that no one like George Bush can ever abuse our nation's power and resources ever again.

12. Signing statements are to be eliminated. George has turned something that seemed good on its face into a complete joke. Just kill it.

13. Use the veto override as often as possible. Once signing statements are illegal, shove George's veto down his throat.

14. Secure electronic voting. Diebold is either corrupt or incompetent from drawing to delivery, and they need to be slapped down for producing a laughably bad voting machine. These guys make ATMs -- they know how to produce a secure machine that creates an auditable paper trail. They only way they could have foisted their crappy voting machine on the American public is if the had a motive to produce an insecure and easily exploitable product. Set federal guidelines for how a voting unit should be constructed, distributed, collected, queried, serviced, etc.

15. The federal tax code will immediately be rolled back to what it was on November of 2000. Balanced taxes, everyone paying a fair share.

16. Fund our schools. Once our troops are safely home or put back on the hunt for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, begin redirecting funds back into the education system. Every child got left behind during Bush's war on America.

17. Fund our schools. Once our troops are safely home or put back on the hunt for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, begin redirecting funds back into the education system. Every child got left behind during Bush's war on America.

18. Eliminate H1B visas for the next year and heavily tax outsourced jobs. Pull high tech back into this country, restore the technology base by making it an attractive career choice again. Bush has pushed to get 1.88 million H1B visas created, when it has been projected that there will only be 1.25 million high tech jobs. So, as a present to his corporate buddies, Bush is creating a glut of foreign workers to drive down the pay scale, nevermind that he's driving up the unemployment numbers.

19. The embargo on stem cell research will be broken. Short of cutting up breathing babies, our scientists need carte blanche to get medical research up to speed and able to catch up to the rest of the world. To do execute that feat, they need healthy, untainted stem cell lines.

20. Environmental protections will be restored and beefed up. Put controls back on corporations for eliminating heavy metals and toxins from the effluents. Put incentives back in place for creating creating environmentally friendly cars. The northern icecap is breaking up. Global warming is an obvious reality. The American people aren't nearly as stupid and Karl Rove thinks. It's time to push for a better world and a cleaner future.

As an American, a patriot, and a voter, I demand that the Democratic Party meet my expectations with diligence and speed. A clear message must be sent that we, the American People, hold treason to be a more egregious crime than marital infidelity. We must make clear that we hold our soldiers lives in higher regard than corporations' abilities to make dollar. We must send a message that we hold our children's futures dear, and that we prize a comfortable retirement surrounded by grandchildren being educated to the best of our abilities in a world of peace, love, unity, and respect. We must send a message that terrorists will not be allowed to permanently change us into rabid reactionaries, that war is our defense, not our business model, and that we do in fact stand for humanitarianism, truth, and justice.

Democratic Party, do not fail.

9/29/2006:   I'm disappointed in Oliver Stone. He went on the record at the Sebastian Film Festival saying that he was ashamed for his country over Iraq, that we have destroyed the world in the name of security, and that Bush has set American back 10 years.

Oh, Oliver.

Mr. Stone, you need a history lesson. Bush has set us back so much more than just 10 years. Bush has done his level best to erase everything good about America that occurred starting after World War II. President Eisenhower coined the phrase "military industrial complex" in his haunting and insightful admonition to the country upon leaving office, warning that if we weren't careful, the business of war would suck the resources out of this country. He was right, and the fall of the Soviet Union illustrated the accuracy of his prediction. Now Bush has fired up the military industrial complex to reshape the world in a stroke of imperialism unmatched in America's history.

As the banners I put on my car while commuting attest, I'm proud to be an American, but I'm ashamed of George W. Bush.

9/24/2006:   A National Intelligence Estimate was released that concluded the war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the September 11th attacks.

Well, no duh. We knew that. This just sort of backs up what we already knew, and keeps the fire under the GOP's toes nice and roasty-toasty. Of course, Dems are graciously pointing to the report and releasing statements that basically boil down to, "Told ya so."

Look, we as a country, when hit over the head with a fact often and hard enough, will finally turn and say, "Alright already. I get it." So it's time to show that we get it. Turn out in November and vote Democrat.

The GOP's time is up.

9/24/2006:   Former President William Jefferson Clinton gave smarmy Fox journalist Chris Wallace a warm, heaping, serving of freshly spiced smack down. Wallace, in an attempt at a Rupert Murdoch-ordered hack job ambush, invited Bill Clinton on the show to discuss Clinton's initiative on climate change, then quickly flanked him with a question about why he didn't do more to stop Bin Laden when he had the chance. And Bill Clinton put him on his figurative butt.

Chris Wallace kept framing his questions to imply that Bill Clinton was soft on terrorists during his administration, but Bill gave Wallace a fact-laden head butt, reminding Little Christopher that he had taken every possible measure to find and kill Bin Laden, leaving the current administration with the architecture, tools, and staff to get the job done, which they immediately began deconstructing along with every other good thing Clinton had done in a weird, pissy, all-too-obvious attempt to erase him and his legacy. Bill slapped Wallace around with the fact that the current administration clearly thinks that Iraq is seven times as important as Afghanistan and capturing Bin Laden, given that there are only 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and 140,000 in Iraq. As a final body slam, he challenged whiney little Chris to reveal how many times the Monkey Faced Frat Boy's administration has been asked why it didn't do more to stop Bin Laden in the eight months preceding 9/11 with all the intelligence and tools it had at its disposal.

The Bush administration, in a high-handed elitist "nyah nyah" replied in a statement that Clinton was spinning history, and that the only way to fight terrorism was to stay the course. What a moron. Who wrote Bush's reply? That jackass should be fired, and they should come up with a better statement, one that explains why we aren't doing more to find Bin Laden. But then, that might be construed as accepting blame, and we know Bush will never do that, no matter how many crimes are laid at his feet.

9/24/2006:   A note to all homosexual Americans and those who aren't ruled by bigotry: The Republicans tried to shove a Constitutional Amendment down our throats to ban gay marriage in order to divert our attention from the President breaking the Constitution on a regular basis.

Want fair and equal treatment? Vote Democrat in November.

9/24/2006:   How would Jesus vote?

He'd probably vote against murder, lies, bigotry, and corruption.

He'd vote Democrat. Nuff said.

9/24/2006:   One of the better known analyses of the 1920 Presidential election is in author Irving Stone's 1944 book about defeated Presidential candidates, "They Also Ran." Stone rated James M. Cox as superior in every way over Warren Harding, claiming the former would have made a much better President. Stone argued there was never a stronger case in the history of American presidential elections for the proposition that the better man lost.

I think Mr. Stone would have reconsidered that claim given the 2000 Supreme Court award of the office of President to George W. Bush over Al Gore, especially knowing what we know now.

Fun fact: Bush's IQ: 91. Bill Clinton's: 182. They are the dumbest and smartest Presidents for whom we have an I.Q. rating, respectively. Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Bush was a monkey faced frat boy. Nuff said.

9/23/2006:   Thanks to George Bush's determination to keep a rolling, active war in play, and diverting our military resources to Iraq to achieve that rather than continuing to pursue Osama Bin Laden, it sounds as though Bin Laden may have died of natural causes, a free man and a hero to the radical, fundamentalist-freak Muslim world.

If that's true, then thanks to the Monkey Faced Frat Boy, Bin Laden will never be brought to justice, never captured and chained, never spend a single moment in jail, never stand before a court and his accusers, never be tried, convicted, and sentenced. Nearly 3000 people's families will never know justice.

Good job, George, and a big hearty, "Well done," to the GOP that refused to reign him in. You're all morons.

9/23/2006:   Garrett Epps, writer for Salon, clearly failed U.S. Government 101. He based an entire article on the idea that the U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee the citizens the United States the right to vote. Now, if you're like me in that you have a fairly decent grasp of the Constitution, this is going to set off an alarm right away. It took me all of 5 minutes to locate my copy of the U.S. Constitution, flip to the section listing Amendments, and find the text for t6he Fifteenth Amendment, which in section one reads, "The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Essentially it was passed to give the right to vote to former slaves, but it applies to all citizens of this country.

But to understand Mr. Epps lapse, one should probably consider the point he attempts to make with it. He impugns the GOP (and I have no problem with that) by implying that they are gaming the Presidential voting process based on the fact that the U.S. Constitution doesn't expressly describe how electoral voters are appointed by each state. As a matter of constistency, the 50 states have all adopted very similar measures, within federal guidelines and limitations, for taking the popular vote and converting it to electoral votes, but in point of fact, Mr. Epps implies that the GOP would not be beyond using any loophole available to them to retain power.

While his argument is poorly founded, the gist is dead-on. The GOP has shown itself willing, inspired, and driven to game every voting subprocess in a blatant and semicohesive war on the American public to wrest undeserved, hoarded, and near-violently protected power, which is then turned against the American people in the interest of converting political currency to hard currency at every opportunity.

Diebold and similar badly designed voting machines need to be outlawed, federal guidelines enacted, allowable methods of voter registration outlined in federal legislation, voter rolls protected, and the voting process overseen by non-partisan federal agents and members of the United Nations. Allowing the less honorable members of the Republican Party to run roughshod over the voting process, gaming it to skew results in their favor in denial of the will of the majority, is morally and ethically wrong and treasonous by way of apathy to the American people.

9/18/2006:   Special mention: Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes, Rachel Maddow. These intelligent, driven women stand up to the foaming-at-the-mouth, rabid, extremist NeoCon Republicans on international television and syndicated radio, face to face, at every opportunity. They are just as quick to take to task foaming-at-the-mouth, rabid, extremist Democrats. They show no sign of being coopted by any political party, but instead fight for what is right in every public forum given to them. They are Americans we can be proud of.

And it doesn't hurt one bit -- and I'm speaking purely as a patriot and proud American here -- that they're pretty stinking good lookin' as well. Ok, that was probably sexist and uncalled for. I'm a guy. Sue me.

9/17/2006:   I have to tell you, I've given a lot of thought to what might happen next if the elections in November are defrauded like the 2004 and 2000 elections. We know about the subtle, not-so-subtle, and in-your-face fraud that occurred during those elections, and as a result we've been stuck with a corrupt, corporatist, elitist, warmongering GOP for 6 years. Our Constitution itself is under attack because we haven't fought back.

That time is over.

I honestly believe that if the election doesn't result in Democrats controlling one or both houses of Congress, unrest will foment. The people will rise up. Demonstrations will begin. It's been too long, and too much harm has been done. The GOP must back down. They must stop stealing elections. They must, or the people will fight back.

I will be one of those people in the demonstrations. I'm prepared now to put my life on hold to fight back. I will not allow my children's future to be further coopted by the GOP.

I've had about all I can take, and I can't take no more. Apparently I'm not alone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KlB4bLbn58
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqtacxoQc0Y

The GOP's time is up.

9/17/2006:   Dick Cheney and Arlen Specter have introduced a bill, Senate Biull 2453, that will make warrantless domestic spying permanently legal, including but not limited to eavesdropping of all communications, data mining and profiling of U.S. citizens, the classification of all data and action points as top secret. (See The Bill of Rights Defense Committee for more details.)

Nice, huh? Dick Cheney. Your Vice President. Y'know, that other guy that swore to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. Destroying the Fourth Amendment because it inconveniently prevents him from legally accruing information about his political opponents, or whatever else he's doing with it. Yeah, heaven forbid we close the borders -- let's just let people flow in as they wish and then spy on everyone, citizen or immigrant, as we please.

Well, not everyone sees this as a bad thing, surprisingly enough. The GOP controlled Senate Judiciary Committee reviewing the bill decided to approve it, passing it on for a Senate vote.

The Congress is supposed to be co-equal to the executive and judicial branches, but can't get information from the executive branch on how the wiretapping to date has been conducted. Even so, they have given the executive branch a blank check for dispensing with due process and the right of privacy outlined so clearly in the Constitution, even going so far as to make compliance with FISA optional. Our only hope is that the judicial branch will strike down this and similar legislation, but the Bush administration has loaded the Supreme Court with any and all candidates that support the unitary executive concept and the GOP blindly and faithfully.

The GOP, led by the Bush administration, is attacking the Constitution at a frenzied pace. Aren't you tired of it yet? Aren't you sick of watching them destroy our country? 200+ years of soldiers laying down their lives to protect the very freedoms this administration is so determined to undermine -- these souls are crying out to you from beyond the grave to take action, to honor their sacrifice.

You have the one tool you need to fight back, to defend your nation. Vote Democrat in November and restore balance.

9/17/2006:   I made the awful mistake today of searching YouTube for "Ann Coulter" and wasting the next half hour letting Ann's moronic rot filter through my computer speakers. What an idiot.

Lessee... Where to begin...

She says being liberal has become a religion unto itself in which "abortion is its sacrament, Roe v. Wade its holy writ, public school teachers its clergy, and Darwinism its liberal creation myth." I'm sure in Ann's carb-starved brain this seemed like some really deep prose, and it might be if you could use a cookie cutter generalization like that to the describe each and every person that she and her foaming-at-the-mouth rabid uber-conservatives like to lump under that label, but in point of fact:

She says if you took away the terrorism, liberals would hate Muslems -- they love the terrorism, but not Islam.

When someone doesn't argue against her, she assumes that means they tacitly agree. Ok, Ann, let me say it: No one argues with you about Darwinism because you're so amazingly wrong. You tightly embrace the conspiracy theorist style attack on Darwinism and ignore the hard evidence that inconveniently refutes your argument.

She believes, by the way, that homosexuality shouldn't exist if evolution is valid, without ever qualifying that statement by saying that it would be correct if homosexuality had a genetic component. She's actually making the case that it either has no genetic component or that, if there is a mutation that causes it, that it is a common mutation relative to other observable mutations. Or perhaps she's making the case that homosexuality is a God-given trait? No, I doubt it. That would mean that Christians would have to love homosexuals as their brethren. Can you imagine Ann Coulter giving some bull dyke a big hug? Nah, me neither...

Ann said in another clip that New Yorkers would surrender immediately to terrorists. She thought Alabama or Mississippi would make a better showing than New Yorkers. I bet Ann won't be going to New York anytime soon.

She said John Mirtha is the reason soldiers invented fragging. (For those that haven't heard that term defined, it refers to assassinating someone in your own unit.) She went on to say that if did get fragged, he'd finally deserve one of his purple hearts. Her mouth is amazing, isn't it? What a .... nevermind...

There was also a great Fox-as-usual clip where Sean Hannity waxes poetic about "500 canisters of chemical weapons found in Iraq." At the time he was lying to the American public with this news, it was already known that the story was bogus. The barrels were full of deteriorated mustard gas, all of them at least 15 years old. This story was first pulled out of Rick Santorum's butt and read, "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal." That last part is a near-lie. Yes, they might make you sick enough to die of you drink them, but unless someone sneaks some of it into your chocolate shake, 15 year old mustard gas or sarin nerve agent isn't going to do a whole lot to you. Rick Santorum, asshole extraordinaire, didn't bother to explain that because he would have been laughed off the Congressional podium. But that didn't stop Hannity from spouting off Santorum's propoganda. Did he need Rupert Murdoch to give him the marching orders to spew this crap? I doubt it. I think Hannity marches to his own brain damaged drum. Fortunately his co-host Colmes came the rescue and shoved the facts in Santorum's face. That had to sting, huh Sean? The words from your love-fest are still hanging in the air when logic, reason, and facts slap your silly ass to the ground. Ouch.

And before I leave this, I want to use Hannity's interview of Santorum on this subject to illustrate the tactics Fox News uses to produce propoganda. After Rick Santorum waved piece of paper before the camera, claiming that it held details about the 500 cannisters that he couldn't share because they were classified, Hannity praises Santorum profusely and asks why Santorum had to fight so hard to get the information about the cannisters to the American public. Hey Sean, I can answer that: because no one wanted Rick to lie to the American public. They're tired of the GOP lies. Period. David Kay, Bush's hand-picked weapons inspector, said that these cannisters, which were found on the Iran-Iraq border, were one of many forgotten caches of chemical weapons left buried in the sand when that war ended. He said he and everyone involved with the WMD search program fully expected to find many of these caches, but that none of them represented usable weapons.

But back to kicking Ann Coulter when she's down...

There was a great clip where Kirstin Powers ignores her entirely while talking to another guest on the Hannity and Colmes show. Ann melts down, huffs and puffs and finally gets up and stomps off the show. It was pretty cool.

9/15/2006:   I heard a report two nights ago that put the Taliban reinfiltration of Afghanistan at over 50%. I was floored. I knew that they had taken control of various cities, but over half the country? Wow. I guess the 20,000 troops that Bush left there when he diverted our military and our nation's attention to Iraq weren't enough to hold back a concerted push by the Taliban, much less find Osama bin Laden. I mean think about that number. 20,000. You have to have three times that to sell out most sports stadiums. And you're going to hold a country and find one very popular criminal in that country with that number of people?

Really?

So let me ask you, my dear reader: Given the job of President of the United States and Commander in Chief of its military forces, would you have left the job of holding Afghanistan and finding Osama bin Laden to 20,000 people? I'm going to guess that the answer is pretty unanimously, "No," and that when you think of it that way, you start to realize that Bush is incompetent in that position. He needs to be removed, and the party that would defend this moron to the very last soldier's life needs to be removed as well.

And lest you think that George did what he thought he ought to do, allow me to remind you of a report that came out in April of this year on "60 Minutes" in which Tyler Drumheller, the former highest-ranking CIA officer in Europe, said that intelligence gathered from Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister, indicated unequivocally that there were no WMDs, and the response Mr. Drumheller got was that the run-up to Iraq was no longer about intel, it was about "regime change." In other words, it really didn't matter if there were WMDs. Bush needed an excuse to invade only until Congress gave the go-ahead, and then all the intel in the world, pointing one way or the other, didn't matter.

Tell me again, is George W. Bush competent to serve as the President and Commander in Chief, and are the people that would support him no matter what competent to serve as your representatives in government?

Of course not. Vote Democrat in November.

9/15/2006:   Back in July, the GOP-led Congress declined to raise the minimum wage to something that working families could actually reach the poverty line on, but decided that they had to have a raise themselves, and they raised their pay to $170,000 a year.

Isn't that special?

Bush's war on Iraq is now running a $469 billion tab (over the projected $200 billion that Bush estimated just 3 years ago), schools can't finance a decent education for our kids, social net programs have been cut to the bone, our air and water are more polluted than they've been in over a decade, etc., etc., and yet Congress needed a raise more than people living below the poverty line even though they slave away all day at the menial jobs that make our society function.

Hm.

Are you tired yet of the GOP's tactics? They have no shame, and no desire to serve the interests of the American people. When are you going to finally throw up your hands, admit you did the wrong thing, and vote these morons out of office? Give yourself a break! Do the right thing in November and vote Democrat!

9/15/2006:   Bush has been using signing statements, the comments that a President can append to legislation he signs, as a means of not only redefining the laws being passed, but even going so far as to say that, while he's signing it, he has no intention whatsoever of enforcing it. As the highest ranking member of the executive branch of our government, it's his job to enforce the laws handed down by the legislative branch. That's just U.S. Government 101.

When was the last time you got a task from your boss, and you passed back a note saying that, while you thought he was a great boss, he could pretty much stick it, that you had no intention of doing your job?

What did Bush think he was signing up for when he ran for President? Oh wait -- that's right, he thinks the President should be a "unitary executive." And the last unitary executive this country had was, coincidentally enough, King George of England. Well, your current king, along with the other violations of your Constitutional rights, has used signing statements on more than 800 occasions to weaken or, in essense, void legislation that he didn't like. All the Presidents before him combined submitted only 600.

George is out of control.

Doesn't it bother you that George, the Monkey Faced Frat Boy, has been thumbing his nose at Congress and the American people, and that -- even worse -- the GOP has been unified in its support of the MFFB at all costs? The sanctity of our government's infrastructure, the interests and security of the American people, are NOTHING beside the GOP's need to maintain an iron grip on power. They are milking this country dry, and the only way to continue doing that is to maintain a unified front. George is telling his own party, his own support structure, to kiss his hairy butt, and the GOP just grins and takes it because to do otherwise would compromise their unified front.

The game of political power is a sick game indeed, ain't it?

Well, this is a sickness that can be cured. Vote Democrat in November. It doesn't even matter if you don't like the Democratic candidate. The GOP needs a firm spanking. They need to be shaken up, kicked out, forced to reform themselves. I see nothing overridingly wrong with our bipartisan system, but when one party becomes so power mad that they stop functioning as representatives of the American people, it is the duty of each and every citizen of this country to send them back to the minors until they get their heads on straight.

9/15/2006:   Bush attempted to quash the following line of questioning. My comments are in red:

Reporter: "If a CIA officer, paramilitary, or special operations soldier from the United States were captured in Iran or North Korea, and they were roughed up, and those governments said, 'Well, they were interrogated in accordance with our interpretation of the Geneva Conventions,' and then they were put on trial, and they were convicted based on secret evidence they were not able to see, how would you react to that..."

Bush: "Mm-hm."

Reporter: "... as Commander-in-Chief?"

[So the question is, essentially, "If another country did to our soldiers what you propose to do to the detainees in Guantanamo, how would you react to that as their Commander-in-Chief?"]

Bush: "David, my reaction is, is that, if the nations such as those you named adopted the standards within the Detainee Detention Act the world would be better (chuckling). [So if we have trials in which the accused and his legal representation are not allowed to review the evidence against him, trials which are held secretly and out of which the accused can be convicted and sentenced to time in a military prison with no sentencing guidelines or limitations, trials in which we try men whose minimum requirement for being there be that the President of the United States, without explanation or outside review, declares the accused an "enemy combantant", that would make the world a better place? A world in which the United States of America abandons the moral high ground and ethical standards men have died to secure and protect are thrown away is a better world? I disagree.] That's my reaction. We're trying to clarify law. We're trying to set high standards, not ambiguous standards. And... and just let me repeat Dave, um... We can debate this issue all we want, but the practical matter is, if our professionals don't have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward. [Translation: If Congress doesn't give me a blank check to keep these guys in prison forever as convicted enemies of the state, I'm just going to keep them in prison forever as accused enemies of the state. Guantanamo Bay is about to open up multi-million dollar facility number five, so there is no plan to shut down anytime soon.] You cannot ask a young intelligence officer to violate the law. [Straw man: No one implied that anyone was going to violate the law. The question dealt with other countries interpreting the Geneva Convention as we are doing and applying that interpretation to abuse our soldiers and convict them in secret military committees.] And they're not going to. They... now, let me finish please... [Translation: "Don't try to get me back on point."] They will not violate the law. You can ask this question all you want [Translation: "Even though you haven't asked the first time yet..."] but the bottom line is, and the American people have got to understand this... that... this program won't go forward if there's vague standards applied like those in Common Article Three from the Geneva Convention. [Straw man: No one asked if the Geneva Conventions were vague or how they could be clarified.] It's just not going to go forward. You can't ask a young professional on the front line protecting this country ... to... violate law. Now I know they said they're not going to prosecute him, think about it, y'know? Go ahead and violate it, we're not going to prosecute you. These people aren't going to do that, Dave. [I don't think David was assuming they would, George.] Now we can justify anything you want and bring up this example or that example, I'm just telling you the bottom line. And that's why this debate is important. [Bush Tactic #8: Marginalize the question by depicting it as part of some larger debate that isn't even close to being resolved.] And it's a vital debate. Now perhaps some in Congress don't think the program is important. [Straw man: Bush is implying that someone in Congress doesn't grasp the importance of having secret military trials, but Bush does.] That's fine, I don't know if they do or don't. I think it's vital, and I have the obligation to make sure our professionals who I would ask to go and conduct interrogations to find out what might be happening, who might be coming, uh, to this country, [Translation: "The boogeyman is coming, and I'm just trying to make sure our 'professionals' have the tools they need to stop the big bad boogeyman. 9/11! Fear! Terrorists! Coming to getcha!"] I gotta give them the tools they need, and that is clear law."

Reporter: "This is an important point, and I think ..."

Bush: "The point I made is the most important point, [Translation: "Your point isn't important! Mine is!"] and that is the program is not going forward. David, you can give a hypothetical about North Korea or any other country; the point is the program is not going to go forward if our professionals do not have clarity in law, and the best way to provide clarity in the law is to make sure the Detainee Treatment Act is the crux of the law. [Again, rewrite the law to suit me or I'll keep these guys in Guantanamo indefinitely without a trial or due process.] That's how we define Common Article Three, and it sets a good standard for the countries you just talked about -- next man."

Reporter: "It's an important..."

Bush: "I *know* you think it's an important point!" (chuckling) [Translation: "You're really starting to piss me off, little man!"]

Reporter: "Mr. President, with all due respect, if other countries interpret the Geneva Convention as they see fit, as *they* see fit, you're saying you'd be okay with that."

Bush: "I am saying that I would hope it would adopt the same standards we adopt, [Translation: "Why wouldn't they? And if they don't, we'll invade'em!"] and that by clarifying Article Three, we make it stronger, we make it clearer, we make it definite. And I will tell you again, David, you can ask every hypothetical you want, [...I'll just refuse to answer it like I did today...] but the American people have got to know the facts [as I define them] , and the bottom line is simple, if Congress passes a law that does not clarify the rules, they do not do that, the program is not going forward."

9/15/2006:   The other day, Secretary Michael Wynne said that nonlethal weapons developed by our military should first be field tested on U.S. citizens for the purposes of crowd control. Perhaps Mr. Wynne, in an effort to reduce costs in the face of an expected $1.8 billion budget cut, thinks he can save money testing weapons by turning them on the people the military is intended to protect?

Mr. Wynne, you are an ass. You have clearly lost sight of your purpose as part of our military. But, lest my message be misconstrued, I can illustrate clearly what I mean, and you can do me a favor at the same time. See, I've been developing this special boot that I call the "Democratic Truth And Justice Crotch Kicking Boot," and I need to field test it.

Mr Wynne, have you ever been to California?

9/15/2006:   The difference between war and mass murder is this: war is a team sport.

9/7/2006:   For some odd reason, Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, has seen fit to construct a fake-umentary about the events leading up to 9/11 that places the fault for the WTC attack squarely on the shoulders of the members of Clinton administration. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Clinton Foundation head Bruce Lindsey and Clinton adviser Douglas Band all wrote in the past week to Robert Iger, complaining loudly about the fabrications portrayed in the movie that were required in order to make it seem as though Bin Laden's plans were known and ignored and that opportunities to stop Bin Laden were rejected knowingly and out of hand.

Bill Clinton's book, "My Life," does a pretty good job of explaining his knowledge of Bin Laden, the danger Bin Laden represented, and Clinton's response to that. It even describes the one opportunity he had to attack Bin Laden with a missile strike, an opportunity he felt he couldn't take advantage of because of the large number of civilian deaths, including women and children, that would result. I admire his decision, and I have no doubt that, if he'd known what would transpire two years later, he probably would have ordered the strike regardless.

I think it's interesting that, at the time Clinton was making plans to attack Bin Laden, the Republicans were crying foul, claiming that Bill was trying to distract the nation from the Lewinsky scandal. Now, the GOP has a President that attacked an entire nation in order to distract us from his failure to capture Bin Laden. What hypocrites. And ABC, complicit with Robert Iger, is leading the charge to soil the Clintons' reputations in an attempt to weaken the Democratic Party before the November elections.

9/7/2006:   "There are some people, and I'm one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord. I don't care how he governs, I will support him. I'm a Republican through and through," said substitute teacher Clydeen Tomanio of Chickamauga, GA.

Mrs. Tomanio, you are an idiot. Perhaps you were an intelligent individual when you first joined the Republican Party 43 years ago, but the Republican Party of today is vastly different, made so by Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, and others that changed the GOP's agenda to one of power at all costs. Apparently the years that followed your mistake have sucked the intelligence you failed to use then right out of your body. Fortunately, not all of the women in the GOP are as blind and stupid as you are, Mrs. Tomanio.

Hey, I call it like I see it.

George Bush is seeing a failure of support in his best demographic, Southern women. When he stood up and said we were going to go get the people that caused 9/11, they stood as a body behind George Bush as their defender. Now, though, they're tired of seeing him suck the financing out of education, power research, job market development, and social programs that families and children need, and devote time and energy to making himself and his cronies rich while expending American lives in a needless war. They're tired of seeing their children or the children of their friends die in Iraq while the Taliban retakes Afghanistan. They are tired of Bush making gay marriage and abortion hot button topics while their kids get education on a shoestring. They're tired of George Bush, and they're upset that the man they stood by as their defender against Al Qaeda has done nothing effective against Al Qaeda, choosing rather to leave the borders wide open and tap their phones instead. George W. Bush, culpable through dissemblage, equivocation, misdirection, and outright bald-faced lies, is personally responsible for the needless deaths of more Americans than Bin Laden and all his terrorist buddies combined.

They're tired and ashamed of their choice for President, and they've learned their lesson, and they are going to vote for change. They are going to vote for moderates, for people with a record of standing up for what's right instead of what's controversial and distracting or self-enriching. They'll be looking at the candidates' records.

In November 2006 and November of 2008, the South will rise again and put down the party that carpet bagged the South into poverty 140 years ago and again over the last 6 years. Strong, intelligent Southern women will stand as a body and reject the party and the man that have embarrassed them, embarrassed this nation, and sullied the reputation of the office which he holds more than any man since Ulysses S. Grant held it. They will reject the worst President ever and the party that has stood by him no matter how horrible his decisions were.

I say this with confidence because my mother is a Georgian woman and a fine example of a Southern lady; strong, intelligent, genteel, and classy to the bone. She is a rock. She is a blazing comet in a velvet black sky. She is amazing to me. And George, if you think I'm hard on you, you should hear what she has to say..... oh, my....

9/7/2006:   In a poll of New Yorkers regarding their choice of candidate for U.S. Senator, when asked if they would only vote for a candidate who opposed the Iraq war at its inception in 2003, 56 percent of Democrats said no, and 41 percent said yes.

That strikes me as an odd question. The U.S. senate, by most accounts, was by and large ignorant of the intelligence upon which Bush was basing his case for waging war in Iraq. They trusted Bush, as did we all, to make the right decision in going in. Bush said there were WMDs, that Saddam had plans and a program already in place to make nuclear weapons. It was a matter of months, not years, before Saddam had the capability to create his own "mushroom cloud," a phrase bandied about with alacrity by Bush and his entire cabinet at that time.

I would actually tend to vote against someone that did not vote in Congress to support the Iraq War. I would further qualify my choice of candidate based on their reaction when information began to come out that the case for the Iraq war was faked.

What makes the poll more interesting is that most people were making their decision between John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore. (I didn't know Al was running for New York Senator, but okay...) And all three of those individuals initially supported the war, and then removed their support when it became obvious that the case they were presented with was questionable. I think the poll questions need to be reviewed with an eye towards what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did with the information. We should be looking at candidates with a proven interest in doing the right thing for the right reasons, candidates that are interested in protecting America and what it stands for as much as keeping the average American's best interests in mind. America should still express the most noble of ideals, and George Bush clearly doesn't. We need to make a change.

8/9/2006:   I started this article, never finished it, and forgot about it. What it amounts to, and articles on Slashdot can be found describing this, is that Deibold machines are hilariously easy to break into and alter without any sign that anything happened. The latest article showed two elderly women with no technical training or experience and a toolbox defeating the security measures on the machine and gaining access to its interior. Any of the chips could be replaced and the tallies the machine stores altered in any way imaginable. It's almost as though Diebold designed and marketed a machine based on the ease with which it can be tampered. It's ridiculous. A friend of mine and I whiteboarded a design that was tamperproof in about 5 minutes. I'm not a dumb guy, but I don't think what we came up with was so terribly revolutionary that the minds of Diebold couldn't have done something similar.

Thus, my theory is that Diebold has an agenda. By producing a voting machine that can be easily altered, they have created the product of choice for voting fraud. I find it hard to believe that they didn't do this on purpose. I would *never* produce a product I marketed as secure if two amateurs could break the security, without leaving a trace, in less than 10 minutes. It's my belief that, if the management of Diebold is embarrassed, it's only because they got caught.

9/6/2006:   It's official: The Taliban is back in Afghanistan.

Canadian soldiers, part of the NATO peace keeping force, are getting their noses bloodied by Taliban forces come back in from Pakistan, financed by the opium drug trade as well as Iran and Syria. As a result, Gen. James L. Jones asked allied nations to send reinforcements. It turns out that the militants are standing and fighting, and fighting with intensity. They are determined to kick NATO back out, and they're doing a pretty good job of it. The Taliban has had some successes in fighting Afghanistan police and army forces, taking various towns before losing them again to NATO forces. Right now they occupy a number of towns, including Garmser, a town they acquired, then lost, then reacquired recently, chasing the Afghanistani police forces out.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai resolved to cooperate to fight the Taliban in both their countries, but the Pakistani people support the Taliban almost to a man, and while most Afghanis hate the Taliban, they don't have the resources to fight them. In response to his people's choice, Musharraf has agreed to pull his army out of border towns so long as the people in those towns turn away foreign fighters -- in essence giving the Taliban free reign in those areas.