Former White House spokesman Tony Snow developed colon cancer in February 2005 thanks to having suffered from ulcerative colitis for much of his life; he died today from that ailment. Snow was a "Fox News Sunday" anchor, a Fox News Channel political analyst, a guest host for Rush Limbaugh's radio program, the host of Fox News Radio's "The Tony Snow Show", and a NPR commentator. Chief of Staff Josh Bolten told staffers that unless they could commit to staying the full remainder of Bush's term, they should leave by Labor Day 2007, prompting Snow's resignation (due to what he said were financial reasons), where he was succeeded by Dana Perino. He played the guitar, saxophone and flute and was in a band called Beats Workin'. "Bush's wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back against the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Wilson," said Snow in a column. "The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment."
posted on Jul 12, 2008 - View this thread

What if Al Gore really had won? J. M. Kearns crafts a new, imaginative Bush conspiracy in his new short story, "The Eagle Has Landed."
posted on Jul 10, 2008 - View this thread

Bush had Karl Rove. But the original wiretapping President needed brains too. Introducing Kevin Phillips. He predicted the prolonged Republican dominance of Washington 1970-present and advised the Ford and Reagan presidencies. He predicted a more liberal 1990s and when the Bushies killed his party he became uttery disgusted. Recently he spoke about the influence of the christian right, our addiction to oil, and America's debt (public and private) at the University of California Santa Barbara.
posted on Jun 28, 2008 - View this thread

"Only Nixon could go to China," and only ex-Republican ex-Senator Lincoln Chafee can explain how George W. Bush set out "to preempt the Congress... on every issue", "turned his back on (his) bedrock campaign pledges", and become simultaneously America's most powerful and least popular President (and why there could never be a "surely this..." moment). NOT just another OMGBUSH commentary, this should be required reading for anybody who honestly wants to know what went wrong.
posted on May 2, 2008 - View this thread

A very special 'This American Life' about an administration with the endemic belief that laws only apply to the little people, and a limitless refusal to concede on even petty issues, no matter the costs. The highlight is about immigrant widows of US citizens (30:50). The program also discusses the constitutional beliefs of the presidential candidates.
posted on Apr 2, 2008 - View this thread

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war.
posted on Mar 3, 2008 - View this thread

Al Odah v. U.S. and Boumediene v. Bush go before SCOTUS Streaming on C-Span today. The Center for Constitutional Rights (great podcast) will argue before the Supreme Court today:

Immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision in Rasul, The Center for Constitutional Rights and cooperating counsel filed 11 new habeas petitions in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of over 70 detainees. These cases eventually became the consolidated cases of Al Odah v. United Statesand Boumediene v. Bush, the leading cases determining the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Rasul, the rights of non-citizens to challenge the legality of their detention in an offshore U.S. military base, and the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

posted on Dec 5, 2007 - View this thread

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush. "The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy. A Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, sees a generation-long struggle to recoup." [Via Firedoglake.]
posted on Nov 18, 2007 - View this thread

Gallup: Bush 'strongly disapprove' 50% > Nixon 48% Gallup notes that the two ratings are statistically equivalent. A newspaper industry site noted it, and Raw Story, while Uruknet (which is not unbiased) felt the story was under-reported.
posted on Nov 9, 2007 - View this thread

sarkozy, sarkozy, sarkozy.
posted on Oct 23, 2007 - View this thread

Bush and Aznar pre-Iraq Invasion-- Transcript of their private conversations in Crawford, Feb 22, 2003: "Quedan dos semanas. En dos semanas estaremos militarmente listos. Estaremos en Bagdad a finales de marzo", le dijo a Aznar. ("2 weeks. In 2 weeks we will be ready militarily. We'll be in Baghdad by the end of March", he told Aznar.) Consider this historical documentation. Full transcript here, and audio clips in first link.
posted on Sep 25, 2007 - View this thread

General Strike. Garret Keizer has an idea. It's really not so outlandish. But of course it won't do any good.
posted on Sep 23, 2007 - View this thread

Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success. Interesting article on the work of psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski. [Via Disinformation.]
posted on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East. A speech by Juan Cole at the New America Foundation in which he discusses his new book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, and the relevance and lessons of Napoleon's expedition in Egypt to the current American occupation of Iraq. A shorter version, covering many of the same points, is in this article: Pitching the Imperial Republic.
posted on Aug 26, 2007 - View this thread

Why Does AT&T Hate Pearl Jam’s Freedom? Well, of course, they’re all apologies now… But this latest corporate misadventure seems to touch on all the hot buttons: Media consolidation, net neutrality and the future of political speech in America. (Newsfilter)
posted on Aug 10, 2007 - View this thread

"Bill Maher: The Decider" [Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, YouTube]. Maher at the top of his game.
posted on Jul 27, 2007 - View this thread

Do the Coup D'etat. The White House has made the Constitutional Crisis official: the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges against an official invoking executive privilege -- even if it's blatantly illegal.
posted on Jul 20, 2007 - View this thread

Tough talk about impeachment. A public opinion poll from the American Research Group recently reported that more than four in ten Americans — 45% — favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half — 54% — favored impeachment for Vice President Cheney. In the video segment linked to here (available via javascript pop-up window from the main linked page), Bill Moyers gets perspective on the role of impeachment in American political life from Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who wrote the first article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, and THE NATION's John Nichols, author of THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT. Transcript is available here.
posted on Jul 16, 2007 - View this thread

The UK media is like a "Feral Beast", and is undermining Britain, says Tony Blair. Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent, responds. Some reasons why Blair might not be too keen on the press.
posted on Jun 12, 2007 - View this thread

Learning From Ike: What a Republican realist could teach George Bush. "If we hope to succeed, we manage evil. We minimize, mitigate, and manipulate evil. But efforts to pre-emptively eliminate evil are prone to end in overreaction and destabilization, with consequences that are often worse than the original problem."
posted on Apr 18, 2007 - View this thread

Lee Iacocca has a few thoughts on President Bush.
posted on Apr 13, 2007 - View this thread

NYPD Intelligence Op Targets Dot-Matrix Graffiti Bike. More details on the premeditated arrest of Joshua Kinberg by the NYPD just before the 2004 Republican National Convention. Kinberg, now the CEO of FireAnt, was targeted by the "R.N.C. Intelligence Squad" for his Bikes Against Bush project. The police lost his Xtracycle. [Via BB.]
posted on Apr 10, 2007 - View this thread

The Purgegate Primer is a helpful document from The Morning News to assist all us armchair pundits in making sense of the U.S. Attorney scandal. Brought to us by the letter Q and recently-mentioned defective yeti, who it seems is about more than just laughs. (Also see his Plamegate Cheatsheet.)
posted on Apr 3, 2007 - View this thread

Criminals and Scoundrels: The Top 25 Most Corrupt Officials of the Bush Administration. Maybe we could make playing cards for them? (found via del.ici.ous)
posted on Feb 13, 2007 - View this thread

Alberto Gonzalez says "there is no express grant" of habeas corpus in the Constitution. Previously on MeFi and AskMe.
posted on Jan 24, 2007 - View this thread

Politics/PlameFilter: In opening arguments today in the Plame investigation perjury case against Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, the prosecutor portrayed Libby as an agent of a Cheney-driven media offensive. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day came from Libby's attorney, who portrayed his client as a White House-chosen scapegoat for Karl Rove's misdeeds. A conservative reporter saw in Libby's emerging defense a "dramatic split inside the Bush White House." An MSNBC host asked whether this hullabaloo could lead to Cheney's resignation. Background on the case. Liveblogging of today's arguments from an anti-administration perspective.
posted on Jan 23, 2007 - View this thread

Jan. 11, 2002, the first 20 detainees, shackled and blindfolded, arrived from Afghanistan .... and since then, nearly 800 prisoners have passed through the detention center in southeastern Cuba. To mark the anniversary, demonstrations are planned Thursday in New York, London, Sydney, Australia, and other cities as well as dozens of small towns in the United States and Britain. Gitmo Detainees Join Hunger Strike .... & .... WikiPeidia History Article
posted on Jan 11, 2007 - View this thread

Bush jumps the gun ahead of tonight's speech.
posted on Jan 10, 2007 - View this thread

Prime Minister's Questions is a weekly televised convention in the UK started in the 1950s during which Members of Parliament get a chance to hold their leader accountable for his or her actions. Sick of boring political meetings? "PMQ" is fast-paced, hip, heated, eloquent, insulting, and sometimes hilarious. In fact, the inherant humor of it is has been well explored.

But brits aren't the only ones; "Question Time", as it's called generically, has been adapted in other countries as well. Yet the show often shocks Americans since the concept of weekly unscripted access to leaders without giving days of question prep-time seems like a fantasy. Of course, maybe the alternative (0:41) is much worse.
posted on Dec 5, 2006 - View this thread

Bolton to step down from U.N.
posted on Dec 4, 2006 - View this thread

Just don't say the n-word.
posted on Nov 29, 2006 - View this thread

Iraq: The War of the Imagination. "Anyone seeking to understand what has become the central conundrum of the Iraq war—how it is that so many highly accomplished, experienced, and intelligent officials came together to make such monumental, consequential, and, above all, obvious mistakes, mistakes that much of the government knew very well at the time were mistakes—must see beyond what seems to be a simple rhetoric of self-justification and follow it where it leads: toward the War of Imagination that senior officials decided to fight in the spring and summer of 2002 and to whose image they clung long after reality had taken a sharply separate turn." By Mark Danner. [Via Tomdispatch.]
posted on Nov 23, 2006 - View this thread

Who is Robert M. Gates? At first glance, he seems a pretty good candidate for Donald Rumsfeld's replacement as Secretary of Defense. As a former director of the CIA, his experience and contacts in the State Department may help heal the bureaucratic rifts between State and the DoD that erupted in the wake of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. However, there was that small matter of the Iran-Contra affair . . .
posted on Nov 8, 2006 - View this thread

Our Man at Yale: 2 versions one link via Linkfilter.com but worth the reading
posted on Nov 4, 2006 - View this thread

"Stay the Course," R.I.P. (1885-2006).
posted on Oct 29, 2006 - View this thread

Turns out Colin Powell was actually fired. In other administration news, it looks like one of the pre-9/11 anti-terrorism meetings wasn't mentioned to the 9/11 commission. According to Bob Woodward's new book, where we also find out that Bush meet with Henry Kissinger at least once a month, and Kissinger's theories on Vietnam inform Bush's reasoning on Iraq.
posted on Sep 30, 2006 - View this thread

Heck of a Job, Tommy! State Department investigators have found that Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the State Department office that oversees foreign broadcasts misused his office for personal and political gain. Mr. Tomlinson’s position at the broadcasting board makes him one of the administration’s top officials overseeing public diplomacy and puts him in charge of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
posted on Aug 30, 2006 - View this thread

The Wizard of Oil Some well-done Photoshop fun to start the week - "Somewhere under the radar, way down low. There's a land that I heard of once, where the oil still flows. Somewhere under the radar, folks are screwed. And the schemes that you dare to scheme really do come through. One day I wrecked the family car, and daddy and my mummy Bar remind me, Of my troubles taking acid drops, the night they had to call the cops, And then they fined me. Somewhere under the radar, I'll get high. Drink Rye under the radar, Try, oh yes I'll still try Why, why must I be dry?
posted on Aug 28, 2006 - View this thread

Strange Bedfellows: Radical Leftists for Bush Among the German far-left, one subgroup called the anti-Germans holds some contradictory views. Most call themselves communists, yet loudly proclaim their support for Israel and George W. Bush.
posted on Aug 25, 2006 - View this thread

Marvin, the neglected Bush We hear about the Bush family a good deal but seldom do we learn much about the "other brother," that is, "Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother, [...] a principal in a company called Securacom that provided security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles International Airport. The company, Burns noted, was backed by KuwAm, a Kuwaiti-American investment firm on whose board Marvin Burns also served. [Utne] According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down." But then, Marvin has led a rather odd life, and more can be learned about him here Wikipedia sums up this Bush in a short bio, and notes the rather odd accident befalling his baby sitter This accident had been reported by The Washington Post but largely ignored by other papers. Is Marvin another possible heir to the Bush crown?
posted on Jul 24, 2006 - View this thread

"What does a bill mean when I sign it into law? Why, whatever I choose for it to mean, no more, no less." This isn't the way I learned this stuff on Schoolhouse Rock; I'm unsurprised Congress isn't pleased by 'signing statements', either. Even the Supreme Court isn't all that happy. No wonder he's only vetoed one bill in 6 years.
posted on Jul 23, 2006 - View this thread

Cheney's Cheney and the Unitary Executive Theory. An excellent article from the New Yorker on the mysterious forces at work behind the Bush administration's expansion of executive powers.
posted on Jul 7, 2006 - View this thread

Spin, exposed live and wriggling. In 1995, Brian Springer released an hour-long documentary film comprised of incredibly revealing moments caught from raw satellite feeds. Not only do we get to hear the spin-doctor coaching candidates received during various commercial breaks, there are also some amazing moments such as Larry King suggesting to Clinton that Ted Turner could "serve him," an anchor suggesting to her expert that during the L.A. riots his frank diagnosis of inner-city hope is "too obtuse," and the exclusion and exclusion of Larry Agran from the 1992 Democratic primaries — and, really, there's much more.
posted on Jul 4, 2006 - View this thread

Mexico's election: now being recounted, but some are saying it was stolen with our help. Many countries in Latin and South America have been moving to the left lately, following in the footsteps of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile. Argentina actually caught us messing with things during their election, too. Exit polls in Mexico (as in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004) showed a lead for the more leftist (relatively) candidate, and for those who scoff at using exit polls as evidence--in 2004, US Republican Senator Richard Lugar, in Kiev, cited the divergence of exit polls and official polls as solid evidence of “blatant fraud” in the vote count in Ukraine. As a result, the Bush Administration refused to recognize the Ukraine government’s official vote tally. So, honest election, or what?
posted on Jul 3, 2006 - View this thread

Is George Bush to Stalin as Irving Kristol is to Trotsky? When will we start hearing these sorts of claims from the right?
posted on Jul 3, 2006 - View this thread

Bush and Koizumi: Roadtrip to Graceland - NYT link
posted on Jun 29, 2006 - View this thread

Bush Incompetent? Think again. I know this is a one link post, I'm afraid that I still haven't mastered the art of adding extra links, and I apologise because it is also from a partisan source. However it raises some points that I think are worth discussing, such as, is calling Bush incompetent not playing right into the hands of all those who kind of like his folksy, laidback ways, and who kind of identify with his fumbling style? Anyway, read this and see the results of this incompetence you might want to think again.
posted on Jun 26, 2006 - View this thread

The New Yorker suggests that Bush is being pushed by his advisors to fight against gay marriage when he really has no strong feelings either way. According to Bush's close unnamed friend, "I don't think he gives a shit about it." An inspired take on strategic political distraction.
posted on Jun 14, 2006 - View this thread

updated red state/blue state map of America with recent poll results in place. Bush still (alarmingly) holding down Utah, Idaho & Wyoming, otherwise, not so great...
posted on May 19, 2006 - View this thread

1 DEPLOY GUNS AND BADGES. Josh Bolten's Five Point Plan is in full effect. "It'll be more guys with guns and badges," said a proponent of the plan. "Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an ATV."
posted on May 18, 2006 - View this thread

Yesterday, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote a letter to the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush. Here it is. (Courtesy Le Monde, 8 page PDF, English.) The letter has been "dismissed by its recipients as a rambling philosophical treatise." (Times) Further coverage at NYT and Le Monde (French). The letter ends 27 years of diplomatic silence.
posted on May 9, 2006 - View this thread

Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush In this excerpt from his book, Eric Boehlert writes about how "[c]owardly and clueless, the U.S. media abandoned its post as Bush led the country into a disastrous war. A look inside one of the great journalistic collapses of our time."
posted on May 7, 2006 - View this thread

Newsfilter: Rumsfeld squirms (via).
posted on May 4, 2006 - View this thread

Rollback. Media critic Jay Rosen rises above the McClellan/"shake-up" foofaraw to put several pieces of the puzzle together and show how the Bush administration has significantly altered the long-standing relationship of the press to the White House. (More from Rosen here.) Another piece that fits: Donald Rumsfeld's bold, frequent, and rarely-challenged assertions that the American press is being expertly "manipulated" by Al Qaeda "media committees" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
posted on Apr 20, 2006 - View this thread

Insulating Bush Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews
posted on Mar 30, 2006 - View this thread

Intrigues at the White House: Andrew Card, Bush's longtime chief of staff -- the guy who briefly interrupted the President's reading of The Pet Goat one rough morning in 2001 and took heat for the Katrina and Dubai debacles -- is out, replaced by budget director "Yosh" Bolten, the one-time founder of a club called "Bikers for Bush." Meanwhile, is Rove rolling over for Patrick Fitzgerald, and if so, what's the angle?
posted on Mar 28, 2006 - View this thread

President Bush on the state of the US Economy, including a discussion of the national debt and rising global interest rates, from today's news conference.
posted on Mar 21, 2006 - View this thread

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America The new(ish), policy statement from the US govt. News stories: The Times, US News & World Report, Bloomberg, BBC (newsfilter +)
posted on Mar 16, 2006 - View this thread

"Resolved that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, president of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans." Invoking "high crimes and misdemeanors," Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold introduces a motion to censure [PDF link] President Bush for his controversial, legally dubious NSA wiretapping program. Feingold declares: "The President must be held accountable for authorizing a program that clearly violates the law." Republican leader Frist retorts: "It's a crazy political move" that sends a "terrible" signal to Iran. Democratic bloggers say: Call your senator. [More legal fallout from the NSA program recently discussed here.]
posted on Mar 13, 2006 - View this thread

Jeb Bush Asked to Explain Cruise Ship Deal The post below on impeachment of Pres. Bush might also consider how the abuses seem to be a family affair: A top House Democrat released e-mails Tuesday detailing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's role in pushing a $236 million federal contract for Carnival Cruise Lines to house Hurricane Katrina victims.
posted on Mar 1, 2006 - View this thread

Exclusive: Dubai ports firm enforces Israel boycott [Defenders of the Bush/Dubai deal argue that we ought to be fair and not be racist in being anti-Arab...that is "un-American."] "The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.....Moreover, the Post found that the website for Dubai's Jebel Ali Free Zone Area, which is also part of the PCZC, advises importers that they will need to comply with the terms of the boycott....
posted on Feb 28, 2006 - View this thread

UAE, Jolted by Port Deal, Is Key Western Arms Buyer The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the centre of a growing controversy over its proposed management of U.S. port terminals, is one of the world's most prolific arms buyers and a multi-billion-dollar military market both for the United States and Western Europe.
posted on Feb 24, 2006 - View this thread

Back when President Bush declared a state of emergency, then did it again, and people were wondering Could Terrorism Result In A Constitutional Dictator? I was reminded of the UN invasion paranoia under Clinton and Senate Report 93-549, written in 1973, which said "Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency." and the question was have we been living in a state of National Emergency for over six decades? Back then it was easy to write off with the tinfoil hat crowd. But it seems throughout the nation's history, presidents have in fact been using executive orders on "emergencies" to circumvent the Constitution's division of power.
posted on Feb 16, 2006 - View this thread

""We only have to recall the colour of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who are most devastated by Katrina to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans." - Former President Jimmy Carter.

Coretta Scott King was laid to rest Tuesday after a six-hour service attended by four presidents and 10,000 ordinary people who came to pay tribute to the first lady of the civil rights movement - and one of its last icons. But at an event designed to remember the lady who was as memorable as her late husband in fighting for civil rights, politics entered the fray with both former President Jimmy Carter and Rev Joseph Lowery taking swipes at the Bush Administration. They say that there's a time and a place, and while this was clearly not the place, with thousands of Katrina victims (mostly African-American) about to be evicted because of budget cuts by the Bush administration, was it the time?
posted on Feb 8, 2006 - View this thread

That scientist NASA tried to silence? He finally did the radio interview last week.
posted on Feb 6, 2006 - View this thread

"We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq." A newly released memo of a meeting of George W. Bush and Tony Blair reveals a determination to invade Iraq regardless of a second UN resolution or evidence of a weapons program. UK's Channel 4 News claims to have seen the memo, which is dated 31 January 2003 (two months before the invasion), and aired a report this evening. Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of “flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours”. Mr Bush added: “If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]”. More discussion here, here, here, and here.
posted on Feb 2, 2006 - View this thread

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald says emails relevant to the Valerie Plame leak investigation have gone missing from the White House. "In an adundance of caution," Fitzgerald wrote [PDF] to "Scooter" Libby's lawyers on January 23, "we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." Might this help explain why Alberto Gonzales -- now the Attorney General, and lately so busy mustering arguments to assert that Bush's NSA domestic-spying program is "legal" -- waited 12 hours before instructing White House staff to preserve documents relevant to the leak investigation after telling Andrew Card about it? Shades of the late, great yoga instructor, Rose Mary Woods. [More on Plame here.]
posted on Feb 1, 2006 - View this thread

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps Instead of the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the warrantless spying on Americans, we've received only the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation and a couple of big, dangerous lies...

this is an editorial pointing out the lies given the American public about spying. In addtion some 15 legal scholars here conclude that the Bush "initiative" is clearly illegal and violates the American constitution. Declaring "war powers" simply will not do!

posted on Jan 29, 2006 - View this thread

President Jonah --an essay/history lesson/bible lesson/etc by Gore Vidal. ...We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define ...
posted on Jan 28, 2006 - View this thread

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win: SDS is reborn. Founded in 1959 and imploded ten tumultous years later, the Students for Democratic Society was one of the most dynamic and controversial forces at work in organizing a mass movement against the Vietnam war, particularly among draft-age kids. The group's original manifesto, Tom Hayden's Port Huron statement, still rings prophetic in Bush's America. Now SDS is relaunching and planning its first national convention since 1969, with a new crew of young radicals issuing calls to action to their own supposedly apathetic generation: "We seek liberation from the dominant business interests that have degraded our cities, paved over our communities, drowned out small business, and commodified our culture... Cooperative self-reliance is the only moral and material salvation of our nation, and the only release from a system that demands each of us be an accomplice to its heinous crimes."
posted on Jan 27, 2006 - View this thread

'He's God's gift to today's political cartoonist': Misunderestimating the President through Cartoons, an exhibition of the work of leading political cartoonists from both the UK and the United States focusing on their depictions of George Bush, opens today in London at the Political Cartoon Gallery. Watch the video report from Channel 4 and read essays on the history of political cartoons.
posted on Jan 26, 2006 - View this thread

When George Met Jack As details poured out about the illegal and unseemly activities of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, White House officials sought to portray the scandal as a Capitol Hill affair with little relevance to them..."The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him," McClellan said....The President's memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed.
posted on Jan 22, 2006 - View this thread

The Impeachment of George W. Bush It's been called for again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, and some MeFites have been praying for it for almost 6 years now. When I saw it pop up in del.icio.us/popular/ this morning I had to read it. An upcoming Nation article written by Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who was there for the Nixon impeachment. Will anyone come to the defense of our President? Let the debate begin!
posted on Jan 13, 2006 - View this thread

Bush in the Bubble. Newsweek's analysis of the man who is possibly "the most isolated president in modern history."
posted on Dec 13, 2005 - View this thread

Bush and Blair slated by Pinter George W Bush and Tony Blair must be held to account for feeding the public "a vast tapestry of lies" about the Iraq war, writer Harold Pinter said. [Postroad: but then, what do artists know about politics?]
posted on Dec 7, 2005 - View this thread

Don't Bomb Us. In response to credible reports that Bush wanted to bomb al-Jazeera's HQ in allied Qatar (discussed here and here on MeFi), Al Jazeera staffers start their own English-language blog. Their site contains remembrances of their fallen colleagues, firsthand accounts of US attacks on their offices, links to relevant reports on the controversy, Flickr photosets of protests calling for an official investigation, and al Jazeera's code of ethics. Also, a quick note to Tony Blair: " P.S. Thanks for talking Mr. Bush out of bombing our offices!" Not surprisingly, their blog is generating some comments.
posted on Nov 26, 2005 - View this thread

Meet 42 casualties of the current Administration --they didn't die in Iraq, or New Orleans, but were beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming. From Bunny Greenhouse to Richard Clarke to General Zinni to lesser-known folks like James Zahn, who was prohibited on no fewer than 11 occasions from publicizing his research on the potential hazards to human health posed by airborne bacteria resulting from farm wastes. A very wide-ranging list, covering everything from Public Health to War to Terror and Torture to Education to...
posted on Oct 16, 2005 - View this thread

thepartyparty.com hosts a set of mindblowingly amazing mixes using the recorded speech of American political figures -- mostly President Bush, but others, like Hilary Clinton and Gov. Schwarzenegger, both make appearances. It's a brilliant exercise in free speech, using the words of the administration against them, especially in the middle and later parts of Who's The Nigga? (Streaming m3u and downloadable mp3.) And did I mention it rocks? Because it rocks- after it breaks your head completely. You must listen to this.
posted on Oct 14, 2005 - View this thread

Like top-10 lists? The fifteen most incompetent Bush administration appointments.
Newsfilter, and reg. required. But this article is a thing of utter transcendent beauty. You have not heard of most of these people.
posted on Oct 8, 2005 - View this thread

The family trees of American politicians - There are those with very long blue blood pedigrees, and there are those with very short and unknown pedigrees. There are also some surprises, like a certain Democratic senator and possible '08 Veep pick being somewhat closely related to the current Veep, or that certain ex-mayors have family trees that were apparently a bit inbred back in the old country. Other fun tidbits: Newt Gingrich's father was illegitimate, John Kerry is related to the rabbi who created the Golem of Prague, Pat Buchanan is related to both FDR and Marilyn Manson, Wesley Clark's father was a Kohan, Martin Luther King was born Michael Louis King, and Gary Hart was born Gary Hartpence, which was in turn derived from an ancestor named James Eberhart Pence. (more non-politicians here)
posted on Oct 3, 2005 - View this thread

"Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." From Wall Street to K Street, the Bush Administration is full of friendly faces.
posted on Sep 25, 2005 - View this thread

At this challenging time for President Bush, let us reminisce about the system that elected him. Will the next election be different? Do you want it to be? What are you going to do about it?
posted on Sep 12, 2005 - View this thread

President Bush defends democratic values and upholds our majoritarian principles by choosing not to exercise the veto power.
posted on Aug 16, 2005 - View this thread

Having trouble keeping up with the latest from your buddy George? Try his new podcast.
posted on Aug 14, 2005 - View this thread

Howard Dean Again Ratchets up Anti-Bush Rhetoric, this time blaming the President's right-wing supreme court for the recent Kelo ruling. These comments strike some as confusing, seeing as how none of the justices at the time were appointed by the President, and 3 of the dissenters are considered to be the most conservative members on the bench.
posted on Jul 31, 2005 - View this thread

The Washington Nationals were one of the biggest surprises of the first half of the 2005 baseball season. On July 3, the team formerly known as the Expos had a 50-31 record. Everybody in DC was feeling good, especially the Republicans. Not only did Washington have a baseball team for the first time in decades, but that surprisingly good baseball team also featured a home uniform that had a red cap with a "w" on the front. As a result, some Republicans eagerly adopted the cap as a symbol of their party and their president. The second half of the Nationals' season has mirrored Bush's second term, however. Just like Bush has made missteps on Social Security and lost the battle to make his judicial nominees filibuster-proof, the second half of the Nationals season has been filled with miscues, too. After this afternoon's loss to the Braves, the Nationals have a 5-16 record over the past three weeks. Does this spell bad news for John Roberts?
posted on Jul 28, 2005 - View this thread

If the president can say it, why can't Gary Trudeau?
posted on Jul 26, 2005 - View this thread

David Corn is claiming that Newsweek is going to nail Karl Rove tomorrow. Not that anyone's surprised, I'm sure, but nevertheless -- where's that popcorn? (via tpm)
posted on Jul 9, 2005 - View this thread

Bush sort of answers lots of serious questions This transcript of Trevor McDonald's interview with Bush is actually quite interesting. I find myself agreeing with his stance on Africa, which is probably a first for me with ANY of his stances on ANYTHING. His climate change and Iraq stances, on the other hand, I didn't quite agree with.
posted on Jul 4, 2005 - View this thread

15 of 19 were Saudis. And now, continuing a trend from the Kingdom, most of the suicide bombers in Iraq are known to be Saudi Arabian.
posted on May 17, 2005 - View this thread

Join the Army for just fifteen months! Visit exciting foriegn lands! Now with "ultra-lite" benefits!
(Warning: Requires an additional two years of service in the Army Reserve / National Guard, may contain additional deployments overseas, stop-loss, 4 1/2 years in the inactive reserve, and possible devil's bargains.)
posted on May 12, 2005 - View this thread

The Still Unsolved Stoffel Affair: How Is Known – but Not Who or Why Iraqi guerrillas calling themselves Rafidan – the Political Committee of the Mujahideen Central Command – have recently woken up and begun releasing a series of communiqués claiming to shed new light on the still unsolved deaths on December 8, 2004, of two Americans, Dale C. Stoffel, 43, whom they describe as “a CIA shadow manager in Iraq, close friend of George Bush,” and his associate Joseph J. Wemple, also 43.
posted on May 10, 2005 - View this thread

Don't like what the annual report on International Terrorist activity says? Just kill it--forever (never mind that the law requires it) -- The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered. ... other current and former officials charged that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's office ordered "Patterns of Global Terrorism" eliminated several weeks ago because the 2004 statistics raised disturbing questions about the Bush's administration's frequent claims of progress in the war against terrorism. "Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," ...

(Previous post on their lying report on 2003's incidents here)
posted on Apr 16, 2005 - View this thread

Adding images to words makes things easier to remember. The 14 defining characteristics of Fascism as a flash movie. I know, I know, it's been discussed quite a few times at MeFi, but I only post this as Thursday fun. Only. Really. Fun.
posted on Apr 7, 2005 - View this thread

Social Security Benefit Cuts Calculator. As President Bush barnstorms the country for Wall Street, you can find out what effects the proposed changes will have on your current benefits.
posted on Feb 17, 2005 - View this thread

"The Bush administration intervened to argue that their claims should be dismissed" I seriously can't believe it. This is Brechtian. Something has to be missing. This can't be my government.
posted on Feb 16, 2005 - View this thread

Yesterday President Bush said, "Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund -- in other words, there's a pile of money being accumulated. That's just simply not true. The money -- payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent." Is he advocating that the US default on its Treasury bonds?
posted on Feb 10, 2005 - View this thread

Safia Taleb Al Souhail was recognized by President Bush's SOTU address with this introduction: "Eleven years ago, Safia's father was assassinated by Saddam's intelligence service. Three days ago in Baghdad, Safia was finally able to vote for the leaders of her country -- and we are honored that she is with us tonight." This year's chairwarmer is an interesting person for the President to have chosen to highlight in his speech. Especially considering how much work she's done for the neocon movement, the fact that she hadn't lived in Iraq for 30 years, was an American-placed a member of the Iraqi interim government, and the fact that she's the new Iraqi ambassador to Egypt. You may also remember that she was paraded in front of us back in 2002 as justification for going after Saddam. , It's interesting to note that her sister blames the US for her father's death, saying that the CIA sold him out because they needed Saddam in power at that point. Shades of the incubator story, no? More research ongoing at KOS.
posted on Feb 4, 2005 - View this thread

The State of the Union Parsing Tool is an interactive transcript and visualization of the last five State of the Union addresses, and a special address given to Congress on Sept. 20, 2001. Noteworthy features are a great interface and the ability to highlight the use of arbitrary and specific phrases. For instance: Iraq vs. Afghanistan, liberty vs. freedom, health care vs. social security, and the lone appearance of 'axis of evil.'
posted on Feb 3, 2005 - View this thread

I wasn't sure what Move On would do after the election and inauguration, but it appears they are coming out with guns blazing over Social Security. Tomorrow they'll take out a full page ad in the NYT (pdf) and start spreading a new commercial (wmv) that is reminiscent of the "working kids" Bush in 30 seconds ad (I assume they hired the same director).
posted on Feb 1, 2005 - View this thread

Green Neocons
posted on Jan 26, 2005 - View this thread

Did the Interim Iraqi Defense Minister have these two Americans murdered for $300 million? In the middle of a election that will decide who controls Iraq, Interim Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Shaalan has announced that Ahmad Chalabi -- a rival candidate -- will be arrested on 13-year-old charges. But why now? Shaalan says Chalabi "wanted to malign the reputation of the defense ministry". How?
1> Shaalan claims Chalabi released documents accusing Shaalan of being a former member of the Mokhaberat, Saddam's intelligence service. (Shaalan claims political fraud, with the intent of silencing his claims against the Iranians.)
2> Chalabi claims that Shaalan flew $300 million in U.S. currency to a shady businessman in Lebanon, bypassing financial controls, the public bidding process, and Iraqi government oversight.
So, how does this tie in with Stoffel and Wemple? Stoffel recently alerted senior U.S. officials that the Iraqi Defense Ministry was involved in a kickback scheme involving a shady businessman in Lebanon and a multimillion-dollar arms deal. Late last year, Stoffel, a prominent Republican donor and arms dealer, met with aides to Sen. Santorum, R-Pa. Santorum wrote Donald Rumsfeld on Stoffel's behalf, asking him to raise the issue with Shaalan. Stoffel was later invited by the Coalition to arbitrate a solution with the Lebanese businessman. After several days, the arbitrator told the businessman to pay Stoffel -- a debt which is still unpaid. Upon leaving the base, Stoffel and Wemple were attacked and killed nearby. A video from a previously unknown terrorist group claimed responsibility, but one expert suggests that the video may be "manufactured". A reporter recently granted an interview with an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman was forbidden to ask "dangerous" questions about the contract. Stoffel and Wemple are survived by their wives and five children.
posted on Jan 22, 2005 - View this thread

Blackout Some sites have gone black today in protest of black box voting and/or four more years of Bush. But, actually, I haven't seen many. Are people tired of fighting or is this just a poorly-organized effort no one knows about?
posted on Jan 20, 2005 - View this thread

Guess what? Another poll (since MeFites enjoy them sooooo much)! This one is a take on how much the world trusts and loves Bush.
posted on Jan 20, 2005 - View this thread

Creating Bush's God Talk by Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter. According to University of Washington professor David Domke, author of "God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the War on Terror", here's how Bush's God-Talk Is Different ("When Bush speaks of God, he positions himself as a prophetic spokesperson rather than a petitioning supplicant".)
Bonus: "On What Did They Solemnly Swear? Which president opened his inaugural Bible at random in haste? Which didn't swear at all?". Test your knowledge of presidential inaugural Bible use with this quiz.
And: Prayers of the Presidents -- From George Washington to George W. Bush, a sampling of personal and public prayers of America's presidents.
posted on Jan 20, 2005 - View this thread

Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider. And 90% of CNN polls are half-mental. Or something. Via TMW
posted on Jan 19, 2005 - View this thread

Kid Rock To Play Bush Inauguration ... The Bush Twins have invited Kid Rock to play their inauguration bash after their father is sworn in to a second term. Rock also played the Republican National Convention. This is a guy who stuck his head through an American flag at the Superbowl and has lyrics that say all women are whores and extol drug and alcohol abuse. (The link has actual lyrics from Rock, so if you are offended by cursing don't follow it.)
posted on Jan 4, 2005 - View this thread

AARP Says No To Bush ... The AARP is coming out strong against private Social security investment accounts, saying they "will actually make the problem worse, not better." In January they plan to spend $50 million on an ad campaign opposing privatization. Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly has also been awesome in pointing out that the common wisdom that Social Security is in trouble is just not true.
posted on Dec 30, 2004 - View this thread

It is not the first time this thing happens, but I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more of this until Americans finally wake up and realise the nightmare Bush has dragged us all in. What with CIA reports painting a completely different picture than the administration would have us belive and the help from people with experience from previous military blunders, it looks like we may soon have a revival of the "stop the war trains" tradition. Cheers!
posted on Dec 8, 2004 - View this thread

A moment-by-moment account of the Bush visit to Halifax via cameraphone.
posted on Dec 1, 2004 - View this thread

EVIL/LIVE is a 28 minute edit of the first debate featuring Bush listening to and debating with himself. It may be broadcast, copied, distributed, edited etc. without permission. (170 MB / 635 MB) [via nettime]
posted on Nov 5, 2004 - View this thread

How Bush Did It "A team of Newsweek reporters unveils the untold fears, secret battles and private emotions behind a historic election." An in-depth series of behind-the-scenes articles. [via Salon 's War Room, which also says Bush's bulge was a bulletproof vest.]
posted on Nov 4, 2004 - View this thread

Imminent job openings at CNN... Open the link and right click the picture of Bush and wife, click "Save Picture/Image" and look at the filename! In the words of a certain Denis Leary, "He's an asshole, asshole, asshole-e-o-oe-oh". I suggest someone mirrors this ASAP!
posted on Nov 4, 2004 - View this thread

Bohemian election. Just a little something to lighten the day. Bound to be a double post but can't find any signs, so apologies in advance if it is. Altogether now, My brother jeb has votes put aside for meeee...
posted on Nov 2, 2004 - View this thread

"You're An Asshole." A film strip we can all appreciate in time for tomorrow's big event. Try singing along!
posted on Nov 1, 2004 - View this thread

Professor Allan Lichtman has predicted the results of the past four elections correctly using a system known as The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency.

The Keys predict election results by assessing the performance and strength of the party holding the White House. The thirteen points take into account all the factors that decide elections from the obvious (how the economy is doing) to the more subtle (whether the party in power has achieved major policy change). If eight or more of the keys favour the candidate of the incumbent party, he wins. Any fewer, he loses.

Eighteen months ago Lichtman forecast that Bush would retain the presidency. But the Republican Party now has seven keys turned against it for 2004, one more than the fatal six negative keys.
posted on Nov 1, 2004 - View this thread

The Rumors On the Internets Are True! "Our goal is to present you with these clips to help you make an informed choice next Tuesday." Your one-stop-shop for documentary clips related to Kerry and Bush, presented by the Internets Vets for Truth.
posted on Oct 28, 2004 - View this thread

"The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?" Rudy Giuliani blames the troops for the current missing explosives scandal. (340K wmv file). Can we finally stop talking about this hack as a viable candidate for national office?
posted on Oct 28, 2004 - View this thread

Georgebush.com site blocked to viewers outside the United States. Surfers outside the US have been unable to visit the official re-election site of President George W Bush. The blocking of browsers sited outside the US began in the early hours of Monday morning.
posted on Oct 27, 2004 - View this thread

Democracy Republican style.
Greg Palast's film will be broadcast by Newsnight on Tuesday, 26 October, 2004 by the BBC. You can also watch the show from the BBC website, either live or on demand for 24 hours after originally broadcast, by clicking on the latest programme button.
posted on Oct 26, 2004 - View this thread

American teens have spoken, and they want George W. Bush for president. Nearly 1.4 million teens voted in the nation's largest mock election, and the Republican incumbent wound up with 393 electoral votes and 55 percent of the total votes cast.
posted on Oct 21, 2004 - View this thread

Iranian regime endorses Bush, saying democrats have historically "harmed Iran." Head of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Hassan Rowhani, is very close to the hardline leader, Ali Khamanei. But the truth is Republicans have always helped dictators in Iran,. Biggest example: 1953 coup that toppled Mossadeq, the extremely popular elected official prime minister of Iran and brought back the tyrant Shaah.
posted on Oct 19, 2004 - View this thread

Sinclair Fires DC Bureau Chief for Speaking out Against Airing "Stolen Honor" (Baltimore Sun link, reg. req)
Sinclair Broadcasting, as has been discussed before, wants to air "Stolen Honor" (quite the appropriate title in regards to Jon Leiberman, the DC bureau chief) during primetime in a bold faced move to sway the election to Bush's favor.
Says Mr. Leiberman, "It's biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election."
The Washington Post and NY Times (both reg.req.) are also running the story.

First brought to my attention via our own Oliver Willis.
posted on Oct 19, 2004 - View this thread

Two weeks from today, John Kerry will win the popular vote by "23% or more" over George W. Bush, according to 5 Star Psychic Advice. See if you can do better than the spirit world by predicting the electoral and popular vote totals in the second quadrennial MetaFilter Presidential Contest ...
posted on Oct 19, 2004 - View this thread

Simon Robson is an animator, and his friend Barry McNamara has political views. Simon made an animation to broadcast them. What Barry Says [QuickTime, political, via madamjujujive]
posted on Oct 11, 2004 - View this thread

Bush Junta: A Field Guide to Corruption in Government - A substantial visual document (200 pages of comics from Fantagraphics, fact-checked with an extensive bibliography; the link goes to a number of sample pages) on the Bush Dynasty, from its beginnings benefitting off of Hitler and WW2 (that entire piece, which is printed in english, is posted in its original dutch online here), to the Bush's connection to Reagan's assassination, CIA and Iran-Contra, ending with the unsettling origins and profiles of the current administration. A great election primer, featuring comics and art by Steve Brodner, Ralph Steadman, Spain Rodriguez and many others. (Amazon link provided for a better description)
posted on Oct 11, 2004 - View this thread

The best political photo essay i've ever seen. A cheeky look at Bush's flip flops in the form of a shoe catalogue.
posted on Oct 8, 2004 - View this thread

Is Bush wired? Ruthless speculation devoid of issues, considered and explored.
posted on Oct 8, 2004 - View this thread

A mixed message gives you the quote and counterquotes from politicians. A good way to see politicians sitting on both sides of an issue, even if it's often the same politician sitting on two sides of the same issue.
posted on Oct 8, 2004 - View this thread

More than rhetoric... As the campaign gets more divisive and time grows short incidents of violence are breaking out more and more often. Shots have been fired on more than one occasion, swastikas burned, intimidation and just plain kicking. Hopefully it gets better from here, but somehow I don't think so.
posted on Oct 7, 2004 - View this thread

What Barry Says. (mirror of the quicktime video) Though it may stray towards the tinfoil hat in places, you can't dispute that a small group of neocons really is actually trying to reform the world in their vision. But are they doing it merely for profit on the part of their closely related weapons companies? Even if you don't agree with its provacative message, it's a damn fine looking piece of type, design, and film all rolled into one 2 minute short [via randomfoo].
posted on Oct 6, 2004 - View this thread

Being Nothing: George W. Bush as Presidential Simulacrum [small excerpt within].
posted on Oct 5, 2004 - View this thread

Coward-in-Chief. George Bush has announced that he will give a major national speech on Wednesday, in which he will respond to John Kerry's criticisms of the president. This appears to be the first time any president has tried to hold a major televised speech during the election season for such a purpose. During his term in office, Mr. Bush has given the fewest press conferences of any president in the televised era. John Kerry had previously offered Bush weekly debates... and George Bush refused. Is it fair to say that he'd rather use his power of office to dictate to us instead?
posted on Oct 5, 2004 - View this thread

The amazing debate spotter text analysis tool is a fun way to look at the words our leaders use. Bush had a lot of obvious ones: hard work, wrong time, wrong place, he forgot poland. Kerry name dropped Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden quite a bit and had the highest kill ratio. Here's Cameron's post about how it came to be and how it works. Politics in the age of the internet are certainly an interesting time.
posted on Oct 1, 2004 - View this thread

An excellent WashPost primer on the lies each candidate is currently telling about the other, and how they hold up to reality. Also, enjoy the many euphemisms employed to avoid the "L" word: (Misleading. Inaccurate. Oversimplified. Exaggerated. Carefully selected. Unfair. etc etc) Who will be the first mainstream media outlet to state plainly that a politician has told a lie? Login: shutyomouf@hotmail.com - pw:shaftbaby)
posted on Sep 30, 2004 - View this thread

Al Gore on tomorrow's Bush-Kerry duel: The debate tomorrow should not seek to discover which candidate would be more fun to have a beer with. As Jon Stewart of the "The Daily Show'' nicely put in 2000, "I want my president to be the designated driver.''
posted on Sep 29, 2004 - View this thread

Tattoo my head with anything anti-Bush! An interesting interview with someone that put their skin on eBay for an anti-Bush tattoo, but instead of the $10,000-30,000 price tags, her no-reserve auction started at one cent and only ended at $103.50. The final product kinda works no matter who wins, but still, a hundred bucks probably didn't cover the ink, let alone the commitment. Remember the Howard Dean tattoo? How far would you go for your candidate?
posted on Sep 28, 2004 - View this thread

"Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear." He is one of America's great novelists, but you don't expect Philip Roth to be barreling up the best-seller list with a book that hasn't even been published yet. And yet "The Plot Against America" is in the top 3 at amazon.com. It spins a what-if scenario in which the isolationist and anti-Semitic hero Charles Lindbergh runs for president as a Republican in 1940 and defeats F.D.R. "Keep America Out of the Jewish War", reads a button worn by Lindbergh supporters rallying at Madison Square Garden. And so he does: he signs nonaggression pacts with Germany and Japan that will keep America at peace while the rest of the world burns. The Lindbergh administration hatches a nice plan to prod assimilation of the Jews. Innocuously called Just Folks, it's a relocation program for urban Jews, administered by an Office of American Absorption fronted by an obliging and pompous rabbi of radio celebrity. The teenage Roth character is shipped off to a Kentucky tobacco farm, to finally live among Christians. The book is about American Fascism, but while Roth is no fan of President Bush ("a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one"), he points out that he conceived this book (LATimes registration: sparklebottom/sparklebottom) in December 2000, and that it would be "a mistake" to read it "as a roman à clef to the present moment in America." (more inside)
posted on Sep 28, 2004 - View this thread

Mr. Bush and His 10 Ever-Changing Different Positions on Iraq: "A flip and a flop and now just a flop." Delightful Moore (to those who like what he does), and a few links to backup his reasoning for those who don't.
posted on Sep 28, 2004 - View this thread

"Liberals want to ban the bible!" Guess I missed that meeting where "liberals" decided on this.
posted on Sep 25, 2004 - View this thread

When you hold a moment of silence for 9/11, it's good to stand with your hand on your heart. But if you're the President, you reach for your crotch.
posted on Sep 12, 2004 - View this thread

Sure, it's just more Bush-bashing, but it's gussied up durn pretty. Philip Gourevitch on Bushspeak.

He is grossly underestimated as an orator by those who presume that good grammar, rigorous logic, and a solid command of the facts are the essential ingredients of political persuasion, and that the absence of these skills indicates a lack of intelligence. Although Bush is no intellectual, and proud of it, he is quick and clever, and, for all his notorious malapropisms, abuses of syntax, and manglings or reinventions of vocabulary, his intelligence is—if not especially literate—acutely verbal.

posted on Sep 10, 2004 - View this thread

"Any day in which Bush's Nat'l Guard service is the dominant news story is a lost day for the Kerry campaign." As another round of media yadayada (see below) is about to emerge over President Bush's National Guard service or lack thereof, Noam Scheiber explains why this is probably very bad news for ... Kerry. We know who Bush is. The election is about the future, not the past. Scheiber's point may have been made in the MeFi thread referenced above, but I'm afraid I lost consciousness after a screen or so.
posted on Sep 8, 2004 - View this thread

Bush and Kerry Hit Road, Trade Blows on Jobs I can only guess that someone at Reuters has a sense of humor.
posted on Sep 3, 2004 - View this thread

The full text of George W Bush's acceptance speech. I feel less safe now than I was before, but as of this week it looks like he's going to win.
posted on Sep 2, 2004 - View this thread

Air Force confirms Bush wore award he never earned. Following the earlier revelation that George W. Bush was photographed wearing military ribbons he never earned, arguments were made against the charge, in some cases based on the political leaning of the source. The Air Force Personnel Center and the Air Force Historical Research Center both state that Bush never recieved the award displayed in the photograph. The Uniform Code of Military Justice states that this is an act punishable by six months confinment and a discharge from the service. (via OW)
posted on Sep 1, 2004 - View this thread

The upcoming entertainment lineup for the GOP convention next week is mostly country music, but this article mentions that Stephen Baldwin will be there. Yep, you heard me, a Baldwin. Alec Baldwin was at the DNC last month, and now it's brother vs. brother, Baldwin vs. Baldwin. Remember when you're voting this fall that it's basically a best of the Baldwins contest. You either like Alec, or Stephen, but not both. Now choose your poison Baldwin. [via devoter]
posted on Aug 23, 2004 - View this thread

George W. Bush's latest TV ads juxtapose Iraq's and Afghanistan's flags with footage of Olympic sport, proclaiming, "At this Olympics, there will be two more free nations — and two fewer terrorist regimes." At a campaign stop, Bush said, "just the image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics. It's fantastic, isn't it? What a fantastic thought." The possibly medal-bound Iraqi soccer team, however, objects to any such association. While Bush goes on to say, "Here's a country now, battling for a country that is now free. It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted," Ahmed Manajid, midfield goes so far as to say, "if he were not playing soccer he would 'for sure' be fighting as part of the resistance."
posted on Aug 19, 2004 - View this thread

The guys who brought you the timeline of terror alerts have been at it again. This time they made a chart comparing Bush's approval rating and the terror alerts. It's getting harder to believe this isn't s big slight of hand going on. Follow the ! icons and the thin red line.
posted on Aug 6, 2004 - View this thread

GW Bush not AWOL: Actually Secret Agent; Deep Throat; Expressionist Art Collector A shocking followup to the tragic Thatcher news earlier today.
posted on Aug 4, 2004 -