This is your president, re-mix

DJ Waingroh felt vibrant and confident to give yesterday's Bush speech a quick little touchup. It's in mp3 format, so that's good news, idn't it? particularly is you somebody who has an mp3 player.

Right click to download Confi-Dense.mp3

This is your President

Link Go watch the video too, it's even better with his commanding oration.

I was pleased to see that consumer confidence is at a two-year high. That's an indication that the economy is strong, and getting better. When people are confident, they tend to be a part of the decision-making process amongst millions of deciders that say the future is going to be better.

Oh, ok. Confidence is good. Especially amongst the deciders.

Real after-tax incomes are up 11 percent since December of 2000. To me, that's a vital statistic. Real after-tax incomes -- that means that the amount of money in somebody's wallet is increasing. That's what we want to hear, isn't it; particularly is you're somebody who has got a wallet.

Wow, look out Adam Smith.

That is good news though, because I is someone who has got a wallet.

No wonder they're scared

Link.

"Fahrenheit 9/11," a left-sided documentary that bashes the Bush administration's war on terrorism, wouldn't find much of an audience in a military town.

Or so they thought.

"This has broken all of our past records," said Nasim Kuenzel, an owner of the Cameo Art House Theatre. "The movie that I thought would make us hardly any money - I never thought it would break all the records."

Note: this is in Fayetteville, N.C.

Village Idiots

First Ashcroft's "Let the Eeeeeeeeeeagles soar", now Colin gives us his own special soundtrack to Iraq. Interesting he chose the construction worker, I woulda thought the Army guy in assless pants much more appropriate.

Idiot.

Interesting...

Matthew Yglesias over at tapped points to a report in the WaPo that K Street firms are hedging their bets in this election by hiring more Democrats. Not overwhelming, but just another reason to be optimistic and keep fighting.

Krugman on F9/11
Link

Mr. Bush's carefully constructed persona is that of an all-American regular guy — not like his suspiciously cosmopolitan opponent, with his patrician air. The news media have cheerfully gone along with the pretense. How many stories have you seen contrasting John Kerry's upper-crusty vacation on Nantucket with Mr. Bush's down-home time at the ranch?

But the reality, revealed by Mr. Moore, is that Mr. Bush has always lived in a bubble of privilege. And his family, far from consisting of regular folks with deep roots in the heartland, is deeply enmeshed, financially and personally, with foreign elites — with the Saudis in particular.

Mr. Moore's greatest strength is a real empathy with working-class Americans that most journalists lack. Having stripped away Mr. Bush's common-man mask, he uses his film to make the case, in a way statistics never could, that Mr. Bush's policies favor a narrow elite at the expense of less fortunate Americans — sometimes, indeed, at the cost of their lives.

In a nation where the affluent rarely serve in the military, Mr. Moore follows Marine recruiters as they trawl the malls of depressed communities, where enlistment is the only way for young men and women to escape poverty. He shows corporate executives at a lavish conference on Iraq, nibbling on canapés and exulting over the profit opportunities, then shows the terrible price paid by the soldiers creating those opportunities.

Spy-der-Man

Check out this flash animation about Ashcroft from the Alliance for Justice.

Stars & Stripes no more

Check out the new flag.

'Penetrating' Fox News...

Where's the FCC on this one???



Apparently boobs are offensive and must be covered up (just ask Mr. Asscroft), but a big penis in the center of the screen is A-okay.

MJSMITHO has the video

Whoa Dowd!

Has Maureen Dowd always been this cool?

This Guy is Not a Journalist

Drudge has a report that Hillary will be named the VP candidate, and he has an anonymous "insider, one of the most influential and well-placed in the nation's capital" to tell the story.

I'm not opposed at all to Hillary as VP, I haven't really thought about it. But this "insider" is so obviously a Republican hack pretending to be a Democratic insider, it's just laughable. Go check it out.

Insurgents

Time has a pretty good article on the insurgents here. The thing I don't buy is that they all went from being Saddam loyalists to all being radical jihadists loyal to Zarqawi. I'm sure that once Saddam was captured, the insurgents loyal to him could have become more fundamentalist. But there have been all types of insurgents from the very beginning, especially nationalist ones, as evidenced by Sadr's recent uprising. I don't see why insurgents have to be portrayed as religious radicals or Saddam "dead enders", when, quite obviously, they are all fighting for one thing. The expulsion of US troops and control of their future. I guess it makes it easier to hate them if they're all extremists and psychos.

Shocker

Iraq worse off.

In a few key areas - electricity, the judicial system and overall security - the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday.

Get your Bush on

There's a new get your war on cartoon hot off the presses.

Yankee Fans
So I may not like the Yankees, but their fans are pretty smart...

link:

Cheney, who visited both clubhouses after batting practice, watched part of the game from the box of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and part from a first-row seat next to the Yankees dugout, where he sat between New York Gov. George Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Cheney was booed when he was shown on the right-field videoboard during the seventh-inning stretch.

If people at Z-Net feel this way...

Why can't the Naderites? Norman Solomon.

This morning I mailed a form changing my party registration from “decline to state” to the Green Party. It’s a tiny individual step in response to a hugely important collective action -- the party’s decision at its national convention to nominate David Cobb for president.

A majority of the delegates went for a candidate who relied on grassroots organizing and respectful debate. Cobb won the nomination after proving his capacity to engage in substantive dialogue with Green Party activists and other progressives. Without that capacity, he probably wouldn’t have ended up taking his position in favor of a “safe states” approach to this year’s presidential race.

How thoroughly Cobb and his running mate Pat LaMarche will implement such a strategy remains to be seen. Hopefully, history will record that in 2004 the Green ticket boosted the party’s strength among progressives nationwide while making common cause with the wide array of movements determined to prevent a victory for the Bush-Cheney gang on Election Day.

As a practical matter, ending the George W. Bush presidency on November 2 will require sufficient votes for John Kerry in most of the 20 or so swing states: Oregon and Washington; Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado; Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Delaware; New Hampshire and Maine; West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana; and, of course, Florida.

(Since I live in California, where Kerry is running 12 to 15 points ahead of Bush, I’m safely voting for Cobb. But if I lived in one of the 20 closely fought swing states, I’d vote for Kerry.)

With the swing states all too close for comfort, activists should be emphatic that the Green Party’s presidential campaign this year ought to concentrate its efforts on “safe states” -- where the Bush-Kerry race isn’t close.

The Green Party should not be at cross-purposes with the progressive movements struggling to end the Bush presidency. People in those movements will long remember, for good or ill, how the Green Party conducts itself between now and the day that seals the fate of the Bush White House.

One of the potential key benefits of Cobb’s nomination is that he seems genuinely interested in hearing -- and being responsive to -- grassroots activists. This is a refreshing and vital departure for a Green Party presidential nominee. So, more than ever, it’s time for activists to speak up.

If strategic thinking prevails, the possibility exists that the Green Party in 2004 will strengthen itself from the bottom up while also providing tangible solidarity in the national effort to defeat Bush. If the Green Party proves equal to this momentous task, it could open up new possibilities for the years and decades ahead.

Why it Won't be close

Steve explains.
Update: I found more reasons too.

Well...

Remember when Abu Gharib's name was going to be changed? Sometimes it looks like these clowns have excellent discipline, and other times it's like they're deranged. While the press just sits idly by, reporting all their claims, questioning none.

Best Buddies

Angry Chirac puts Bush in his place

Jacques Chirac bluntly told George Bush to mind his own business yesterday when the US president urged European leaders to give Turkey a firm date for starting EU membership talks later this year.

Ignoring the determined effort to celebrate improved transatlantic relations after the Iraq crisis, the French president publicly rebuked Mr Bush at Nato's Istanbul summit for calling for special treatment for the Turks.

Mr Bush, he complained, "not only went too far but went on to territory which is not his own".

He added: "It's as if I was advising the US on how they should manage their relations with Mexico."

As he was speaking, Tony Blair and Mr Bush were asked about their current relationship with France and Germany, the key Nato critics of their Iraq war policy.

Mr Blair said: "There's no point ... in saying all the previous disagreements have disappeared; they have not."

I imagine it went something like this...

Prez Bush: I call on all of Europe to use your stratedgery and expand European Union freedomship to Turkey.

Reporter: Pres. Bush, Who is currently in the European Union?

Bush: You'll..Won't...Initi... Europe!

Reporter: But President Bush...

Bush: Will you let me finish?(snicker)It's a different world, 9/11, terror, so we must give Turkey a tax cut... uh...I mean, freedomship.

Ha Ha, Fooled You!

Iraq Formally Returns to Self-Rule*** Two Days Early

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government two days earlier than expected Monday, aiming to forestall guerrilla attacks with a secretive ceremony formally ending 14 months of occupation...

The low-key ceremony was over before it was announced and came as a surprise to ordinary Iraqis. Its hurried and secret nature appeared to reflect fears that guerrillas could stage a spectacular attack on the scheduled date of June 30.

***by self-rule, we mean you can do anything you choose, as long as we say you can.

Asshole

This is how low Nader has sunk, attacking his "old buddy's" physical appearance.

Link
Hey, Michael, Where Were Your Friends?

Once upon a time, there was Michael Moore the First. He never forgot his friends. Come time for the Washington, DC premiere of Bowling for Columbine a while back, he invited his old buddies in Washington—gave them good seats and spent the rest of the evening with them. During his other movie's premiere, he affectionately recognized how much those old friends helped him and supported him after he was mistreated and let go by Mother Jones. He was generous with his words and time.

Now there is Michael Moore the Second. Last night he hosted the Washington, DC premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, and who was there? The Democratic political establishment, the same people whom he took to such mocking task on the road with us in campaign rally after campaign rally in 2000. Who was not there? His old buddies! Not personally invited, not personally hung out with.

A few weeks ago, Michael, I sent you a message: "Hey, Dude, where's my Buddy?" It is attached. It has gone without reply. It simply asked you to come back to your progressive constituency and take on the two-party monopoly of our rigged election system—to challenge the pro-warlike, corporate party with two heads, wearing different makeup when it comes to playing toady for Big Business. These are the giant multinationals who have no allegiance to our country or to communities like Flint except to control, deplete or abandon them. It is not that your views have changed, with an exception or two. It is that your circles have changed. Too much Clinton, not enough Camejo.

Your old friends remain committed to blazing paths for a just society and world. As they helped you years ago, they can help you now. They are also trim and take care of themselves. Girth they avoid. The more you let them see you, the less they will see of you. That could be their greatest gift to Moore the Second—the gift of health. What say you?

Best wishes,

Ralph Nader

Well, I guess he's learned some new rhetoric from his new Republican friends.

Coming Home to Roost

As Bush Confers With NATO, U.S. Is Seen Losing Its Edge

The Bush Administration made its failed plans based on US military superiority, negating American moral superiority. Unfounded or not, that moral superiority is gone for good.