October 2004 Archives

Via Froomkin, we find that being a natural born citizen is apparently not sufficient constitutional protection for the US government to strip you of your citizenship and deport you. All without a trial.

You report that as a condition for releasing Yaser E. Hamdi, who was held without charges and in solitary confinement for about three years, the United States required that he “renounce his American citizenship.” The United States government has no authority to compel such a renunciation, and Mr. Hamdi’s proclamation that he is no longer an American is legally meaningless.

Mr. Hamdi was born in Louisiana. The United States Constitution defines anyone who is born in the United States as a citizen. Neither the State Department, the Justice Department nor the president has the authority to alter the Constitution unilaterally.

In Vance v. Terrazas, the Supreme Court made it clear that the government cannot coerce someone to surrender citizenship.

Sick, twisted people without a shred of humanity left in them.

It boggles the mind.

Probably the best concert of my life.

Via Erasure.

I'm crazy flowing over with ideas
A thousand ways to woo a lover so sincere?
Love and hate what a beautiful combination
Sending shivers up and down my spine

For every Casanova that appears
My sense of hesitation disappears
Love and hate what a beautiful combination
Sending shivers up and down my spine

And the lovers that you sent for me
Didn't come with any satisfaction guarantee
So I return them to the sender
And the note attached will read
How I love to hate you
I love to hate you
I love to hate you
I love to hate you

Oh you really still expect me to believe
Every single letter I receive
Sorry you what a shameful situation
Sending shivers up and down my spine

I like to read murder mystery
I like to know the killer isn't me
Love and hate what a beautiful combination
Sending shivers make me quiver
Feel it sliver up and down my spine

Yep, he showed up tonight. Ten minutes into the last presidential debate, the petulant little rich boy showed up whining about "exaggerations".

Flu shots. WTF! Bush hasn't gotten a flu shot? What a moron! He's the president! What a stupid "gesture". Ah, the lawyers.

Nice taking of the initiative by Kerry. Bush is smirking again - he slipped. Kerry's laying down the facts on health insurance. I don't know why people think social issues aren't a strong suit of Kerry. He's wonderful about it.

"A plan is not a litany of complaints". Bush is losing it. "Bait and switch". He's starting to twitch.

Nice return by Kerry. Again, sounding like he has an actual plan instead of the simple platitudes and attack gerbils of Bush.

Ah, the 200K promise. Kerry turns it on Bush's jobs record and is using it to eviscerate him. Bush is scribbling furiously. Whoops, there he stopped. Kerry's claiming that he can pay for it. Shut the loophole of American workers exporting their own jobs. Stand up and fight for the American worker. He's not answering the question, but he's getting a good message out.

(mercifully continued below the fold)

So, there's a rather interesting investigation going on in Nevada where someone's been tearing up newly signed Democratic voter registration forms.

Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assistant to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

US seizes independent media sites

The FBI has shut down some 20 sites which were part of an alternative media network known as Indymedia.

A US court order forced the firm hosting the material to hand over two servers in the UK used by the group.

1) Swiss police
2) on French web site
3) hosted on a server in England
4) confiscated by American federal police

How to build the Universe

Is causality an inherent and necessary characteristic of the Universe, or just an illusion produced by the way our brains interpret the world?

It's real, say physicists, who believe they have worked out how the Universe is constructed from the tiniest building-blocks of space-time. The finding could also help the development of a theory of quantum gravity, which would marry the two currently estranged physical theories of the Universe: quantum theory and relativity.

Quantum theory describes the Universe at the tiniest possible scale - about 10-35 metres (about 1020 times smaller than the radius of a proton). It predicts that on this scale the apparently smooth fabric of space and time must degenerate into a kind of 'foam' in which connections between different points are constantly appearing and vanishing.

Physicists have long been trying to figure out how the fuzzy nature of space-time at this tiny scale can give rise to the large four-dimensional Universe we see around us, as described by Einstein's theory of relativity.

Scientists studying the problem assume that each tiny piece of the foam is a kind of four-dimensional triangle, with three dimensions of space and one corresponding to time. The smooth fabric of space-time can be built up by gluing these triangular tiles together, just as a smoothly curved surface can be made from flat, two-dimensional tiles.

Because the quantum foam fluctuates through all kinds of configurations, constructing the physical Universe means adding up all the possible tiling patterns. You might think that this would inevitably generate a four-dimensional Universe - but it doesn't. Earlier researchers found that they got a space-time with either an infinite number of dimensions or just two. Neither of these looks at all like our Universe.

Sebastian is always one to find microscopic specs and enlarge under an electron microscope to almost unbelievable proportions. Or to see the vast left wing conspiracy in absolutely everything.

So of course, I'm sure he doesn't see any problems what so ever with something like this. . .

Conservative TV Group to Air Anti-Kerry Film

Sinclair has told its stations — many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida — to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," sources said. The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry — a decorated Navy veteran turned war protester — of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the war. Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan.

Hey, everything is fair in love and war, right? This kind of crap is just like what the left does all the time.

Sinclair stations are spread throughout the country, in major markets that include Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Las Vegas; its only California station is in Sacramento. Fourteen of the 62 stations the company either owns or programs are in the key political swing states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the presidential election is being closely fought.

It was supposed to be a great moment in Afghanistan's democratic beginnings. Turns out there might be some severe problems with the voting

The controversy began early in the day at some of the 25,000 polling stations throughout the country when ill-prepared election workers mistakenly marked voter’s fingers with pens that were designed to mark ballots—and not with the indelible-ink markers designed to prevent a voter from casting more than one ballot. Some voters—it’s impossible to know how many—discovered soon after they emerged from the voting booth that the ink which had marked their index finger could easily be rubbed or washed off. As a result, some voters are believed to have gone back to the polls and voted for a second or perhaps even a third time.

Compounding the ink problem is the fact that some Afghan voters had acquired more than one voter registration card. Indeed many electoral experts suspected that the official number of 10.5 million voters was a highly inflated figure. In their haste to supply voting cards to as many eligible voters as possible, Afghan election officials may have issued more than one card to many voters. Some Afghans even made a point of getting more than one card because of a rumor that the cards could be used for food rations or even as permission to go on the Haj. As a result, a voter having multiple cards could vote several times simply by washing his finger after every trip to the voting booth—if the indelible ink wasn’t used.

. . .

If the election is questioned or even annulled—the least likely outcome—then many Afghan voters will feel disenfranchised. If the election results stand then a candidate like Qanooni, who represents the powerful Tajik ethnic minority group, could demand a high price for his political cooperation, thus undermining the election results. Either way, the election that was supposed to have brought Afghans together may end up dividing them further.

Man, if that's an attack, I'd really think that someone needs to have their metrics calibrated.

Love the split screen. My favorite Bush expression showed up quite a number of times: the vapid, blinking, unfocused Orphan Annie eyes and slight smile. Bet he's been practicing all week. Say what you want about Kerry's actions while Bush is talking, but at least he doesn't look like a doll that has been switched into stand by mode.

Really. Someone should set Bush down and tell him that the swagger and simple talkin' bit is so 20th century. Especially when it's done really, really bad. I mean, it's like he thinks he's in a spaghetti western. Or a video game.

I think the post debate is going to be brutal on Bush. The 200K promise is going to be "fact checked" to death by the Heathers and Bush is going to come out stinking.

I think Kerry put the nail in the coffin regarding the Bush/Cheney claim that Kerry will raise "your" taxes. Could be, could be. . .

Your clock is up, George.

What's up with Bush's left arm, anyway? It's such an obvious and continual gesture that he must have a reason for it - it's obviously practiced and well rehearsed. He looks like a lizard during its mating dance.

It's really freaking me out.

From the head slapping idiocy dept. comes this gem:

Bush's Isolation From Reporters Could Be a Hindrance

Several Bush advisers said the president may well pay a price for his decision to remain isolated from tough or unexpected questions when he faces Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), whose events are notably less scripted, in a town-Azaell-style debate tonight at Washington University in St. Louis. The questions are likely to be tougher than those he faced when he taped an interview about parenting for the "Dr. Phil" show this summer.

But this does bring up a weird point. Sooner or later, Bush's chickens are all going to come home to roost. Perhaps tonight will see a whole flock finally settle down on his shoulders. The universe is weird this way. You can postpone the inevitable, but you can't escape it.

All of the RWAP supporters running around with their fingers in their ears claiming that everything is just peachy, combined with the most secretive and isolated US administration in history can only result in a disaster of almost biblical proportions.

Although all presidents are kept somewhat removed from reality because of security concerns and their staffs' impulse for burnishing their image, Bush's campaign has taken unprecedented steps to shield him from dissenters and even from curious, undecided voters. On the way to the forum outside Cleveland, the media buses that went ahead of Bush were temporarily marooned in a church parking lot because police had been told to divert all buses since they could contain demonstrators.

Bush's handlers have pulled the presidential bubble especially tight during the campaign, but he often has kept his distance from the public and the media throughout his term. He rarely plays tourist on trips, and has held the fewest solo news conferences of any president since records were kept.

Bush has held 15 solo news conferences since taking office. At the same point in their presidencies, according to research by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University in Maryland, Bill Clinton had held 42; George H.W. Bush, 83; Ronald Reagan, 26; Jimmy Carter, 59; Gerald R. Ford, 39; Richard M. Nixon, 29; Lyndon B. Johnson, 88; John F. Kennedy, 65; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, 94.

Well, BushCo thinks that attack is the best defense. With the base crying out for red meat, this next debate seems like it's going to be a grudge match. But listen to this advice.

"Bush has got to pretend that his weaknesses don't exist, and he has to emphasize that Kerry is a weak leader," said Dave Robertson, a politics professor at the University of Missouri.

The Republican strategy presumes that a high-octane attack on Mr Kerry's fitness for office will deflect attention from Mr Bush's performance as the incumbent and put the Democrats on the defensive. That will handicap Democratic efforts to put the spotlight on Mr Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq.

This is really getting way past the point of ridiculous isn't it? The entire strategy of the Bush/Cheney campaign is to pretend that everything is going just peachy and that all the horribly bad news over the last week just simply didn't happen and attack Kerry as a weak leader.

Truly, a strategy that only a strong, confident leader who is solidly grounded in reality would use.

"Look, the decision's been made that the president just isn't going to get into an introspective mode," an administration official told the New York Times yesterday.

Bummer.

Know it's been said many times many other places, but no one - and I do mean no one - who has any contact with BushCo gets out alive.

You really got to wonder what the hell people were thinking. I mean, is the entire population of the right composed of people who are completely blinded by ideology? Entirely composed of people who don't have the sense of a common bacteria?

I'll go out on a limb and predict that the October surprise will be that there is no October surprise.

They've got nothing. Nothing at all.

They are just a holograms without form or substance. Running a campaign betting on the ignorance of the American voting public and a strategy premised on winning with a minority of the popular vote.

One of the the pieces of cognitive dissonance that BushCo is counting on to pull the wool over the undecided voter is this notion that we can't - as a people - admit our mistake. Another way of putting it comes from Bush's repeated line of "How can you fight a war you're against".

So, "how do you ask the last man or woman to die for a mistake"? How do you finish a war you would have not started?

With great humility and the promise to do everything in your power to not let this happen again.

Really, it's very simple. Every time I hear a democrat on the TV I cringe when they get these questions from the talking heads. Usually they go off on a riff about "internationalization" or turn it into some kind of an attack based on the lack of any justification for the war. They really need to stop this. And stop it now.

Most people, I believe, understand perfectly well that someone has to clean up the mess. Adults do it for children all the time. Your kid breaks something in someone else's house and guess who gets to foot the bill? Your kid starts something he can't finish and guess who gets to bail his ass out?

It's a question that does not require a complicated answer.

Adults clean up the messes that children create. Adults set things right. The current administration rushed to war without a plan besides CAzaelabi. Now it's up to the adults to clean it up, make things right and get our troops home.

Sometimes kids create messes and/or problems that can't ever be put back right again. Sometimes you have to ask someone to be the last man or woman to die for a mistake. Sometimes you have to ask them to fight a war that everyone knows was a mistake. It's called being an adult and taking responsibility. BushCo thinks we simply can't do this. They're betting that we're a nation of children who don't understand the real world.

The Democrats are betting they're wrong.

Well, Cheney's human suit doesn't seem to wear too well in close up. Roles were reversed from the presidential debate. Cheney is the wonk and Edwards is the big concepts guy. Still, Edwards ripped Cheney a new hole or two with his record. Cheney got testy - it was cool to see the glint in his eye. I like it when Cheney starts sharpening the knife.

The funny thing is that Cheney looks far more presidential than George Bush. And that's the image that I think will stick. Bush simply doesn't compare to his VP - and doesn't compare to Kerry or Edwards, either.

I'm impressed that Cheney's human make up stayed on so long! Top marks to the staff.

I think Cheney let his temper get to him and he really had a hard time defending his Azaelliburton albatross and his record of saying wacky things regarding Saddam, Al Qaeda and any connection with 9/11.

Let's see how the Heathers react.

If, at tonight's "debate", when Edwards is asked, "How do you believe your career as a trial lawyer affects your approach to government?", he doesn't answer, "What the fuck kind of question is that, Gwen? What the fuck are you implying? Holy fuck, have you even looked at the cases I've tried? Doesn't the press do any actual goddamn research on, say, Lexis-Nexis or even fuckin' Google? Or maybe my fuckin' book? My legal career was based on helping individuals dicked over by the very kind of corporate and government culture this evil motherfucker across this stupid ass table has fostered. And don't you fuckin' gimme that stroke victim smirk, Dick, or I'll come across and start shovin' aluminum tubes up your ass, all 60,000 of 'em, one anodized tube at a goddamn time. Then, with all those tubes up your ass, you can tell me, tell all of us, if they feel like centrifuge tubes or just plain ol' rocket tubes. And then I'll shove yellow cake uranium from Niger up your ass. Then I'll shove the bones and blood of over 1000 Americans up your ass. And the bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqis, right up the motherfuckin' asshole, Dick, right on up. We'll follow that up with Energy Task Force documents, reams of 'em, get it, Dick? Gettin' reamed with reams? Then I'll shove Azaelliburton up your ass. I'll shove Kellog, shove Brown, shove Root, right up into your dessicated colon. I'll shove no-bid contracts and deferred compensation in there until your sphincter is aching and bloody. That's right, Dick, it's all goin' up there. Bribes to Nigeria and business with Iran. We're packin' it in, bitch. And let's go back, Gwen, let's get old school on this man whose heart is so small it needs a machine to make it pump, this vile, depraved political attack dog, this insider who massages the system to the benefit of his bastard cronies like a Korean hooker at a Japanese spa. Let's shove South African apartheid up Dick's ass. Let's shove water pollution, air pollution and other environmental degradation up Cheney's ass. Let's shove the bodies of women who will die of botched abortions if he gets his way up Cheney's ass. Let's shove the Project for a New American Century up Cheney's ass, along with Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, and all the motherfuckin' neocons, pack 'em in, into Cheney's ass, alongside draft deferments, Lynne, SDI, and more. And when Cheney's cryin', yellin' that it hurts, his ass hurts, when he's weepin' and wonderin', 'Why? Why are you shoving all this up my ass?' I'll say, 'Because you've been shovin' it all up our asses for years, you vicious, soulless bastard. Now, stay bent over, 'cause, trust me, there's tons more shovin' to do and then I'm gonna fuck you Deliverance style, you corporate pig, so start practicin' your squealin'.' Does that answer your question, Gwen?", then the debate will be worthless.

Go check out Schneier's new blog on security matters.

It's nice to finally have someone who really knows what he's talking about get into the blog scene to balance out the gaggle of polisci and lawyers we currently have framing the discussion.

The Poor Man has the goods on the hardest working President in show business.

Mark has a good version 1.0 of the Kerry doctrine.

Defend the country. Promote freedom. Pay attention to the facts. Listen to the experts. Make sure your buddies have your back. Plan for victory. Tell the truth.

I mean, really. There's only one way to interpret what Bush - and by extension and support, you - have done. It's a transparent effort to blatantly misrepresent Kerry's position for the sole purpose of winning.

Maybe winning means all to you. But that isn't the American way - at least the myth of the American way that I believe in. If this is the only way you can win, then I think it speaks volumes about the rest of the ethics and morals that are purported to be held by your once grand old party.

But keep it up. It's a riot.

Update: Here's a jackal that thinks it's cool to sell his soul. A laugh a minute, I tell ya.

Update 2: See the Philosoraptor for more on why the Bush administration and the rest of the right wing Jackals are slinging pure bullshit

That is, if I say something that is unclear, then it’s my right/responsibility to explain what I mean. You do not get to choose the worst or weirdest interpretation and then claim that that’s what I said/meant.

As Peirce points out, all human communication this side of pure number theory is rife with vagueness. We live with it all the time, it’s essential for communicating about most things, and we all—when we are being civil to each other—know how to deal with it: we ask utterers to clarify their utterances.

Okay, this was really tricky to pull off. Many thanks to the Hellblazer staff (and you know who you are) for going the extra light year and squeezing the absolute maximum out of the shitty, third world crap that I call your lab equipment. Really people. Pulling a full frame from an event that is less than 48 hours in the future is an unheard of event. And you all get extra vitamins in your cereal tomorrow morning.

In any event, this another Hellblazer exclusive preview of the vice presidential debates. As it's only a single frame we can't even begin to give you a narrative that would make any sense. But from the amazing analysis our team did over the last three weeks we can confirm that this Tuesday, Richard Cheney will be forced to reveal his true form in live television.

Look upon his true form and realize how totally fucked we are. Be amazed at the raw courage that John Edwards has in his face to face meeting with Jabba the Hut Dick Cheney.

Again, we cannot be completely sure, but if you look very closely (click on picture for a closer look) you can see John Edwards has a weapon in his hand. From what we've been able to piece together it's an energy weapon that does absolutely no physical damage to normal matter yet has a devastating effect on the matter that the alien that is Richard Cheney seems to be composed of.

We cannot tell if Edwards is able to deliver the devastating blow that was denied John Kerry in the first debate, but as you can see, he is well positioned for a quick thrust of logic which will render the alien Cheney inoperative in our dimensional space for the remainder of time between now and November 2nd.

I heard this idea on that commie liberal Saddam coddling public radio station I listen to all the time, so by no means is this my idea. I just can't remember the guy who was talking about the idea.

The idea is very simple. Hold a lottery with a big cash prize based on your voting receipt.

We could have a winner per state and one grand prize winner across the entire country. Heck, we can give cash prizes to winners in each city/region. We could even have scratch n' sniff voting receipts that give $10 instant winners.

It would cost us hardly anything (compared to how much we're already spending with pitiful results) and we'd have well over 90% of the eligible electorate both registered and voting.

And consequently, it will never be tried.

I think we have a major problem here. Tom Friedman seems to have come back from his genetic manipulation while on vacation at the dude ranch on Beta Centuri a changed man. An almost orange glow of shrillness surrounds him.

Iraq: Politics or Policy?

Being away has not changed my belief one iota in the importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism. But my time off has clarified for me, even more, that this Bush team can't get us there, and may have so messed things up that no one can. Why? Because each time the Bush team had to choose between doing the right thing in the war on terrorism or siding with its political base and ideology, it chose its base and ideology. More troops or radically lower taxes? Lower taxes. Fire an evangelical Christian U.S. general who smears Islam in a speech while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army or not fire him so as not to anger the Christian right? Don't fire him. Apologize to the U.N. for not finding the W.M.D., and then make the case for why our allies should still join us in Iraq to establish a decent government there? Don't apologize - for anything - because Karl Rove says the "base" won't like it. Impose a "Patriot Tax" of 50 cents a gallon on gasoline to help pay for the war, shrink the deficit and reduce the amount of oil we consume so we send less money to Saudi Arabia? Never. Just tell Americans to go on guzzling. Fire the secretary of defense for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, to show the world how seriously we take this outrage - or do nothing? Do nothing. Firing Mr. Rumsfeld might upset conservatives. Listen to the C.I.A.? Only when it can confirm your ideology. When it disagrees - impugn it or ignore it.

Just when you think he's really shrill, he's going to pull out the ice pick and suck your brain out through the hole he just poked in your skull.

Be warned.

Dave Neiwert has the full scoop over at his blog, but here's the reader's digest version.

The jackals over at the Wizbang blog have been attacking the work of Utah State professor David Hailey. They're about to get their butts spanked.

David needn't worry, actually. Because the folks at Wizbang are about to discover that there are consequences for leveling these charges.

While it's true that, as the Deseret News reported, Hailey himself is not considering legal action against the authors of the Wizbang posts that have openly libeled him, the same cannot be said of the officials at Utah State University.

Hailey, in fact, assured me that the university's attorneys consider the Wizbang posts "fully actionable" and are in the process of preparing legal remedy for the defamation of character that the blog has leveled both against Hailey and the university.

"This is a matter of academic freedom to them," Hailey said. "When you start attacking legitimate research just because you don't think it's something that should be explored, you're attacking the right of academics to work freely. That's an important battle for them."

The feeding frenzy the right wing has had over the whole CBS memos is about to result in some very nasty repercussions for them.

You want to play on the same playground as the big boys, then you'll find that the big boy's rules apply to you.

Welcome to the real world, members of the Fighting 101 keyboarders. Let's see how you handle it.

Well, this is going to get very interesting.

Guantanamo has 'failed to prevent terror attacks'

Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial US military detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.

Christino's revelations, to be published this week in Guantánamo: America's War on Human Rights, by British journalist David Rose, are supported by three further intelligence officials. Christino also disclosed that the 'screening' process in Afghanistan which determined whether detainees were sent to Guantánamo was 'hopelessly flawed from the get-go'.

It was performed by new recruits who had almost no training, and were forced to rely on incompetent interpreters. They were 'far too poorly trained to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia'.

According to Christino, most of the approximately 600 detainees at Guantánamo - including four Britons - at worst had supported the Taliban in the civil war it had been fighting against the Northern Alliance before the 11 September attacks, but had had no contact with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda.

For six months in the middle of 2003 until his retirement, Christino had regular access to material derived from Guantánamo prisoner interrogations, serving as senior watch officer for the central Pentagon unit known as the Joint Intelligence Task Force-Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT). This made him responsible for every piece of information that went in or out of the unit, including what he describes as 'analysis of critical, time-sensitive intelligence'.

Clusty, the Clustering Engine.

This is a new search engine that uses clustering to categorize your search results. You can read about it in the marketing release story here.

I tried out a few things I remember intensily searching on using Google - sorting through the sea of thousands of results that seemed barely related to what I was looking for.

I was impressed. I'm oh so very glad people aren't sitting on their laurels here.

So, now the meme is that Bush's loss in the first debate will decrease expectations for him in the second, giving him the edge he needs to pull it off.

Could be. The press is fickle. But Bush lost his chance at maximizing his Foreign Policy "strength" with this first debate. This was his big chance to pin the flip/flop on Kerry and paint him as a liberal woos for the rest of the campaign.

Now Bush is fighting again when the campaign didn't want to be. Sure, Kerry's got the expectations on his shoulders now. And that's going to be tricky to manage.

But I'm quite sure that BushCo and the rest of the RWAP wishes they had Kerry's problems with expectations right now. I don't think merely showing up and getting your name right at the next debate is going to count for much.

Oh, and in the mean time, we have the debate between Edwards and Cheney. Cheney goes in with incredibly high negatives (32% favorable) and he already looks like he's wearing an ill fitting human suit. This is going to be contrasted against a very good looking southern man who's every bit as sharp as Cheney is.

And remember, Cheney's performance isn't only going to be contrasted with Edward's performance. Bush's performance last night in the debate is going to be contrasted to whatever Cheney pulls off.

So spin away Dr. Rove. Keep lowering the bar for the Place Holder President^tm.

Just got a lot of hits from Google's search engine by people looking for information regarding Farnaz Fassihi's email. I find it terribly encouraging that people are seeking out this information.

I don't think it spells good news for BushCo and their merry band of corporate Zombie followers.

Well, after a good sleep and listening to this morning's spin, it's pretty clear that George Bush came off exactly as we all know and love him. A whiny man who simply doesn't have a clue about what to do about Iraq nor the War on Terror - other than to spout platitudes about how much "hard work" needs to be done.

His "flip/flop" lines were overused to the point of fraying and he still seems to think that just because he says something it makes it true. He couldn't back up his assertions with anything more than just repeating the assertions. This line of attack is officially dead, I'm pretty sure. That doesn't mean that the Bush/Cheney campaign isn't going to keep injecting the Zombie serum into the dead horse to keep on flogging it - quite the contrary. So it's going to be great to see them put so much energy into an issue that - for all practical purposes - is DOA.

George Bush was also pretty incoherent and dissembling. It was weird watching the man - he really has lost whatever public speaking abilities he might have had in his youth. The pregnant pauses just drew even more attention to the hamsters laboring under his skull, desperately trying to figure out something - anything - to say in response to Kerry.

Bush came off as arrogant, whiny and unable to admit that anything had gone wrong with his wonderful plans for world domination.

And best of all, this debate was Bush's strongest platform: Foreign Policy. From here on out, Bush's "advantage" is gone. He had his best possible playing field and he blew it all to hell.

Even better, pretty much everyone on the right seems to completely aware of this miserable failure last night.

This is your leader. George Bush: Whiny, petulant, failure extraordinaire.