Whistle Ass / George Bush 2004

George Bush will lose; as long as we remain steadfast

Monday, September 20th, 2004
Put Away Your Hankies...a message from Michael Moore

9/20/04

Dear Friends,

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.

Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!"

No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.

My friends, it is time for a reality check.

1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people. Finally, most of the polls are weighted with too many Republicans, as pollster John Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.

2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team. Instead of shunning Clinton (as Gore did), Kerry has decided to not make that mistake.

3. Traveling around the country, as I've been doing, I gotta tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of unrest out there. Much of it is not being captured by the mainstream press. But it is simmering and it is real. Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of angry white people scare you. Turn off the TV! (Except Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is just a sugar-coated lie).

4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is decided on "9/11" (the fear of terrorism), Bush wins. But if it is decided on the job we are doing in Iraq, then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell we used to call Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags will sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry meant by his original war vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their deaths -- and Mr. and Mrs. Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to show up when he was in the "service" he might have somewhat of a clue as to how to recognize an immoral war that cannot be "won." All he has delivered to Iraq was that plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this failure of monumental proportions that is going to cook his goose come this November.

So, do not despair. All is not over. Far from it. The Bush people need you to believe that it is over. They need you to slump back into your easy chair and feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate another four years of George W. Bush. They need you to wish we had a candidate who didn't windsurf and who was just as smart as we were when WE knew Bush was lying about WMD and Saddam planning 9/11. It's like Karl Rove is hypnotizing you -- "Kerry voted for the war...Kerry voted for the war...Kerrrrrryyy vooootted fooooor theeee warrrrrrrrrr..."

Yes...Yes...Yesssss....He did! HE DID! No sense in fighting now...what I need is sleep...sleeep...sleeeeeeppppp...

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS -- YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-09-20

neo-clowns

get to know all the neo-clowns - including frank "cakewalk" gaffney, richard "scumbag" perle, and douglas "the carpetbagger" feith. these are the jerks that brought us the war in iraq and the ill concieved mess that it is today.

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/index.html?leftNavInclude

Democrats or Republicans: The America I Live In: Notes for the Campaign, 2004

By Bernard Weiner

This is the America I live in.

A normal, average citizen, I unlock the front door and enter my home. I don't know if anyone has entered surreptitiously -- perhaps a sneak-and-peek job by Ashcroft's black-bag boys.

I boot up my computer to go online. I don't know if my email is being monitored, if my keystrokes are being recorded.

I call my attorney, about a family matter. I don't know if communication with my lawyer, previously regarded as "confidential," is being listened to. (This, and the other examples above, and many below, flow from the Bush-Ashcroft "USA Patriot Act.")

I visit my physician, and learn later that my employer found out about a chronic condition I had and laid me off, to keep his insurance costs down. The doctor-patient confidentiality I thought existed is now breachable by government agencies in cahoots with insurance companies... (read the disturbing rest)...

2004 Republican Battle-cry?:"We had to kill off Wellstone to get it."

As the audience giggled off and on, Mike Clement, representing congressional candidate Tim Bridgewater, spoke excitedly about Republican successes when College Republicans work hard, citing the victory of Norm Coleman in the 2002 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota.  

  As Clement bantered with the audience, one Republican gadfly noted that they defeated former Vice President Walter Mondale in that race, adding: "We had to kill off Wellstone to get it." He was referring to the death in a plane crash of Sen. Paul Wellstone and his family before the election.

http://www2.sltrib.com/columnists/RollyWells/main/index.asp

"Neo" as in "Neocon" does NOT mean JEWISH

January 17, 2004

About Those Neocons: Thinking Again, or Just Wondering?
by Karen Kwiatkowski

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace just published WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications. To paraphrase that lovable old Don Rumsfeld, the report summarizes what we knew, what we said about what we knew, what we imagined, what we said about what we imagined, and most significantly, what we didn’t say but strongly insinuated to the Congress and the American people about what we knew not and only hopefully imagined.

As the academics and politicians relax with after-dinner cigars and drinks, they may peruse at their leisure CEIP’s findings, which track closely with what I saw inside the five-sided asylum in the last two years:

* Iraq WMD was not an immediate threat
* Inspections were working
* Intelligence failed and was misrepresented
* Terrorist connection missing
* Post-war WMD search ignored key resources
* War was not the best – or only – option

Well, who really cares, right? So what if we lied about WMD, misled as to "war on terrorism" objectives, and wasted well over $200 billion we didn’t have, deployed 150,000 troops, and killed over 500 of them (so far and not counting suicides, or the thousands maimed) unnecessarily. Look at the bright side – on March 24, George W. Bush confiscated Iraqi bank and national financial assets, including assets of the oil ministry. On May 22, George W. Bush became the proud new administrator of the Iraqi Development Fund, and future oil sales that would feed it. On August 28, George W. Bush made sure that all additional government and Ba-ath official property be transferred into the Fund. All Iraqi oil sales are back in dollars too. We broke it, we bought it, we switched it back to dollars.

I wonder, in signing these and other executive orders seizing property, if Dubya was reminded of the good old days, when he and his partners "used Arlington’s [municipal] powers to condemn the land for the [Ranger’s] stadium, and relied on taxpayers to repay the bonds sold to build the Ballpark." After the stadium was completed, the increased "value" was pocketed when Bush and partners sold the team for $250 million in 1998 to Tom Hicks, who later merged with another Bush buddy, Lowry Mays to expand the media conglomerate Clear Channel.

I guess some "businessmen" are just more equal than others.

But back to the idea of "Thinking Again." The CEIP also publishes a bi-monthly called Foreign Policy, and it has a regular myth-busting corner called "Think Again." The current issue features my pal, Max Boot, who is thinking again about neocons.

Max says he is a neo-conservative, calls neo-conservatism a movement, and calls neoconservatives "hard-Wilsonians." Max thinks neocons are "targeting" North Korea and Iran next. Targeting for regime change, he means.

Max "knows" that "the Iranian and North Korean peoples want to be free." I am not sure if he means "as free as an Iraqi" or perhaps "as free as a bird." Maybe he means that freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose. If so, the Iraqis are getting pretty damn free, given that we own the oil, the government resources, the Ba-ath elite’s resources, and we handpicked their governing council and are denying elections.

Max also thinks that some widely held allegations about neocons are wrong. He says neocons are not "liberals mugged by reality" but are actually just good old American "hawks." Natural born birds of prey, as it were.

Max believes that almost everyone confuses the moniker of "neocon" as "Jew." He says this is done because people are malicious, and then Max proceeds to list the dozens of neocons who are not going to the synagogue. I think this would be even more effective if he would list the number of Jewish neocons who also haven’t seen the inside of a synagogue in a while. Fact is, 80% of American Jews are appalled at the neo-hawkish warmongering emanating from the mouths and pens of neocons. Many significant critics of neo-conservatism are well-studied and ethically minded Jews, including many rabbis. Some of the very best critiques and discussion of neo-conservatism in America, and its impacts in the Middle East, are regularly published by Israeli daily Haaretz. A classic explanation and discussion of the neocon-designed invasion of Iraq is entitled "White Man’s Burden," by Ari Shavit, in Haaretz last April.

Max also thinks it is crazy that a few people – maybe even only Paul Wolfowitz – with only a few impoverished thinktanks behind them (AEI, PNAC, the Olin, Bradley and Smith-Richardson Foundations) can create and control American foreign policy. He says neocons have been "relatively influential" only because their arguments are so good, not their connections. That’s probably why Dick Cheney placed so many previously connected thinktank guys in key positions at the Pentagon, within his own office, and in parts of the State Department so as to more easily roll those who weren’t convinced of the wisdom of those good neo-con arguments.

Funny how there are no female neocons. He mentions Jeanne Kirkpatrick, although she’s written nothing seriously promoting the neocon agenda of imperialism in the past several years. I guess some neocons are also more equal than others.

Max also denies that neocons are unilateralists, or Manichean simpletons who cherish the idea of noble lies and the stealthy practice of electoral politics by other means. Well, of course they aren’t unilateralist or Manichean–if you are with them, then you are certainly not against them.

He mentions the noble lie, Plato’s governing elite, contempt for common people and their choices. Of course, these three are nothing at all like the Iraqi liberation experience, the "Governing Council," and the denial of Iraqi elections and the disregard for the United States Congress. Not at all.

The last issue Max brings up is the success or failure of the war in Iraq. He says the war and occupation are flawed only because neocons were not allowed to be completely in charge of every detail. But alas, there are so few of them! Max says neocons are hankering for an even larger American military and military-industrial complex, and presumably one that is actively engaged in promoting a forward national agenda. How we miss you, General Butler.

Concluding, he says, "The continuing U.S. casualties are lamentable, but the losses so far are low by the standards of guerrilla wars – far fewer than the 500 soldiers the British lost in putting down a previous Iraq insurgency in 1920." Excuse me? Is this a typo?

Lamentable losses, he says.

Neoconservatives in both major political parties are still excited by their Bush-given opportunities, and still cozy in their safe officialdom. They evangelize our Constitution abroad, even as their program demands increasing constitutional breaches at home. Foreign Policy will think again on other subjects. Maybe next time they can challenge the old assumption that crime doesn’t pay.

Karen Kwiatkowski [send her mail] is a recently retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon. She now lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski60.html

"... their (the neoconservatives) philosophy remains remarkably untouched by respect for real liberty, justice, and American values."

"As the winter of 2002 approached, I was increasingly amazed at the success of the propaganda campaign being waged by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and neoconservative mouthpieces at the Washington Times and Wall Street Journal."

"My personal experience leaning precariously toward the neoconservative maw showed me that their philosophy remains remarkably untouched by respect for real liberty, justice, and American values."

http://www.amconmag.com/1_19_04/article1.html

josh marshall on defenders of the neo-cons

"Not only is this dishonest. It's a conscious cheapening of the charge of anti-Semitism that should be roundly and vociferously criticized."

Perhaps an email or a call to the obudsman at the ny times or the editors at townhall would be in order?

After Boeing made a $20m investment in the venture capital fund he runs, Richard Perle (illegally?) lobbied for Boeing's $18 Billion US Govt. Contract for controversial Aircraft Refuelling Tankers

By Joshua Chaffin in Washington and Stephanie Kirchgaessner in New York
Published: December 5 2003 0:50

Richard Perle, a prominent Pentagon adviser, lobbied on behalf of Boeing's bid for a controversial $18bn government contract a year after the aerospace company made a $20m investment in the venture capital fund he runs.

Mr Perle, a former Reagan-era assistant defence secretary, is considered one of the most influential civilian members of Washington's defence establishment.

He was appointed in 2001 by Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, to chair the Defence Policy Board, a group of former military and policy experts who meet regularly with Mr Rumsfeld and top Pentagon officials.

In August, Mr Perle co-authored an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing in favour of a deal in which the Air Force would lease 100 767 aircraft refuelling tankers from Boeing. The piece was published at a time when the deal was under intense attack by critics who claimed the tankers were unnecessary and the deal too expensive.

Mr Perle and Thomas Donnelly, both members of the American Enterprise Institute think- tank, wrote that a "special government green-eyeshade mentality" was holding up a crucial deal.

Mr Perle did not disclose that Boeing had committed to invest $20m in his venture capital fund, Trireme Partners, in mid-2002. The investment marked one of the largest early stakes taken in the fund by a corporate partner.

Mr Perle on Thursday denied he had received any compensation from Boeing or any benefit related to the article. "The people involved in Trireme have nothing to do with the tanker deal," Mr Perle said. "I never discussed the tanker issue or my views on the tanker issue with anyone at Boeing that had anything to do with Trireme." He added that Trireme's relationship with Boeing was "fundamentally" handled by Gerald Hillman, a partner in the fund, who is also a Defence Policy Board member.

Boeing said it briefed Mr Perle on the tanker deal on July 14, giving him the same presentation it had made to several journalists, policy analysts and watch-dog groups.

But the company said it had "no hand" in writing or placing Mr Perle's Op-Ed piece. In addition to Trireme, Boeing said it had invested $250m in 29 similar funds.

Internal Boeing e-mails portray a lobbying campaign the company undertook to have "friends on the Hill" and "think tanks" drum up support for the deal. One Boeing e-mail refers to an Op-Ed article in support of the company by retired Admiral Archie Clemins as being "ghost-written".

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1069493745090&p=1012571727088

Neocons: realizing their own internal conflicts

Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Tuesday September 23, 2003

...Even General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the coalition's ground forces in Iraq, appeared to subscribe to this theory, conceding that Iraq was "a terrorist magnet" but adding: "This is exactly where we want to fight them." Other neoconservatives disagree, however - one of numerous ways in which their previous consensus seems to be fragmenting.

Some dissenters have seen the breach with the Pentagon coming since before the war. As an example, Mr Rumsfeld was reported to have personally delayed the dispatch to Iraq of heavy artillery units based in Texas and Germany. Even to many hawks that seemed a foolhardy degree of commitment to the "revolution in military affairs", the doctrine that America will win the wars of the future with light, nimble forces using laser-guided missiles and precision bombs.

"Rumsfeld, in particular, has become a bit of a problem, because he's so committed to the revolution in military affairs that he doesn't like the idea of American ground troops patrolling, doing low-tech things," said William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1047850,00.html