I always find CNNs polls outrageously oversimplified. But this one seems to miss the point entirely. I don't think anybody, well most people anyway, would take away the governments right to wiretap, or read international mail, or even read people's email. All we're asking is that the government gets a warrant first! Is it so much to ask that you convince a judge up to 72 hours after the fact (in the case of a FISA warrant).

Anyway, you never know what's going to happen when CNN throws up a poll like this, and at the time of reading, the No's had it 63% to 37%!

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it would consider reinstating a death penalty law that requires juries to sentence a defendant to die -- rather than serve life in prison -- when the evidence for and against imposing death appears equal. Justices will hear arguments next fall in Kansas' appeal of a state Supreme Court ruling that found the law unconstitutional. The 1994 law says if the evidence for and against imposing a sentence of death is equal, Kansas juries must choose death instead of life in prison.

How do these people do it? Isn't Kansas a playground of the religious right -- the very same people who claim to espouse the "Culture of Life"? You can't claim to support "life" when you want to kill people! It just doesn't make any sense. The mental gymnastics these people must go through in order think like this must be astonishing. On second thought they probably just don't realize their own inconsistency.

I was at the movies the other night watching Life Aquatic, and in the pre-show entertainment an economics question came up from Econ4U.com:

20. How much money is currently held in the Social Security Trust Fund?

• $0
• $100 million
• $500 billion
• $900 billion

Now, I've seen questions from these people in the past -- they're usually personal finance questions, small business questions, and things like that. However, I guessed $900 billion, since after all Social Security Trust Fund is perfectly solvent until 2042 to 2053. (Those long-range forecasts are hard to pin down obviously). Imagine my surprise when Econ4U tells me that the correct answer is $0! They explain:

Zero. The taxes you pay for Social Security today are used to finance current retirees and other government programs (emphasis added). When you retire, taxes on current employees will be used to pay your benefits. This transfer system has worked well for the first 60 years of the program, but current demographic trends create concerns that employee contributions will not be able to sustain payments to the aging "Baby Boomer" generation in the near future.

If you would like to take a look at the quiz, check out question 20.

The company behind these questions appears to be the Employment Policies Institute, a right-wing economics think-tank. The seem primarily concerned with the minimum wage, but perhaps they just haven't gotten the memos yet on the importance of destroying Social Security. Stay tuned for more propaganda at a movie theater near you.

Mission Accomplished

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved," Mr. Ashcroft wrote in a five-page, handwritten resignation letter to President push.

Mission Accomplished

In hindsight, perhaps it was a mistake for the Yankees to raise a "Mission Accomplished" banner above their dugout after Game 3.

Mission Accomplished

I tried, and failed. All that's left is to pray for the soldiers.

"The biggest threat we face today," [Vice President Cheney] said in Pennsylvania," is that one of these terror cells is organizing in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, and the prospect that the next time they launch an attack against the U.S. it won't be just a few thousand lives. It may be a few hundred thousand."

Vice President Cheney - September 24, 2004

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

Vice President Cheney - September 7, 2004

I don't necessarily agree that the only way to fight terrorism is through law enforcement; for example I, along with just about everybody I know, was fully behind the invasion of Afghanistan. However, invading foreign countries is a long long way to military action on American soil. Just what would be the military response if we do find out that a terrorist network has a nuclear bomb in the middle of an American city? Do you strike the home of the terrorist, or do you strike the cell before they have a chance to detonate their bomb? Say you run with the intelligence, and execute a military strike only to find out that there was no bomb on the premises, or even worse, that there were innocent bystanders in the way.

This is the danger in thinking that the only possible response to terrorism is martial. Of course, the reality of the situation is more likely that Cheney doesn't really believe that a civil (i.e. law enforcement) approach to terrorism is always wrong, just that its a convenient wedge to use against Senator Kerry who tends to inject more nuance into his public persona.

Okay, so its been a while since I've had a political post. But current world events have gotten me increasingly concerned. And no, this has nothing to do with Iraq. I'm talking about Russia's current slide into a dictatorship.

The Bush administrations response?

"This is a domestic matter for the Russian people,'' said a White House official who asked to remain anonymous. "It is important for Russia to continue along the pathway of democracy and economic reform.''

Naturally, there have been other responses from the administration:

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, said Putin's planned changes were "pulling back on some of the democratic reforms". He pledged to raise his concerns with the Russian leadership.

It remains to be seen whether or not Powell's concerns will actually get raised, or listened to. Most of the European community is outraged about this, but we know how much good that will do them without the full support of the U.S. Can we all agree yet that unilateralism has opened the door to some particularly bad actors?

Contribute Now

---

Join Now

First name:	Last name:
Email:	Zip:

So, a friend of mine started a political internet consulting company called Blue State Digital with some former members of Howard Dean's campaign. Apparently, one of their projects was the Democratic Majority Makers, which is an effort to organize a grassroots network to help get a Democratic Majority in Congress. It's supporting the DCCC, which is trying to ensure that the Democrats field a candidate in every district, and provide money and support for close races all over the country.

While I know not all of you who read this have leftward leanings, I would appreciate it if those of you who do could go and sign up. If you want to, please give a little money to the DCCC so that we restore a measure of fiscal sanity to Congress.

Farenheit 9/11 took #1 on Friday, with a very healthy $9k per theater. It beat out the ever so eloquent White Chicks, despite showing in 1/3 as many theaters. I'm going to see it in a little under an hour, so I'll be sure to give my thoughts on the subject when I get back. We're going to Carrabas for dinner tonight; Sangria here I come!

The movie was extremely powerful. There were many moments when I wanted to stand up and shout at the screen. Not anything in particular; just anger and helplessness. At one point, a soldier maimed in Iraq said that when he returned home, he was going to become extremely active in the Democratic party. It made me proud, and hopeful that with people like him, the Democrats might actually live up to his calling.

Michael Moore is a master moviemaker. He skillfully wove first-hand interviews with soldiers, parents, congressmen with TV footage of members of the Bush administration. Sure it was one-sided, but it was a scathing indictment of their policies and their decisions to abuse the memory of 9/11 and to lead our country into this reckless war. The administrations defense of their actions is pitiful. They continue to repeat lie after lie: "Saddam had illegal weapons, and he was prepared to use them against the United States", or "There was a relationship between Iraq and al Queda". To those of you who would claim that these are not lies, then please show that they are true. I was done taking Bush's word on anything a long time ago, and I can only hope that you dont' claim "well, they must know something that we don't, otherwise why would they make such a claim?"

Kerry finally chooses a running mate:

"In my search for a vice-president, I considered many qualified men and women," Kerry said, announcing his decision at Boston University. "But one man stood apart from the madding crowd as brave, honest, and full of life. One man displayed a true desire to change America for the better -- not through political maneuvering, but through hard work.

This is the exact model that our current Vice President was chosen. Cheney was in charge of the search committee that selected Cheney himself for Bush 2000. Once again proving that we really are living in a parallel satirical universe!

Bush's budget plan for 2006

• Domestic security at the Homeland Security Department and other agencies would go from $30.6 billion in 2005 to $29.6 billion in 2006, a 3 percent drop.
• The Veterans Affairs Department would fall 3.4 percent from $29.7 billion in 2005 to $28.7 billion.
• The Defense Department would grow 5.2 percent to $422.7 billion in 2006, and the Justice Department would increase 4.3 percent to $19.5 billion in 2006.

Is this really a budget that will protect the United States? A lot of people like Bush because he is allegedly "strong on defense", yet he cuts the nations front line defense? Homeland Security controls the coasts, the borders, the airports. Bush may say he's interested in protecting the country, but only so far as it promotes the interests of his rich friends. I wonder how the Department of Defense will spend that money. Lucrative new defense contracts perhaps?

CNN.com - Sources: Major terror attack possible this summer - May 26, 2004:

Although there is no specific target, time or date for the possible attack, the information is the culmination of intelligence that has been known and gathered over time -- and it is the assessment that is new, the sources said.

Given this administrations past with non-specific threats, it looks like they might not be able to protect us against this one, right? It seems that there isn't actually any new intelligence to spur this warning, just a desire to remind the public that they need to be afraid and that the Bush administration is doing a fantastic job of protecting us.

Looks like I was right the other day. This poll from ICR/Money agrees with my assessment that despite the "tax cuts" passed by the Bush administration, most poll respondents felt that their overall tax burden had increased!

Most Americans don't believe they benefited personally from the 2003 tax cut, according to a poll conducted for Money magazine, and would have preferred the government devoted resources to job creation or deficit reduction.

... 60 percent said the tax cut did not personally help them. Only about a third of respondents said they benefited from the tax cut.

... The poll found 76 percent of those surveyed would have preferred the government devote resources to job creation rather than the tax cut, and even 54 percent of Republicans would have chosen jobs over tax cuts.

I think the big question is: will people remember just how successful Bush's big plans were in their personal lives when they hit the polls this November.

Q: Mr. President, before the war, you and members of your administration made several claims about Iraq that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators with sweets and flowers, that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for most of the reconstruction; and that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, we know where they are. How do you explain to Americans how you got that so wrong? And how do you answer your opponents, who say that you took this nation to war on the basis of what have turned out to be a series a false premises?

THE PRESIDENT: ... Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He was a threat because he coddled terrorists. He was a threat because he funded suiciders. He was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States. That's the assessment that I made from the intelligence, the assessment that Congress made from the intelligence; that's the exact same assessment that the United Nations Security Council made with the intelligence.

... The United Nations passed a Security Council resolution unanimously that said, disarm or face serious consequences. And he refused to disarm.

At least he's consistent. He'll never give anybody the benefit of the truth; Bush will just repeat the same lies that he's given all along. Why expect anything different?

Its clear to everybody now that Iraq had no illegal weapons. How can a country refuse to disarm if the arms never existed in the first place? From the sound of it, we went to war with Iraq because they were a threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia (from the neo-Con's point of view anyway). If the safety of our allies is so paramount, why not justify the war that way to begin with?

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Two weeks ago, a former counterterrorism official at the NSC, Richard Clarke, offered an unequivocal apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11. Do you believe the American people deserve a similar apology from you, and would you be prepared to give them one?

THE PRESIDENT: ... Here's what I feel about that. The person responsible for the attacks was Osama bin Laden. That's who's responsible for killing Americans. And that's why we will stay on the offense until we bring people to justice.

So the answer would be no then. I thought this was supposed to be an administration of "grown-ups"; people who would take responsibility for both their successes and their failures. Bush heralds those tax cuts at every opportunity, but he can't take the slightest responsibility for presiding over one of the countries biggest intelligence failures in history, or worse ignoring the intelligence that would've tipped off a more competent administration?

It may sound overly obvious, but tax cuts do not make for lower taxes. Restricted spending, a balanced budget, and perhaps a cookin' economy make for lower taxes.

Whatever you may think, Bush does not want to lower your taxes, but that of his wealthiest friends, at your expense.