If you're in the middle class, a vote FOR Bush is a vote AGAINST yourself.

Paul Krugman compares the healthcare proposals of John Kerry and George Bush -- and finds that there's really no comparison.

The difference couldn't be starker. Mr. Kerry offers a health care plan that would extend coverage to most of those now uninsured, paid for by rolling back tax cuts for those with incomes over $200,000. President Bush offers a tax credit that would extend coverage to fewer than 5 percent of the uninsured, plus a new tax break for the affluent that would actually increase the number of uninsured. As I said last week, I don't see how Mr. Bush can win this debate. 

Just one more example of Bush putting the screws to average citizens -- while offering yet another tax break for those "Pioneers" who raised cash for his campaign war chest.

'We need a president who is not fazed by complexity'

"We need, above all, a president who is not fazed by complexity. A president who likes to read. A president who loves history. A president who is rightly proud of the sacrifice of our ancestors."
-- Teresa Heinz Kerry, quoted in The Note from ABC News

Putting the blame where it belongs

Kevin Drum nails it:

The fact is that by March 2003 we didn't have to rely on CIA estimates or on the estimates of any other intelligence agency. We had been on the ground in Iraq for months and there was nothing there. There was nothing there and we knew it.

Did the CIA screw up? Probably. Did it matter? No. George Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003 not because he was convinced Iraq had WMD, but because he was becoming scared that Iraq didn't have WMD and that further inspections would prove it beyond any doubt. Facts on the ground have never been allowed to interfere with George Bush's worldview, and he wasn't about to take the chance that they might interfere with his war.

Whatever faults the CIA has, let's not blame them for the war in Iraq. We all know exactly whose mistake it was.

Banana Republic(ans)

This is truly frightening:

U.S. officials have discussed the idea of postponing Election Day in the event of a terrorist attack on or about that day....Newsweek said the discussions about whether the November 2 election could be postponed started with a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge from DeForest Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission....

Soaries, who was appointed by President Bush, is a former New Jersey secretary of state and senior pastor of the 7,000-member First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset. Newsweek reported that Soaries expressed concern that no federal agency had the authority to postpone an election and asked Ridge to ask Congress to give his commission such power.

This nation went forward with elections during the Civil War and World War II. Now we've got a Baptist minister--appointed by George W. Bush--seeking the authority to postpone an election? Does anyone else think this reeks to high heaven?

First they steal* an election; now they want the power to shut down an election. Tactics of this ilk are employed by banana-republic dictators.

*Yes, they stole it. Only in Bush v. Gore have the Supremes found it necessary to state that their decision was NOT to be considered a legal precedent, but was to be applied one time only -- tacitly admitting that it was a politically expedient load of crap, perpetrated by a 5-4 vote.

Pure genius

This is the unvarnished truth -- and too funny for words.

The cartoonist, David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, also has produced a satirical history called Empire Rising. It's the story of Dubbia the Incoherent -- now facing a challenge from Senator Kerriolanus.