Al Franken's Blog

The great thing about Al Franken is his research staff. If you've read his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, you'll realize he has a great staff of people working for him. In the book, it's a sharp group of Harvard students. On his blog and radio show, the research director is J.R. Norton. His post today, 04.27.2004, is really well researched. He proves that Cheney is lying about Kerry's record on defense. In typical right-wing-nut fashion, it turns out it was actually Cheney who wanted to make the cuts he was blaming Kerry for!

Compare and Contrast

Here's all you need to know about Bush v. Kerry on who served their country during Vietnam.

Post from my friend, Jon Cupp

Here is the link to the 361 photos that the bush people don't want you to see. The bush people are trying to make the argument that these photos are an invasion into the privacy of the family members of military casualties in Iraq. These are photos of coffins. There is nothing in these photos to personally identify those killed in Iraq or their familiy members.

Rather, these photos are an invasion of truth into the lies of the bush people and the cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

You may get an error page. I think this site is getting a lot of hits.

What the Bush administration doesn't want you to see

TAMI SILICIO gave this picture to the Seattle Times. She was fired by Maytag Aircraft for that violation of US Government and Company regulations. The Bush administration has prohibited photographs of returning caskets of US service personel, continuing a policy started by George HW Bush in 1991.

Air America

While liberal radio breaks streaming audio records, I'm amazed at how many people are buying our Bush magnets! They're great if you're on a diet! Put these Bush quotes on your fridge and you'll lose your appetite... Oh, and check out the Dead Soldier Bush picture.

Bush Lies

Representative Henry Waxman has created this great site full of the Bush administrations lies, in case anyone would like to see what real lying looks like. So, when the Bush Cartel claims Kerry is lying because he won't name the 99% of world leaders who would rather see him win, be sure to remind yourself that that's just the Bush Junta calling the other guy what they are.

Oil Execs Get Tax Cuts - Theirs and Yours

The fact that a Petroleum based White House is running up trillions on the credit card shouldn't suprise us. The fact that they cut taxes on millionaires, a few of whom are in the oil business, AND helped raise energy prices through higher demand for war, the strategic reserve (yes, they've been filling those salt caverns lately, paying record prices with our tax dollars), and various other policies that have contributed to making us less safe (like attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, because it was in violation of less UN Resolutions than Israel). So, their buddies in the energy bidness get richer on tax cuts, and even richer sucking up our tax cuts. Big suprise.

Put up or shut up

Resident Bush's recent challenge to John Kerry to name the foreign leaders who would like to see Bush defeated is another Bush administration exercise in futility. We all know that the French, the Germans, the Russians, and many other nations were opposed to the war in Iraq. They also don't like the way Bush and his cronies have behaved towards the UN, International Treaties, the environment, trade, taxes, and many other issues that affect the whole world. They are amazed that Bush trashed the good will the whole world felt for us after 9-11. It doesn't take a genius, or even a C student, to realize these leaders would prefer someone else be in charge of the US.

In the final analysis, though, the Bush challenge for Kerry to put forward the names of these leaders is the ultimate in hypocrisy. Until Bush and his supporters put forward facts to back up these claims made by the President, I suggest they shut up:

"There is no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess the most lethal weapons ever devised."
(David Kay, among many others, said this is not true.)

"We found the weapons of mass destruction."
(He was referring to mobile hydrogen production trailers, which are not WMDs.)

"By far the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder."
(Congress' bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation said households making less than $40,000 - roughly the bottom half of the economic ladder - would receive only 10 percent of Bush's income tax cut.)

"This nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war."
(He said this two months after his own budget acknowledged that his economic policies and tax cuts for the wealthy - not the war - were what created the largest deficits in American history.)

John Kerry for President

If you know someone in Ohio, start talking to them about how much better John Kerry would be as President now. No Republican has ever won the Presidency without Ohio. If you know someone in Florida, call them too! We need those 100,000 Nader voters to vote for Kerry... Other swing states to contact your friends and relatives in: Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Contact Moveon.org for more info.

We Know What W Was Doing

Lines. That's right. George W Bush requested his transfer to a non-flying assignment in the Air National Guard at the same time they started random drug testing. Bush has admitted that he hasn't done drugs since 1974, so that means he was doing them before then. As this story documents, plenty of people saw George at Blount's campaign, performing dirty tricks on the opponent (gutter politics). They also remember him bragging about drinking and driving a Yale and having the cops let him go when they found out who he was. They remember him bragging about how much beer and whiskey he drank. And they remember doing lines in the bathroom.

We can all figure this out. It's pretty obvious that Dubya was drinking and doing drugs, knew he wouldn't pass the drug test and/or physical to keep frying, so he ducked out. He was snorting blow, drinking whiskey, smoking dope, and he got a big, fat, pass because he was privilaged. Now he's lying about it. This is not something we should drop. This goes to the credibility gap. I don't care what he did back then. I care that he's still lying about it now.

Ask the right questions

Now that the story that GW Bush did a half-assed job of his duty in the Air Guard has grown legs, it's time that we ask a few of the right questions. Why does it suprise people that Bush did a half-assed job at anything? He scored in the 25th percentile on the flight exam, barely enough to get in, yet he leap-frogged over more qualified applicants and avoided Nam. Click here to read Lou Dubose asking all the right questions, again, in the LA Weekly. Of course, Lou and Molly Ivans have been asking the right questions since Dubya became Gubna. Seems the press was taking a little vacation. Good to have them back.

While even some of my liberal friends are suggesting we leave this issue alone, I think there's something bigger here that deserves looking into. Of course, weapons of mass destruction are much more important. But the AWOL story and how the bushies handle it is part of a pattern of deceit these neo-cons have been perpetuating about their boy. From here, the press can easily slide into Harken Energy records that will show Bush taking the kind of loans he now says CEOs shouldn't, selling stock on insider tips, not filing paper work with the SEC while his Daddy was President and not getting in trouble for it. There's funeral gate, and Bush saying "show me the money" to lobbyists on the steps of the Texas Capitol. There's Bush telling Jews they're all going to hell, because only Christians get into heaven. And when asked about these, and many other stories, Bush's hemming and hawing will provide great fodder for Jon Stewart and the talented Daily Show writers.

I would also like to remind my liberal friends that this issue goes to much bigger points, like crediblity. For instance, when he says he didn't take the physical exam because he knew he wasn't going to be flying, how did he know that? Because he chose (or did someone assign him) to be trained in an antiquated plane that was being phased out (and therefore he would not be sent to Nam)? Aren't exams REQUIRED of people the public has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training? What if he had been called up to active duty and sent back to his base in Texas, where they needed him to fly? Would someone in the press please ask him if he didn't take the test because he knew that with cocaine in his system he would flunk the physical, and that would fly in the face of the Texas Air Guard's Refer-Madness poster boy facade. “George Walker Bush is one member of the younger generation who doesn’t get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed,” says the 1970 National Guard press release. “Oh, he gets high, all right. But not from narcotics.”

If this guy is such a straight shooter, as his neo-con apologists want to believe, then why doesn't he just come clean? Hell, even Clinton finally admitted that he tried to get out of the draft, but eventually drew a high number. Seems W didn't want to just avoid the possiblity of a low number, he wanted to cut in line to go to the head of the class with the lowest score (elite affirmative action), and then he wanted to get by doing as little work as possible. If character is indeed as important as these people have been suggesting, then these questions aren't just important, they're essential.

Finally, for my liberal friends who suggest we move on, I would like to point out how quickly debate can shift these days. With massive acts of civil disobedience taking place all over the country at marriage license counters this Valentine's Day, we should never underestimate how one story can shift debate in this country quickly and righteously. Thanks to the Mass. Supreme Court, Civil Unions ala Vermont are now the middle ground. Just four years ago, Civil unions were considered liberal. Just think where reasoned debate, and asking the right questions about military service can take this country over the next five and a half months.

Miserable Failure

Please fight the right on this one by creating this link on as many pages as possible. Post in bulletin boards, and every web site you can. They have made Michael Moore's site come up on this google search, instead of Bush's--which was the original manifestation of this "google bomb."

Check out this miserable failure. And here's another miserable failure. And yet another miserable failure. Are we seeing a pattern of miserable failures here?

AWOL BUSH

Want some fun? Read this exchange between Scott McClellan and reporters over Bush's service (or lack thereof) in the National Guard. It's so refreshing to see the press doing its job.

I started a supak for Wes Clark blog. I will support whoever the Democrative nominee is, of course, but I'm pushing for Clark because I think electability is the most important factor. I think a Dean - Clark ticket would be good, but they seem to be ruling it out now.

"The question is whether we are to abandon the standards and habits of a free society, fleeing the risks of freedom for the deadlier risks of opression. The question is whether we are to relinquish the standards of Jefferson for those of Torquemada."

"Down there in the jungles, unregenerate, ingenious, tricky, as tiny as a louse or a termite, and as hard to get at, emerged a strange creature whose potency we had almost forgotten: man."—I.F. Stone

A Chat with Jack Sheldon back stage at Like Jazz

I sat down next to one of my favorite Jazz musicians, Jack Sheldon, backstage at the Mark Taper Forum last week. We're they're doing "Like Jazz" through Jan 25th. I'm running projection. Jack is 1st trumpet and sings two songs. We chatted about the Hollywood Bowl. He asked me who my favorite Jazz musician is and I said Art Pepper, and Jack went off. All kinds of Art Pepper stories. Art had a tough life and a heroin addiction. But Jack only mentioned that briefly, like it was a sad disease. What mattered most to Jack about Art was how well he played. I could see a hint of tears welling up in the chubby bags under his tired eyes.

Apparently, his eyes are the only things of Jacks that's tired. He flirts a lot (even on stage during "Don't Touch My Horn." And, he's doing eight shows a week!

I never knew Jack was the voice of the I'm still just a bill up here on capitol hill guy of School House Rock fame....

Response to a "Don't vote for tax increases" mail I just got

Considering that the rich in California pay less as a percentage of their income in taxes than the middle class and poor, I'd say you're kinda right. Don't vote for someone who is going to raise your taxes, especially if you're rich, because you wouldn't want to have to pay for all those lazy, middle class, over-paid union guys who seem to think they have some right to health care and social security and decent wages?

Also considering that the term "taxes" can include many things, like payroll taxes, higher fees, price increases, bigger fines, less services, less benefits, and the middle class paying a higher percentage of all taxes due to tax cuts for the rich, the middle class should definately not vote for BUSH. HE HAS RAISED THEIR "TAXES."

As someone recently said, Republicans like to say Democrats are "Tax and Spend." Well, Republicans are now the party of "Don't tax -- and spend."

Fighting Fires With Tax Cuts

We're fighting a nasty flu here in Canyon Country, while firefighters battle the fires all around us. Our air is full of fine particles, which are dangerous to breathe. Our kids aren't going out to recess. And as I read this morning's news, I find that many people are being told the firefighters simply don't have enough people to protect homes. Why? Because a great many firefighters are in Iraq—called up as reservists.

While they're over there protecting us from the dangerous weapons of mass destruction, over a thousand homes (and counting) have been destroyed, and our air quality resembles a chemical attack. Fire, the oldest weapon of mass destruction, is plowing through these neighborhoods, which are, ironically, mostly Republican. These people, whose homes are now being destroyed, mostly supported the action in Iraq, which destroyed so many Iraqi homes. These people, most of whom will probably vote for Bush again, probably don't make the connection between the man telling them there's not enough resources to save their home and the reservists sent to Iraq. They probably don't make the connection between their vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger and how his cut in the car tax will mean massive layoffs of the very firefighters he's praising today.

While these people sleep in gyms or in their cars packed with what they could save from their houses, will it sink in that we have to pay for all this? Or will they continue to buy the slickly marketed Republican snake oil tax cuts?

We have a friend in San Bernardino who's family lost their home to fire yesterday. She has breast cancer. Her son has health problems too. They barely get by, and now they have to suffer this. So when I hear talk of laying off firefighters and cops to pay for Arnold's tax cut, or when I hear that more reservists are going to be sent to Iraq, it makes me wonder how greedy Republicans can actually be. It makes me wonder how the party that likes to talk about values and safety and community could actually say "Screw all that, I want my tax cut." It makes me wonder if they can ever admit they were wrong about anything.

Ain't Killing Palestinian Children And Destroying Houses By American Jets Terrorism?

Here's the picture. I like to vote pictures like that onto the top of Yahoo's highest rated sights list. Five votes gets a story or picture up there, so all you need is 5 Yahoo user profiles. If it's a great shot like that one, the kind that makes a point Fox news won't, it will get voted down viscously by a group of about 50 that watches that thing like a hawk for anything really pertinent. Like, during the war, you'd never find a story about little Ali (whose family was killed and arms were blown off) up there, no pictures of bleeding or dead children. Only arguments that it must have been an Iraqi bomb that did it.

The terror we spread there will come back to us. Because the US is the world's largest arms dealer many times over, there's a lot of killing with "made in the USA" written on it. Predictably, the people who create war in this country are the same people who profit the most from it. Dick Cheney, who made millions at Halliburton where government contracts increased 90% during his tenure as CEO, and the Project for a New American Century posse (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle), advocated attacking Iraq since 1999, and got their chance after 9-11. Now, through no bid contracts, the companies they work for (Cheney still receives $150,000 a year from Halliburton, and the George HW Bush owns an undisclosed chunk of the Carlisle Group, which W would inherit) are being paid in borrowed dollars by the Bush administration to rebuild what they just blew up.

In this month's Harper's magazine, Chalmers Johnson writes, in The War Business Squeezing a profit from the wreckage in Iraq, "When war becomes the most profitable course of action, we can certainly expect more of it." I'll be checking out Johnson's new book, The Sorrows of Empire: How the Americans Lost Their Country.

"Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he 'didn't want to see any stories' quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used." — Article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 16, 2003

My God Can Beat Up Your God

Lieutenant General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said the reason Osama and his cabal hate us is because we're Christians. Huh. Maybe they hate us because our right-wing, ultra-conservative, evangelical Christian cabal, headed by born-again coke-head AWOL Bush, makes the kind of statements that Boykin, and Pat Robertson, make. Last week, Pat Robertson suggested we should blow up the US State Department with a nuclear weapon. Today, the LA Times reported that Boykin, while in uniform, said to the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Oregon, “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” He also stated that President George W. Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters: “He was appointed by God.”

And I thought it was the Supreme Court.

First of all, we're not a Christian nation. We have many faiths and non-faiths. We have believers and brights. We have many Muslims, Hindu, Buddhists, Seiks, and others. The Christian right is forcing their god down everyone's throat and for some reason nobody seems to mind much. Pat Robertson asked God to kill Supreme Court justices who voted to legalize Sodomy. Jerry Falwell, well, I think you get the picture. And when W gives a speech at Bob Jones University, as he did in the campaign of 2000, we all know where he stands. He agrees with these people. In fact, in a well known exchange with his mother, he said only evangelical Christians will get into heaven. As he said when he first set foot on Israeli soil and was asked what he had to say to the Jews, he responded, “You're all going to hell.”

James Watt, when he was Reagan's interior secretary (and mentor to current interior secretary Gail Norton), said "We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand." Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum recently made remarks to the same effect. This kind of Rapture Logic is rampant among the neo-cons in Washington these days, and it should scare the hell out of each and everyone of us. After all, if the man with his finger on the button thinks the Book of Revelation is actual prophecy, then who can stop him from raining fire from the sky on us all? What's to stop this man from thinking he is the second coming? After all, God talks to him. God picked him to be president. His generals go around preaching it. He preaches it. They do what they want to whoever they want and keep the details secret.

Meanwhile, we can't find the truth about Bush's Saudi friends, like Bandar Bush, and the Bin Laden family, and how they were secretly scurried out of the country after 911, without the FBI or anyone interviewing them. We can't find out about the connection between Bush, Cheney, the Carlyle Group, Unocal, Enron, and the Afghan pipeline. We can't find out about Ken Lay writing energy policy that causes environmental Armageddon. The press plays dumb, or worse. And I write away in this political blog that no one reads.

What's the point? Why bother? Who cares?

Bush Creates Hostile Environment

responding to "Bush Faces Hostile Environment," by Gregg Easterbrook, LA Times, Oct. 14, 2003

Gregg Easterbrook put so much spin on Bush's environmental record that I got dizzy reading it. Using statistics from the last 30 years of successful regulation and enforcement as proof that Bush's recent changes to those very laws are responsible for our cleaner environment is the utmost in neo-con double-speak. The steady decline of air and water pollution stats since 1970 actually prove that the policy of tough regulation and suing environmental evil-doers worked. Those policies have been abandoned under Bush, and it will take some time to measure the impact. We can, however, look at the record in Texas, where his voluntary emissions-control programs managed to sign up 3 of the 8,645 worst polluters, and pollution has gotten much worse. As new studies show an even more direct correlation between pollution and breathing disorders, especially asthma in children, we know that the results of Bush's laissez faire approach to pollution will result in more pain, sickness, and death.

People like Bush have spent decades fighting for land-owner rights over the rights of endangered species, and the rights of people to have protected wilderness areas. The fact that forested acreage has expanded in the last decade, or that no US animal has gone extinct in the last 20 some years is reason to applaud the brave people who have spent their lives fighting for these issues. To suggest that Bush be given credit for these facts is sickening.

While Bush's new regulations on diesel emissions are laudable, they are a miniscule portion of air-pollution, and will be flash-flooded away by the changes being made to allow more pollution elsewhere. Easterbrook doesn't mention the shift away from making polluters pay for Superfund, cutbacks in offshore oil well inspections, or Bush's under funding national parks. Bush has stopped farmers from suing pesticide makers, removed Clean Water Act protections from streams and wetlands, allowed factory farm pollution (from agribusinesses that give him millions) to foul the waterways with animal waste, and imposed a regulatory freeze that is holding up regulations to minimize raw sewage discharges. Easterbrook does mention an increase in smog in southern California, but he fails to explain how this "blip" isn't going to keep getting larger when, as he admits, SUVs aren't required to get better mileage, and there are more SUVs on the So Cal roads everyday. He ignores the fact that So Cal's success in fighting smog has been the direct result of the kind of tough regulations that Bush and the lobbyists he's put in power are against!

Easterbrook's assertion that we "...can't demand no oil drilling and also demand no mileage restrictions on SUVs," is convoluted logic. First of all, most Americans support strict mileage standards on all vehicles. It is the auto industry, well represented in the Bush administration by Andy Card, Bush's chief of staff and former auto industry lobbyist, that fights mileage standards. Spoiling our natural places with oil wells for a drop in the bucket of demand is an insult to and an assault on our children and grandchildren. Suggesting that Bush gives a damn about these environmental issues when his record in Texas and as president prove the exact opposite is the biggest insult of all.

Eric Schaeffer quit as an EPA enforcer when he realized the Bush administration, and the lobbyists they put in positions of power, were not only going to stop suing polluting industries, but actually relax the rules that regulate them. Bush also slashed the EPAs enforcement budget, and directed the EPA to expand loopholes that allow old power plants to continue pumping out 12 million tons of sulfur dioxide a year, without implementing modern pollution controls. Pending lawsuits were dropped. Polluting industries dropped out of agreements reached before Bush. All of these tools for reducing pollution were eliminated, resulting in a pollution increase compared to where we would be if Bush had not been "elected." Modest estimates of the results of Bush's changes to new source review show 20,000 more premature deaths per year as a result. Now that's eco-terrorism.

Arnold's comments to female bodybuilder Lisa Lyons.

A few years back, while posing for photographs with female body builder Lisa Lyons, Arnold Schwarzenegger had a question about her racial preference in sexual partners. Apparently, Arnold had a problem with Lisa preferring to have sex with black men. He asked her point blank, "Why do you fuck all these niggers?"

Of course, this doesn't have anything to do with whether he can balance the state budget without raising taxes, as promised. But perhaps it does have something to do with who will suffer the most under his budget cuts.

So far, that's two Arnold stories we've published in this political blog that have not been picked up by "mainstream press." They've both come from credible sources who prefer not to be named (for fear of retribution from Arnold and his powerful friends in Hollywood, and now Sacramento). If you know someone in the press, pass this on to them. Tell them you heard it from us. We'll point them in the right direction.

“Today, somebody who has worked his whole life to save for his son’s college has to pay taxes at more than twice the rate of his boss. Where I come from, that man’s hard work means at least as much to the future of the country—not half as much as his boss. Mr. President, I challenge you. Explain why you think a multimillionaire should pay 15 percent on his next million on stock profits, while a fireman has to pay over 30 percent for each extra dollar of overtime. Mr. President, explain how you square that with America’s values.”— John Edwards

Recall Arnold

I don't care if you're family, union, or what, but any of you who bought the Pete Wilson run Arnold show are dead to me. Good luck with these assholes back in charge. More deregulation. More screwing the working guy. More blaming someone else for Bush's problems. More me writing in a political blog to vent anger. But now, with Arnie surely helping Bush get his hands on California's 55 electoral votes, I've taken it personally. My anger is going to start leaking out of this political blog, and into the lives of every single person I know who voted for this.