This was cute:

Bush's campaign strategist Matthew Dowd says Kerry has failed to sell himself. "They've spent over $100 million. No challenger has spent that kind of money to introduce himself to the public and still be in such a weak position," Dowd said, acknowledging that Bush's own approval rating hovers at 50 percent or less.

It's pretty safe to say that Dowd is correct, considering that no challenger has spent that kind of money at this point in the campaign, period. And much of Kerry's spending hasn't gone to advertising; rather, it's gone to campaign infrastructure.

Of course, no incumbent has dumped the kind of money Bush has into trying to "pre-define" his challenger with negative advertising, so this isn't surprising.

Kerry, of course, was very strong for a challenger going into the Democratic National Convention, and initial post-convention polling results are showing a bounce in the neighborhood of 10 points. According to the latest Newsweek poll, after Kerry's speech respondents put Kerry/Edwards over Bush/Cheney by a 54-41 margin.

In honor of the GOP's attempts to slur the Democratic National Convention as an "extreme makeover" (evidently, the Democrats just won't act like the GOP's caricatures of them! How mean!), and mindful of the likely "look! Over there! evil John Kerry!" theme in the upcoming RNC National Convention at the end of August, I'd like to make a suggestion. I think we should think of the GOP gathering as the "No-Mention Convention".

Things you'll likely hear "no mention" of at the Convention:

• "No Mention" of Bush's being the first term in 50 years to have negative job growth
  
• "No Mention" that wages are falling
  
• "No Mention" of no Weapons of Mass Destruction found in Iraq
  
• "No Mention" of no collaboration between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein
  
• "No Mention" of an exploding federal deficit

I'm sure there are many, many more. Please feel free to add your thoughts in comments!

Just a quick review of history regarding the infamous $87 billion troop funding bill that the GOP loves to bring up -- and misrepresent.

Kerry was telling the truth -- although he put it rather badly -- when he claimed that he "voted to provide the money before he voted against it". That's because there were two bills (hence, two options) for providing the funds. The first, which Kerry co-sponsored, was Senate bill S. 1634, called the "Iraq Security and Stabilization Fund Act" and introduced to the 108th Congress, 1st session on September 17, 2003. Other co-sponsors for that bill were Joe Biden, Jon Corzine and Dianne Feinstein.

The synopsis for that bill reads: "To provide funds for the security and stabilization of Iraq by suspending a portion of the reductions in the highest income tax rate for individual taxpayers."

The point of the bill was to avoid running up the deficit further, and it died in committee.

The bill that passed, S. 1689, had no provision for paying for the funding; thus, it provided $87 billion by running up the deficit further. An amendment offered by Biden which would have paid for the bill by rolling back tax cuts on the wealthy was voted down by the majority Republicans.

What's worse, as Bob Somerby noted yesterday, George Bush threatened to veto S. 1689 if it made the money a loan instead of charging the bill to the American taxpayers; in other words, by Bush's logic, he threatened to veto money for the troops.

The bottom line is this: Kerry proposed a bill to fund the troops. He proposed to pay for the funding, too, without further running up the deficit. Bush threatened to veto a bill for funding the troops if it didn't run up the deficit. The GOP agreed, their version passed, and now we have record deficits.

Wow -- it's kinda fun playing the GOP's spin game. And pretty easy, too!

Well, you can't beat them for consistency. To borrow a line, "there you go again, Mr. President".

Bush is again distorting Kerry's record and ignoring his own. He's claiming Kerry has done very little over the last 20 years in the Senate. But as Josh Marshall put it today,

This might be a plausible line of attack coming from another opponent. Unlike, say, Russ Feingold or Ted Kennedy, there's no prominent piece of legislation with Kerry's name on it, though admirers of Kerry point to his critical role in a series of high-profile Senate investigations.

But coming from George W. Bush? A guy whose handlers had to get some of the more gullible run of journalists to refer to his life before he turned forty as his 'lost years'?

I mean, even if you grant that Bush's presidency has been a tenure of transcendent achievement (and it has undoubtedly been eventful), it's a bit hard to get around the fact that even by his own account he spent his first five decades kicking back, living off family connections and playing solitaire.

It's certainly true that Mr. Kerry said certain things in his war protestor days that can now be used against him with some audiences. But until he was well into middle-age President Bush's most noteworthy public utterances seem to have been limited to various invocations and inflections of 'par-TAY' and reciting the alphabet under legal compulsion.

You just can't beat these guys for self-parody. Bush is basically a walking Kerry commercial.

It's truly a pity that Bush has to stay so negative, but it's indicative of the fact that he doesn't have a record to run on. He simply doesn't have a choice.

Fortunately, we do.

Shortly after accusing the Democrats of "an extreme makeover" and running the "Reinvention Convention", the Bush Campaign has re-invented itself. Its new themes are, in no particular order: "Results matter" (he'd better hope the American People don't agree), and an appropriate "we've turned the corner". Why appropriate? Because that's a line basically borrowed from Herbert Hoover, the last president before Dubya to finish his term with negative job growth.

Mr. Hoover lost, and lost badly, in his bid for re-election.

Of course, we're all glad that Pakistan captured a known al Qaeda terrorist. But the timing of the announcement, coming as it does hours before John Kerry gives his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, has to give even the most jaded pro-Bush advocate pause: the terrorist was captured last Sunday, after all. Why announce it now?

But the whole story is much, much worse.

You see, three weeks ago, three investigative journalists (John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari) of The New Republic published an explosive investigative report. The piece, which cited several sources, related that Bush administration officials have in the last few months been greatly racheting up efforts to capture "High Value Target" terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, apparently in an effort to improve their political standing in the runup to the elections. More important, however, was the revelation that Pakistani intelligence officals were saying the Bush administration wanted Pakistan to announce such captures during the Democratic National Convention.

Put all together, the evidence is clear and very, very hard to refute: the Bush administration, far from being strong on terrorism, has been playing political games with national security. It is hard not to come to the conclusion that the Bush administration appears to only be interested in fighting terrorism when there's an upcoming election.

The bottom line is this: if they can capture al Qaeda terrorists on cue, then what the hell have they been doing for the last three years??

It would appear the administration blew off fighting al Qaeda terrorists in order to have their war with Iraq. Three thousand Americans died on September 11, 2001 and they still didn't get it. Let's hope, for our country's sake, that the same can't be said for the American people.

Dick Cheney showed up in my inbox last night. He made a now-debunked claim (he seems to be rather good at that):

When it came time to fund our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, for body armor and other vital support, Kerry and Edwards both voted no, even though Senator Kerry said such a vote would be "irresponsible." Senator Kerry then explained that, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

It seems Dick just can't tell the truth.

In the Senate, there were two options for providing the $87 billion. One, which John Kerry not only voted for but proposed, was to do it without running up the deficit. The other, which John Kerry opposed but passed thanks to the Republicans, funded the troops by further running up the deficit. George Bush threatened to veto the first option. George Bush is lying when he claims John Kerry opposed funding for the troops. But he doesn't have a record to run on, so all he can do is lie about Kerry.

Interestingly, on Friday, new figures will be released showing the federal deficit this year will set a new record.

First we learn that a "Muslim Charity" has links to Hamas (an investigation that has been underway since 2001). And oh, look! A day later, we have an announcement of an arrest of a woman on a terrorist watch list in Texas.

A cynic might imagine the sudden slew of "terrorist-related" law-enforcement news might be conveniently timed. But we all know Ashcroft would never abuse the trust of the American People for partisan political gain, don't we?

The bottom line is that, were I Ashcroft, I would deliberately avoid making any such announcements this week. As it is, I find it more than peculiar that these announcements are coming right now, thick and fast.

All the more reason, in my opinion, to get rid of the current bunch in the White House. They simply can't be trusted not to play politics with national security issues.

Various news reports have it that George Bush will push quickly for enactment of the various 9/11 Commission suggestions for defending against terrorism.

Folks, this is test cramming, pure and simple.

George Bush has had three years to act to defend this nation against terrorism. He was slow on the uptake before 9/11, and worse, he abandoned our efforts to fight al Qaeda after Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Instead, he switched tracks and went after his old enemy, Saddam Hussein. In the process, he divided the UN, Nato and the world and turned their good will into dislike and distrust. He let terrorists such as Zarqawi go to make the case that Iraq had terrorists in it. He pulled resources out of Afghanistan and elsewhere to fight in Iraq. He divided America into those "with him" and those "who hate America". And he made Osama bin Laden look like a hero and created thousands of new terrorists. In short, he threw rocks at a hornet's nest and turned Americans against each other.

So here we are, four months before the election. Bush fought the 9/11 Commission every step of the way, and has resisted suggestions they're making for three years (none of this is new). NOW he wants to say he backs them?

We need a president and a Congress who will act against al Qaeda more often than when there's an election coming up. We need an administration that will try to kill or capture al Qaeda leaders not just during the Democratic Convention, but the rest of the time, too.

In short, we don't need a man working for us in the White House who only does his job when we're standing over his shoulder. It's time to hire somebody who wants to work for us.

Barak Obama's speech last night was a winner. And he brought up a very good point: whenever right-wing pundits start talking about "class warfare" or "special interests", what they're really trying to do is pave the way for dividing America. Efforts to slash taxes mainly for one group of people, single out one group of people as terrorists, etc. are about creating classes of "better" and "worse" Americans. We can do better.

Theresa Heinz Kerry's speech was good, too. Not nearly the fire of Obama (she was quite soft-spoken), but solid and impassioned. That's one smart lady! I bet she keeps John Kerry honest...

Despite the pre-election attempt by the Bush administration to absolve itself of it's Iraq War, the bottom line is that the country is still in terrible shape.

Word comes this morning of a devastating car bomb in Baqubah which killed more than 50 people.

And as we approach the one-month anniversary after the "handover of sovereignty" in Iraq, Americans are still dying. In fact, more Americans have died already in July than in June, the month before the handover.

Things are getting worse, not better, in Iraq. The Administration's irresponsible war shows no sign of letting up.

"Over 900 Americans dead". It sounds horrific, doesn't it? That, of course, is the number of American casualties thus far in the Iraq War. The rate of deaths, in fact, has increased by more than 30% since the June 30th "handover of sovereignty" to Iraq.

But the number isn't enough. After all, tens of thousands have been killed in previous wars; millions lost their lives in World War II. And today, when America is facing a deadly enemy who thought nothing of snuffing out nearly 3000 lives by ramming airplanes into buildings, it's important to put all such numbers in context. After all, a soldier's job, if asked, is to put his or her life on the line for his or her country. And barring a relatively small number who have deserted, most would do so and have done so willingly.

So how does one judge whether "900 killed" is too many? Everyone has their own standards, of course. For myself, I think it's important to consider the trade off: what have we gained by the soldier's sacrifice, and what could we have reasonably expected to gain given the conflict and how the war has been fought?

The Iraq War was promoted as necessary to prevent a madman from giving terrible weapons to America's most deadly enemies. Needless to say, this is a fear that has been shown to have been utterly groundless: numerous reports have indicated that, of all countries in the Middle East (friendly and otherwise), Iraq was near the bottom in terms of connections with al Qaeda. There is no evidence they worked with each other, period. And Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Moreover, even if Iraq had worked with al Qaeda, it's questionable what they could have provided the terrorist organization that it didn't have already: as most of us now know, Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction. Even its means of WMD production were completely shut down.

So, our leaders were wrong about the danger posed to America. What's worse, there is good reason to believe that not only is America no safer thanks to the war, but we're actually less safe: Iraq has become a recruiting poster for terrorists. Before the war, Osama bin Laden warned arabs that Americans wanted to "invade your countries, expropriate your property, rape your women, and humiliate your men". It's clear, then, that the Iraq War has turned bin Laden into a prophet in many arabs' eyes; arabs who, before the war, might have viewed bin Laden as an extremist.

A different case for the war, though, involves democratizing Iraq and the Middle East. This is an idea for fighting the problems that lead to terrorism. In order to judge whether American lives were worth the cost, we'll have to look at just how much has been accomplished in terms of spreading democracy and western ideas in Iraq. Before the war, of course, a brutal dictator and thug ruled the country. Iraq was a country broken by years of sanctions, military strikes and a crushing defeat in the Persian Gulf War.

So where do things stand now in Iraq? According to the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations, more than a year after the war, electricity provision and clean water supplies still haven't caught up to pre-war levels. Less than 2% of the reconstruction money allocated to Iraq in November of last year has been spent. Much of this is due to the basically insecure situation in the country, as well as a very-slow-moving occupation bureaucracy.

The new leadership in Iraq is also questionable. The new Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Alawi, belonged to Saddam's ruling party. Shortly before becoming Prime Minister, he is alleged to have brutally executed accused insurgents without a trial by personally lining them up and shooting them. He has pushed for martial law, and hinted that he may "postpone" elections in Iraq. What's more, he is a former Iraqi dissident who, like Ahmed Chalabi, was likely misinforming the U.S. about the state of Saddam's WMD programs.

To me, then, the actual outcome of war in Iraq thus far hasn't merited a single American life. But the best-laid plans and intentions can go awry, so one could argue that the risk of lost American lives was worth it, given good planning and high potential payoff. In other words, things can go terribly wrong in war despite everything, and a bad outcome doesn't necessarily mean that the gamble wasn't worth it. We'll discuss that in another post soon.

With the Democratic National Convention coming up this week, I guess we'll see if the Bush Administration/Campaign can produce high-value al Qaeda targets on cue. They have asked Pakistani Intelligence to announce the capture of important al Qaeda operatives this week, and on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday in particular.

If nothing comes of it, then it will simply underscore the Bush administration's inability to capture bin Laden and others (admittedly, a difficult task). But if the so-called "July Surprise" materializes, it will be damning indication that not only could the Bush administration have likely captured high-ranking al Qaeda leaders before this point (but concentrated on Iraq, the wrong target), thus resulting in unnecessary deaths, but that the Bush administration sees national security as nothing more than a cynical campaign tool.

Time will tell...

A fair amount of good stuff has been written lately regarding the Bush tax cuts and his overall stewardship of the economy. While I'll write more later regarding this information, I think this graphic from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says a lot: