Check this out:

A pork-hungry Congress has long been with us, of course, but this year, with our armed forces engaged on two major fronts, Congress has pushed the pork in the defense budget to an all-time high, totaling $8.9 billion.
. . .
In parts of the bill that no one talked about, the Armed Services Committee raided the accounts that support combat readiness. Specifically, the committee cut Army depot weapons maintenance by $100 million (just when the repair backlog from the wars has grown to unmanageable proportions), and it removed $1.5 billion from the services' "working capital funds" for transportation and consumables (e.g. helicopter rotor blades, tank tracks, spare parts, fuel, food and much more). In one unseemly move, the committee also cut from one account $532 million for civilian repair technicians activated to support the deployed forces, claiming the money should have been credited elsewhere in the bill. But then it failed to add the money where it said it belonged.

In another feat of legislative trickery, the committee cut another $1.67 billion throughout the bill in anticipation of lower inflation in 2005 -- a pretense at a savings that OMB said in written comments to the committee "do[es] not exist." OMB concluded that "the practical effect of these reductions would be cuts to critical readiness accounts." In response, the Armed Services Committee did nothing and urged the Senate to endorse its bill, which it did by a vote of 97-0 on June 23.

Thereafter, the Senate Appropriations Committee used other gimmicks to reduce essential defense accounts in its bill. By the time Congress had finished with the appropriations measure on July 22, I counted $4.534 billion in reductions, mostly buried in the General Provisions section in the back of the bill. Ostensibly labeled as "unobligated balances," "general reductions," "excessive growth," "adjustments" and savings due to "management improvements," these were simply offsets to accommodate the $8.9 billion pork invoice the appropriators wrote. That more than $2.8 billion of these cuts came in military pay and the Operations and Maintenance budgets that support soldiers' salaries, training, spare parts, weapons maintenance and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan shows where the committee's real priorities lay.

While the article tries to heap blame on both sides equally, remember, this is a Republican-controlled Congress we're talking about, cutting spending on critical defense issues such as military pay and ramming through nearly $9 billion in pork at a time we're seeing record deficits.  Nor has the White House done anything to stop the process.

At the very least, it oughtta be enough to keep a fiscal-conservative Republican home in November.

The rate of US deaths in Iraq has increased since the "handover of sovereignty" at the beginning of July:



June 2004: 1.67 deaths/day
July 2004: 1.87 deaths/day
August 2004: 2.62 deaths/day

At this rate, within 20 days the U.S. death count in Iraq will exceed 1000.

No wonder Bush is terrified of talking about the issues, and prefers instead to wage an underhanded smear campaign to distract us...

Three days after being officially called out by John Kerry, Geroge Bush still hasn't shown the courage or the integrity to condemn the ads produced by his surrogate group, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Instead, they're plaing games:

Underscoring how personal the dispute has become, Bush's campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, went on CNN and said the Kerry campaign has come "unhinged," and that Kerry himself "looks wild-eyed." Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Kerry is "losing his cool." In 2000, the Bush campaign used similar language to portray rival Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as potentially too unstable to run the country.

Does such a cowardly, lying bully deserve to run the country? This man has no grace, no decency, no honor. He has failed the country, and wants to take everyone down with him. He is running a vicious smear campaign through surrogates and claims noninvolvement even as his own campaign coordinates with and promotes the smear. And when their indecency and illegal activites are pointed out, the Bush campaign prefers to play games, mocking those they bully and, by extension, all of America.

You see, if you have a problem with the Bushies' unethical, gangster tactics, you must be "unhinged".

If you have a sense of fair play or a sense that America can do better, you must be "wild-eyed".

If you are outraged that Bush refuses to talk about what's going on in the country and the real problems of Americans, preferring instead to wage a lowest-of-the-low, Nixonian dirty tricks campaign, you must be "losing your cool".

George Bush is not a good man. His dream for the country is not the America we used to be. It is not an America most of us want. It is not the America we should be.

Time to put someone in office with a sense of ethics and decency, someone who knows what America ought to be. Someone like John Kerry.

Isn't this nice:

And that's why we've called on the Kerry campaign to join us and call for an end to all of these ads. The President condemned all of these ads and activity that are going on by these shadowy groups. So that's why I pointed out that over the last year, the Kerry campaign has been noticeably silent on these shadowy groups, while at the same time fueling some of the very attacks that these groups have launched. We can put an end to it all if Senator Kerry would come out and join the President and say, let's stop this kind of unregulated soft money activity.

Aside from the implication that the Bush campaign can, indeed, stop the Swift Boat ads any time they wish and are thus coordinating their efforts with the group illegally, and aside from the inference that independent groups should have no right to exercise their first-amendment rights, the crass statement above means simply this: we're going to lie about you, and slander you, and it's all your fault.

Meanwhile, George Bush once again, today, refused to take the simple step of condemning the outrageous lies of his surrogate group, continuing to hide behind them rather than facing John Kerry like a man.

George Bush a coward? What else can you call it?

From today's right-wing, pro-GOP, Washington "Moonie" Times, front page, top, in font size usually reserved for "end of war" announcements:

Kerry's fellow 'Swiftees' dispute his Purple Hearts

I know there's a word for this, but it escapes me...ah! there it is:

"D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-E"

Here, a Bush supporter kindly demonstrates the cowardly and unAmerican traits so common in today's Republican Party.



"An unidentified supporter of President Bush tries to silence protester Kendra Lloyd-Knox (right) outside Southridge High School in Beaverton. Elsewhere in Portland, supporters of Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., rallied on the waterfront."

To paraphrase Voltaire:

"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."

Does it ever seem that George Bush is beloved by all, despite his plummeting poll numbers? Well, that impression might just be due to televised pictures of him constantly surrounded by people who think he's the Second Coming of Christ. And now, the mainstream news is finally confirming what we've long suspected: those appearances aren't real. They're scripted. Yet another example of George Bush's courage:

Instead of taking questions from reporters, President Bush has become increasingly partial to playing talk-show host to an audience of sycophantic fans.

There were four "Ask President Bush" events last week and in each case, after a long speech and staged interviews with prepped guests, Bush opened the floor to some incredible softballs.

The format allows the president to come off as very smooth.

As John Harris writes in The Washington Post: "In loosening his style, Bush tightened his message. Fielding friendly questions at 'Ask President Bush' forums, or lathering up the crowds at pep rallies like the one here on Saturday afternoon, he presented his case for reelection with a force and fluency that sometimes eluded him at important moments over the past year."

There's never a nasty question, never a heckler, nothing but love. That makes for great imagery and great soundbytes.

So, this is supposed to be the gutsy, take-no-crap George Bush, at whose name terrorists tremble and nations bow?

This guy is too cowardly to take actual questions from real people. How can we trust him to make courageous, difficult decisions as president? Do we really want to hand the reigns of power over to such a coddled, fearful, incapable man a second time?

To paraphrase Dick Cheney, "I don't think the people who beheaded Nick Pearl will be impressed by a man who is too much of a mamby-pamby coward to take real questions from real Americans".