All Republicans are Nazis. Thanks for the insight, Newsday.

Prime-time Republicans are hard to take

As I watched Tuesday night's network coverage of the unrelenting political propaganda hour known as the Republican National Convention, the first thought that came to mind was of old newsreels of those self-congratulatory Nazi rallies held in Germany during the reign of Adolf Hitler....

In the same manner that the German people were told that Nazi leadership was faultless, the Republicans are telling the American public that no one knows what's best for the world except the current leadership in the White House.

"If you believe this country and not the United Nations is the best hope for democracy, then you are a Republican!" bellowed California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Haven't been posting much - I've been traveling quite a bit on business. I'm in New York now with a nice view of the new 7 World Trade Center. It brings gladness to my heart to see this 50+ story building go up like a big middle finger in the sky.

Which leads me in part to this disgusting link brought to my attention by James Lileks' daily bleat. From the Associated Press:

'Soft Targets' Off Limits No More

What planet have these people been living on?!?! Are soft targets for terrorists something new? Was the World Trade Center not a soft target? How many decades and THOUSANDS of attacks and attempted attacks were made by the Palestinians - the Olympics, hijacked aircraft, the killing of schoolchildren in Ma'alot (and you thought Beslan was original)....

Is there any legitimate reason for the NY Times to publish this piece at all - much less on their website's home page? This "story" broke over a week ago with no further information made available.

Spy Case Renews Debate Over Pro-Israel Lobby's Ties to Pentagon

The underlying tone is that somehow some Jews convinced President Bush to send hundreds of thousands of Americans (and others of course) into harm's way. Even if one could make the argument that it should be illegal for a state or lobbying group to argue in one's own interest, it's as if they're suggesting that the Jews secretly wormed their way in to the administration and slipped them some sort of Jew-drug for the U.S. administration to go against its own interests.

Newsweek confirms the bounce. And a solid majority want to see the president re-elected.

NEW YORK, Sept. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Immediately following the Republican
National Convention in New York, the latest Newsweek Poll shows that, in a
two-way presidential trial heat, the Bush/Cheney ticket would win over a
Kerry/Edwards ticket by 54 percent vs. 43 percent among registered voters...
That represents a 13-point margin bounce for Bush/Cheney since an August 5-10 poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for the Pew Research Center.


Right now neither the CNN nor NY Times websites has any mention of this seismic shift in the polls, as if it doesn't exist. MSNBC does mention the Newsweek poll.

Funny, I looked at my calendar and it says September 4, not April 1.

Palestinians Begin Voter Registration, and Arafat Promises General Elections Will Be Held Soon

Right.

UPDATE: No surprise here.

Meager turnout in PA voter registration drive for Dec. elections

How disingenuous is this headline from the Washington Post?

Undecideds unswayed by Bush's speech

Considering the poll results from Time posted below saying that the President has jumped about 10 percent in the polls despite the fact that we are supposed to have an electorate that is "polarized and already decided".

So how many people did the WaPost poll to get such contradictory results?

Half a dozen undecided voters who gathered here to watch President Bush's acceptance speech made it clear before he took the podium that they had serious doubts about his leadership and his political choices.

Why didn't they just do a report that says "One of our reporters has a friend that's not sure who to vote for - a nation divided..."

My prayers go out to Bill Clinton and his family...

Bill Clinton to Undergo Bypass Surgery

Bush gets good news on jobs...

The jobs numbers, while below market forecasts of 150,000, were respectable enough to give the Republican president a lift, and he quickly noted the U.S. unemployment rate of 5.4 percent was a point below the rate last summer and below the average of the 1970s, the 1980s and 1990s.

And great news in the polls....

New York: For the first time since the Presidential race became a two person contest last spring, there is a clear leader, the latest TIME poll shows. If the 2004 election for President were held today, 52% of likely voters surveyed would vote for President George W. Bush, 41% would vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry, and 3% would vote for Ralph Nader, according to a new TIME poll conducted from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2.

Disgusting, but expected.

5 Acquitted in '94 Bombing of a Jewish Center in Argentina

10 years and no one's guilty.

This cartoon says it all. No translation necessary.

Ouch.

John Kerry wants to have it both ways. But he isn't going to get the military vote. Perhaps the best line making its way around veterans' Web sites these days is: "A Kerry defeat would be the welcome-home parade we never had."

From my initial readings, I think that the rejection of Tariq Ramadan's visa was wrong.

Here he writes in his own defense - Too Scary for the Classroom?

Just days after 9/11, I gave an interview calling on Muslims to condemn the attacks and to acknowledge that the terrorists betrayed the Islamic message. I have denounced anti-Semitism, criticizing Muslims who do not differentiate between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a political issue and the unacceptable rejection of individual Jews because of their religion and heritage. I have called for a spiritual reformation that will lead to an Islamic feminism. I reject every kind of mistreatment of women, including domestic violence, forced marriage and female circumcision.

Thank G-d we have oceans to separate us from the bulk of Islamic fundamentalists.

Armed Men Reportedly Seize School in Russia

I can't even imagine what life would be like with this kind of stuff going on.

America is Back! Terminate the Terrorists! Economic Girlie Men! Brilliant.

I want a Schwarzenegger-Giuliani ticket in '08.



Let me tell you about the sacrifice and commitment I've seen firsthand. In one of the military hospitals I visited, I met a young guy who was in bad shape. He'd lost a leg had a hole in his stomach, his shoulder had been shot through.

I could tell there was no way he could ever return to combat. But when I asked him, "When do you think you'll get out of the hospital?" He said, "sir, in three weeks." And do you know what he said to me then? He said he was going to get a new leg, and get some therapy, and then he was going back to Iraq to serve alongside his buddies! He grinned at me and said, "Arnold, I'll be back!"

Ladies and gentlemen, America is back! Back from the attack on our homeland, back from the attack on our economy, back from the attack on our way of life.

This is what they did after Sharon announced plans for a more rapid pullout from Gaza.

AT LEAST 12 KILLED IN TWIN BUS BOMBINGS IN BE'ER SHEVA

Dollars to donuts that these guys crossed into Israel from a place where the "apartheid wall" is not yet finished.

And there could have been more.

Hooray! The NY Times prints a piece on one of the benefits of the new Iraq, brought to you by George W. Bush.

Long Stifled, Iraqis Make Most of Chance to Vent on Talk Radio

Of course, based on the article you would imagine that people have a lot of complaints about the current situation...

Most calls are about the nuts and bolts of life. Many public services have not recovered since the American occupation began more than a year ago. Daily power failures persist. Piles of trash are heaped on city streets. In poorer areas, leaky sewage pipes taint water supplies.

However, I think the bigger story is reported somewhat lower down...

One such program was broadcast June 30, the day before Mr. Hussein first appeared in court. The program director and host, Majid Salim, asked listeners what they wanted to see happen to him. The answer was something of a surprise for Mr. Salim.

"Most people wanted him executed," Mr. Salim said.

Another time, he asked listeners what they thought about the insurgency that has roiled Iraq, claiming most of the energies of the new interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and putting the American occupation in danger of failure.

"We asked them, is it terrorism or is it resistance," he said. "A very large proportion, almost 100 percent, said terrorism. They did not like it."

This article is further proof that those in our liberal media who call the "insurgents" anything other "terrorists" is pushing their own agenda based on the assumption that we are imperialist agressors who have done nothing positive for the Iraqi people.

A simple point made by a member of Protest Warriors regarding the symbolic carrying of coffins during the huge anti-Bush rally a few days ago.

The leftist group 1000 coffins, brought up the tail end of the protest....The coffins symbolized the soldiers who died in Iraq. For some reason, they were not carrying coffins to symbolize all the people who died on 9/11 in WTC, nor do they carry coffins to symbolize the hundreds of thousands who were killed by the Hussein regime. But then again, they probably don't have enough members to carry that many coffins.

First a made up claim of an anti-Semitic attack and now this?

Jewish man arrested over arson at Paris Jewish centre

Police headquarters refused to identify the man taken into custody in connection with the August 22 attack, but investigators said the man had worked on occasion as a guard at the center, but that management wanted to fire him.

Investigators suggested that "resentment" over the loss of his job could have motivated the suspect, in his 50s, to torch the eastern Paris center out of revenge, but that explanation was not confirmed.

Once again, I figured I'd take a stab at trying to read one of the more popular left-wing bloggers without getting my blood pressure up.

So much for that...

Pentagon/Israel Spying Case Expands - Fomenting a War on Iran

It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud faction in the Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by the United States, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv (not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if someone else's boys did the dying).

Thanks, Juan Cole for reminding me why I need to vote for Bush/Cheney. I feel sick to my stomach that the vast majority of my co-religinists want to put the people in power who will give voice to opinion makers like this. People like Pat Buchanan, as much as he thinks the same, was never so direct and has been practically stripped of any power in the Republican party.

The "Bush Lied" crowd and their leaders (Kerry/Edwards) have gotten so mixed up that if Bush says it's going to rain and then the sun comes out they'd be upset. How do I know? Here is John Edwards speaking about Iraq:

"After months of saying he'd done everything right on Iraq and foreign policy, the president acknowledged just the other day that he miscalculated the way in which he waged the war in Iraq. He believes that he may have won the war too quickly and that was a miscalculation," Edwards added.

So he thinks it would have better had the war been prolonged? I guess it's possible in their mind since the things they complain about most (e.g., looting of museums and prison abuses) happened after the war against Iraqi forces was over.

The Bush-Cheney folks (not a 527) have put together a history of videoclips of John Kerry expounding on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. My favorite part is when he describes, in 1998, how he is ahead of the rest of his colleagues, and the country in general, in wanting to force Saddam Hussein from power.

Kerry on Iraq

And the theme song from "Flipper" of course.