The site for ranting and reporting by John Masters
This category is a main category for post dealing with political issues and politicians at any level of government.
The secrecy and the closed doors just go on and on with an arrogance that defies explanation. Yet Karl Rove has been able to convince half of America that all this means is that Bush is “working hard” and is “determined.”
Read moreThe central claim at the heart of the Bush administration’s case for going to war was thoroughly discredited by the New York Times yesterday. Before the war, the Bush administration stated without doubt that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding a nuclear weapons program and, as proof, it pointed to the only physical evidence it could find: Iraq’s attempt to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes. We now know, however, that the smoking gun was a fabrication.
Read morePresident Bush and Sen. John Kerry squared off in Miami last night for the first presidential debate. The result was a solid hit for Kerry. This morning’s papers describe the scene: Bush is described as coming off as “petulant,” “tight-mouthed,” and “frustrated.” Meanwhile, Kerry was “presidential,” “in control,” “serious and substantive.”
Read moreOnce again, the Onion comes up with the real story — Freshly unearthed public documents, ranging from newspapers to cabinet-meeting minutes, seem to indicate large gaps in George W. Bush’s service as president, a spokesman for the watchdog group Citizens for an Informed Society announced Monday.
Read moreAs son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration?s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
Read moreOn Thursday, President Bush claimed that “nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers, and other security personnel are working today.” But last Monday, the Pentagon said that “only about 53,000 of the 100,000 Iraqis on duty have now undergone training.”
Read moreReports, including one in The Nation Magazine by Kathy Pollitt, point an incident at the University of Arizona in Tuscon where Fox News reporters attempted to intimidate and threaten students conducting a voter registration drive on the UA Mall.
Read moreLast week Congress began to take up the 9/11 Commission?s recommendations but now we have the details of the proposed legislation and it is much worse than we had expected. The proposed House bill would likely create what amounts to a national identification card, drastically curtail basic fairness in the nation?s immigration system and expand government powers under the PATRIOT Act.
Read moreAn Article by Frederic Morton: If this rainbow array of hopes is indeed dying now, it is not the terrorists but the recent cumulative acts of the United States itself that are the slayers. To Europeans of nearly every stripe, the statue in New York harbor brandishes not a torch but a tommy gun. Lady Liberty has transmogrified into an ominous colossus. Here is the ultimate Godfather, enforcing with missile and aircraft carrier a protection racket on all seven seas. Here is an America shrugging armored shoulders at the ozone hole, at collateral damage, at its own poor, an America practicing domination in the name of freedom.
Read moreTo hear President Bush tell it, Iraq is a bed of roses: “Our strategy is succeeding,” he said last week. Yesterday at the U.N., he said Iraq is “on the path to democracy and freedom.” Yet the CIA told Bush recently that the scenarios we’re really facing there range from a quagmire to a bloodbath.
Read moreI sent the members of the Hamilton, NJ Town Council a link to my recent post concerning the arrest of a protester at a Republican event there. Councilman Dan Benson was kind enough to respond to that article.
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