The Failed Presidency.

Which makes one wonder...does a George poop in the woods?

This George is devine, no pooping allowed - it is used for gray matter

I see all the A2K sand is in the left side of the box.

Run Dean, PLEASE.

Bush Visits Bellevue:Bush in Bellevue, Wa.
BUSH'S WELCOME WAGON
Eastside Bushies Confront Protesters

by Mahrya Draheim and Alexis Lainoff

At Bellevue Square, a few miles from the tony Hunts Point fundraiser where President Bush nabbed $2,000 from each attendee during his August 22 visit, a couple of hundred demonstrators clogged the corner of Northeast Eighth Street and Bellevue Way, shouting at passing drivers, who honked in return.

These folks weren't upset that Bush was visiting Washington State, though. Instead, they were thrilled, and out in force to support the president, protesting the anti-Bush activists who assembled in four locations in Seattle and on the Eastside. The standoff centered around Bellevue Square, where a pro-Bush rally was just a few blocks from an anti-Bush demonstration at Northeast Fourth Street and Bellevue Way.

Gary Jensen, a pastor from Burien, came to the rally without costume or sign, explaining he was simply there to add support: "I think Bush is doing great. He's a president who means what he says."

When asked to specify what Bush policies he supported, Jensen was particularly vocal about the war. "The war in Iraq was the right thing to do," says Jensen. "Weapons of mass destruction will be found."

In its early hours, the Republican rally seemed like your typical patriotic flagfest. At 10:00 a.m. organizers passed out stickers to like-minded rallygoers amid a ragged chorus of "FOUR MORE YEARS!" Some drivers responded to signs beckoning "Honk if you love Bush" by blaring their horns. (A few, who probably think WMDs won't be found, responded with a raised middle finger.)

One run-of-the-mill Bush supporter, a man with a foam-rubber cowboy hat, set up his camp of flags and army action figures right next to a prim elderly woman and a family of four.

Though Republicans tend to have a rep for homogeneity, the rally at Bellevue brought out their diversity. A yarmulke-wearing young man and his girlfriend waved the Star of David. The Tacoma-area Vietnamese community was represented by more than a dozen people, carrying a banner and occupying prime curb space.

"We came to support Bush's war on terrorism," says Dang Lamp, a Tacoma resident. "Terrorism is just like Communism. It has to be taken care of before it spreads."

Lamp doesn't see the current economic slump as anything to chide Bush about. "The economy goes in cycles," Lamp says. "It's on its way back up."

The pro-Bush camp had plenty of competition at Bellevue Square. At Northeast Fourth Street, 200-plus anti-Bush protesters were on hand to counteract the Bush support. Though they were centered four blocks away--victims of the Bushies' forethought in getting a permit for the more prominent corner of Northeast Eighth Street--the anti-Bush protesters couldn't resist having a bit of fun with the opposition. A half-dozen anti-Bush protesters aped their wealthy conservative counterparts, emerging from a limousine, decked in furs, at a prominent spot on the pro-Bush curb. "Thank you, Bush! You've made us richer than we ever imagined.... Thank you for the tax cuts!" the middle-aged protesters declared. Republicans didn't know what to think at first.

But quick-thinking Lori Sotello, Republican rally organizer, swept in to create a diversion. Sotello immediately motioned for members of the pro-Bush crowd to stand in front of the limo, blocking the faux millionaires.

The back-and-forth continued all afternoon. By 12:30 p.m., the GOP crowd was peppered with liberal interlopers as anti-Bush demonstrators abandoned their designated post to infiltrate the pro-Bush rally down the street. ("We followed the guidelines," Sotello said, explaining the pro-Bush folks' decision to stay put. "Others chose not to.") The result was a heated exchange (a "public dialogue," as one anti-Bush organizer called it)--at times a shouting match--between the two sides, covering everything from the legitimacy of the war in Iraq to the effectiveness of Bush's tax cuts.

"It was an opportunity for discussion," says Sotello tactfully, adding that many of the GOP attendees enjoyed the debate. One protester, a middle-aged lady with frosted lipstick and an American-flag shirt, seemed to be having an especially good time shouting, "Communists go home! If you don't love this country, then get out of here!"


© Copyright 2003 TheStranger.com

w

sand to the left...**** to the right...... :wink:

Stand up, sit down, fightfightfight.

If you have not seen Eric Blumrich's excellent Flash about Katherine Harris and the Florida Stealection, then click here.

cjh, The sand is shifting slowly, but it is shifting, and it's not shifting to the left. It's shifting to the right to bury this administration from this country - for good. c.i.

Turning into an avalanche

Cheney has disappeared. Rummy seems to be on the run. Nobody pretends anything about Bush's month-long vacation (was he missed?). The Gov of Arkansas (rep) decides not to run for senator against the democrat - says he want to spend his time fixing the education system. Janklow, in SD, gets indicted on manslaughter 2 - so guess he's not running against Daschle. Boise, Idaho, rejects Ashcroft on the Patriot Act - and they're a solid republican state. Bustamante doing better than Arnie in CA.

What is happening? Deus ex machina?

You can fool some of the people all of the time, All of the people some of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Idaho
One of this state's most prominent politicians, Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter (R), is leading an effort in Congress to curtail the centerpiece of Ashcroft's anti-terrorism strategy, the USA Patriot Act. Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), who used to croon alongside Ashcroft in a senatorial quartet, said this month that Congress may have to consider scaling back parts of the law. And in a state with an all-GOP congressional delegation, several city councils and the legislature are considering resolutions condemning Ashcroft's tactics in the war on terrorism.


"Ashcroft wants more power," said state Rep. Charles Eberle (R-Post Falls), who has drafted a resolution critical of the Patriot Act. "What a lot of us in Idaho are saying is, 'Let's not get rid of the checks and balances.' . . . People out here in the West are used to taking care of themselves. We don't like the government intruding on our constitutional rights."

They don't understand, this stuff is necessary to continue the Fascist agenda of the current administration......

dys, I'm glad to see that some people in local governments sees the danger of the Patriot Act, and their willingness to strip it of it's intrusion into our Constitutional Rights. c.i.

Bush took a month's vacation. Wasn't missed. Would he be for another month? The little president who wasn't.

He's like the wizard behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz." "Don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain" as he's pulling levers and hitting switches to run the country. Trouble is, he hasn't any brains, heart or courage.

LW, Rove made sure those levers and switches weren't attached to anything

Empire of Novices
By MAUREEN DOWD


WASHINGTON

The Bush foreign policy team always had contempt for Bill Clinton's herky-jerky, improvised interventions around the world. When it took control, it promised a global stewardship purring with gravity, finesse and farsightedness.

But now the Bush "dream team" is making the impetuous Clinton look like Rommel.

When your aim is remaking the Middle East, you don't want to get stuck making it up as you go along.

Even officials with a combined century of international experience can behave with jejeunosity — if they start believing their own spin.

The group that started out presuming it could shape the world is now getting shoved by the world.

Our unseen tormentors are the ones who seem canny and organized, not us. As they move from killing individual U.S. soldiers and Iraqis to sabotaging power plants, burning oil pipelines, blowing up mosques, demolishing the U.N. headquarters and now hitting the Baghdad police headquarters, our enemies seem better prepared and more committed to creating chaos in Iraq — and Afghanistan — than we are to creating order.

They've also proved more adept at putting together an effective coalition than the Bush team: a terrifying blend of terrorists from other countries, Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam fighters, radical Shiites and Saddam remnants, all pouring into Iraq and united by their hatred of America.

If we review the Bush war council's motives for conquering Iraq, the scorecard looks grim:

• We wanted to get rid of Osama and Saddam and the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We didn't. They're replicating and coming at us like cockroaches. According to Newsweek, Osama is in the mountains of Afghanistan, plotting to use biological weapons against America. If all those yuppies can climb Mount Everest, at 29,000 feet, can't we pay some locals to nab Osama at 14,000 feet?

• Bushies thought freeing Iraq from Saddam would be the first step toward the Middle East road map for peace, as well as a guarantee of greater security for Israel. But the road map blew up, and Israel seems farther away from making peace with the Arabs than ever. The U.S. has now pathetically called on Yasir Arafat to use his power to help after pretending for more than a year that he didn't exist.

• Rummy wanted to exorcise the stigma of Vietnam and prove you could use a lighter, faster force. But our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan may not banish our fears of being mired in a place halfway around the world where we don't understand the language or culture, and where our stretched-thin soldiers are picked off, guerrilla-style.

• The neocons wanted to marginalize the wimpy U.N. by barreling past it into Iraq. Now the Bush administration is crawling back to the U.N., but other nations are suspicious of U.S. security and politics in Iraq.

• Dick Cheney and Rummy wanted to blow off multilateralism and snub what Bushies call "the chocolate-making countries": France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. But faced with untold billions in costs and mounting casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are beginning to see the advantages of sidekicks that know the perils of empire.

• The Pentagon wanted to sideline the C.I.A. and State and run the war and reconstruction itself. Now, overwhelmed, the Pentagon's special operations chiefs were reduced to screening a 1965 movie, "The Battle of Algiers," last week, as David Ignatius reported in The Washington Post, to try to learn why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers.

• The neocons hoped democracy in Iraq would spread like a fever in the Mideast, even among our double-dealing friends like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But after the majestic handoff of democracy to the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, it seems the puppets (now nervous about bodyguards) don't even want to work late, much less govern. As one aide told The Times, "On the Council, someone makes a suggestion, then it goes around the room, with everyone talking about it, and then by that time, it's late afternoon and time to go home."

• The vice president wanted to banish that old 60's feeling of moral ambivalence, of America in the wrong. Our unilateral move in Iraq, with the justifications on W.M.D. and Qaeda links to Saddam getting shakier each month, has made us more hated around the world than ever.

What do you expect from a group of people that began by stealing an election?

Acquiunk
Certainly not the stupidity we have been presented with.