2/26/2004: Bush Nat'l Guard: ( Doonsbury ) I can't believe what you 
can find on the net. For example, here is our president's dental record from an exam, Jan 6, 1973. From this, you can tell that he has no wisdom teeth. Looks like he has some fillings too.
This may be why he gave up sugar a few years ago. I guess posting the president's dental record on a public web site is a bit strange, but since it is already out there, and since this site already has a large article on dental cavities and how to prevent them, why not.
2/26/2004: Bush Nat'l Guard: ( CNN ) ' Doonesbury' (fun site, check it out) offers $10000 for proof Bush served. No joke. 
"In 2000, concerned veterans in both Texas and Alabama offered cash rewards to lure former guardmates of Mr. Bush into stepping forward, to no avail." So the Doonesbury cartoon author Garry Trudeau is upping the reward.
Why is service important for a leader? Because a guy who sends our kids to death should understand the horrors of war, first hand. People who go to war thinking it will be cool have a very different idea afterwards. Without experience, you might say, "Bring 'em on!" But once you see little kids with arms blown off, your friends die, guts spilled out, and so forth, you generally sober up... unless you are crazy. Hey, war is just no fun any more.
2/24/2004: Anthrax Attacks: (washingtontimes ) Whodoneit, Anthrax letter attacks. Some postal workers think the letters were indeed tied to the attacks of 9-11. Who might have done it? Some ideas:
FBI: We don't know. May never know.
Assistant Director Michael A. Mason, who heads the FBI's Washington field office, said that despite "our very, very, very best efforts" the FBI may not ever solve the case. - washtimes
WRH: The guy who tried to frame an Egyptian in a racially motivated attack?
"the one guy who was ACTUALLY CAUGHT ENTERING THE ANTHRAX STORAGE AREA WITHOUT PROPER AUTHORIZATION AFTER HE HAD LOST HIS JOB OVER A RACIALLY MOTIVATED INCIDENT WITH AN EGYPTIAN CO-WORKER. You know, means, motive, opportunity, all that crime detection stuff?" - wrh
WATIMES: The sender of that letter?
A letter sent to police in Quantico, Va., in October 2001 attempted to frame the Egyptian for the Anthrax attacks, but he was cleared by the FBI. "Asked whether the FBI was investigating any connection between the anthrax mailings and the anonymous letter, Mr. Mason told The Times: "I just can't talk about that. I can't talk about that letter." Pressed about the significance of the anonymous letter, given to the FBI after it had been, Mr. Mason said flatly that "the letter is not a priority." - washingtontimes
FAS: Someone connected with U.S. biodefense?
"First, the strain and properties of the weaponized anthrax found in the letters show that it originated within the U.S. biodefense program." - fas
BBC: Secret CIA project gone wrong?
"A Newsnight investigation raised the possibility that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went madly out of control. " CIA rejects theory and says "they were unaware of ANY project to assess the impact of anthrax sent through the mail." - bbc
If you like mysteries and want to help find the culprit, read the Anthrax Timeline (includes sources) for clues.
2/19/2004: Neocons: ( AmericanConservative ) Here is a refreshing conservative article reviewing neocon Richard Perle's (photo) new book. It says the Bush pro-war neoconservative moment may be over. They are losing their hold on power and their grip on reality.
An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror opens on a note of hysteria. In the War on Terror, writes Perle, “There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust.” “What is new since 9/11 is the chilling realization that the terrorist threat we thought we had contained” now menaces “our survival as a nation.”
But how is our survival as a nation menaced when not one American has died in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11? Are we really in imminent peril of a holocaust like that visited upon the Jews of Poland?
“[A] radical strain within Islam,” says Perle, “ ... seeks to overthrow our civilization and remake the nations of the West into Islamic societies, imposing on the whole world its religion and laws.”
Well, yes. Militant Islam has preached that since the 7th century. But what are the odds the Boys of Tora Bora are going to “overthrow our civilization” and coerce us all to start praying to Mecca five times a day?
I agree with this conservative view. The threat seems quite low. We were already fooled once by these neocon people. We were told that Iraq had WMDs, that we had to attack, VERY dangerous! Must kill or be 
killed! Oops, there were actually no weapons. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Well, Perle (click card for more) is trying again to scare us into letting them take over the world. Some big evil thing may happen here eventually, but if and when it does, keep in mind that many people think the neocons are running a protection scam. That is, they secretly arrange some evil so they can take over and protect us to death. I think they may not "secretly arrange" the evil per se, but as with blowback, it may just be that their super fear must-attack mind-set results in a self fulfilling prophesy.
We are waving around our big stick saying "Are you going to hit me? Are you? How about YOU?" When other countries see a crazy person waving a stick they may strike in self-defense as a result of our overreacting. And then the whole world goes up in mushroom clouds of stupidity. I have seen the future and it is run by terrified morons.
The remedy: myvotecounts.org. Get out there and VOTE!
P.S. Perle is under investigation "for allegedly failing to disclose bonuses worth about $3 million which he received for running an investment scheme."
2/18/2004: Neocons: During an interview with conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham, Paul Wolfowitz was asked when he first came to believe Iraq was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
"I'm not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it," DoD News: Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with The Laura Ingraham Show Wolfowitz said in the interview, aired Friday.
Critics of the Iraq war believe the Bush administration had no evidence linking Iraq to 9-11 or al-Qaeda, but simply used the horrific attacks as a reason to overthrow Hussein.
2/18/2004: Bush: Jobs (CNN) NEWS FLASH! Bush to focus on reality. Today White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan 
announced "We are interested in reality."
I think that's an excellent beginning. This bold new policy might take the administration far.
Unfortunately, statistics will not play a part in the bold new plan. Regarding the 2.2 million jobs lost since Bush became president, Bush said "I'm not a statistician. I'm not a predictor."
The people's understanding of this president has grown considerably over the last few years. We also know, for example, that he is not a fact-checker. When ABC's Terry Moran asked a senior White 
House official why Bush wrongly accused Iraq of trying to buy bomb-making aluminum tubes, the reply was "The president of the United States is not a fact-checker."
But wait! If the new policy is to focus on reality, and reality deals with facts, does this mean the president will also change his policy regarding facts and the checking thereof? Only time will tell boys and girls.
2/17/2004: Elections: Legitimate verifiable voting is the most important issue our democracy is facing right now. SOLUTION: The same document processor machines that take pictures of your checks when you make deposits at the bank can be easily modified to take pictures (30 per second) of voter cards. This will put the voter record on microfilm which can't be tampered with. It is EASY to fix our broken voter system to prevent vote fraud. See votefraud.org, blackboxvoting.com, and vote.org.
2/16/2004: Oil Wars: ( Dieoff ) Two years ago, people said the Iraq war was about oil. The president and vice president are, after all, oil men. According to CNN, Dick Cheney still gets over $150,000 a year from Haliburton, the energy services company which has already made over two billion dollars in no-bid contracts as a result of the Iraq War.
CNN: "Democratic lawmakers have also long been critical of the Army's no-bid contract with KBR to repair Iraq's oil infrastructure, worth up to $7 billion, which so far has generated about $2.3 billion of revenue for Haliburton"
Still, conservative talk radio listeners say it is unpatriotic to hint that our leaders might mislead us for their own profit. Here, I suppose, is the logic:
1. Billions of dollars is a lot of money.
2. Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld are people.
3. Some people lie, cheat, steal and even kill for a lot of money.
4. America faces huge oil shortages in the coming future and Iraq has the second most oil in the world.
5. We had to invade Iraq with our military because Saddam was so evil. It had nothing to do with oil or money.
2/16/2004: Hate Radio: Have you been listening to "conservative talk radio" shows like Glenn Beck, broadcast on over 100 stations via the Clear Channel network? You should know that this m
edia giant owns over 1,200 stations and is run by L. Lowry Mays and Thomas Hicks, out of San Antonio Texas. Mays and Hicks are long time friends and supporters of George Bush. (see chart)
Despite the political connections, some refuse to believe the president or the radio voices would lie.
Pro-war hype, hate and fear based propaganda said Iraq had WMDs.
They made it all seem so simple, "Liberals just hate Bush! We can't trust a madman like Saddam! We must defend our way of life! The sky is falling! We must attack now! Saddam is SO scary!! Aaaaaaa! Can't take any chances! We must kill! Kill! Kill! Remember 9-11! Kill! Kill! Kill for Bush! Kill for peace! Kill for freedom! Kill for democracy! Kill them to save them!"
Now it is two years later ... oops. Tousands of people have 
been killed in nasty ways. Why? We had to kill them to protect them from the madman running their country. We caught him hiding in a hole with ... three guns.
Oops. No WMDs, no threat.
Still, some cling to blind faith. Clear Channel stations with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are still there to help. Some of them say we will still find the weapons. ( If he had weapons, why didn't he use them when we attacked?)
Others say Bush didn't lie, he merely had bad intelligence. Do you really want to go there?
2/16/2004: Bush and the "Bad Intelligence"
According to what I've found on the subject, Bush bypassed legitimate intelligence channels which told him there was no impending threat.
Bush's own neo-conservative group set up the Office of Special Plans which was responsible for the "bad intelligence" he now seeks to blame.
The chart here is from motherjones.
Ideas in a nutshell:
World low on oil, much oil under Iraq, much oil via pipeline through Afghanistan, PNAC and AEI group neocons sought preemptive war.
These groups years ago expressed need to control middle east oil and oust Saddam. Lets consider the possibility that a group with a political agenda to control world resources constructed the intelligence it needed for a deception. Either that, or this group is criminally incompetent at intelligence gathering and should not be running the country.
Rumsfeld's frightening statement about the WMDs: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." - Donald Rumsfeld, ABC Interview, March 30, 2003.
More quotes here. But not here.
2/15/2004: Politics: ( Xeno | ABC ) San Francisco Mayor declares gay marriage legal. Over 1,000 gay couples swamp San Francisco City Hall to get married over the three day weekend. I say let people do what they want. Anyone who likens it to marrying a dog or a tree is dehumanizing people. Marriage is between consenting adults, which rules out trees, animals, rocks, the dead, a foot fungus, and so on. What I found newsworthy for all is that the SF mayor is taking on the establishment with such a bold move. I witnessed a peaceful act of civil disobediance in the name of love this Valentines Day. Love it or hate it, it was an historic occasion. Here are some pics I took of this event while on my heterosexual (its my way) Valentines Day date: (click to enlarge)
Headlines: Demand for San Francisco's Same-Sex Marriage Licenses So Great, Hundreds of Couples Turned Away | Conservatives not all opposed to gay marriage
2/11/2004: Politics: (fromthewilderness ) An ex-LAPD narcotics officer and member of MENSA says the world is running out of oil and this is the reason those running our country have plans to procure the rest of the world's oil to secure America's future. A CNN article says oil and gas are running out much faster than expected. Iraq has a lot of oil. Afghanistan is needed for a pipeline to move oil. If oil runs out, people starve, medicine is not available, really, it is a mess.
2/9/2004:( nzherald ) Bush says, "I'm a war president" and "I'm not going to change." Yes, we noticed. All of us who enjoy war will vote for you.
2/9/2004:( MoveOn,org ) In just days, more than 250,000 people have joined the call on Congress to censure President Bush for misleading us in his rush to war. Here is a link if you want to Add your name.
2/8/2004: Xeno's First Cartoon: "I don't want to get involved."
2/5/2004: (CNN) Homosexual marriage is the issue Republicans want. Not war, intelligence failure, Iraq, not the economy, not jobs, not education, not healthcare, not social security, not the environment. Bush says he will push for a constitutional amendment to make gay marriage illegal. Keep Bush away our F'ing Constitution! He has no respect for it. He wants to abolish it. See above. Most Americans agree that we should not amend the constitution over this according to an ABCPoll.
2/4/2004:(WRH) Are you angry yet? "here you stand now, with egg on your collective faces, finally facing up to what your more intelligent neighbors knew all along; There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush made a total fool of you. The whole world is laughing at you. ... Under the Constitution ... only Congress can declare war. [Congress] passed a bill that authorized the President to send in the military to Iraq, but ONLY if the President could prove that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction in defiance of UN Resolution 1441. The President said he had proof, and [Congress] did not check him on it. You must get angry enough to drive the liars out of the media and out of office.
2/4/2004: The Federal Election Commission reported last Friday that somehow, even without Kerry, Dean and Bush taking federal money, the FEC Matching Campaign Fund is experiencing a shortfall. For example: The Kucinich Campaign is owed over $3.34 million as of today, Feb. 3, but the FEC will only be contributing 46 cents on the dollar due to lack of funds. They promise to pay the balance sometime after April 15th. Promise? What does this mean? What kind of explanation and accounting can they give for the shortfall? "the Ohio congressman eligible for up to $18.6 million, the FEC said Wednesday." -foxnews
2/4/2004: (CNN) Bush: U.S. drawing terrorists into a 'closing net of doom'. "Bush declared that democracy is the best antidote for terrorism, and announced that he has asked Congress to double the budget for the National Endowment for Democracy, to raise its total to $80 million. " If what I found on line about this group is correct, this is like saying, "cleaning the sharp rocks from your floor can improve your safety, which is why I'm funding a group that will add sharp rocks to your floor. I call this group the Safe Floors Endowment."
No kidding. Read up on the National Endowment for Democracy and its history. Barbara Conry notes that: "NED, which also has a history of corruption and financial mismanagement, is superfluous at best and often destructive. Through the endowment, the American taxpayer has paid for special-interest groups to harass the duly elected governments of friendly countries, interfere in foreign elections, and foster the corruption of democratic movements... the controversy surrounding NED questions the wisdom of giving a quasi-private organization the fiat to pursue what is effectively an independent foreign policy under the guise of 'promoting democracy.' Want democracy? Get rid of Bush before he protects us to death, destroys our constitution, our environment and our economy.
2/4/2004: According to an article by Jason Leopold, CIA probe finds secret Pentagon group manipulated intelligence on Iraqi threat. The Office of Special Plans (OSP), a special operation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, not only sought "to produce intelligence more in keeping with the pre-held views of those individuals, but to intimidate analysts in the established intelligence organizations to produce information that was more supportive of policy decisions which they had already decided to propose." In other words: Intelligence failure? My ass!
Leopold has written more than 2,000 news stories, is a regular contributor to CNBC and National Public Radio, and was "the first journalist to report that energy companies were engaged in manipulative practices in California's newly deregulated electricity market" according to onlinejournal.
2/4/2004: (Knight Ridder) Include Cheney's office in Iraq probe, officials urge. A senior military official who was involved in the planning of the Iraq invasion said the (Pentagon's now-disbanded) Office of Special Plans and the office of the vice president were providing intelligence in addition to the CIA. Iraq intelligence efforts led by Cheney magnified errors through exaggeration, oversights and mistaken deductions, officials say.
2/4/2004 The OSP was authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and ... "functioned like a shadow government," according to Julian Borger. The OSP, responsible for (faulty) intelligence leading to the Iraq war, was headed by William J. Luti, who came to the Pentagon from the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney in mid-2001, where he was a Special Advisor for National Security Affairs and Mideast Policy. The chief intelligence analyst in the unit, Abram Shulsky, assembled a team of full-time and "personal service contract'' employees, drawn from the neo-conservative scene in Washington. Widespread allegations say the OSP ... [drew] upon Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, a group widely discredited in the eyes of the CIA, the State Department, and even the Defense Intelligence Agency; and on intelligence flows from a parallel rogue intelligence unit created in the Office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, at the initiative of Douglas Feith, a defense undersecretary. - aljazeerah.info Opinion column.
2/4/2004: Mail sent to the US Senate contained the powder ricin, a deadly toxin.
2/2/2004: (USA Today) 'We were almost all wrong' Ex-weapons chief: Prewar intelligence on Iraq a sweeping failure. Funny, I recall people in the streets protesting by the millions before the war who tried to tell you this. Bush, perhaps if you had listened to the people of the USA and the world, thousands more people would be alive right now. Oops, sorry, no weapons. That's okay. We forgive you. You had to get the oil and you had help the world population problem, and you to get rid of that evil man who was found in a hole with three guns. He was obviously a threat. Well, he did plot to kill your dad, so revenge is justified, even if you have to trick the country into using our military to do it. Problem is, now we are in a bit of a hole ourselves. More dying all the time, money going down the drain. Do you have a plan or something?
2/2/2004: Bush is going to decide who gets to probe him for lying about wepons of mass destruction. Why not have the same rule for all "leaders" whose lies lead to the deaths of thoudands of innocent people? Better yet, let every accused criminal decide who will investigate him.
"Let's see, I'll pick my twin brother .... that guy who owes me a hundred thoudsand dollars .... the person I got a job for last year by pulling some strings .... and that blind person."
Also see: Rigged 9-11 investigation, rigged election, hutton report whitewash, and so on. Many say that Bush must be impeached for lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war. Instead, Americans are going to let him blame "intelligence failures" with a result of giving more money to intelligence groups, perhaps slapping the wrist of a skapegoat, and then carrying on, business as usual. Same old story.
2/2/2004: ( CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll ): Majority would vote for Kerry over Bush.
