Peter Jennings, 1938-2005

Peter Jennings, the face many would say of ABC News, passed away this week following a battle with lung cancer.

Jennings had been off the air since early April but in late October 2004, in what must have been his last news trips on the road, Jennings was among those covering a John Kerry presidential campaign rally at the statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa.

While many on the right viewed Jennings as a liberal, to many others he was a reporter who developed a keen insight into the news. And in today's era of turning everything into a black or white issue it was refreshing to know that a few people still knew there could be many sides to an issues.

The last of the big three (Jennings, Rather & Brokaw) to retire he may be the one most missed.

The Other 2001 Anniversary

The Republican like to wave the anniversary of September 11, 2001 as a bloody flag against anyone who challenges them but there is another important 2001 date that will go down in history, but one George W. Bush would like to forget.

On August 6, 2001, Bush supposedly was briefed on a presidential daily brief entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.

The memo stated FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Just over a month later Al Qaeda did strike and Bush, who was watching his popularity fall as one would expect of an illegitimate president, saw the public disregard their concerns and support him.

But rather than go after an enemy who attacked the United States, Bush tried to go to war on the cheap so he could pursue his policy of going after Iraq. Democrats missed a chance to say "Finish Afghanistan First" and instead saw Bush be "re-elected."

So today, four years later, one has to wonder if the Bush White House is marking this anniversary, for it possibly was just as important as September 11. If they had acted and stopped the attacks they might not have been given credit and lost the 2004 election. Instead thousands in New York, Washington, D.C. and soldiers from across the country might be alive today.

An anniversary to remember indeed.

Mr. Horrible Goes to the UN

Rather than give Congress a few documents to evaluate United Nations Ambassador nominee John Bolton, George W. Bush decided to wait until Congress left town so he could weakly appoint possibly the worst person in his administration to be ambassador to the United Nations.

Bolton, who even many Republicans believe is a bad appointment, will now be able to "represent" the U.S. at the United Nations. One has to wonder if the people at the United Nations will give Mr. Bolton the amount of respect he deserves.

Afterall, REPUBLICAN Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio said of Bolton "It is my opinion that John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be."

The committed Republicans believe that he is just the sort of person the U.N. needs to lead the reforms. While that kind of talk may keep the Right in line it's doubtful it has any basis in reality. But then this past four years has been an unreal experience.

Did the Press Corp Visit Emerald City?

After watching the White House Press Corp stop accepting lies and half-truths from the Administration and actually show a backbone one has to wonder what happened.

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, to the roar of approval from his audience, suggested "We've secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters."

For too, too long members of the Washington typists suggested that to ask actual questions and not accept dishonest statements from the White House. And when someone had the audacity to question the people like Tim Russert for not asking tough questions, alleged media watchdogs like Howard Kurtz would say How dare Russert not act as a Democratic debater!

So what happened? Perhaps the WH Press Corps was replaced by actual reporters, or perhaps the media just got tired of being lied to. But my favorite is that they went to the emerald City and picked up courage, a brain, and heart.

Maybe so and maybe this will be the start of the press acting like journalists instead of watchdogs.

Blame the Victim

In an attempt to move the focus of the discussion around Karl Rove's potential role in outing a CIA operatives, the Republican Party has gone on attack, figuring a good offense is the best defense.

In doing so the GOP have decided to attack Joe Wilson, Matt Cooper of Time Magazine for their role in the story. Afterall, all Karl Rove was trying to do was alert the media to questionable story. It will be interesting if that strategy works.

The thing those on the left find interesting about Rove is that in 2004 he was involved in an election campaign that played heavily on security issues, yet he, or someone else at the White House outed a CIA operative.

Because the investigation was underway the press didn't push the story too much (afterall they were much too busy with attacking Kerry based on faulty right wing claims) and the public didn't have an opportunity, in an election that was about security issues, to decide if they wanted to vote for a group that hurt American security.

While the White House is currently facing some unpleasantness, many cynics believe that in the end the most anyone involved will get a slap on the wrist, secure in the knowledge that this came out after the election and well after it could have been an issue.

Deny, Deny, Deny

In a dishonest and disingenuous speech before the New York Conservative Party, Karl Rove attacked liberals and democrats for their response to 9/11. Faced with a torrent of criticism, Rove and conservatives tried to revise what he said and thanks to a compliant media they have succeeded.

According to the Daily Howler, Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday toed the party line, saying "Rove did go after in his speech liberals, not Democrats. But a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill reacted as if they personally had been attacked and insulted, and demanded that Rove apologize or be fired."

Because Rove's speech received limited attention, many may have relied on transcripts of the event to decide if Rove was over the line. In a perfect world that would be no problem as, for example, a White House supplied transcript would provide accurate reflection of what was said.

However, in this case, the White House has apparently decided not to supply a transcript, yet there are supposed "transcripts" out there.

In the text of the speech on the Washington Post, Rove allegedly said "Moderation and restraint is not what was called for. It was a moment to summon our national will - and to brandish steel. MoveOn.Org, Michael Moore and Howard Dean may not have agreed with this, but the American people did."

See, the word Democrat wasn't used, conservatives say. Right. Except that wasn't what Rove said. During an interview with Howard Dean on Hardball, Chris Matthews played the actual tape of what Rove said. Unfortunately, the transcript of the show did not include Rove's remarks, but this is what Rove said.

MoveOn.Org, and Michael Moore and Howard Dean may dominate the Democratic party and liberalism, but their moderation and restraint is not what America felt needed to be done and moderation and restraint was not what was called for and acted upon. It was a time to summon our national will and to brandish steel.

Without a true transcript, people at places like Redstate.org can claim "Rove did not say Democrat. Rove said "liberal." Rove did not say progressive. Rove said liberal."

Now some may split hairs and still say Rove was talking about liberals but it's pretty clear, that with Bush's popularity plummeting, conservatives have decided to go into attack mode. The galling thing is that Bush has been so eager to go to war when he avoided one, yet he and his administration feel free to criticize others lack of eagerness to enter into a war unconnected to the 9/11 attacks on America.

Red stater wins in Iran

One of the strangest things about watching and listening to all of the news coming out of Iraq was how much their recent election, in a sense, followed the recent US elections. In Iran a religious conservative defeated an intellectual politician, in part by going after value voters.

(Of course the other comparison is that there was funny business going on in the election balloting, matching our own problems back in the state.)

In Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative mayor of Tehran, beat his relatively moderate rival Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani and was declared Iran's next president.

In a sense, Ahmadinejad has George Bush to thank as it was Bush's election eve criticisms of the Iranian election that push people to vote for Ahmadinejad. Bush denounced Tehran's theocracy for manipulating the vote by eliminating candidates and ignoring the "basic requirements" of democracy.

One has to wonder if Bush did that on purpose with the expectation that a hardliner would be elected and that would either lead to the people working to overturn the system or if he is just plain stupid and didn't realize the impact his words would have on the Iranian people.

While Bush may say he is not happy with the election, he may find a soul mate in Ahmadinejad as they both share religious conservative views, won elections by appealing thanks to negative campaigns, and an interest in seeing issues only in black or white. The problem may be that they are too much alike, stubborn and uninterested in the wishes of the electorate.

Missing the Point of the Downing St. Memo

In an effort to prove that they didn't blow off reporting on the Downing Street memo, the media has attempted to say that the memo doesn't saying anything that the press hadn't previously reported, i.e. that the Bush Administration was planning for war against Saddam Hussein.

And if that wasn't enough, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post added that Critics, however, note that the memo by Richard Dearlove, then head of British intelligence, offered no specifics about any cooking of the intelligence books and could easily have been drawn from ongoing news accounts about the administration gearing up for war.

That the facts were being fixed was only one part of the memo. As Slate pointed out there were three points to the memo, that the Bush administration:

• Knew Saddam Hussein didn't pose a threat
• Decided to overthrow him by force anyway; and
• Was "fixing" intelligence to sell the impending invasion to a duped American public.

The media and Republicans have decided that the first two points are unimportant and that the third was false. Yet here is a memo describing minutes of British intelligence meeting and as Michael Smith, reporter for the Sunday Times of London, whose coverage broke the story, said It is one thing for the New York Times or The Washington Post to say that we were being told that the intelligence was being fixed by sources inside the CIA or Pentagon or the NSC and quite another to have documentary confirmation in the form of the minutes of a key meeting with the Prime Minister's office.

When faced with this truth, conservatives argue that "fixed" doesn't mean fixed, it means focused. Unfortunately, that also is false, Smith pointed out. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it.

But how was the public to know they were lying? If only someone in the U.S. had actually pointed out the lies in real time surely the media would have looked into it. Wouldn't they?
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These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen," John Kerry - March 10, 2004.

Media's E-ZPass Double Standard

One of the major reasons for the "successes" of the Bush Administration, and the difficulty facing Democrats, is the disparate treatment they receive from the media.

Republican's have been able to institute policies, which a majority of Americans don't support, without serious questioning by the media while anytime a Democrat says anything questionable a full front attack is undertaken by the media.

One only has to look at the latest Beat The Press incident on Sunday, June 5, to see how host Tim Russert and his lack of follow-up allowed RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman to escape serious questioning.

But when Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post commented that host Tim Russert is fast becoming journalism’s answer to the “E-ZPass,” those electronic tags that allow drivers to go through toll booths without having to stop, Media Critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post snidely commented How dare Russert not act as a Democratic debater!

Kurtz apparently believes in the E-ZPass treatment for GOP guests, however when journalists actually do their job and ask intelligent questions of Democrats and liberals, he thinks that's just great. On Wednesday Kurtz highlighted the thorough questioning on "Fox News Sunday" by Chris Wallace of Amnesty's U.S. chief, William Schulz and called the resulting answers "quite revealing."

See Wallace kept asking Schulz questions until he got to the bottom of the story, providing comments that were "quite revealing." This is the very type of journalism liberals are begging people like Russert and Kurtz to engage in. Instead Russert, just like he gives his GOP guests, received the E-ZPass treatment from Kurtz.

Apparently asking pointed follow-up questions of Democrats is expected but to do so with Republicans means you are a "Democratic debater."

Is it really any wonder with this type of double standard that Democrats face obstacles in getting their message out while the GOP gets an E-ZPass on questioning on their policies.

Beat the Press

George Bush must throw good parties because the way the press treats him and his groupies one must think that they are worried that if they ask too many questions they will be crossed off future guest lists.

On Sunday Tim Russert of NBC NEWS' MEET THE PRESS interviewed Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the Republican Party and time after time Russert had Mehlman on the ropes, only to let him go without deep questioning, you know, the type he went on the offensive with when Howard Dean was running for president.

First, Russert pointed out that John Danforth, former Republican senator, and Bush's man.. at the United Nations had written in The New York Times that By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christian...By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians.

Mehlman waived it off, like he would do so many other questions this morning. The problem is that Russert didn't treat Mehlman like Dean. Some have said that Russert was correct to go after a possible future president. Fine, but why roll over once in office?

Mehlman got away it time after time. Russert would ask a probing question, Mehlman would respond with a stupid or ridiculous answer and Russert would move along to the next question, like a police officer moving people away from a crime scene. "Move along, nothing to see here."

One can only assume when Mehlman got back to his office he was received congratulations for "Beating the Press."

Bush's real plan for Social Security

In his efforts to change Social Security from a social insurance program to an investment program George Bush has said he wants to give people more control over their money.

In reality he wants to give Wall Street more control over American's money, with limited oversight. This was made clear on Thursday with the appointment of Rep. Christopher Cox as head of the Security and Exchange Commission.

Cox will replace William Donaldson, a moderate who worked to restore the integrity to the SEC after the short, but turbulent term of Harvey Pitt, who may be best remembered for not telling other commissioners that former FBI director William Webster, who had been selected to head a new five-member panel charged with overseeing the accounting industry, had served on the board of directors of a company accused of fraud.

Pitt decided that the allegations about the firm, U.S. Technologies, were not worth relaying to other commissioners, or to the White House, before Webster's selection, according to USA Today. Hey, why should fraud allegations be important on someone named to oversee an industry facing numerous ethical clouds.

While Donaldson worked to restore integrity to the SEC, the problem was that as the New York Times pointed out, in Republican and business circles, William H. Donaldson has been viewed as the David Souter of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a disappointingly independent choice who sided too frequently with the Democrats. (i.e. the people's voices were heard.)

On the other had Cox is view as GOP lackey, who helped to steer through the House a bill making investor lawsuits more difficult.

That measure, the Times pointed out, which Congress adopted over President Bill Clinton's veto, was hailed by business groups, which say it has reduced costly and frivolous cases. It has also been criticized by consumer and investor organizations. They say its adoption in 1995 contributed to an unaccountable climate that fostered the big accounting scandals at companies like Enron and WorldCom a few years later.

So what does this have to do with Social Security? With a flood of money potentially available to the investment community, one should expect new scandals, however those scandals won't be investigated. William Lerach, a prominent shareholder lawyer in San Diego, told the Times not to expect Cox to be an investor's friend.

"I would expect that Cox will use his authority for an across-the-board assault on investor protection," Mr. Lerach said. "In my experience with him, I found him to be virulently anti-investor and unrestrained in his desire to gut the securities laws. It's hard to think of a worse choice for the S.E.C. This is a world-class payback to the corporate world."

Guess whose going to win? Wall Street and the rich. And who will lose? Everyone else. I guess we can thank the 51% of Americans who voted for Bush for making the U.S. a worse place to live.

Watergate vs. Whitewater

One of the interesting aspects to the unmasking of Mark Felt as Deep Throat is that well after 30 years a great deal of the public still views Watergate as an important historical event and probably one where there was an abuse of power.

The Watergate investigations led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president, in part because of fears that he would not survive impeachment procedings. Fast forward approximately 25 years and there was another set of impeachment hearings, except this had little to do with governmental actions by a president, rather personal activities.

So it was with no surprise that barely five years after the hearings that were started by the investigation of Whitewater, a long ago failed real estate venture, few people remembered or cared. In fact, most people were probably just as embarrassed by the impeachment hearings as they were with President Clinton.

In the midst of the hearings, the Democrats uncharacteristically regained seats in Congress, a slap in the face to Republicans, which lead to Newt Gingrich resignation as Majority Leader.

The long term legacy of Whitewater is one that few will talk about. While the investigations were a failure, they may have played enough of a role in making the 2000 election close enough to allow George Bush to steal the presidency.

And in the end that may have been the sole purpose, putting a Republican back in the White House, fairly or not.

Filibustering President Gore's Judges

Before Republicans get too upset about a tiny number of George Bush's judges not getting a confirmation vote perhaps they should look at the record of judges appointed by President Al Gore.

What judges, you might ask. Exactly. In 2000, despite what one reads in the papers, Al Gore won the presidency of the United States, it's just that activists judges, and a compliant senate, took it away from him.

Going into Florida, which by all accounts was basically a tie, Gore lead Bush by around 500,000 votes overall and by a count of 267-245 in the electoral college. It was only by throwing out hundreds of thousands of votes in Florida were the Republicans able to rewrite the election.

As a result Bush got to appoint 218 judges and had 208 confirmed, which is quite a record of compliance by the Democrats. And President Gore, well he got to appoint 0 judges and 0 were confirmed.

So before Sen. Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell and Sam Brownback complain too much about what the Democrats have done, they need to look at their own action. Since Bush had no moral right to appoint judges, the fact that he got ANY approved is an accomplishment.

What the Democrats should have done is to not recognize the election, nor allow any hearings on judges. Unfortunately the Democrats listened to Republicans mantra of "Act like an American, not like a Republican" and tried to work for the common good.

Look what good it did them.

White House outrage little more than CYA

In an amazing, but predictable, turn of events, the Bush administration is criticizing the publication of questionable information because it could lead people to action and result in deaths.

No, the White House didn't decide to be honest about falsifying the reasons they went to war in Iraq. No, it was about Newsweek magazine formally retracting a story published last week that said U.S. interrogators of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Koran, according to USA Today.

"The report had serious consequences. People have lost their lives," White House Spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Again, McClellan wasn't talking about the questionable information the White House put out that led to war in Iraq and the deaths of more than 1,500 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. No, apparently that kind of falsification is OK.

Instead he was talking about Newsweek issuing a retraction of the story that sparked deadly riots in Afghanistan and other countries.

However, the problem is that just as the GOP Schiavo memo was true, the desecration allegations may be accurate as this was not the first time that charges that US soldiers had desecrated a Koran during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. The Daily Kos reported that several sources, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, had earlier reported such abuse.

Also blaming Newsweek may be attempt to divert Muslim anger. Originally the US government originally said that the riots were not caused by the Newsweek report. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

So in the end the White House actions may be little more than an attempt to cover their ass over behavior the world finds appalling.

Who is the most dishonest of them all?

A few days after the America media finally dug its head out of the sand and reported on the secret United Kingdom memo that stated that the UK decided to go along with the U.S. to war in Iraq despite a lack of evidence, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Iraq and lied about the U.S. involvement.

"You see, this war came to us, not the other way around," the Australian Broadcasting Company quoted Rice as lying to Iraqi government leaders.

This after CNN reported that 89 Democratic members of the U.S. Congress last week sent George Bush a letter asking for explanation about the secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq war in mid-2002.

The White House had not yet responded to queries about the congressional letter, which was released on May 6, but perhaps Rice's statement was the response.

CNN showed Rice making the statement but a Google search of the phrase shows only Radio Australia and one other site using the comment. Perhaps the media were so incredulous that she would make such a bald faced lie that they couldn't bring themselves to report it.

After all they have the image of the administration to keep up. Now if John Kerry had made such a stupid statement the airwaves would have been full of criticisms by both Republicans and media.

Welcome to the world of new media.

John Bolton - We Can Do Better

On Wednesday, by a 10-8 vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee forwarded the nomination of John Bolton to the full Senate for review, although Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio said there were better candidates.

"This United States can do better than John Bolton," Voinovich said, according to ABC News. He also called Bolton "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be." He said Bolton would be fired if he was in the private sector.

So it's come down to this, the United States may have as one of its top diplomats someone who would be fired in the private sector. (And I thought that the GOP praised the private sector for these types of decisions.)

ABC News reported that Voinovich told reporters he would vote against Bolton in the full Senate. Will Bolton win eventual confirmation? "I have every faith in my colleagues. No one really is excited about him. We'll see what happens," he said.

For all the GOP's complaints about filibustering appointments, Bolton will get a vote, which is more than what could be said for William Weld, former Republican Governor of Massachusetts appointed by President Bill Clinton as Ambassador to Mexico but who was never even allowed a committee hearing by Sen. Jesse Helms. Weld eventually withdrew his nomination.

Bolton got more than a hearing, he got a vote, and now will go to the full senate where his prospects are uncertain. Voinovich said he hoped the full Senate, where Republicans hold a 55-45 majority, would reject the nomination.

"What message are we sending to the world community?" Voinovich asked.

Perhaps "Who cares what you think"?

Laura Bush: Truth Teller

First Lady Laura Bush's performance at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on April 30 earned her rave reviews (Laura Bush big hit at press corps dinner) from most quarters but few people have taken the time to understand why she was such a hit.

I am a desperate housewife. I mean, if those women on that show think they're desperate, they oughta be with George

Well the whole country lives with the consequences of George and there are a lot of desperate people out here, possibly enough to elect John Kerry President last November, but that's another story. For many of us, Laura was only stating what many of us feel.

But George and I are complete opposites - I'm quiet, he's talkative, I'm introverted, he's extroverted, I can pronounce nuclear...

One has to wonder if that was an inside joke. In the Jib Jab pre-election cartoon, one the lines the John Kerry character said to Bush was "You can't say nuclear - that really scares me."

George's answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chainsaw, which I think is why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well.

Recently the UK was rocked by the release of a pre-Iraq war memo that said "Britain and America had to "create" conditions to justify a war." Maybe that's another example of Bush's chainsaw behavior she was referring to.

"George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're going to have to stay up later."

Perhaps that's been the problem with Russia, Moscow is eight hours ahead of the US so Bush is never awake when the Russians are so it's difficult to get around to talking to Putin regarding democracy.

Laura was a hit alright, she hit a bullseye in describing her husband.

Turning PBS into GOPTV

Dissatisfied with control over the White House, the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate, and Supreme Court, talk radio and most cable news programs, the Republican Party has set its site on the lone holdout of moderate expression, the Public Broadcasting Service.

As the NewYork Times pointed out on May 1, the Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

Long a symbol of liberal propaganda to the right for uncovering stories that the right would prefer not be told, chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson is putting the squeeze on the few liberal programs on television. Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers" and encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.

While this might seem small, what Tomlinson is doing is putting a microscope on a program that includes guests from all political persuasions while placing the extremist Wall Street Journal editorial board under the same microscope.

Should anyone really be surprised? No. But the questions is what should be done. Jonathan Chait of the Los Angeles Times suggests Cut the strings of government funding before right-wingers can destroy public broadcasting pointing out that while Newt Gingrich sought to slash or eliminate programs he considered wasteful, Bush turns those programs into arms of his political machine.

While many people think of Bush as an idiot, perhaps he is a genius, actually an evil genius. Bush takes a program like PBS and gives people the choice - either it will be run his way or get rid of it. So in order to save PBS it will have survive in the marketplace, not sustained like defense contractors with public money.

Yet there already are a number of cable networks that offer children's programming and nature shows, just few that offer real, in-depth analysis of the news, although anyone who watched PBS' Once Upon A Time in Arkansas investigation into whitewater must have thought it a FOX News production.

While those on the right may be drawn to support networks running questionable stories about Christmas under siege or trashing American war heroes, those on the left may not be as willing to support investigative stories on stolen elections or politicians shirking their military duties. So at the end of the day the right has figured out another way to get their message out, now it will be at the public expense.

Bush's Trillion Dollar Tax Increase

One of the points George Bush makes about the Social Security System is that the trust fund to which Americans have paid $1.5 trillion into over the past 20 plus years is basically empty, spent by a series of mostly Republican Presidents.

Yet by making that claim Bush is treating the $429 Billion collected in his first three fiscal years and the $963 billion expected to be collected in the coming five fiscal years as tax receipts that don't have to be paid back, which in effect makes it a Trillion Dollar tax increase.

During Bush's first three years in office the administration has racked up $1,571 trillion in deficits (compared to $1.4 trillion in eight years for Clinton, $1.5 trillion in four years for Bush I and $1.9 trillion in eight years for Reagan).

While the Bureau of the Public Debt shows the annual deficit for the Bush Administration to range from $420 in 2002 to $595 Billion in 2004, the White House uses the excess Social Security receipts to bring the figure to a more "manageable" $413 Billion.

If Social Security wasn't running a surplus then the government would be forced to sell Treasury notes to fund the deficit, which would be required to be paid back. Instead the Social Security trust fund annually covers a large part of the deficit spending.

The Social Security Trust Fund was set up for the government to eventually pay back what it borrows but when Bush says "there is no "trust fund,'" one has to ask whether he is indicating the government will default on those obligations?

Get it? If there's no surplus then the government has to really borrow money which it really has to pay back. But with the surplus it can take the money and run by saying it's gone In effect, by operating this way, Bush was able to enact a $145 billion tax increase in 2004 and $429 billion over his presidency.

Apparently Bush is the one with "fuzzy math." The only question is, is anyone listening?

Did Kerry win afterall?

Last year, in response to the 2000 presidential election debacle, Sen. John Kerry and John Edwards promised supporters that they would work to count every vote and make sure every vote counts.

On election day, early exit polls seemed to indicate that was happening and that Kerry/Edwards would be elected. However later in the day, in several key battleground states, the exit polls were said be wrong, leading to a victory for George Bush.

To many there was always a question of "how could the exit polls be so wrong?" Now there is a study by the US Counts Votes that shows that possibly the polls weren't wrong. In Monday's Washington Post, Terry Neal writes that the USCV study "suggests the early exit polls that showed Kerry beating Bush may have been accurate after all."

While very exciting, reading the charts in the back of the study it appears that if the exit polls were correct, Kerry would have picked up votes in many states but only Iowa (7 electoral college votes), New Mexico (5) and Nevada (5) clearly voted for Kerry rather than Bush. If Kerry had received those three states, the 17 electoral vote change would meant a 269-269 tie rather than a 286-252 Bush win.

That leaves Ohio, for which the study showed two exit polls, an early one showing Kerry winning 52.1% to 47.9% and a late one showing Bushing winning 50.9% - 48.6%. Florida had three exit poll results and while the race was basically even Kerry was not ahead in any of the exit polls.

So was Ohio accurately counted? In 2000 the media tried to determine that regarding Florida and perhaps came up with a mixed result. (Although assuming Florida was basically a tie, how does the guy who otherwise was in second place in both the electoral college and popular vote end up President?)

If Kerry had only won Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, the election would have gone to the House of Representatives. Could Kerry have won in the House? Maybe not since the GOP has the majority, but maybe Ohio would have been examined closer, eliminating the need for the House vote.

One comment heard a lot last fall was something along the line of "whoever wins I hope it's not close." While there might not have been a conspiracy, individually many voting officials may have repeatedly gave Bush the benefit of the doubt, increasing his vote total. After all, didn't this kind of behavior take place in Florida in 2000? (Did Florida Secrtary of State Katherine Harris do anything that hurt Bush?)

Kerry may well have won Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico AND Ohio, which would have been a 289-249 win, and based on what the Bush people believe, this would have been quite a mandate. That also might have meant the GOP lost the Presidential election four times in a row.