The Dunce

In Salon.com, a former Harvard Business School professor of George W. Bush recalls not just a terrible student, but a spoiled, loutish, pathological liar. Why, it's almost too perfect to be true. But it certainly rings true with a lot of what I've read and heard about Bush's personality.

Read about it here.

The Wall Street Journal: New Harris Poll Shows Tight Presidential Race

According to a new Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal poll, the presidential race is once again neck-and-neck. Completed on Sept. 13, the poll shows Kerry with 48 percent, Bush with 47 percent and Ralph Nader with 2 percent.

Here in Mount Pleasant, I am beginning to see a LOT more Bush-Cheney lawn signs. Makes me sick. For a while there, this was Kerry country, lawn sign-wise, if not bumpersticker-wise too. Now, not so much. A lot of them are in front of obviously student houses and, as I always claim, Bush supporters tend to be dummies and, well, this IS a second tier state university. We have our fair share of dummies here. :)

Getting back to the whole notion of polls, though, I should note that in the final weeks of the 2000 election, major polls showed Bush ahead of Gore by three to 13 points. Then Gore won the popular vote by more than 500,000. Kinda says something about how accurate polls actually are, doesn't it?

Sidney Blumenthal: The "War is Lost"

In Salon.com, Sidney Blumenthal writes that military experts see no exit from the Iraq debacle...and that the war is helping al-Qaida.

Read it here.

Arianna Huffington: The Bush Campaign's Dark Magic

In Salon.com, former conservative Arianna Huffington laments that the Bush campaign has spread phony fear of John Kerry. But the real nightmare, she notes, is the president's disastrous war on terror.

Read it here.

The gist?

"Under George Bush, Osama has gone free; al-Qaida has reloaded; terrorist attacks continue unabated; nukes keep on spreading; the Muslim world is ferociously united against us (and the rest of the world isn't too crazy about us either); our ports, railways, roads and borders remain unsecured; our police, firefighters and first responders remain underequipped; and our armed forces have been stretched perilously thin."

And the sad thing is, Bush gets high marks on national security. I guess we are so dumb, we deserve whatever we get. Well, not me. I'll be in New Zealand, hiding behind a sheep.

Seymour Hersh's Alternative History of Bush's War

In Salon.com, Seymour Hersh, the crack investigative reporter, talks about a disastrous battle that the U.S. brass hushed up, the frightening True Believers in the White House, and how Iran, not Israel, may have manipulated us into war. Intriguing.

Read it here.

Johnny Ramone: 1948-2004

Very sad, but not at all unexpected, news this morning: After suffering from prostate cancer for the past five years, legendary guitarist and punk pioneer Johnny Ramone died yesterday afternoon at his home in Los Angeles.

Bush and Kerry's WWII Records Examined

Ha ha ha! I love Tom the Dancing Bug, especially the latest comic.

The K Chronicles by Keith Knight

This is a spot-on, hilarious comic about Dick Cheney's growling threats that we should vote for Bush or suffer grave consequences.

Paul Krugman: Taking On the Myth

Paul Krugman has a(nother) terrific piece in today's New York Times.

Who Profits?

MoveOn.org has a new animated ad that you HAVE to see.