Bush's troubles shake the GOP base

The Republican party continues to be a party of extremists with a far right agenda; increasingly it does not represent the American people. Pandering to extremists on individual issues is not uniting the Repugs as before. Moderate and liberal republicans will be looking for a new party. Pew Research Center: Bush's Troubles Shake the GOP Base Pew Research Center for the People & the Press Report Bush's Troubles Shake the GOP Base Both Moderate and Conservative Partisans Grow Restless June 6, 2006 by Courtney Kennedy and Michael Dimock Pew Research Center for the People & the Press As public approval of George W. Bush languishes at all-time low levels, supporters of the president are increasingly hard to find. In the months following his re-election, roughly half of the country rated Bush's job performance favorably. Today only a third of Americans do so, while more than half (56%) disapprove of his performance. These latest figures are based on a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 27-May 22, among a national sample of 3,204 adults, a large enough survey to allow for a more detailed breakdown of where and how opinion has changed since the election. While the decline in support transcends ideological and demographic lines, the drop among one group – moderate Republicans – has been especially steep. Among all Republicans, Bush's job approval rating has dropped 20 percentage points since December 2004 (from 89% to 69%). This erosion of support has been most severe among Republicans describing themselves as moderate or liberal, where his rating has dropped 25 points from 81% to 56%. Conservative Republican support for Bush has also declined, but more gradually. Approval among this group was nearly unanimous (93%) following his re-election, and stands 15 points lower at 78% today. But there are far more conservatives than moderates in the GOP; as many as two-thirds of Republicans identify themselves as conservative. This means that even though the drop off in their support has been more gradual, the implications are no less serious. Translated into real numbers, just as many conservative Republicans as moderate and liberal Republicans have grown frustrated with the president's leadership over the past year-and-a-half. While a much larger share of moderate and liberal Republicans disapprove of the president, they make up only a minority of the GOP. Within the Republican Party, moderate women stand out for their lack of support for the president. Through most of Bush's presidency he has been evaluated similarly by men and women within the GOP, but this latest survey shows signs of a potential gender gap. Currently, only half (51%) of Republican women who describe themselves as moderate or liberal approve of Bush's job performance – a falloff of 31 percentage points since his re-election. By comparison, his approval rating among moderate and liberal Republican men stands at just over six-in-ten (62%) down only 19 points over this same period. There is no gender gap in presidential approval among more conservative Republicans. In addition to losing support within his partisan base, the president has lost much of the backing of independents that helped him win reelection in 2004. Job approval among independents has fallen from 45% to 26% since the post-election period. By comparison, Bush has lost less support among Democrats, but there was little support to lose. In December of 2004, 17% of Democrats rated the president's performance positively; just 9% do so today. Beyond Party: Bush Struggles in All Groups Even white evangelical Protestants, a traditional Republican constituency, are expressing more dissatisfaction with the president today. Barely half (55%) of white Evangelicals now approve of the job Bush is doing, down from 77% following the 2004 election. Looking at various population groups across all partisan lines, the decline in Bush's approval rating is fairly consistent among various groups with the largest drops coming from those who had supported him the most strongly and, thus, had the farthest to fall. For example, more than half (53%) of seniors rated Bush's performance positively on the heels of his re-election, while just a third do so today. Meanwhile, Bush's rating among Americans under age 30 fell just 11 percentage points during that time from an already marginal rating of 40% down to 29% today. Similarly, Bush has lost support across all regions of the country. In the South, where Bush is viewed most favorably, his job approval has dropped 20 points from 56% to 36%. In the Northeast, where he has had the least support throughout his presidency, approval has fallen 12 points from 39% to 27% today. The percent of Hispanics who approve of Bush's performance in office is down from 45% to 29% since the election, and African-Americans continue to view Bush very negatively. Support for the president is down across the socioeconomic spectrum as well, among both wealthy and poor, and those with more and less education. If anything, positive views of Bush's performance have fallen most sharply in the middle-income brackets. Among those with a household income in the $30,000-$75,000 range, approval has dropped roughly 20 percentage points compared with 12- and 13-point drops among the most wealthy and least wealthy, respectively. Even Core Constituents Less Enthusiastic Beyond the overall balance of opinion, the intensity of views about Bush has changed as well. After his re-election, comparable numbers strongly approved and strongly disapproved of his job performance (34% vs. 35%). Today those who strongly disapprove of his performance outnumber those who strongly approve by more than two-to-one (45% vs. 19%, respectively). Even among key Republican constituencies, support for Bush has been waning – not necessarily from approval to disapproval but from strong approval to a somewhat weaker endorsement. In December 2004, more than eight-in-ten (81%) conservative Republicans strongly approved of Bush's job in office, but closer to half (54%) feel this way today. Similarly, the number of white, evangelical Protestants strongly backing the president has fallen from six-in-ten after his re-election down to 34% today. Strong support for Bush has declined at similar rates among southerners (40% to 20%), high income earners (34% to 22%), weekly church-goers (42% to 25%), and those who are married with young children (41% to 26%). Presidential Approval Trend in Detail

Maybe Gay marriage isn't the thing to ban

Pensito Review: Politics & Media » The Real Threat to Marriage: Top 10 GOP Adulterers Posted by Jon Ponder Jun. 5, 2006, 7:14 pm The traditional media may be interested almost exclusively in the sex lives of Democratic politicians, but on the hypocrisy index, it is hard to score higher than Republicans pontificating about saving the institution of marriage while so many of their leaders are serial and long-time adulterers: 1. President George H.W. Bush allegedly had an LTR with British-born Jennifer Fitzgerald that lasted at least two decades, all while married to Bar, who said, “He didn’t even notice when I stopped coloring my hair.” 2. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, famously married to Maria Shriver, is allegedly a serial groper, a purveyor of prostitutes and the father of at least one child out of wedlock. 3. Sen. John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential frontrunner, and admitted adulterer and alleged philanderer. 4. Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and another GOP 2008 presidential contender, betrayed his second wife, TV presenter Donna Hanover, with his “very good friend” Judith Nathan, whom he has since married. Hanover also publicly accused Rudy of having an affair with a staffer, Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas. 5. Rush Limbaugh, comedian, (a.k.a. “Rusty Sharpe”) dated Marta Fitzgerald while she was married to someone else. Marta later became his third wife. (He and CNN’s Daryn Kagin recently stopped dating.) 6. Bill O’Reilly, propagandist, who is married to Maureen McPhilmy, tried to have phone sex with Andrea Mackris, who sued him for sexual harrassment. 7. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is probably the most audacious serial adulterer in any political party. 8. Former Rep. Bob Barr’s notoriety as an adulterer was one of many ironies around the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) which he wrote, and which was passed with the leadership of fellow adulterers Sen. Majority Leader Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. 9. Rep. Henry Hyde, who served as chairman of House Mangers in the adultery-related impeachment of President Clinton, was a home-wrecker himself. Hyde had an affair when he was a young and foolish man of 41 while he and his girlfriend were both very much married. Her husband later said Hyde broke up his family. 10. Gary Bauer, professional moralizing Christian nationalist, experienced a mutiny when he was running for president when actual Christians on the staff of his 2000 presidential campaign quit in protest over Bauer’s “inappropriate” behavior with a 26-year-old deputy campaign manager. Euww. 11. (Updated) Had to add this one sent in by reader S.O. that probably should have bumped poor old Henry Hyde on the list: Neal Horsley, and rightwing religious nut, freely admitted to a kinky sex life, including this outrageous exchange on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes: AC: “You had sex with animals?” NH: “Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.” AC: “I’m not so sure that that is so.” NH: “You didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?” AC: “Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?” NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality… Welcome to domestic life on the farm…” UPDATE: Thanks for all the emails. Our list attempts to identify the top 10 adulterers so there were several top contenders that didn’t make it: Rep. Bob Livingstone, the man who would have been House Speaker after Newt if Larry Flynt hadn’t uncovered some very kinky dirt on Livingtstone. He was a top contender but since he never really served as Speaker, was bumped for Bauer. It is true that Nancy Reagan was pregnant when she married Ronnie, but neither of them were married to anyone else at the time. By Republican standards of “abstinence only,” Nancy clearly did not say “no.” We covered the rumors of troubles in the marriage of the president and Laura Bush but the evidence of this is spotty. A definite top 10 contender is the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, a sanctimonius Clinton-hater, who, as reader TL reminds us, “[Apparently] had a fling with the DAUGHTER of someone he was having an affair with and then arranged for (or at least condoned) the abortion of their child.” Back-bencher Rep. Don Sherwood of Pennsylvania, whose adultery with a younger woman was revealed after he tried to strangle her, didn’t make the cut, but someone please tell us he won’t be re-elected. (And thanks, M.H. and others, for the reminder!) Reader Tim pointed out the track record of Rep. Jim Nussle of Iowa, who used his wife and autistic child as family values props then left them for a high-powered lobbyist after he was elected. Keep ‘em coming! If you have any nominees for this list, please leave a comment below or email us. And for more on the reality behind Republicans’ purported family values, see this listat Pam’s House Blend. Another good resource (sent in by reader L*@aol.com) is www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Moral_Values Topics: Politics, GOP Hypocrisy

Media Matters Cavuto claim media biased if cover Iraqi insurgency

Cavuto: Media biased if they cover Iraqi insurgency, biased if they don't http://mediamatters.org/items/200606050001 On the June 1 edition of Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto complained that "the media is all over" the alleged killings of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq, but that there has been "virtually no coverage of the daily savage attacks by insurgents on Iraqi civilians and our troops." Onscreen text during the segment read: "Blatant Bias?" But Cavuto has previously alleged that "all you see in the media out of Iraq are the insurgent activity, our soldiers getting killed or hurt." In fact, just one day before Cavuto claimed that the media have ignored insurgent attacks in Iraq, he invited Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on to Your World to discuss whether "beheadings and roadside bombs, suicide attacks" in Iraq are "being blown out of proportion by the media." Onscreen text during this segment read: "Media Bias?" Previewing an upcoming discussion of the alleged Haditha killings during the June 1 edition of Your World, Cavuto asserted that "because of this incident last year, the media is all over it today." He then asked: "[B]ut where is all the coverage of the ongoing daily attacks on U.S. troops?" Later in the show, Cavuto reiterated his claim that the media have hyped the Haditha incident while ignoring insurgent violence against Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops: "[T]he media is all over the alleged incident in Haditha. The word 'massacre' splashed across the headlines in almost all major newspapers today across the globe, but virtually no coverage of the daily savage attacks by insurgents on Iraqi civilians and our troops." Then directing his comments to Fox News military analyst Gen. Wesley K. Clark, Cavuto commented: "You read everything. I know you are a voracious reader. You must have noticed the same thing I did." But the previous day, Cavuto asked King whether the media pay too much attention to "insurgent activity" and if "dangers [in Iraq are] being blown out of proportion by the media" -- and he didn't challenge King when the congressman affirmed the media's purportedly "slanted" coverage. From the May 31 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto: CAVUTO: Well, beheadings and roadside bombs, suicide attacks -- we all know Iraq is a dangerous place, but are those dangers being blown out of proportion by the media? My next guest says, yes, they are. He says that the annual civilian death rate in Iraq amounts to 27 deaths per 100,000 people, and that your chances of dying a violent death are greater in places like Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Baltimore. With us now is Iowa Congressman Steve King. Congressman, good to have you. KING: Thanks, Neil. I'm glad to be on board with you. [...] KING: It is dangerous for our military that are there [in Iraq], and yet it's not as dangerous for the public in Iraq as has been portrayed by the news media, which is my point. CAVUTO: All right, bottom line, you're saying we're getting a -- a slanted view of what's going on there? KING: I believe that. CAVUTO: OK. KING: I think we should always put it in perspective. And -- and if I could add, the risk to our soldiers is significant. But they faced far more risk in other wars. CAVUTO: OK. KING: For example, what profession, fishermen -- five years as a fishermen is about equivalent to one year in Iraq in uniform, to put that in perspective, Neil. CAVUTO: OK. Steve King, very interesting. Thank you. Cavuto himself has also suggested that the media have overemphasized insurgent violence in their coverage of the Iraq war. For example, while interviewing U.S. Army Reserve Chief Lt. Gen. James Helmly on the July 29, 2005, edition of Your World, Cavuto asserted: "You know, what surprises me is all you see in the media out of Iraq are the insurgent activity, our soldiers getting killed or hurt": CAVUTO: Well, as the war on terror rages on over there, recruitment is up -- that's right, up -- a lot over here. Take a look at this. For the month of June, the Army Reserve is reaching its goal and then some. Joining us now, Lieutenant General James Helmly. General, good to have you. You know, with that uniform, not one tough question. HELMLY: OK. Well, you're awfully kind. I get asked the tough questions by Congress. CAVUTO: There you go, I guess. You know, what surprises me is, all you see in the media out of Iraq are the insurgent activity, our soldiers getting killed or hurt. And, yet, in the face of this, recruitment goes up. What -- that seems to be odd. HELMLY: Well, first of all, I caution. I shy away from measuring progress on the month-by-month scale. We do measure that. Frankly, we report those numbers by month. And that was a -- that was a good month. It was -- was good news. Having said that, my own judgment -- and I recently expressed this to Congress in testimony -- is, we need to begin to look out two to five years to set conditions for success. As our president said, we're going to be at this for a while. And we have to, I think, adjust some of our policies and practices by which we recruit and retain soldiers to sustain the great force we have today. CAVUTO: But you also have to counter the impression that we're getting bogged down. Onscreen text aired during the May 31 and June 1 editions of Your World suggested that the media have exhibited "bias," in covering the insurgency -- and in not covering it. During a preview of the June 1 segment in which Cavuto claimed that the media have not adequately covered the insurgent attacks in Iraq, onscreen text read: "Biased Coverage?" During the segment itself, onscreen text read "Blatant Bias?" and "Why is media focused on Haditha & not attacks on U.S. troops?" Yet when Cavuto wondered on May 31 whether the dangers in Iraq are "being blown out of proportion by the media," the onscreen text read: "Media Bias?" From the June 1 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto: CAVUTO: All right, straight ahead, because of this incident last year, the media is all over it today. But where is all the coverage of the ongoing daily attacks on U.S. troops? [...] CAVUTO: The media is all over the alleged incident in Haditha. The word "massacre" splashed across the headlines in almost all major newspapers today across the globe. But virtually no coverage of the daily savage attacks by insurgents on Iraqi civilians and our own troops. So why is that? With us now is retired General Wesley Clark; he is also a Fox News contributor. General, thank you for coming. CLARK: Good to be with you Neil. CAVUTO: You read everything, I know that. I know you are a voracious reader. And you must have noticed the same thing I did. CLARK: I see coverage every day of the attacks of U.S. troops and on Iraqi civilians. It's covered every day. CAVUTO: To the degree that this Haditha scandal [inaudible]? CLARK: I did not read Iraqi newspapers today, and I don't know how much that's a gotten coverage over there. CAVUTO: Banner headline in [French newspaper] Le Monde, banner headline in London Times. Contact: Neil Cavuto Neil Cavuto Contact: Fox News Channel FOX News Channel1-888-369-4762Comments@foxnews.com1211 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 10036 Contact: Your World w/ Neil Cavuto Your World w/ Neil Cavuto

Foaming Republicans

Commentary Last Updated: Jun 5th, 2006 - 00:38:51 Foaming Republicans By Larry BeinhartOnline Journal Contributing WriterJun 5, 2006, 00:36 Email this article Printer friendly page Today’s Republican Party is a stool that rests on three legs of fear: fear of foreigners, fear of dark people and fear of sex. The issues that touch on these fears are usually called hot button issues. But a better term is ‘foam at the mouth’ issues. Because they make Republicans foam at the mouth. As does any person or any idea that challenges that foaming. Foaming is now most visible around the “immigration” issue. The “immigration” issue is not about immigration. It’s about Mexicans, those dark foreigners. There are no Minute Men, or Second Men or Hour Men for that matter, out to patrol the frozen wastes from the Straits of San Juan de la Fuca to the St. Lawrence Seaway. There are no foamers screaming for the Navy to get out on Lake Superior and shoot those Canadian canoes out of the water before the illegals reach Minnesota and take up residence in Lake Woebegone. The reality is that the illegal immigration may be a problem, but it’s not a big problem. Their impact on health care, for example, is utterly trivial compared to our real health care problems. Their impact on wages is irrelevant compared to congress’s refusal to raise the minimum wage. Their impact on jobs is minor compared to the wide variety of ills that affect the American job market; globalization, the growth of corporate power, America’s disinvestment in infrastructure, the weakening of unions and the misplaced economics policies of the government (if you take at face value the claim that they are designed to stimulate the economy and create jobs). When Republicans are in full foam at the mouth mode it does no good to discuss reality with them. That only makes them foam more. Rightly so, because reality is their enemy. George Bush usually knows this. He normally, and constantly, pushes the hot buttons that produce the foam. But with the immigrant issue there are multiple constituencies. Number one is the party professionals, the guys who track demographics and voting blocs, who believe the Latin vote can be peeled away from the Democrats. They’ve been telling Bush he needs to appear pro immigrant. Many of his backers in various business groups, especially agribusiness, want cheap, cheaper, cheapest labor. As does anyone rich enough to employ domestic help. So the president looked at the issues and came up with a proposal. It was actually, for a Bush Republican, pretty reasonable. Unfortunately for him, it was based on realities. That made his base just foam at the mouth. President Bush's immigration initiative has angered conservative Republicans so much that some are refusing to donate to his re-election campaign, according to a Bush fund-raiser in Georgia. --Washington Times, Jan. 16, 2004 Bush's Immigration Plan Called 'Massive Amnesty' --CNSNews, Nov. 29, 2005 CNSNews, Cypercast News Service, was created by L. Brent Bozell III, who describes himself as a “leading conservative,” as an antidote to the “liberal” media. To understand the headline it is necessary to understand that “amnesty” is a very dirty word to conservatives. It’s a code word for ‘time to foam at the mouth,’ they’re letting criminals – criminals! – get away with their crimes! From certain points of view, illegal aliens are people trying to go from a poor place to a rich place to make a living. But if you’re watching the landscape from the picture windows in foamer land, you see that they are felons! By definition! And by definition, where do felons belong? In prison. Therefore, what we need to do is put 30,000 troops on the Mexican border, ready to shoot, with high tech weapons as ‘force amplifiers,’ to hunt them down, round them up and throw them in the many new prisons that we will quickly build. Any program that allows illegal immigrants who are already here to gain citizenship, no matter how arduous, makes them line jumpers. When a foamer sees someone jump the line, it hurts, it really hurts, and in their pain, they cry out, “Miz Dobbs, oh Miz Dobbs, Maria Rodriguez jumped the li-ine, throw her out of school, Miz Dobbs!” Foamers routinely deny their fear of foreigners, dark people and sex. That’s why they love code words so. It allows them to pretend that they are doing what they do for high moral reasons. It allows them to pretend, not just to others, but to themselves as well. That’s why anti-abortion fastened onto the name ‘right to life’ and they are so hysterical that what they are doing is ‘protecting the unborn.’ All realistic studies show that good, honest sex education is the way to cut down on abortion. But sex education makes foamers foam that teaching sex will lead to sex. Which is what they really fear. They don’t want to end pregnancy and disease. Pregnancy and disease are desirable as enforcers that will protect us from people having sex. If there is any doubt, notice that abortion foes are now becoming foes of birth control. Because it leads to sex for pleasure. Fear of dark people is the impulse that’s most denied. Overt racism is rare indeed. Though the spectacle of Fox News’s John Gibson urging white people to have more babies lest the lesser breeds outbreed us, came close in his smiley, Christian way. But actions speak louder than words. In the land of racism. White voters have moved away from the Democrats and now vote Republican. Black people vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. That is, white people who don’t like black people and black people both know, no matter what words are spoken. Republicans work very hard to disenfranchise black people. Democrats work to get them to vote. If we are going to change politics in this country we need to understand foaming at the mouth. Sometimes defuse it, sometimes harness it, even sometimes use it. In the meantime, it’s a pleasure to watch the Republicans lose control over their own foamers, and watch them turn on each other, the white stuff bubbling all around their mouths.Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org. He can be reached at beinhart@earthlink.com. Copyright © 1998-2006 Online JournalEmail Online Journal Editor

Was the 2004 election stolen

Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House. BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. The complete article, with Web-only citations, follows. Talk about it in our National Affairs blog, or see exclusive documents, sources, charts and commentary. Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2) But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10) The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11) Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.'' But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn?t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15) ''It was terrible,'' says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. ''People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct -- it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I'm terribly disheartened.'' Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. ''Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,'' Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. ''You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb.'' I. The Exit PollsThe first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark -- they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President Bush.(16) Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: Exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent.(17) ''Exit polls are almost never wrong,'' Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are ''so reliable,'' he added, ''that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.''(18) In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.(19) And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine -- paid for by the Bush administration -- exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency.(20) But that same month, when exit polls revealed disturbing disparities in the U.S. election, the six media organizations that had commissioned the survey treated its very existence as an embarrassment. Instead of treating the discrepancies as a story meriting investigation, the networks scrubbed the offending results from their Web sites and substituted them with ''corrected'' numbers that had been weighted, retroactively, to match the official vote count. Rather than finding fault with the election results, the mainstream media preferred to dismiss the polls as flawed.(21) ''The people who ran the exit polling, and all those of us who were their clients, recognized that it was deeply flawed,'' says Tom Brokaw, who served as anchor for NBC News during the 2004 election. ''They were really screwed up -- the old models just don't work anymore. I would not go on the air with them again.'' In fact, the exit poll created for the 2004 election was designed to be the most reliable voter survey in history. The six news organizations -- running the ideological gamut from CBS to Fox News -- retained Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International,(22) whose principal, Warren Mitofsky, pioneered the exit poll for CBS in 1967(23) and is widely credited with assuring the credibility of Mexico's elections in 1994.(24) For its nationwide poll, Edison/Mitofsky selected a random subsample of 12,219 voters(25) -- approximately six times larger than those normally used in national polls(26) -- driving the margin of error down to approximately plus or minus one percent.(27) On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(28) In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.(29) As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina.(30) Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000.(31) ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''(32) But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.(33) According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. ''As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,'' he says, ''it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.'' (See The Tale of the Exit Polls) Puzzled by the discrepancies, Freeman laboriously examined the raw polling data released by Edison/Mitofsky in January 2005. ''I'm not even political -- I despise the Democrats,'' he says. ''I'm a survey expert. I got into this because I was mystified about how the exit polls could have been so wrong.'' In his forthcoming book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, Freeman lays out a statistical analysis of the polls that is deeply troubling. In its official postmortem report issued two months after the election, Edison/Mitofsky was unable to identify any flaw in its methodology -- so the pollsters, in essence, invented one for the electorate. According to Mitofsky, Bush partisans were simply disinclined to talk to exit pollsters on November 2nd(34) -- displaying a heretofore unknown and undocumented aversion that skewed the polls in Kerry's favor by a margin of 6.5 percent nationwide.(35) Industry peers didn't buy it. John Zogby, one of the nation's leading pollsters, told me that Mitofsky's ''reluctant responder'' hypothesis is ''preposterous.''(36) Even Mitofsky, in his official report, underscored the hollowness of his theory: ''It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters.''(37) Now, thanks to careful examination of Mitofsky's own data by Freeman and a team of eight researchers, we can say conclusively that the theory is dead wrong. In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey -- compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ''The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,'' observes Freeman, ''but actually contradicts it.'' What's more, Freeman found, the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent -- a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country.(39) ''When you look at the numbers, there is a tremendous amount of data that supports the supposition of election fraud,'' concludes Freeman. ''The discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. All these are strong indicators of fraud -- and yet this supposition has been utterly ignored by the press and, oddly, by the Democratic Party.'' The evidence is especially strong in Ohio. In January, a team of mathematicians from the National Election Data Archive, a nonpartisan watchdog group, compared the state's exit polls against the certified vote count in each of the forty-nine precincts polled by Edison/Mitofsky. In twenty-two of those precincts -- nearly half of those polled -- they discovered results that differed widely from the official tally. Once again -- against all odds -- the widespread discrepancies were stacked massively in Bush's favor: In only two of the suspect twenty-two precincts did the disparity benefit Kerry. The wildest discrepancy came from the precinct Mitofsky numbered ''27,'' in order to protect the anonymity of those surveyed. According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.(40) Such results, according to the archive, provide ''virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount.'' The discrepancies, the experts add, ''are consistent with the hypothesis that Kerry would have won Ohio's electoral votes if Ohio's official vote counts had accurately reflected voter intent.''(41) According to Ron Baiman, vice president of the archive and a public policy analyst at Loyola University in Chicago, ''No rigorous statistical explanation'' can explain the ''completely nonrandom'' disparities that almost uniformly benefited Bush. The final results, he adds, are ''completely consistent with election fraud -- specifically vote shifting.'' II. The Partisan OfficialNo state was more important in the 2004 election than Ohio. The state has been key to every Republican presidential victory since Abraham Lincoln's, and both parties overwhelmed the state with television ads, field organizers and volunteers in an effort to register new voters and energize old ones. Bush and Kerry traveled to Ohio a total of forty-nine times during the campaign -- more than to any other state.(42) But in the battle for Ohio, Republicans had a distinct advantage: The man in charge of the counting was Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee.(43) As Ohio's secretary of state, Blackwell had broad powers to interpret and implement state and federal election laws -- setting standards for everything from the processing of voter registration to the conduct of official recounts.(44) And as Bush's re-election chair in Ohio, he had a powerful motivation to rig the rules for his candidate. Blackwell, in fact, served as the ''principal electoral system adviser'' for Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida,(45) where he witnessed firsthand the success of his counterpart Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who co-chaired Bush's campaign there.(46) Blackwell -- now the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio(47) -- is well-known in the state as a fierce partisan eager to rise in the GOP. An outspoken leader of Ohio's right-wing fundamentalists, he opposes abortion even in cases of rape(48) and was the chief cheerleader for the anti-gay-marriage amendment that Republicans employed to spark turnout in rural counties(49). He has openly denounced Kerry as ''an unapologetic liberal Democrat,''(50) and during the 2004 election he used his official powers to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens in Democratic strongholds. In a ruling issued two weeks before the election, a federal judge rebuked Blackwell for seeking to ''accomplish the same result in Ohio in 2004 that occurred in Florida in 2000.''(51) ''The secretary of state is supposed to administer elections -- not throw them,'' says Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Cleveland who has dealt with Blackwell for years. ''The election in Ohio in 2004 stands out as an example of how, under color of law, a state election official can frustrate the exercise of the right to vote.'' The most extensive investigation of what happened in Ohio was conducted by Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.(52) Frustrated by his party's failure to follow up on the widespread evidence of voter intimidation and fraud, Conyers and the committee's minority staff held public hearings in Ohio, where they looked into more than 50,000 complaints from voters.(53) In January 2005, Conyers issued a detailed report that outlined ''massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio.'' The problems, the report concludes, were ''caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.''(54) ''Blackwell made Katherine Harris look like a cupcake,'' Conyers told me. ''He saw his role as limiting the participation of Democratic voters. We had hearings in Columbus for two days. We could have stayed two weeks, the level of fury was so high. Thousands of people wanted to testify. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before.'' When ROLLING STONE confronted Blackwell about his overtly partisan attempts to subvert the election, he dismissed any such claim as ''silly on its face.'' Ohio, he insisted in a telephone interview, set a ''gold standard'' for electoral fairness. In fact, his campaign to subvert the will of the voters had begun long before Election Day. Instead of welcoming the avalanche of citizen involvement sparked by the campaign, Blackwell permitted election officials in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo to conduct a massive purge of their voter rolls, summarily expunging the names of more than 300,000 voters who had failed to cast ballots in the previous two national elections.(55) In Cleveland, which went five-to-one for Kerry, nearly one in four voters were wiped from the rolls between 2000 and 2004.(56) There were legitimate reasons to clean up voting lists: Many of the names undoubtedly belonged to people who had moved or died. But thousands more were duly registered voters who were deprived of their constitutional right to vote -- often without any notification -- simply because they had decided not to go to the polls in prior elections.(57) In Cleveland's precinct 6C, where more than half the voters on the rolls were deleted,(58) turnout was only 7.1 percent(59) -- the lowest in the state. According to the Conyers report, improper purging ''likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide.''(60) If only one in ten of the 300,000 purged voters showed up on Election Day -- a conservative estimate, according to election scholars -- that is 30,000 citizens who were unfairly denied the opportunity to cast ballots. III. The Strike ForceIn the months leading up to the election, Ohio was in the midst of the biggest registration drive in its history. Tens of thousands of volunteers and paid political operatives from both parties canvassed the state, racing to register new voters in advance of the October 4th deadline. To those on the ground, it was clear that Democrats were outpacing their Republican counterparts: A New York Times analysis before the election found that new registrations in traditional Democratic strongholds were up 250 percent, compared to only twenty-five percent in Republican-leaning counties.(61) ''The Democrats have been beating the pants off us in the air and on the ground,'' a GOP county official in Columbus confessed to The Washington Times.(62) To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as ''caging.'' During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging.(63) But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters(64) in sixty-five counties.(65) On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett -- who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County -- sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable.(66) Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland.(67) There were plenty of valid reasons that voters had failed to respond to the mailings: The list included people who couldn't sign for the letters because they were serving in the U.S. military, college students whose school and home addresses differed,(68) and more than 1,000 homeless people who had no permanent mailing address.(69) But the undeliverable mail, Bennett claimed, proved the new registrations were fraudulent. By law, each voter was supposed to receive a hearing before being stricken from the rolls.(70) Instead, in the week before the election, kangaroo courts were rapidly set up across the state at Blackwell's direction that would inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters at a time(71) -- a process that one Democratic election official in Toledo likened to an ''inquisition.''(72) Not that anyone was given a chance to actually show up and defend their right to vote: Notices to challenged voters were not only sent out impossibly late in the process, they were mailed to the very addresses that the Republicans contended were faulty.(73) Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation, sheriff's detectives in Sandusky County were dispatched to the homes of challenged voters to investigate the GOP's claims of fraud.(74) Next page--1) Manual Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating, ''Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether,'' The Washington Post, November 11, 2004. 2) The New York Times Editorial Desk, ''About Those Election Results,'' The New York Times, November 14, 2004. 3) United States Department of Defense, ''Defense%20Department%20Special%20Briefing%20on%20Federal%20Voting%20Assistance%20Program," 4) Overseas Vote Foundation, ''2004 Post Election Survey Results,'' June 2005, page 11. 5) Jennifer Joan Lee, ''Pentagon Blocks Site for Voters Outside U.S.,'' International Herald Tribune, September 20, 2004. 6) Meg Landers, ''Librarian Bares Possible Voter Registration Dodge,'' Mail Tribune (Jackson County, OR), September 21, 2004. 7) Mark Brunswick and Pat Doyle, ''Voter Registration; 3 former workers: Firm paid pro-Bush bonuses; One said he was told his job was to bring back cards for GOP voters,'' Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), October 27, 2004. 8) Federal Election Commission, Federal Elections 2004: Election Results for the U.S. President. 9) Ellen Theisen and Warren Stewart, Summary Report on New Mexico State Election Data, January 4, 2005, pg. 2 James W. Bronsan, ''In 2004, New Mexico Worst at Counting Votes,'' Scripps Howard News Service, December 22, 2004. 10) ''A Summary of the 2004 Election Day Survey; How We Voted: People, Ballots & Polling Places; A Report to the American People by the United States Election Assistance Commission'', September 2005, pg. 10. 11) Facts mentioned in this paragraph are subsequently cited throughout the story. 12) See ''Ohio's Missing Votes'' 13) Federal Election Commission, Federal Elections 2004: Election Results for the U.S. President. 14) Democratic National Committee, Voting Rights Institute, ''Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio'', June 22, 2005. Page 5 15) See ''VIII. Rural Counties.'' 16) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004'' prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofksy International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 3 17) This refers to data for German national elections in 1994, 1998 and 2002, previously cited by Steven F. Freeman. 18) Dick Morris, ''Those Faulty Exit Polls Were Sabotage,'' The Hill, November 4, 2004. 19) Martin Plissner, ''Exit Polls to Protect the Vote,'' The New York Times, October 17, 2004. 20) Matt Kelley, ''U.S. Money has Helped Opposition in Ukraine,'' Associated Press, December 11, 2004. Daniel Williams, ''Court Rejects Ukraine Vote; Justices Cite Massive Fraud in Runoff, Set New Election,'' The Washington Post, December 4, 2004. 21) Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, ''Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count,'' Seven Stories Press, July 2006, Page 102. 22) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004; prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 3. 23) Mitofsky International 24) Tim Golden, ''Election Near, Mexicans Question the Questioners,'' The New York Times, August 10, 1994. 25) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004; prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 59. 26) Jonathan D. Simon, J.D., and Ron P. Baiman, Ph.D., ''The 2004 Presidential Election: Who Won the Popular Vote? An Examination of the Comparative Validity of Exit Poll and Vote Count Data.'' FreePress.org, December 29, 2004, P. 9 27) Analysis by Steven F. Freeman. 28) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 134 29) Jim Rutenberg, ''Report Says Problems Led to Skewing Survey Data,'' The New York Times, November 5, 2004. 30) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 134 31) Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies. U.S. Count Votes. Baiman R, et al. March 31, 2005. Page 3. 32) Notes From Campaign Trail, Fox News Network, Live Event, 8:00 p.m. EST, November 2, 2004. 33) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 101-102 34) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004; prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 4. 35) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 120. 36) Interview with John Zogby 37) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004; prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 4. 38) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 128. 39) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 130. 40) ''The Gun is Smoking: 2004 Ohio Precinct-level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount,'' U.S. Count Votes, National Election Data Archive, January 23, 2006. 41) ''The Gun is Smoking,'' pg. 16. 42) The Washington Post, ''Charting the Campaign: Top Five Most Visited States,'' November 2, 2004. 43) John McCarthy, ''Nearly a Month Later, Ohio Fight Goes On,'' Associated Press Online, November 30, 2004. 44) Ohio Revised Code, 3501.04, Chief Election Officer'' 45) Joe Hallett, ''Blackwell Joins GOP's Spin Team,'' The Columbus Dispatch, November 30, 2004. 46) Gary Fineout, ''Records Indicate Harris on Defense,'' Ledger (Lakeland, Florida), November 18, 2000. 47) http://www.kenblackwell.com/ 48) Joe Hallett, ''Governor; Aggressive First Round Culminates Tuesday,'' Columbus Dispatch, April 30, 2006. 49) Sandy Theis, ''Blackwell Accused of Breaking Law by Pushing Same-Sex Marriage Ban,'' Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), October 29, 2004. 50) Raw Story, ''Republican Ohio Secretary of State Boasts About Delivering Ohio to Bush.'' 51) In the United States District Court For the Northern District of Ohio Northern Division, The Sandusky County Democratic Party et al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, Case No. 3:04CV7582, Page 8. 52) Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff (Rep. John Conyers, Jr.), January 5, 2005. 53) Preserving Democracy, pg. 8. 54) Preserving Democracy, pg. 4. 55) The board of elections in Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton counties. 56) Analysis by Richard Hayes Phillips, a voting rights advocate. 57) Fritz Wenzel, ''Purging of Rolls, Confusion Anger Voters; 41% of Nov. 2 Provisional Ballots Axed in Lucas County,'' Toledo Blade, January 9, 2005. 58) Analysis by Hayes Phillips. 59) Cuyahoga County Board of Elections 60) Preserving Democracy, pg. 6. 61) Ford Fessenden, ''A Big Increase of New Voters in Swing States,'' The New York Times, September 26, 2004. 62) Ralph Z. Hallow, ''Republicans Go 'Under the Radar' in Rural Ohio,'' The Washington Times, October 28, 2004. 63) Jo Becker, ''GOP Challenging Voter Registrations,'' The Washington Post, October 29, 2004. 64) Janet Babin, ''Voter Registrations Challenged in Ohio,'' NPR, All Things Considered, October 28, 2004. 65) In the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division, Amy Miller et al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, Case no. C-1-04-735, Page 2. 66) Sandy Theis, ''Fraud-Busters Busted; GOP's Blanket Challenge Backfires in a Big Way,'' Plain Dealer, October 31, 2004. 67) Daniel Tokaji, ''Early Returns on Election Reform,'' George Washington Law Review, Vol. 74, 2005, page 1235 68) Sandy Theis, ''Fraud-Busters Busted; GOP's Blanket Challenge Backfires in a Big Way,'' Plain Dealer, October 31, 2004. 69) Andrew Welsh-Huggins, ''Out of Country, Off Beaten Path; Reason for Voting Challenges Vary,'' Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), October 27, 2004. 70) Ohio Revised Code; 3505.19 71) Directive No. 2004-44 from J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio Sec'y of State, to All County Boards of Elections Members, Directors, and Deputy Directors 1 (Oct. 26, 2004). 72) Fritz Wenzel, ''Challenges Filed Against 931 Lucas County Voters,'' Toledo Blade, October 27, 2004. 73) In the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division, Amy Miller et al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, Case no. C-1-04-735, Page 4. 74) LaRaye Brown, ''Elections Board Plans Hearing For Challenges,'' The News Messenger, October 26, 2004. ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. Posted Jun 01, 2006 5:02 PM

Send Malkin to Iraq

Malkin on media's Haditha coverage: "[T]here are puddles of drool in the offices of the L.A. Times and The New York Times" http://mediamatters.org/items/200606020010 On the June 1 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson, right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin blasted the media coverage of alleged killings of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops in Haditha, claiming that there are "puddles of drool in the offices of the L.A. Times and The New York Times." Malkin suggested that there be "a ratcheting down of all the hyperventilation and treat this incident with the seriousness and sobriety that it deserves." Malkin went on to complain that "there is a large antiwar contingent that is willing to believe every last lie about our troops. And I think that our troops deserve at least as much deference and attention paid to their rights and the presumption of innocence as, oh, say, [suspected 9-11 mastermind] Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or O.J. Simpson or [Crips gang co-founder] Tookie Williams." In a May 28 editorial, The New York Times described the Haditha incident as "the latest indication of what terrible things can happen when soldiers are required to occupy hostile civilian territory in the midst of an armed insurrection and looming civil war," and that questions surrounding the incident "have awful resonance for those who remember Vietnam, and what that prolonged and ultimately pointless war did to both the Vietnamese and the American social fabric." In a May 31 editorial titled "What happened at the Iraqi My Lai?," the Los Angeles Times wrote: "If Marines 'avenged' the killing of a comrade by terrorizing and killing innocent Iraqis, they disgraced their uniform and must be punished. The same is true of anyone higher in the chain of command who helped conceal what happened on November 19, 2005, in Haditha in western Iraq." The editorial added: "If the allegations of a massacre are corroborated -- and a full disclosure is overdue -- the debate about the wisdom of the U.S. mission in Iraq inevitably will become even more inflamed. But in Iraq, as in Vietnam, larger 'explanations' for atrocities cannot be regarded as excuses." Other right-wing pundits have also complained about media coverage of the Haditha incident on Fox News. For example, on the May 31 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly claimed that the "left-wing press" and others are "rejoic[ing]" over Haditha, as Media Matters for America noted. From the June 1 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson: GIBSON: The U.S. military is conducting at least two investigations into claims that U.S. Marines killed two dozen unarmed civilians in Haditha last year. President Bush is promising a full investigation and so is the Iraqi government. And now, those crying "cover-up" are seeing some sharp criticism. Joining us now is one of the critics, Fox News contributor and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin. So, Michelle, it seems that there was clearly some kind of -- I don't know if you would call it a cover-up, but the correct story wasn't told in the first case because a couple of commanders had been relieved of duty, so why go after the people crying "cover-up"? MALKIN: Well, what I really want to get across, John, is that we don't know exactly what happened, and I am very dismayed by a lot of our colleagues in the media who pretend that they do know what happened. And there are puddles of drool in the offices of the L.A. Times and The New York Times, whose columnists and editorial writers are screaming, "Iraqi My Lai, My Lai, My Lai," and when they get tired of living old history, invoking Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo Bay with ultimate confidence about what happened here. Yes, there are some very disturbing allegations about what happened on that day and also a possible cover-up, and the Bargewell report will tell us exactly what happened, and I'm glad to hear the Bush administration say they will make all of these findings public. But in the meantime, I think there should be a ratcheting down of all the hyperventilation, and we should treat this incident with the seriousness and sobriety that it deserves. We're not getting that. GIBSON: Do you sense that people are trying to make Haditha into the entire war? MALKIN: Yes, of course. And I think that that context is so important that this incident did not happen in a vacuum, and the media treatment of it didn't either. Now, I have to say that I think actually that Time magazine did a good service in bringing this forward and showing us that the original story that the Marines gave apparently was not true, that the 24 civilians -- upwards of 24 civilians did not die in a roadside bomb attack. And we have to commend, and the Iraqi people themselves in this neighborhood commend, the NCIS for how they are conducting this, and I think it's interesting to note that the Iraqi government itself, not a single one of their politicians had bothered to go visit these survivors until this media thing played out here. So, you know, I just think that you have to keep in mind that there is a large antiwar contingent that is willing to believe every last lie about our troops. And I think that our troops deserve at least as much deference and attention paid to their rights and the presumption of innocence as, oh, say, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or O.J. Simpson or Tookie Williams. GIBSON: All right. Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin. Michelle, thank you. Contact: Michelle Malkin E-mail: writemalkin@gmail.com Contact: Fox News Channel FOX News Channel1-888-369-4762Comments@foxnews.com1211 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 10036 Contact: The Big Story with John Gibson The Big Story with John Gibson

More good news from Iraq.... Oh wait

Back to Story - Help As accusations mount, Iraq furor grows By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer 37 minutes ago A third set of allegations that U.S. troops have deliberately killed civilians is fueling a furor in Iraq and drawing strong condemnations from government and human rights officials. "It looks like the killing of Iraqi civilians is becoming a daily phenomenon," the chairman of the Iraqi Human Rights Association, Muayed al-Anbaki, said Friday after video ran on television of children and adults slain in a raid in March on the Iraqi village of Ishaqi north of Baghdad. Al-Anbaki's comments came a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki upbraided the U.S. military over allegations that Marines killed two dozen unarmed civilians in the western city of Haditha, calling it "a horrible crime." They were his strongest public comments on the subject since his government was sworn in last month. U.S. commanders have ordered new ethics training for all troops in Iraq. But the flow of revelations and investigations threatens to undermine Iraq's new government and public support in America for President Bush's management of the war. Iraq's government also began its own investigation of the deaths in Haditha. In addition to the Haditha case, in which Marines are alleged to have gunned down 24 civilians in a rage of revenge for a bombing that killed a Marine in November, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman could face murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges as early as Friday in the April shooting death of an Iraqi man in yet another incident, a defense attorney said Thursday. Military prosecutors plan to file the charges against the seven servicemen, who are being held in solitary confinement at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Marine Corps base, said Jeremiah Sullivan III, who represents one of the men. The Iraqi man reportedly was dragged from his home west of Baghdad and shot. The Los Angeles Times and NBC News said troops may have planted an AK-47 and a shovel near the body to make it appear as if the man was an insurgent burying a roadside bomb. Neither suggested a possible motive. The U.S. military had no additional comment Friday on the accusations stemming from a raid March 15 in the village of Ishaqi, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. In March, the U.S. military said four people died when they attacked from the ground and air a house suspected of holding an al-Qaida operative. The house was destroyed. But video shot by an AP Television News cameraman at the time and aired on March 15 shows at least five children dead. The video shows at least one adult male and four young children with obvious entry wounds to the head. One child has an obvious entry wound to the side caused by a bullet. The March report spelled the village's name as Isahaqi. Local Iraqis said there were 11 total dead, and charged that they were killed by U.S. troops before the house was leveled. The video includes an unidentified man saying "children were stuck in the room, alone and surrounded." "After they handcuffed them, they shot them dead. Later, they struck the house with their planes. They wanted to hide the evidence. Even a 6-month-old infant was killed. Even the cows were killed, too," he said. The video included shots of the bodies of five children and two men wrapped in blankets. Other video showed the bodies of three children in the back of a pickup truck that took them to the hospital in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's former hometown. Police Capt. Laith Mohammed said the March 15 attack that hit Ishaqi involved U.S. warplanes and armor. Riyadh Majid, who identified himself as the nephew of Faez Khalaf, the head of the household who was killed, told AP at the time that U.S. forces landed in helicopters and raided the home. Khalaf's brother, Ahmed, said nine of the victims were family members who lived at the house and two were visitors. The U.S. military, which said in March that the allegations were being investigated, said it was targeting and captured an individual suspected of supporting foreign fighters of the al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist network. It had no further comment Friday. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said at a news conference Thursday that "about three or four" inquiries were being carried out around the country, but he would not provide any details. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday defended the training and conduct of U.S. troops and said incidents such as the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians shouldn't happen. "We know that 99.9 percent of our forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner. We also know that in conflicts things that shouldn't happen, do happen," he said. "We don't expect U.S. soldiers to act that way, and they're trained not to." U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called the allegations "very, very serious" and said the world will see a thorough military investigation. "If people are found to have committed crimes, those people will be held responsible and they will be held accountable," Gonzales said Friday in an interview with WOAI-AM, a radio station in San Antonio. "The president expects that, and I know the leadership in the military wants to see that happen as well." Iraqi officials and relatives also said U.S. forces killed two Iraqi women — one of them about to give birth — when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. The U.S. military said coalition troops fired at a car after it entered a clearly marked prohibited area near an observation post but failed to stop despite repeated visual and auditory warnings. It said the incident was being investigated. Army Brig. Gen. Donald Campbell, the chief of staff of the Multinational Corps-Iraq, said at a briefing Friday that incidents of misconduct could result from the stress and fear of battling an enemy that doesn't abide by the rules of war, and often cannot be distinguished from the civilian population. "It doesn't excuse the acts that have occurred, and we're going to look into them. But I would say it's stress, fear, isolation and, in some cases, they're just upset. They see their buddies getting blown up on occasion, and they could snap," Campbell said.

Gay marriage ban- no win for Bush

The American Debate Gay-marriage ban a no-win deal for Bush By Dick Polman Inquirer Political Analyst The religious conservatives who worked hard to reelect President Bush in 2004 have long anticipated that the White House would reward them by pushing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. But that's not happening. Too many other issues predominate, everything from Iraq to immigration. As a result, Bush seems ill-positioned to spend dwindling political capital on a social crusade - especially at a time when a nod toward greater religiosity might turn off secular Republican voters and thus imperil the moderate Republicans in Congress who are already struggling to keep their jobs in November. So the religious right, which may well have been pivotal in helping Bush keep his job, appears destined for major disappointment in 2006. It's true that Senate Republican leaders, including Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, have slated a floor vote on the amendment for early June, in hopes that grateful religious conservatives will show up to vote in November. But the overall party message is mixed. Laura Bush told Fox News last weekend that same-sex marriage should not be used "as a campaign tool," and Mary Cheney, the vice president's gay daughter, told CNN Wednesday that "writing discrimination into the Constitution of the United States is fundamentally wrong." Bush has said virtually nothing. Actually, on the eve of his second term, he said he was averse to pushing hard for an amendment, so in a sense he is simply being consistent. To religious-right leader Gary Bauer, the president's underwhelming effort is "inexplicable." Bauer said the other day that Bush "should be calling members of Congress, twisting arms, making public statements, rallying the troops. This issue is extremely important to his base. This administration needs to get its base back." He warned that if Bush doesn't crusade against gay marriage, "this is just going to be one more thing that keeps people at home on Election Day." A similar warning was issued by Tony Perkins, another religious-right leader, who told Fox News on Wednesday that Bush faced "the very real potential of deflating what's left of the GOP base. They deflated the fiscal conservatives, because of [the increases in] spending, and now they risk deflating the social conservatives by failing to act on our interests." Some Republican strategists are sympathetic. Bill Pascoe, who has ties to the conservative wing, says that these aggrieved activists are the "most likely to work their butts off for the party's candidates in the midterm elections," and after their herculean labors in 2004, "they have every right to expect that their concerns will be addressed." Bauer is not just spinning for his side when he contends that this issue "is a major reason why the president is sitting in the Oval Office today." In 2004, the Bush forces and their religious-right allies placed antigay-marriage measures on the ballot in 11 states - all of which passed. Several teams of political scientists have determined that those measures stoked conservative turnout and swelled Bush's tally. One scholarly paper, referring to pivotal Ohio, has concluded: "Gay marriage may well have put Bush over the top in the state." Which brings us to 2006. Some analysts argue that the careers of key Republican senators may hinge on whether social and religious conservative voters are sufficiently motivated - and that, in turn, could hinge on whether they view the GOP as sufficiently committed to defending traditional matrimony. In Pennsylvania, Bush ally Santorum, a cosponsor of the constitutional ban, will need a strong November turnout from cultural conservatives, notably in Chester, Lancaster and Westmoreland Counties. In Ohio, imperiled Mike DeWine, mindful of the base, is vowing to take a lead role next month in pushing for the ban. And in Tennessee (where a state measure against same-sex marriage will be on the ballot), the GOP hopes a big conservative turnout will thwart Democratic Rep. Harold Ford's bid for the Senate seat being vacated by Majority Leader Bill Frist. "These voters are crucial to the Republicans in tight races," said Bruce Cain, a political analyst who directs the University of California's Washington program. "Even if we're talking about only one or two percentage points, that could be enough to make the difference, especially for someone like Santorum." (Even Democratic chairman Howard Dean says it's wise to woo religious conservatives; this month, he visited Pat Robertson's TV show and said that the 2004 Democratic platform endorsed "marriage between a man and a woman." But this turned out to be Dean's latest verbal misfire, because the Democratic platform endorsed no such thing.) Yet, if the clout of these voters is so important, what explains the muted White House push for the ban? Three words: competing political interests. Other Republican factions are demanding attention. Party moderates are concerned about the fate of House incumbents from socially tolerant districts in the Northeast. The fear is that many party voters might stay home, or swing to the Democrats, if they feel their leaders are more fixated on gay marriage than on issues they deem more important, such as Iraq and the price of gas. These vulnerable incumbents include Jim Gerlach and Mike Fitzpatrick in Philadelphia's Pennsylvania suburbs, and three Republicans in Connecticut: Rob Simmons, Chris Shays, and Nancy Johnson. To survive, all five will rely on moderate Republicans and independents. Yet, according to surveys by Pew, Bush's job-approval rating among independents fell from 48 percent in January 2005 to 22 percent a month ago. A full-throated crusade against gay marriage would not bring that number northward. GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio said Friday: "We can't afford to alienate moderate voters any more than they are already alienated... . Issues have a shelf life. Gay marriage passed everywhere [on state ballots] in 2004, but today, a lot of people look at that issue and think, 'It is so over and done.' Our party base is already fracturing, and if we emphasize gay marriage now, it would create new divisions." Why are so many moderate Republican voters feeling alienated? Party strategist Craig Shirley suggested, "There is a fear, among some in the party, that the Republicans are being identified too much as a theological party." With good reason, apparently: Fabrizio estimates, based on his own surveys, that half of today's Republicans are "theocrats" who want government to "promote traditional values by protecting traditional marriage," as opposed to wanting less government intrusion into personal lives. In a sense, this split sums up the dilemma for Santorum this year: If he pushes hard on issues like this, his "theocratic" base may respond favorably - yet that could hurt him badly in the politically moderate, vote-rich suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery Counties. But religious-right leaders insist that saying no to gay marriage is a mainstream position; they cite recent Pew polls showing that 51 percent of Americans oppose the concept. For that reason, said Gary Bauer, "President Bush should be pushing this. This is an issue where the public is on his side, yet he seems too busy to deal with it. At least he'd be able to talk about something that can get people's heads nodding, instead of him getting tuned out." What Bauer didn't mention is that the polls show far less support for amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And the subject doesn't seem to register on the intensity scale, either. The latest Fox News poll, released Friday, listed the 20 issues that Americans are most concerned about, and gay marriage didn't even make the list. That reality is a big reason why the Senate vote next month is just a gesture to the religious right. Sixty-seven senators are needed to pass a constitutional amendment, and there's no way GOP leaders can goad even all their own senators to vote for it. (John McCain is against it.) Hence, Bush's difficult position. He can steer clear of the fight, as he is doing now, and risk alienating religious conservatives who await their reward for services rendered. Or he can spend precious capital in a losing cause, and risk alienating moderates and independents. GOP strategist Pascoe said that, in the end, Bush has to ensure that the antigay-marriage forces show up on Election Day. After all, he said, citing the sour mood within Republican ranks, "our side is going to need every vote it can get." Contact staff writer Dick Polman at 215-854-4430 or dpolman@phillynews.com. Read his daily blog at http://go.philly.com/polman

Best of wedge issue: Bush backs gay marriage ban

Back to Story - Help Bush backs amendment banning gay marriage By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press WriterFri Jun 2, 10:47 AM ET President Bush will promote a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on Monday, the eve of a scheduled Senate vote on the cause that is dear to his conservative backers. The amendment would prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages. To become law, the proposal would need two-thirds support in the Senate and House, and then be ratified by at least 38 state legislatures. It stands little chance of passing the 100-member Senate, where proponents are struggling to get even 50 votes. Several Republicans oppose the measure, and so far only one Democrat — Sen. Ben Nelson (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska — says he will vote for it. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the amendment on May 18 along party lines after a shouting match between a Democrat and the chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa. He bid Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., "good riddance" after Feingold declared his opposition to the amendment and his intention to leave the meeting. Bush aides said he would be making his remarks on the subject Monday. A slim majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press from March. But the poll also showed attitudes are changing: 63 percent opposed gay marriage in February 2004. Those poll results don't reflect how people might feel about amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. The Massachusetts Supreme Court decided to legalize such marriages in 2003. A year later, San Francisco issued thousands of marriage licenses to gay couples. This November, initiatives banning same-sex marriages are expected to be on the ballot in Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. In 2004, 13 states approved initiatives prohibiting gay marriage or civil unions, with 11 states casting votes on Election Day. Bush benefited as religious conservatives turned out to vote and helped him defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry in 2004. In Ohio, an initiative rejecting the legality of civil unions won handily. The same state tipped the election to Bush. "The president firmly believes that marriage is an enduring and sacred institution between men and women and has supported measures to protect the sanctity of marriage," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said. Bush has lost support among conservatives who blame the White House and Congress for runaway government spending, illegal immigration and lack of action on social issues such as the gay marriage amendment. Opponents of the amendment objected to Bush promoting a measure they said amounts to discrimination. "This is fundamentally both a civil rights and religious freedom issue and the president's position of supporting amending the constitution is just dead wrong," said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "This is simply to give ammunition to the so-called religious right just to show that the president is still with them." I wonder how dumb are the religious right, once Bush got "re-elected" the issue of gay marriage ban faded faster than a cheap t-shirt in the wash. If you're one of those people who voted for Bush just on this issue. I have some bad news for you people George W. Bush don't give a damn about gay marriage heck I bet the smirk watch a porno with two girls were getting it on not too long ago. The Republicans know they can't win on the issues so to draw out that 5 to 10% of the population that could tip the election in their favor so the GOP panders to the racists, the religious nuts and the pro life nuts or as I now call them the social retards. And now when it looks like the GOP are in danger of getting their asses kicked out of power they're bringing this issue up once again to save some face. Ok Rove you're probably are going to get that 5 to 6% where you're going to get the other percentage vote from since George W. Bush and the firewall like GOP congress have alienateted even the hardest core GOPer.

So that's why Dick want to do away with taxes

DeVos Has a History of Influencing Tax Policy to Enrich Himself and Amway SBT repeal latest selfish effort to help himself financially LANSING – Today Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer presented evidence showing that GOP gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos has a long history of influencing government tax policy in order to save him, his company Amway and his family hundreds of millions of dollars. “Throughout his career, Dick DeVos has used his and his family’s political influence to enrich Amway and himself at expense of average working families,” said Brewer. “In 1997 DeVos got a $300 million dollar federal tax break on Amway’s China investments. In 1998 he lobbied for the elimination of the federal estate tax, which would save the Amway heirs $1.3 billion. And now he is trying to again save Amway and himself millions of dollars by eliminating the SBT. Add it up – nearly $2 billion in tax cuts for Dick DeVos and Amway.” “DeVos’ pattern of conduct shows that his true motivation for changing tax policy has been to enrich himself and Amway at taxpayers’ expense,” continued Brewer. “This is yet another reason why Dick DeVos must disclose his tax returns so the citizens of Michigan know how much he will benefit from his self-serving advocacy of repealing the SBT.”Single Business Tax Repeal: DeVos is campaigning for the repeal of the Single Business Tax (SBT) which would result in the loss of nearly $2 billion in state revenue. The SBT’s elimination would cost Michigan families an additional $800 a year or force cuts in public education, health care and public safety. DeVos has also said he said he doesn’t have a plan for replacing the revenue. DeVos is advocating for the SBT’s elimination because it will benefit Amway and him financially.Estate Tax RepealA new Public Citizen report details how Amway, Dick DeVos, his family and the Van Andel family are part of a group that have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the federal estate tax, a move that would save DeVos and Van Andel heirs $1.3 billion. The report reveals that Amway first lobbied on the estate tax under Dick DeVos’ Presidency in 1998 and has lobbied every year since. http://www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issue.cfm?ID=1359Tax Break on China Investments:Common Cause reported that a tax loophole was inserted into the 1997 federal tax and budget bill which primarily benefited Amway and its Asian investments, to the tune of nearly $300 million. Amway’s tax giveaway occurred while Dick DeVos was President of the company and after Amway and the DeVos family had given millions of dollars in soft money to various Republican groups during the 1990’s. The $300 million tax loophole for Amway came just before DeVos cut 1,400 Michigan jobs, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in China and created tens of thousands of jobs in China. http://michigandems.com/CommonCause.htm

Media Matters

Horowitz: "Cornel West is a black airhead" http://mediamatters.org/items/200606020004 In a May 28 FrontPageMag.com weblog post, right-wing activist and author David Horowitz referred to Princeton University professor Cornel West as a "black airhead," adding that he "is blessed with these unearned and undeserved perks solely because he's black." Horowitz further described West's work as "useless" and claimed that he "hasn't written as scholarly paper or book in twenty years (if ever)." Horowitz's remarks appeared in defense of recent attacks on his book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery, January 2006), in which he criticized numerous professors for their political views and participation in political events outside the classroom. Horowitz used the term as part of his purported paraphrase of a May 26 AlterNet weblog post by Evan Derkacz, which criticized Horowitz for his attacks on West. In fact, Derkacz defended West as "an American Book Award winner and distinguished intellectual." West, a professor of religion who has published extensively, is no stranger to criticism and controversy. Media Matters for America has repeatedly pointed out false and misleading claims that Horowitz has made about his own book, most recently his comparison between the recent allegations of plagiarism and related academic misconduct by Ward Churchill, professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and the reported activities of other professors Horowitz profiled in his book. From Horowitz's May 28 FrontPageMag.com blog post: One of the professors profiled in my recent book of that title is Cornel West, a man [who] confuses attitudinizing with thought, whose intellectual output the liberal New Republic assessed and found "worthless," who is one of the academic world's most honored and distinguished figures and yet hasn't written a scholarly paper or book in twenty years (if ever). The leftwing journal Alternet is outraged by these facts. Here is its entire argument against my description of the unbearable lightness of Cornel West's being: "In the nation's top universities, African-American representation goes from offensive to paltry. Anywhere from less than 1% of tenured faculty are black to a high of 4.3%. In other words, you'd need to go out of your way to pluck a black professor for your rant about the nature of academia." In other words, Cornel West is a black airhead so don't hurt his feelings by pointing this out. Actually, my book The Professors features portraits of several bloviating dummies like West who are white. Professors Michael Vocino and Grover Furr for example. However, neither Vocino nor Furr have 20 honorary degress, a professorship at Princeton, a $35,000 academic speaking fee, a several hundred thousand dollar academic salary, or a lucrative book racket for appending their signatures to encyclopedic publications of the Harvard press. Cornel West is blessed with these unearned and undeserved perks solely because he's black -- there is no other explanation (but don't hurt his feelings by pointing this out). Contact: David Horowitz David Horowitz Contact: FrontPage Magazine FrontPage Magazine David Horowitz calling someone an air head is like a snail calling a turtle slow, Mr. West is highly respect nationwide while Horowitz fan base is made up yellow belly college Republicans and cowardly campus conservatives whose idea doing their part on the war against terrorism is whine about the anti war marches, slap on yellow little bumper stickers on their mom's Ford Escort and act like online warriors in political chatrooms or message boards.