Jerome at MyDD dismantles the skewed Newsweek poll showing Bush 6 points ahead of Kerry. Why is the poll skewed? One reason is it doesn't account for the party identification of the person polled

It's amazing what sort of story the media can create with just 1117 individuals of their choosing. In their just released poll, which the conservative mouthpieces are using to tout a "late break to Bush" as a result of Osama, and a 6% lead over Kerry among "likely voters" here's the facts.

He's got them, go read.

Here's two clever, one minute Bush videos to watch this weekend:

Bush vs. Cheney, The Debate and
Hard Working George.

Could there be any more reasons not to vote for George W. Bush Tuesday? Here's another one, as set out in this LA Times editorial today, Guantanamo Stonewall:

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 600 foreign terror suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base were entitled to lawyers and the chance to challenge their imprisonment. But in the months since, Pentagon and Justice Department officials have simply acted as if the high court's decision didn't exist, blocking efforts by detainees to meet with their lawyers and insisting on onerous conditions for those meetings.

Last week a federal judge and former federal prosecutor wrote an opinion blasting the Bush administration over its policies at Guantanamo:

A new, in depth profile of Rudy Giuliani in this week's New York Magazine examines his future potential as a presidential candidate in 2008. What an awful idea, although no way would he win with his pre-9/11 background, but this thought is even worse: Rudy as Attorney General or Director of Homeland Security in a Bush II Administration. Some choice quotes:

For Rudy to be a viable candidate in 2008, terrorism still has to be the central issue. He could vanquish it the way he vanquished the squeegee men.

Describing Giuliani back at his hotel after an event:

...Giuliani, in shirtsleeves, is on a gray central couch, an enormous cheese-and-cracker plate in front of him, untouched. When he’s standing, Giuliani is often hunched. Seated, his posture is even odder: He’s so short-waisted that his large head appears perched just above his navel.

On his future:

Many newspapers are printing only redacted versions of Osama bin Laden's statement yesterday. Here is a full translation by the Northeast Intelligence Network. It does seem as if bin Laden's reference to Bush leaving 50,000 people alone in the towers relates to his actions immediately after learning of the attacks, not to a prior warning:

A TalkLeft reader posted this in the comments to Osama Tape: Real or Fake.

When I first read this line from OBL tonight it bothered be for some reason. An hour later I'm wondering if he didn't give something away therein,

"It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the country would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone"

It sounds like he's saying that some sort of specific warning about 9/11 was given to Bush ahead of time because how else would Bush have known to remove the towers occupants?

Interesting.

Read it, send it around, GOTV. From John Kerry's Saturday radio address:

"I see an America of rising opportunity. And I believe hope, not fear is our future. "In three days, we can change the course of our country. I ask for your vote and I ask for your help. When you go to the polls next Tuesday, bring your friends, your family, your neighbors. No one can afford to stand on the sidelines or sit this one out.

"In three days, this campaign will end. The election is in your hands. You can vote now and every day until Election Day. And if you believe we need a fresh start in Iraq . if you believe we can create and keep good jobs here in America ... if you believe we need to get health care costs under control ... if you believe in the promise of stem cell research ... if you believe our deficits are too high and we're too dependent on Mideast oil ...then I ask you to join me and together we'll change America.

"Thank you and God bless America." ---

Ding dong the wicked witch is dead. House and Senate Conferees have given up trying to compromise on the horrible House version of the 9/11 Commission intelligence reform bill known as H.R. 10.

After the election, talks will resume. This is a failure for Bush. He pushed the House version which had new death penalty offenses and contained the most repressive immigration legislation in decades. He pushed a version that might have sent immigrants back to countries where they might be tortured.

We do need intelligence reform legislation. We don't need it with draconian new and expanded law enforcement and immigrant-directed powers. Kudos to the Democratic Senatorial conferees who refused to yield:

• Richard Durbin of Illinois,
• Carl Levin of Michigan,
• John Rockefeller of West Virginia,
• Bob Graham of Florida and
• Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey
• Joe Lieberman of Connecticut

The devil in California's current three-strikes law is in the details. So says the New York Times in an editorial today urging California voters to approve Proposition 66, limiting the third strike in three strikes cases to violent or serious offenses.

In marked contrast with the federal government and the 24 other states that have three-strikes laws, California does not require the third offense to be a violent, or even serious, crime to draw an enhanced sentence of 25 years to life. How prosecutors apply the law varies from county to county. But all too often, people get life sentences for stealing spare tires or T-shirts, or for possessing small amounts of narcotics. According to the Department of Corrections, the last crimes committed by more than half of California's 7,000 third-strikers were nonviolent.

The Bush Campaign would love us to focus on Osama and terror until the election. It's not going to happen. Not when news like this comes up...8 U.S. Marines were killed in Iraq Saturday.

How many more?

by TChris

The Pentagon's first explanation for the missing explosives at Al QaQaa -- that Iraq shipped them to Syria before the U.S. invasion -- became untenable after a news video surfaced showing that the explosives were in place, bearing U.N. seals, after the occupation began. Now the Pentagon has produced Maj. Austin Pearson to explain that his troops removed 250 tons of munitions from Al QaQaa on April 13, 2003 -- none of which carried U.N. seals. But the news video, taken five days later, shows the now-missing HMX, complete with seals, and Pearson admits that his unit didn't haul away any HMX.

Pearson said his team did not go into bunkers bearing seals, and his appearance, arranged by the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, did little to answer how such a large amount of explosive could have disappeared from a site that may well have been under U.S. military control.

The Pentagon says that Pearson's story shows that the Pentagon had a well conceived plan to destroy Iraq's arsenal. The facts, however, can't sustain the spin.

A number of government officials and weapons experts involved in the postwar weapons search have been sharply critical of the U.S. effort to find and secure material that was considered part of Iraq's massive weapons production program. They say that important, well-known Iraqi weapons sites were subject to only cursory searches as the U.S. invasion force thrust north toward Baghdad and then left largely unguarded.

Gary Hart has hit the campaign trail. He adds to speculation about a draft:

If the United States wants to keep a strong presence in Iraq, but few volunteer for military service, “What other course is left?” he said. “The only answer is conscription.”

He also blasted Bush's "imperialistic policy."

The war in Iraq was conceived a decade ago by high officials now in the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to establish a democracy in Iraq and use it to moderate the region and eliminate threats to the world oil supply, Hart said. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were “a smoke screen” to allow the plan to be put into action, Hart said.

More on the war in Iraq: