] First off, Kushner has erected a straw man. No one is
] claiming that the White House should have "foreseen what
] would happen" on September 11. But many do argue that,
] having received the August 6 memo, the administration
] should have reacted more aggressively. Kushner doesn't
] have to agree, but he can't dismiss that argument out of
] hand.

[ This is basically my feeling too. No one with any sense thinks that the PDB is damning evidence that the administration absolutely could have prevented 9/11. What it is, though, is another sign that the attention being given to terrorism and homeland security was not as high a priority as the administration has been claiming. And it also tends to undermine the statement that they lacked evidence that Al Qaeda was planning an attack within the US.

Probably the attacks were still not preventable in that time frame. Probably the FBI / CIA / etc. did and do have systemic problems and suffer from lack of communication, but I'd feel a lot better if it seemed like the administration had acknowledged the threats, the internal problems, and been working to resolve them. At this point, I basically don't see that this was the case. -k]

CJR Campaign Desk: Archives

] To Bush, credibility means that you keep saying today
] what you said yesterday, and that you do today what you
] promised yesterday. "A free Iraq will confirm to a
] watching world that America's word, once given, can be
] relied upon," he argued Tuesday night. When the situation
] is clear and requires pure courage, this steadfastness is
] Bush's most useful trait. But when the situation is
] unclear, Bush's notion of credibility turns out to be
] dangerously unhinged. The only words and deeds that have
] to match are his. No correspondence to reality is
] required. Bush can say today what he said yesterday, and
] do today what he promised yesterday, even if nothing he
] believes about the rest of the world is true.

Fantastic commentary on the seperation of Pres. Bush from reality as noted in his *incredible* press conference yesterday. And yes, I am using incredible by its other meaning-- not credible.

Trust, Don't Verify - Bush's incredible definition of credibility. By William Saletan

] President Bush and his wife saved about $31,000 as a
] result of the tax cuts he championed, according to
] documents the White House released yesterday, but Vice
] President Dick Cheney and his wife lost nearly all of
] their Bush tax cuts to another levy that will soon take
] away part or all of the cuts from 35 million households.

The Washington Post story notes that Sen. Kerry's taxes tripled this year. And no, he does not file jointly with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

The New York Times Washington Tax Cuts Helped President but Far Less So the Cheneys

] APRIL 12--With the September 11 commission set to focus
] on intelligence and law enforcement failures prior to the
] 2001 terror attacks, warnings unheeded--or simply
] ignored--are central to analyzing whether CIA and FBI
] officials could have done more to derail Osama bin
] Laden's deadly plot.
]
] Below are links to three government memos, all drafted
] prior to 9/11, containing red flags about possible terror
] threats.

Unheeded Warnings: Intelligence Memos Cited Possible Terrorist Attacks

] It's been called the most ambitious military effort since
] the Manhattan Project, and the centerpiece of Donald
] Rumsfeld's plans to overhaul America's armed forces: a
] $92 billion push to change almost everything about the
] Army by 2010, from the guns GIs carry, to the officers
] they salute, to the tanks they drive.
]
] A new congressional report is alleging that the Future
] Combat Systems program is poised for major delays and a
] financial train wreck. Worst of all, the report claims,
] the Army knew this was going to happen all along.

Wired News: GAO Says Army on Road to Ruin

] Y'see, Dennis Miller isn't the genius he pretends to be,
] he's that asshole you see at parties who's always making
] obscure references in the hopes that nobody every calls
] him on it. He's the guy who quotes poetry to girls and
] then feigns embarrassment for showing his "sensitive
] side". He's the guy who reads the Cliff's Notes and
] pretends he read the whole book. Miller knows that 98% of
] the time, he can confuse people with "witty" remarks that
] mean nothing like "Howard Dean reminds me of what happens
] when Steve from Blue's Clues pulls an all-night Red Bull
] and absinthe binge with the Marquis de Sade and Snoop
] Doggy Dog." Miller's shtick worked well when we was
] giving softball interviews to celebrities once a week,
] but now that he's got five hours of per week to fill on a
] news channel, he's clearly out of his league.

You should actually go to this site and click the link to Eric Alterman (liberal writer) wrecking Dennis Miller on his new show.

The Talent Show:

] Use the location search (on your home address) to find
] those who live near you that have made presidential
] campaign contributions. You can also search for friends
] or celebrities by name.

This is a neat little tool. Clearly needs to be updated, but still has some valuable info in it.

Neighbor Search

] I'm in a rental car with Al Franken, and we're driving
] across New Hampshire on the Sunday before the nation's
] first primary, heading to a John Edwards rally. The
] Democrats are in a kooky mood following the sudden
] collapse of Howard Dean in Iowa, and Franken -- comedian,
] celebrity, scourge -- is spending two days in the state
] not in any official capacity but as a sort of good-will
] representative from the party's satiric wing. He is not,
] as you might think from the outrageous trappings of his
] comedy, an extreme lefty but rather a devout party man,
] one who says, for example, that the Democratic Leadership
] Council is a moral force for good. He believes in the
] process; he's friends with several of the candidates as
] well as many members of the press corps; he's here to
] soak it all up.

Pretty good article in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine about Al Franken and his new radio network Air America. Good Read.

Al Franken, Seriously

] Texas Safe Voting reviewed the videotapes of the January
] 2004 closed meetings used to review voting systems for
] certification (the videos were acquired by open records
] requests).
]
] What we saw may shock you. Here's a two minute clip, in
] Windows and Quicktime format. The clips show how the
] state of Texas examines voting machines for
] certification.
]
] A group of examiners reviews voting systems, and makes
] certification recommendations to the Secretary of State.
] You might think that these examiners would conduct a
] comprehensive testing process, assessing the voting
] machines against a set of detailed critieria and
] discussing the underlying code.
]
] But there was nothing on the videotapes that resembled a
] testing process. The examiners didn't start with a set of
] criteria to test against. They didn't even start with a
] comparison the new machines to the older versions.
] Instead, the Diebold representatives gave a demo.
] Reviewers voted on the machines and looked at the final
] output. A few of the committee members watched closely,
] while others chatted together.

This is a _must_ see.

Texas Safe Voting - Leaked Video of Texas Certification of Diebold Machines

] The average collegian in the U.S. isn't graduating into a
] world of boundless opportunity, but rather is
] $20,000-plus in the hole thanks to student loans and
] credit cards. So begins the snowball effect: The most
] desirable entry-level jobs often pay wages too low for
] the indebted, who must fork over a large percentage of
] their salaries to Sallie Mae or Citibank.

This problem affects me and practically everyone I know. Very insightful article about the problems that trouble Generation X and Y.

Ryan: Absolutely. There are tons of jobs I would really like to do. However, none of them can provide me with the $60k/yr paycheck that I need to *break even*. sigh.... Here's to someday being able to do what I want-- and yes, I understand that this is a position of relative luxury but still....

Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young: The Ambition Tax