CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, in his bluntest language yet, the U.S. commander-in-charge of the Afghan campaign says al Qaeda fighters are bottled up in a Tora Bora mountainous area, with no access to food or ammunition and no way out. U.S. officials say there's reason to believe Osama bin Laden is in there as well, but they can't be certain.

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.

After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.

the facts are -- and this issue was addressed just yesterday or the day before by General Tommy Franks. General Franks was the CENTCOM commander; he was the four-star in charge of or operations for that whole part of the globe, including both Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the man in charge of those operations. He was the one who developed and executed the plans that worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and he came just within the last 24 or 48 hours and said, it's absolute garbage. It's just not true.

Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State

epublican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.

Election officials in other swing states, from Arizona to Wisconsin and Florida, say they are bracing for similar efforts by Republicans to challenge new voters at polling places, reflecting months of disputes over voting procedures and the anticipation of an election as close as the one in 2000.

Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.

Ohio Democrats were struggling to match the Republicans' move, which had been rumored for weeks. Both parties had until 4 p.m. to register people they had recruited to monitor the election. Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.

The Democrats, who tend to benefit more than Republicans from large turnouts, said they had registered more than 2,000 recruits to try to protect legitimate voters rather than weed out ineligible ones.

Republican officials said they had no intention of disrupting voting but were concerned about the possibility of fraud involving thousands of newly registered Democrats.

– 75% believe Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.

– 74% believe Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in agreements on trade.

– 72% believe Iraq had WMD or a program to develop them.

– 72% believe Bush supports the treaty banning landmines.

– 69% believe Bush supports the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

– 61% believe if Bush knew there were no WMD he would not have gone to war.

– 60% believe most experts believe Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.

– 58% believe the Duelfer report concluded that Iraq had either WMD or a major program to develop them.

– 57% believe that the majority of people in the world would prefer to see Bush reelected.

– 56% believe most experts think Iraq had WMD.

– 55% believe the 9/11 report concluded Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda.

– 51% believe Bush supports the Kyoto treaty.

– 20% believe Iraq was directly involved in 9/11.

...why are Bush supporters clinging so tightly to beliefs that have been so visibly refuted? As discussed, one possible key explanation for why Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had WMD or a major WMD program, and supported Al Qaeda is that they continue to hear the Bush administration confirming these beliefs.

Another possible explanation is that Bush supporters cling to these beliefs becaue they are necessary for their support for the decision to go to war with Iraq....To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions is difficult to bear, especially in light of the continuing costs in terms of lives and money. Apparently, to avoid this cognitive dissonance, Bush supporters suppress awareness of unsettling information.

[snip]

So why do Bush supporters show such a resistance to accepting dissonant information? While it is normal for people to show some resistance, the magnitude of the denial goes beyond the ordinary. Bush supporters have succeeded in suppressing awareness of the findings of a whole series of high-profile reports about pre-war Iraq that have been blazoned across the headlines of newspapers and prompted extensive high-profile and agonizing reflection. The fact that a large portion of Americans say they are unaware that the original reasons that the U.S. took military action--and for which Americans continue to die on a daily basis--are not turning out to be valid, are probably not due to a simple failure to pay attention to the news.

The roots of this resistance to this information very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11...Large numbers of Americans had a powerful bonding experience with the president -- a bond they may be loath to relinquish.

[snip]

Bush appears to assume that his support is fragile. He refuses to admit to making any mistakes....to remain bonded to him means to enter into [this] false reality.

NEW YORK — On Sept. 9, as it must frequently do, the U.S. government turned to Wall Street to raise a little cash, and Paul Calvetti bet that demand for $9 billion worth of long-term Treasury bonds would be “huge.”

But at 1 p.m., as the auction opened and the numbers began streaming across his flat-panel screens, the head of Treasury trading at Barclays Capital Inc. slumped in his chair. Foreign investors, who had been voraciously buying Treasury bonds, failed to show up. Bond prices cascaded downward, interest rates rose, and in five minutes, Calvetti, 38, who makes money by bidding on bonds at one price and hoping market demand lets him quickly resell them at a profit, had lost $1.5 million.

“It’s amazing,” he gasped, after the Treasury Department announced that Wall Street traders, not foreigners, had been left to buy virtually the entire auction. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.”

The most recent auction of 10-year Treasury notes may have been a fluke, a momentary downturn in one aspect of the massive world market for U.S. government and private-sector bonds, stocks and other securities — a market so large and diverse that it has long been the world’s safe haven. But a rash of new data, including Treasury Department figures released Monday showing a net sell-off by foreigners of U.S. bonds in August, has stoked debate over whether overseas investors — private individuals, institutions and government central banks — are growingly dangerously bearish on the U.S. economy.

It is a portentous issue. Foreign governments and individuals hold about half of the $3.7 trillion in outstanding U.S. Treasury bonds, for example, and the government has been heavily dependent on continued overseas bond purchases to finance the roughly $1 billion a day it has to borrow to pay its bills. Foreign lending and investment are also needed to finance the country’s roughly $50 billion monthly trade deficit, while foreign capital has been a key prop to U.S. stock prices.

A turn in overseas attitudes toward the United States could ripple deeply through the economy, depressing the market, raising interest rates and pushing down the value of the dollar.

Giordano's attorney argued before the 2nd U.S. Circuit of Appeals on Wednesday that the former mayor wasn't using his political power when he paid to have oral sex with the 8- and 10-year-old girls.

If the three-panel appeals court agrees, it could jeopardize Giordano's conviction and 37-year prison sentence.

During an hour-long court hearing Wednesday, Judge Dennis Jacobs said that committing a crime while mayor is not necessarily the same thing as using political office to commit a crime.

Jacobs suggested that Giordano didn't need to use his political power to force the girls into sex.

"Did the children testify that they wouldn't have submitted if he hadn't been the mayor?" Jacobs asked federal prosecutors. "They never said that because it's not true."

Between 2000 and 2001, Giordano paid a crack-addicted prostitute to bring her daughter and niece to City Hall, his home and his law office for oral sex. After each encounter, Giordano told the girls not to talk about it or the woman would go to jail.

Prosecutors said those warnings, plus the fact that Giordano drove a police cruiser and carried a badge, made him an intimidating figure whom the girls were afraid to disobey.

"He watched over them like God," Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Jongbloed said. "He ruled the city."

THE REPUBLICANS are out to steal the 2004 election -- before, during, and after Election Day. Before Election Day, they are employing such dirty tricks as improper purges of voter rolls, use of dummy registration groups that tear up Democratic registrations, and the suppression of Democratic efforts to sign up voters, especially blacks and students.

On Election Day, Republicans will attempt to intimidate minority voters by having poll watchers threaten criminal prosecution if something is technically amiss with their ID, and they will again use technical mishaps to partisan advantage.

But the most serious assault on democracy itself is likely to come after Election Day.

Here is a flat prediction: If neither candidate wins decisively, the Bush campaign will contrive enough court challenges in enough states so that we won't know the winner election night.

The right stumbled on a gambit in 2000, which could become standard operating procedure in close elections: If the election ends up in the courts, all courts eventually lead to the Supreme Court, which, as we learned, can overrule state courts -- and pick the president.

[snip]

If the courts took away the people's right to choose the president, and George Bush in effect stole two elections in a row, this would surely produce a constitutional crisis and a crisis of legitimacy.

But what if they gave a constitutional crisis and nobody came? The most ominous outcome of all would be public passivity, echoing 2000. That would confirm that the theft of our democracy was real.

Call me partisan, but the best insurance against this horrific outcome would be a Kerry win big enough so that even Karl Rove would not dare to mount this maneuver. A razor-thin race virtually invites it. And if Bush wins handily, our democracy will have other problems.

The old caveat, read the fine print before you sign, has taken on new meaning for some students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

An official from the Indiana County Voter Registration Office estimated Tuesday that several hundred IUP students had been duped into registering as Republicans several weeks ago.

The duplicity occurred, voter registration chief Donna Hoover said, because forms that the students thought they were signing to support efforts to legalize marijuana for medicinal use were actually used to register them as Republicans.

No one has lost his or her ability to vote this fall, Hoover stressed. "It is not going to make a difference for these students this time." Voters, regardless of party registration, can select any candidate on the ballot on Nov. 2. Party registration will make a difference, however, in the primary election, when voters can only choose candidates of their party affiliation.

Indiana County Democratic Committee Chairwoman Della Jean Manning said she is already concerned how registration could affect the party's vote count next May.

"We certainly will put forth an effort to give them (the students who were duped) an opportunity ... to register as they intended to register," she said.

In the meantime, some IUP students are feeling frustrated.

They have tried to be conscientious this election year, but the electoral system has let them down, said Richard Auvil of Blairsville, a sophomore music major.

A victim of the registration scam, Auvil signed a petition and form supporting the marijuana issue, only to find out a week or so later that the paperwork caused his party registration to be changed from Democrat to Republican.

"It is disheartening not because my party was switched but because the process was tampered with so blatantly," he said.

An ostensibly nonpartisan voter registration drive in Western Pennsylvania has triggered accusations that workers were cheated out of wages and given instructions to avoid adding anyone to the voter rolls who might support the Democratic presidential nominee.

Sproul & Associates, a consulting firm based in Chandler, Ariz., hired to conduct the drive by the Republican National Committee, employed several hundred canvassers throughout the state to register new voters. Some workers yesterday said they were told to avoid registering Democrats or anyone who indicated support for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry.

"We were told that if they wanted to register Democrat, there was no way we were to register them to vote," said Michele Tharp, of Meadville, who said she was sent out to canvass door-to-door and outside businesses in Meadville, Crawford County. "We were only to register Republicans."

Tharp said volunteers were sent door-to-door to seek registrants but were instructed to first ask prospective new voters which candidate they planned to support.

"If they said Kerry, we were just supposed to say thank you and walk away," Tharp said.

Let me put it simply: if the draft comes back, you will not be able to hide your precious, middle class children from the military. No running to Holland, no drive to Canada. A new law might restrict the travel options of US citizens of draft age and you may well have prove you are draft exempt or ineligible to cross the frontiers. If not, anyone trying to stay in Canada may face a protracted legal struggle or immediate deportation.

So if you think you can ship the kids off to the UK, well, that's not going to work. They won't be able to support themselves, work legally and face immediate deportation to the US if arrested or detained.

The talk of a skills draft is nonsense. There will be a draft and the first people to go will be working teens out of school. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, McDonalds, all will lose those young male employees, first. They will be unprotected from the draft. And thus the first to go in the Army.

And what will they do?

Hi ho, hi ho, to Ft. Benning you will go, just like all the other 11 Bravos. Make no mistake, the draftees will get all the fun jobs like truck driver and combat infantryman. Also, changes in the force structure mean that you'll have a much harder time volunteering for the Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force. Nope, it's an 11B or 0300 (Marine Rifleman) MOS for you. And the increase will be in infantry, MP's and Engineers. All highly dangerous, all with high risk of injury and death.

Middle class people need to understand something. They will not be able to get their precious children overseas to save them. Most countries will not take our young men and even if they did, they may never come home again. Ever. They will face felony charges if they attempt to come back to the US. Nigeria? They may have their own civil war there sooner rather than later.

The draft will be targeted towards you and your kin. Everyone else joins the military. It's the white, middle class who a new draft would seek to scoop up. Those townies your kids sneer at will be long gone when the draft comes.

You middle class people (white, black, asian) have engaged in magical thinking for a very long time. It's not 1968. Canada sent more people to Vietnam than accepted as draft dodgers. They will come for your children and then make it impossible for them to escape or effectively leave them stateless abroad or facing either immediate induction or a felony charge at home.

So if you think running will solve your problems, it won't even come close.

If you want to stop a draft, you have to fight it now, here, not run, because there won't be a place to run and CO status just takes the gun from your son's hand when he's in that Infantry platoon.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

A French pharmaceutical company will supply 2.6 million extra anti-flu shots to help the United States cope with a vaccine shortage that has sparked public concern, a top US health official said on Tuesday.

Tommy Thompson, Health and Human Services Secretary for the United States, said Aventis-Pasteur, a division of French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis, will raise the number of vaccines available in the US to 58 million in January.

The doses represent more than half of what the United States needs.

Rescuers dug the bodies of six members of one family -- a couple and their four children -- out of the rubble of an Iraqi house bombed by U.S. warplanes on Wednesday, witnesses said.

The house was destroyed during air strikes on the insurgent-held town of Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad.

A Reuters cameraman filmed the dead bodies being removed from the rubble of the house.

U.S. forces say their strikes are carefully targeted against fighters loyal to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a self-declared ally of al Qaeda who the U.S. says is hiding in the town.

But Falluja residents say they know nothing about Zarqawi -- some even doubt his existence -- and that the air raids regularly kill civilians and destroy homes.

Based on past research, this is how I suspect special interests would justify voting in favor of privatization, assuming we could get Wall Street and others to tell us honestly why they feel so passionate about the issue:

Wall Street bankers love it ...

"Don't act naïve Paul, the media knows the game. You worked for Morgan Stanley. Wall Street is obsessed about getting rich, fast, any way we can. Conflicts of interest? So what! Our personal interests always come first, not the investors. That's been the name of game since the exchanges were formed in 1752. Same motto today: 'Greed is good!'"

"The more assets we get under our control, the more fees we can charge. Privatization is our baby. We prefer millionaire clients. But privatization gives us a new way into the pockets of little mutual fund investors so we can siphon off extra fees."

"How will we pay for the $2 trillion in federal deficits when all those Social Security contributions are diverted into private accounts? Nobody knows. But we do know Wall Street is in trouble today, so we need more assets now! Let future generations bail themselves out."

Fund-company owners love privatization ...

"You don't look like Michael Moore. No cameras either. Okay, Paul, we'll answer your poll. Fund owners get rich whether the market goes up or down. Remember, during the 2000-2002 bear market our shareholders lost 30-40 percent and still our income and net worth rose. Today we need more assets to generate more fees, like the banks. We'll get it by donating big bucks to Congress so they pass privatization. Campaign contributions are an investment for us, the way to get around voters."

Fund portfolio managers love it ...

"We make an average of $436,500 a year, ten times what the average investor makes, Paul. And we get it even when investors lose money. Plus we don't have to disclose all the perks. So you bet we voted for privatization. And stop mentioning conflicts of interest. We don't care. The truth is, investors come second, our own families first. Besides, investors get 'enough.' And they're going nowhere, they're stuck with us."

Mutual fund directors love it ...

"Before all the new SEC governance rules, we were paid $252,500 annually for part-time work. Just five weeks work, Paul, the full-time equivalent of $2.5 million a year. We'll work more under the new rules, but we'll make more. So we love privatization!"

Special interests lobbyists love privatization ...

"Paul, lobbyists are merely doing our job representing the special interests of organizations like the Investment Company Institute, the owners and managers who actually run your $7.5 trillion fund industry. ICI has a $30 million annual budget and pays us a lot to get Congress to do what they want. Maybe in a perfect world lobbyists should represent the best interests of America's 95 million mutual fund investors. But that's too idealistic, ICI represents the personal interests of fund owners and managers, not voters, it's that simple."

Bush isn't a bible-based, messianic fundamentalist. His "crusade fer freedom" is really much more in the mode of a New Agey Kumbaaya cult leader than an Armageddonist.

[snip]

He doesn't know the bible except in the most rudimentary way. He doesn't attend church. He doesn't follow any of the most basic tenets of Christianity. He is simply the leader of the republican cult whose members believe that anything he says is the word of God --- hence the bizarre screams of orgasmic fervor when he say words that one would not usually associate with deep emotional beliefs, like "tort reform." It doesn't matter what he says, it's how he says them.

This is why he doesn't have to make any sense and this is why his followers are so blind to reality. As with all cults they are willing to give up their money and their free will and turn it over to the leader. It has nothing to do with any traditional religion.

He's the leader of the Cult of the Codpiece and as far as his followers are concerned, anything he says and does is divine.

Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday evoked the possibility of terrorists bombing U.S. cities with nuclear weapons and questioned whether Sen. John Kerry could combat such a threat, which the vice president called a concept "you've got to get your mind around."

"The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us — biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans," Cheney said.

"That's the ultimate threat. For us to have a strategy that's capable of defeating that threat, you've got to get your mind around that concept," Cheney said.

Cheney, speaking to an invitation-only crowd as he began a bus tour through Republican strongholds in Ohio, said Kerry is trying to convince voters he would be the same type of "tough, aggressive" leader as President Bush in the fight against terrorism.

U.S. Has Contingency Plans for a Draft of Medical Workers
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The Selective Service has been updating its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelms the military's medical corps.

In a confidential report this summer, a contractor hired by the agency described how such a draft might work, how to secure compliance and how to mold public opinion and communicate with health care professionals, whose lives could be disrupted.

On the one hand, the report said, the Selective Service System should establish contacts in advance with medical societies, hospitals, schools of medicine and nursing, managed care organizations, rural health care providers and the editors of medical journals and trade publications.

On the other hand, it said, such contacts must be limited, low key and discreet because "overtures from Selective Service to the medical community will be seen as precursors to a draft," and that could alarm the public.

Evangelicals endeavor to redeem the vote

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush's re-election campaign is getting a boost from powerful Christian groups, which are enlisting entertainers such as actor Jim Caviezel of "The Passion of the Christ" to cajole millions of evangelicals into voting.

One of the newest groups is Redeem the Vote, the religious community's answer to MTV's secular Rock the Vote. The group is touring battleground states with Christian rock groups and voter-registration drives that organizers say are putting the fear of God into Sen. John Kerry's supporters.

"This is really scaring Democrats," said Redeem the Vote founder Randy Brinson. "This is major, major news that the major media have ignored because we're not liberal."

Mr. Brinson persuaded Mr. Caviezel, the actor who portrayed Jesus in Mel Gibson's hit film, to appear in a Webcast imploring Christians to vote. Although Mr. Caviezel never explicitly endorses the president, his message is designed to remind Christians that Mr. Bush shares their opposition to abortion, judicial activism and homosexual "marriage."

"In this election year, Americans are faced with some of the most important issues in the history of our country," he said. "In order to preserve the God-given freedoms we each hold dear, it's important that we let our voices be heard."

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
The Agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials

October 19, 2004 – It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."

According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.

"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official.

"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."

None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.

The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.

And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.

In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.

The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don't have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."

The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."

...a close look at five domestic agenda items suggests that Tennesseans as a group hardly qualify as well-informed, ideologically consistent policy wonks. For example, only about half of Tennessee adults can accurately name Kerry as the candidate who supports rescinding the recent federal income tax cuts for people earning over $200,000 a year. About a quarter (23%) incorrectly attributed the proposal to Bush, and 27% admit they don’t know which candidate supports the measure. Similarly, only about half (50%) rightly name Bush as the candidate who favors giving parents tax-funded vouchers to help pay private or religious school tuition. Thirteen percent attribute the plan to Kerry, who actually opposes it. Over a third (37%) admit they don’t know.

Knowledge levels are even lower on the other three issues. Well under half (42%) are aware that Bush wants to let younger workers put some of their Social Security withholdings into their own personal retirement accounts. Nineteen percent incorrectly think Kerry supports the measure, and 40% say they don’t know one way or the other. Just over a quarter (28%) rightly name Bush as the candidate who supports giving needy people tax breaks that would help buy health insurance from private companies. Thirty percent inaccurately name Kerry as the measure’s proponent, and 41% admit not knowing. Finally, just 39% know that Kerry advocates requiring plants and factories to add new pollution control equipment when they make upgrades. Fifteen percent wrongly attribute the policy to Bush, and 45% don’t know.

Many favor positions inconsistent with their candidate

Asked for their own opinions on these same issues – with no clues given in the question regarding which candidates support which position – many Tennesseans express views contrary to those of the candidate they say they support. Only 54% of self-described Kerry partisans, for example, express support for Kerry’s plan to retain the recent income tax cuts only for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year. And about a third (32%) of Bush partisans say they like the idea, even though Bush opposes it. In a mirror image of that pattern, just about half (50%) of those backing Bush support Bush’s plan for providing tax breaks to help needy people buy health insurance from private companies. And about a third (31%) of Kerry backers support the idea, even though Kerry favors an alternative strategy that would let more people qualify for government-funded insurance programs like Medicaid.

On vouchers, 52% of Bush supporters agree with Bush’s stance, and so did 31% of Kerry supporters. Fifty-eight percent of Bush partisans favored Bush’s Social Security plan, but so did 38% of Kerry backers. And 80 percent of Kerry backers, along with 71 percent of Bush backers, say they favor Kerry’s plans for requiring factories and plans to install new pollution control equipment when upgrading.

Overall, in fact, Tennesseans averaged only two right answers when quizzed about which candidate held which view on the five issues. A fifth (20%) got no right answers, and 19% got one answer right. Another fifth (20%) got two right answers, and still another fifth (20%) got three right answers. Only 13% got four right answers, and a mere 8% got all of the answers right. An analysis looking across the preferences expressed by respondent to these five issues found that only 6% gave unfailingly Democratic answers, and just 2% gave all Republican answers. At least on these issues, most Tennesseans cluster around an ideologically neutral center and, on average, venture no more than a net of two answers in the direction of being either consistently Democratic or consistently Republican.

Nevertheless, Tennesseans profess a high degree of interest in the campaign, with 71% describing themselves as “very interested,” and 23% as “somewhat interested.” Only 6% say they are “not at all interested.” Although high across the board, expressed interest is positively related to age, education, and income. Over a third (39%) say they watched the presidential debates at “every single opportunity.” Another 22% say they watched “most of the time,” and about a quarter (24%) say they watched “only some of the time.” Just 16% say they never watched.

The special code is “PTI 961”, and is found in the “Reason and Authority for Discharge” section of Bush’s NGB-22, his “Report of Separation and Record of Service in the Air National Guard of Texas and as a Reserve of the Air Force.”

No actual “reason for discharge” is cited in this section. However, the reference to “ANGR 36-05 [PTI 961]” provides us with enough information to determine that Bush was being thrown off for failure to fulfill his requirements.

“PTI” stands for “Personnel Transaction Identifier”, a code which “identifies the controlled personnel management action being accomplished the personnel data system.” And although the particular meaning of “PTI 961” remains unknown, all “900” series PTIs mean that someone is no longer considered part of “Air Force strength.”

AFM 30-3 explains how “transactions” involving the “movement of a member within the Air Force strength which does not affect the total strength, that is, movement….to a different command” would have been “reported by PTI 201.” Bush’s discharge and reassignment appears to have been a “movement to a different command” (i.e. from the Air National Guard to the Air Force Reserves).

However, when an “action is reported by the 9xx PTIs” it represents a “loss to the Air Force strength.” In other words, despite the fact that Bush had almost eight months left on his six year Military Service Obligation at the time, Texas Air National Guard officers were signaling that Bush was essentially worthless to the Air Force, and should not even be retained in the “Ready Reserves” for call up in the event of a national emergency.

This interpretation is fully consistent with the fact that Bush was placed in an “Inactive Status” retroactively, effective September 15, 1973. “Inactive Status” meant that Bush was no longer eligible to accrue time served toward “gratuitous” membership points.

Brave Sir Robin ran away.
Bravely ran away, away!
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!

He is packing it in and packing it up
And sneaking away and buggering up
And chickening out and pissing off home,
Yes, bravely he is throwing in the sponge...

Michigan's top elections official on Monday said qualified voters can request absentee ballots until Nov. 1, citing fraudulent calls telling voters the application deadline already had passed.

Registered voters who qualify for an absentee ballot have until 4 p.m. on Nov. 1 to request one at their city or township clerk's office, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land said. Voters have until 2 p.m. on Oct. 30 to request an absentee ballot be sent to their home.

Land said there have been some reports of calls made to Ann Arbor and southern Wayne County residents by people identifying themselves as members of the state bureau of elections or local clerk's offices. They are telling residents the deadline to apply for an absent voter ballot has passed and are asking that completed ballots be sent to the wrong place.

"This fraudulent activity is unconscionable," Land said in a news release. "While these activities appear to be extremely limited and do not represent what's going on throughout Michigan, it's important that residents do not release private information over the phone."

It's unclear who is making the calls. A message left with the secretary of state's office on Monday morning wasn't immediately returned.

The Florida National Guard may order selected members on to state active duty for service to the State of Florida pursuant to Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes, to assist FDLE in performing port security training and inspections. Based on the potential massive damage to life and property that may result from an act of terrorism at a Florida port, the necessity to protect life and property from such acts of terrorism, and inhibiting the smuggling of illegal drugs into the State of Florida, the use of the Florida National Guard to support FDLE in accomplishing port security training and inspections is "extraordinary support to law enforcement" as used in Section 250.06(4), Florida Statutes.

Florida National Guard troops who spent months patrolling airports after the 2001 terrorist attacks may return to the terminals around the state soon.

Florida Guard officials are drafting plans to dispatch "at least a couple of hundred" troops to airports across the state, Lt. Col. Ron Tittle, a Guard spokesman, said Thursday.

Tittle said the planning was prompted by a "warning order" received earlier this week from U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, which is responsible for the military's homeland-defense operations. Warning orders are typically issued before National Guard troops are called to active duty.

Several law-enforcement officials said there is no specific threat to Florida. It is unclear when, or whether, the troops will be ordered to the airports.

"The planning stage is still ongoing in case we get notification to do it," Tittle said. "It's not a certainty" that the soldiers will be called up, he said.

Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two s**ts what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of s*tty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dips**t. Oh, yeah - and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.
Wading River, NY
...
Consider this: stay out of American electoral politics. Unless you would like a company of US Navy Seals - Republican to a man - to descend upon the offices of the Guardian, bag the lot of you, and transport you to Guantanamo Bay, where you can share quarters with some lonely Taliban shepherd boys.
United States
...
KEEP YOUR F**KIN' LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION. HEY, S**THEADS, REMEMBER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR? REMEMBER THE WAR OF 1812? WE DIDN'T WANT YOU, OR YOUR POLITICS HERE, THAT'S WHY WE KICKED YOUR ASSES OUT. FOR THE 47% OF YOU WHO DON'T WANT PRESIDENT BUSH, I SAY THIS ... TOUGH S*T!
PROUD AMERICAN VOTING FOR BUSH!
...
Real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions. If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it.
Texas, USA
...
Hey England, Scotland and Wales,
Mind your own business. We don't need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidential election. If it wasn't for America, you'd all be speaking German. And if America would have had a president, then, of the likes of Kerry, you'd all be goose-stepping around Buckingham Palace. YOU ARE NOT WANTED!! Whether you want to support either party. BUTT OUT!!!
United States
...
Please be advised that I have forwarded this to the CIA and FBI.
United States
...
Keep your noses out of our business. As I recall we kicked your asses out of our country back in 1776. We do not require input from losers and idiots on who we vote for in our own country. F**k off and die as**ole!!!!!
Knoxville, Iowa
...
Who in the hell do you think you are??? Well, I'll tell you, you're a bunch of meddling socialist pricks! Stay the hell out of our country and politics. And another thing, John Kerry is a worthless lying sack of crap so it doesn't surprise me that a socialist rag like yours would back him. I hope your cynical ploy blows up in your cowardly faces, you bunch of mealy-mouthed morons!
United States

He said
On September the 4th, 2001, I stood in the ruins of the twin towers
His prepared text said "September the 14th, 2001". Is the president unable to read?

Is John Kerry excommunicated, or isn't he?

That's a fairly important question, wouldn't you agree?

But the form of the answer from Rome is simply bizarre.

A ranking official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asks an American theologian-- who is himself a consultor to CDF-- to answer a question from a layman. And in his answer, that priest-- who certainly seems to be speaking on behalf of the Vatican-- says: Yes, Kerry is excommunicated!

Now that's a bombshell statement. But it was handled like an arcane scholarly query. ("Yes, the Monophysite heresy was condemned by the 2nd Council of Constantinople. Thanks for asking. And by the way, the "Catholic" candidate for the world's most powerful political office is excommunicated.") Why?

Could it be that the CDF sent this message unofficially, because it was clear no official pronouncement would survive the vetting of the Vatican bureaucracy?

Is it a coincidence that this statement came (indirectly) from the same dicastery that "leaked" Cardinal Ratzinger's comments on giving Communion to pro-abortion politicians-- after Cardinal McCarrick withheld those comments from the other US bishops?

Is it a coincidence that this statement became public shortly after Cardinal Sodano conferred a papal knighthold on a politician who, it seems, has earned excommunication in the same fashion as Kerry?

"His claim that the private letter he received from (Dominican) Father Basil Cole is a Vatican response is completely without merit," Father DiNoia told Catholic News Service Oct. 19, declining to discuss the matter further.

Father DiNoia denied that Father Cole, a theologian who resides in Washington, was delegated in any way to address the questions on behalf of the congregation.

Father Cole's letter to Balestrieri, also posted on De Fide's Web site, begins by saying he had been asked by Father DiNoia "to respond unofficially" to Balestrieri's questions.

The priest concluded that "if a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy envisioned by Canon 751 of the Code" of Canon Law.

Vatican officials contacted by CNS Oct. 19 said they did not agree with Father Cole's conclusion that Kerry has incurred excommunication.

"You can incur excommunication 'latae sententiae' (automatically) only if you procure or perform an abortion," one said.

In Washington, Father Cole told CNS the Holy See "gets these requests ... tons of them," and that Father DiNoia asked him to respond to Balestrieri in a private capacity.

"I have no relationship to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ... and the letter that I wrote to Balestrieri was purely private," he told CNS Oct. 19. "I wrote it as a private theologian, not with any authority. It has no authority whatsoever.

"Its worth is disputable," he added.

One Vatican official contacted by CNS said no church official had seriously approached the point of declaring Kerry a heretic.

"No, Kerry is not a heretic," he said.

Problems were being reported at nine of 14 early voting sites in Broward County on Monday morning.

Gisela Salas, of the Broward Elections Office, said workers were having problems with a live database connection that is used to verify that a voter is properly registered.

The sites, Salas said, that were unaffected were at satellite offices in Deerfield Beach, Hollywood, Lauderhill, Pembroke Pines and Plantation.

All the branch offices were reported having problems with the database connection. Many of the sites had voters lined up to cast their ballots.

Voters at several sites said poll workers told them the problems started 20 minutes to 30 minutes after the early polling stations opened at 8:30 a.m. The stations close at 6 p.m.

At the Tamarac branch public library, where voting stopped after the computer glitch, Sally Zwanger, a poll watcher for the Kerry campaign, claimed the problems reflected on the inability of Gov. Jeb Bush's administration to fix voting problems left over from the 2000 election.

"The worst thing to hear was, 'I support Kerry, but I can't wait in this line,'" she said.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ignored advice to throw out a flawed felon voter list before it went out to county election offices despite warnings from state officials, according to a published report Saturday.

In a May 4 e-mail obtained by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Florida Department of Law Enforcement computer expert Jeff Long told his boss that a Department of State computer expert had told him "that yesterday they recommended to the Gov that they 'pull the plug'" on the voter database.

The e-mail said state election officials "weren't comfortable with the felon matching program they've got," but added, "The Gov rejected their suggestion to pull the plug, so they're 'going live' with it this weekend."

Long, who was responsible for giving elections officials his department's felon database, confirmed the contents of the e-mail Friday to the Herald-Tribune. He said he didn't remember the specifics, but that Paul Craft, the Department of State's top computer expert, had told him about the meeting with Bush.

A software program matched data on felons with voter registration rolls to create the list of 48,000 names. Secretary of State Glenda Hood junked the database in July after acknowledging that 2,500 ex-felons on the list had had their voting rights restored.

Most were Democrats, and many were black. Hispanics, who often vote Republican in Florida, were almost entirely absent from the list due to a technical error.

Bush's spokeswoman, Jill Bratina, denied allegations that the governor ignored warnings about the list.

"It's also irrelevant because the list isn't being used," Bratina said Saturday.

Bush told the Herald-Tribune that Craft didn't call him, and he denied that any meeting took place May 3 with Craft or other election officials.

The U.S. technology sector suffered another round of widespread layoffs during the third quarter, with computer firms slashing jobs most aggressively, a report said on Monday.
"High-tech job cuts are on the way up as the end of the year approaches," said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "Behind this trend is the fact that technology companies have virtually no pricing power,"

Job cuts in technology jumped 60 percent between July and September to 54,701, compared with 34,213 layoffs in the second quarter. Computer companies alone saw job cuts jump 127 percent, to 30,624.

Manufacturers in the sector are having trouble making money since they have been forced to lower prices in order to attract consumers, Challenger said. So they end up firing workers in order to maintain healthy profit margins.

Worse yet, the growing number of layoffs is not being countered by any move to hire, Challenger added.

A few months later, on Feb. 1, 2002, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners stood in the Roosevelt Room for the introduction of Jim Towey as head of the president's faith-based and community initiative. John DiIulio, the original head, had left the job feeling that the initiative was not about ''compassionate conservatism,'' as originally promised, but rather a political giveaway to the Christian right, a way to consolidate and energize that part of the base.

Moments after the ceremony, Bush saw Wallis. He bounded over and grabbed the cheeks of his face, one in each hand, and squeezed. ''Jim, how ya doin', how ya doin'!'' he exclaimed. Wallis was taken aback. Bush excitedly said that his massage therapist had given him Wallis's book, ''Faith Works.'' His joy at seeing Wallis, as Wallis and others remember it, was palpable -- a president, wrestling with faith and its role at a time of peril, seeing that rare bird: an independent counselor. Wallis recalls telling Bush he was doing fine, '''but in the State of the Union address a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our energies, our focus, our resources on this war on terrorism, we're going to lose.' I said, 'Mr. President, if we don't devote our energy, our focus and our time on also overcoming global poverty and desperation, we will lose not only the war on poverty, but we'll lose the war on terrorism.'''

Bush replied that that was why America needed the leadership of Wallis and other members of the clergy.

''No, Mr. President,'' Wallis says he told Bush, ''We need your leadership on this question, and all of us will then commit to support you. Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll never defeat the threat of terrorism.''

Bush looked quizzically at the minister, Wallis recalls. They never spoke again after that.

''When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a self-help Methodist, very open, seeking,'' Wallis says now. ''What I started to see at this point was the man that would emerge over the next year -- a messianic American Calvinist. He doesn't want to hear from anyone who doubts him.''

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Bush sought to counter suggestions that there will be a military draft if he's re-elected, but the president almost blew his line.

He said that, after a debate with Kerry, "I made it very plain. We will not have an all-volunteer army." The crowd fell silent. "WE WILL have an all-volunteer army," Bush said, quickly catching himself. "Let me restate that. We will not have a draft."