Son of GOP President Supports Kerry

It's not "liberals" or "left-wing kooks" pointing out how lost the country is under Bush. Old time and rock-solid Republicans WHO KNOW are aghast at what George Bush has done as president while subverting the original ideals and values of the GOP. More than that they rightly fear for the country's future while believing that John Kerry represents the best chance to bring it back to its democratic roots with dignity and honor. No matter which party you support this extraordinary condemnation by John Eisenhower is a wake-up call to shake off the Rove-colored glasses. It took great bravery for Eisenhower to stand up for something greater than party loyalty to speak out about what is right for America. It's one of the most selfless acts of patriotic courage that I've witnessed in my lifetime. Eisenhower could have remained quiet about the Bush threat and lived out his last days without any rancor but instead chose a path that his father would have been proud of because he stood up as an American first, party second. --- Sam Park

Son of GOP President Supports Kerry

Wed Sep 29, 8:24 PM ET

TRAPPE, Md. - John Eisenhower, son of Republican President Eisenhower, said in a newspaper column this week that he will vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry for president on Nov. 2.

In a rare public announcement, Eisenhower said he switched his party affiliation from Republican to independent after 50 years after losing confidence in his former party. He said Kerry has demonstrated courage, competence and a concern for tackling the "widening socio-economic gap in this country."

"There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them," Eisenhower wrote in the opinion column published Tuesday in The Union Leader of Manchester, N.H.

The column assails President Bush and the GOP for federal budget deficits, for "unilaterally" invading Iraq and for infringing on personal liberties.

The Bush campaign had no immediate comment.

Eisenhower, 82, declined to be interviewed Wednesday. His wife, Joanne Eisenhower, said by telephone from their home on Maryland's Eastern Shore that, "This is something he felt strongly about."

"The fact is that today's 'Republican' Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word 'Republican' has always been synonymous with the word 'responsibility,' which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms.

"Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion," Eisenhower wrote.

Eisenhower, a former U.S. ambassador to Belgium and author, was a registered Republican for 50 years — until the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq "as a maverick," he wrote.

"Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance," he wrote.

Eisenhower scolded the Republican leadership for embracing a tax code that "heads us in the direction of a society of very rich and very poor."

"Senator Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country," he concluded.

Bush's Hometown Newspaper Endorses Kerry

Tue Sep 28, 1:19 PM ET

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - The newspaper in President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry.

The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare.

"The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry."

It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country."

Bush spends many of his weekends and holidays at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.

The Iconoclast's publisher and editor-in-chief, W. Leon Smith, said the newspaper is sent to Bush's ranch each week. "But I don't know if he reads it," Smith said.

The Kerry campaign welcomed the endorsement in an email to reporters.

Crawford, Texas Newspaper Endorses Kerry

Top US musicians launch of anti-Bush music blitz

Tue Sep 28, 8:19 AM ET

SEATTLE, United States (AFP) - A coalition of top US musicians led by Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt were poised to launch a two-week concert blitz aimed at persuade US voters to oust President George W. Bush.

The famed singers were due to headline Monday's concert in Seattle, the first in a manic series of "Vote for Change" concerts that will be headlined later in the tour by rock legend Bruce Springsteen.

The boss and other musical stars including REM, Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt will perform in around 36 cities in nine electoral swing states, culminating in a huge concert on October 11 in Washington DC.

The loose coalition of musical stars is launching the series of mini-tours with "a single goal through the tour: to get people to the polls on November 2 to vote for a change," according to the organisers' website.

The tour will roar through the crucial Midwestern swing states such as Ohio and Michigan where Kerry and Bush are running neck and neck before hitting the equally critical Florida on October 8.

Other musician's hitching the wagons to Kerry in the "Vote For Change" concerts are Dave Matthews Band, James Taylor, John Fogerty, the E Street Band, and John Mellencamp.

Proceeds from the tour will go to America Coming Together (ACT), a voter mobilisation organisation committed to defeating Bush.

The concerts get off to their true start on October 1 in Seattle when the 55-year-old Springsteen will make his first appearance.

One of the emotive highlights of Monday's concert in Seattle was expected to be "The Boss's" rendition of his stirring anthem, "Born in the U.S.A.," which is likely to become the musicians' battlecry.

Springsteen explained to Rolling Stone magazine in an interview published last week that he felt America had been misled by the Bush administration into going to war in Iraq.

"It made me angry ... I felt we had been misled. I felt they had been fundamentally dishonest and had frightened and manipulated the American people into war," the 55-year-old legend.

President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and his policies had convinced Springsteen to break with his career-long aversion to partisan politics, he said.

"It was something that gestated over a period of time, and as events unfolded and the election got closer, it became clearer," he told the music magazine.

Flood of New Voters Signing Up

You're not seeing these newly registered voters in the polls being cited. This is going to shock the world on election day. We're going to get these new voters to the polls, vote our Democratic base, draw in independents and kick Bush's arse out of the White House door.

Tue Sep 28, 8:23 AM ET
By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer

New voters are flooding local election offices with paperwork, registering in significantly higher numbers than four years ago as attention to the presidential election runs high and an array of activist groups recruit would-be voters who could prove critical come Nov. 2.

Cleveland has seen nearly twice as many new voters register so far as compared with 2000; Philadelphia is having its biggest boom in new voters in 20 years; and counties are bringing in temporary workers and employees from other agencies to help process all the new registration forms.

Nationwide figures aren't yet available, but anecdotal evidence shows an upswing in many places, often urban but some rural. Some wonder whether the new voters — some of whom sign up at the insistence of workers paid by get-out-the-vote organizations — will actually make it to the polls on Election Day, but few dispute the registration boom.

"We're swamped," said Bob Lee, who oversees voter registration in Philadelphia. "It seems like everybody and their little group is out there trying to register people."

Some examples, from interviews with state and county officials across the country:

_ New registered voters in Miami-Dade County, a crucial Florida county in 2000, grew by 65 percent through mid-September, compared with 2000.

_ New registered voters jumped nearly 150 percent in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in Ohio, one of the most hard-fought states this year.

And that's with weeks left until registration deadlines fall, beginning in October.

Curtis Gans at the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate said a clear national picture won't emerge until more applications are processed next month. And Kay Maxwell of the League of Women Voters cautioned that some years that promise a boom in new voters turn out to be duds on Election Day. The danger is that new voters may not be as committed to showing up at the polls as longtime voters.

"Turning people out to vote is tougher than getting them to register," said Doug Lewis, who works with local election officials as head of The Election Center, a nonprofit group.

Rural areas, which trend conservative and Republican, aren't necessarily reporting the same growth as urban, more liberal and Democratic strongholds: Brazos County, Texas, hasn't beaten its 2000 numbers so far, though officials said applications are now rolling in. The state of Oklahoma, however, saw new registrations in July and August increase by 60 percent compared with four years ago.

Oklahoma officials said they had 16,000 new Republican registrations, 15,000 new Democrats and 3,500 new independents. In Oregon, where new registrations grew by 4 percent from January through Sept. 1, Democrats outregistered Republicans two-to-one.

Lewis and others say that no matter what the partisan breakdown, the registration boom is real — driven by a swarm of organizations such as Smack Down Your Vote (a professional wrestling-connected campaign), Hip-Hop Team Vote, traditional groups like the League of Women Voters; party-aligned groups such as America Coming Together, made up of deep-pocketed Democrats; and many, many more.

"There seem to be hundreds of them," Maxwell said.

The groups' focus is on states where the vote was close in 2000, but even in several states where the election isn't as competitive, officials say they are seeing new voters register in higher numbers. Officials in El Paso County, Texas, Maryland's Montgomery County, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and California's Los Angeles County said registration numbers are on pace to be higher than 2000.

In many jurisdictions, administrators complain that the crush of new registrations is overloading staff.

Clerks have hired extra workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. Philadelphia borrowed employees from other city agencies and started working overtime two months earlier than the usual post-Labor Day push.



In Greenbrier County, W.Va., deputy clerk Gail White said she's never seen so many people register in her 10 years working elections, and despite extra staff she's still behind on processing new and absentee voters. "I get them all typed up, and the next thing I know, here comes another pile," she said.

The reasons seem clear — groups on all sides were energized by the close election of 2000, which proved to doubters that a handful of votes can swing an election. In 2000, 9 percent of voters, roughly 9.5 million people, said that was their first time casting a ballot, according to AP exit polls.

"It's the high-growth areas, the suburban and exurban areas in those battleground states," said Scott Stanzel of the Bush-Cheney campaign. "There are opportunities there because there are so many new residents to register."

The GOP has launched a volunteer, precinct-by-precinct effort in swing states, with separate help from a Republican-aligned group, the Progress for America Voter Fund.

Democrats, who've consistently made turnout efforts the foundation of their campaigns, are devoting huge amounts of resources, too. America Coming Together focuses solely on registering and turning out voters.

The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law has boosted efforts, too. It cut off unlimited "soft" money to the parties, diverting some of that cash to community-based groups.

In Missouri, the result is that what used to be a mostly volunteer-driven voter-registration effort by the Missouri Citizen Education Fund has blossomed into a bigger, paid-staff operation, said executive director John Hickey. Funds jumped from a few thousand dollars a year to $250,000.

Focused on poor, black neighborhoods in St. Louis, mid-Missouri and rural areas, his staff went from registering a few thousand new voters in 2000 to at least 50,000 so far this year, Hickey said. In 2000, George W. Bush won the state by less than 80,000 votes.

Heady U.S. Goals for Iraq Fall by Wayside

In Bushworld, you don't have to BE a hero you just have to be marketed like one on TV. Meanwhile, back in reality...

Mon Sep 27, 7:55 AM ET
Los Angeles Times

By Tyler Marshall Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Despite continuing violence and instability, President Bush has stuck doggedly to his central message on Iraq: There is no need to change course because the administration's plan for planting democracy in the Middle East is working.

Yet behind the unwavering public posture, there is evidence that the Bush administration has altered its approach. It has lowered its hopes for the type of democracy that can be achieved, changed course on its plans to privatize Iraq's economy and reordered its priorities by devoting more money to improving security as fast as possible.

Gone — at least for now — is the lofty ideal of Iraq serving as a free-market democratic model that would ignite the forces of change throughout the Middle East and lay the seeds of a settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said administration officials have told him privately that they have lowered their expectations. "They've definitely recalibrated their goals," he said. "One of them told me: 'When we went in there, I thought we would build American-style democracy. Hell, I'd be happy with Romanian-style democracy now.' "

"It doesn't mean you abandon" the Iraqis, Kolbe added. "It reflects what is realistic, what is doable." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld echoed that sentiment Friday, when asked what it would take for the United States to declare victory and begin to withdraw.

"Any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and U.S. forces I think would obviously be unwise because it's never been peaceful and perfect and it isn't likely to be," he said. National security advisor Condoleezza Rice this month defined success in more modest terms than the administration used in the war's early stages. "Success will be an Iraqi government that has gone through the legitimacy process of being elected and an Iraqi government that can defend itself," she said.

Many experts believe the administration will be hard-pressed even to pull that off...

Key Bush Assertions About Iraq in Dispute

By Adam Entous

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Many of President Bush (news - web sites)'s assertions about progress in Iraq (news - web sites) -- from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections -- are in dispute, according to internal Pentagon (news - web sites) documents, lawmakers and key congressional aides on Sunday...

Cheney Crowds Would Like More on Kitchen-Table Issues

You won't find Bush or Cheney talking about domestic issues near and dear to their main street supporters. They have done nothing worth a damn for average Americans and everything for corporate America while sticking it to the rest of the country. Even ardent Republican supporters will tell you they are disappointed in how Bush and Cheney avoid talking about the economy, jobs, health care, deficits, etc.

THE VICE PRESIDENT
By JOEL BRINKLEY

Published: September 27, 2004

ANSAS CITY, Mo., Sept 24 - For Vice President Dick Cheney's weeklong campaign swing, little was left to chance. Or so it seemed.

Campaign advance workers for each of the rallies and town hall or round-table discussions chose every participant, combing lists of Republican activists and donors.

But these advance workers could not control what Mr. Cheney said or predict that his dark message would be out of sync with what many in his ardently supportive audience wanted to hear: his stand on domestic social issues...