"Shh, Don't Tell the Swing Voters." You know where he stands, he says. But does the president-select -- who was first against, then for the 9/11 commission; positive about, then unaware of, a Saddam-Al Qaeda link; determined to capture, then utterly unconcerned with, Osama bin Laden -- need a GPS to find himself? In The Nation (Sept. 13), the indispensable David Corn runs a laundry list of W's "false advertising" on everything from Homeland Security to his own past.
"Tax Code." Pushing tax cuts that did the most to fatten the richest, and helped transform a huge budget surplus into a massive deficit, did not sate W.'s fiscal ambitions. Backed by Congressional conservatives and right-wing think tanks, Bush doesn't simply want to make those cuts permanent; according to John Cassidy in The New Yorker (Sept. 6), four more years would find Bush seeking a flatter tax rate and the complete elimination of both the corporate income tax and taxes on savings and investment income. That would further balloon the deficit and swell the purses of the wealthy, with scant likelihood of benefiting the overall economy. www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040906fa_fact
"From John McCain to John Kerry: The Vicious Smear Tactics of the Bush Campaign." John McCain, alpha-rolled: Who'd have imagined? The U.S. Senator targeted by sleazy whispers during the 2000 Republican primary against George Bush now backs W like a spaniel. With Bush-linked Swift Boaters now similarly gunning for John Kerry, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! (Aug. 31) interviews Wayne Slater, co-author of Bush's Brain, a book (and now documentary film) about Bush political consultant Karl Rove, for whom such slime is a day's work. www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/31/148237 (The TV version of Democracy Now! airs locally at 8 a.m. weekdays on PCTV-21, the radio version at 8 a.m. weekdays on WRCT 88.3 FM.)
"You Don't Know Dick." What Dick doesn't know can't hurt Dick. Vice-President Cheney says that during the five years he ran Halliburton, he was simply unaware that the giant oil-field services company changed its accounting practices to inflate earnings statements -- helping him, just coincidentally, snag a $35 million windfall when he sold his stock just before it tanked. Writing on AlterNet (Aug. 27), Jason Leopold dissects this dubious claim along with other fun facts, including the Cheney-led Halliburton's business deals with states either under trade sanctions or suspected of sponsoring terrorism, including Iran, Iraq and Libya. www.alternet.org/election04/19685/=
