I just received this email at my college email address:

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New story in the Guardian:

The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. Wearing a black vest, Mr al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: "I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day."

Digby has expressed concern that allowing Disney to define 9/11 to generations of schoolchildren is dangerous and will propagate myths that will define the debate for a generation.  An example of this in practice is the widely held belief that lemmings commit suicide by walking off of cliffs. This was invented in a Disney documentary, though it is believed to this day.

Footage I just saw on MSNBC showed food being dropped, from either the air or from boats, in the water in front of people's houses.

Those packages had better be waterproof.

These are pictures of what Bush does not want you to see. These are taken from a German newsmagazine show.

This is what Bush is hiding from the American people.

I don't care about mojo, but please recommend.

The good news?

The bad news? After the flip.

Several years ago, Texas deregulated the power industry in certain areas. And for once, deregulation might actually work in our favor.  If you live near Houston, Dallas, or in south or west Texas, you might have the option to switch your electricity provider to an environmentally conscious, green energy provider.

Information can be found at www.powertochoose.org

(Note: I am just a concerned citizen, and have no affiliation with any power company, and make no recommendations.)

More after the flip.

According to the Asia Times, in order to "nip the threat of Shi'a Islamic fundamentalist domination in the bud," the US is arming militias of former Ba'ath party members.

"A similar strategy was used in Afghanistan"

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html

Snippets after the fold.

Below is my transcript of the Jeff Gannon interview on Wolf Blitzer. This is a rare diary of mine, so there may be formatting problems. I will correct these as I learn the ropes, but I feel it's important that this get out here ASAP.

Transcript below the fold.

It's just a small one.

Okay, questions of vote fraud notwithstanding, Americans supposedly want this guy, and all that he stands for.

That so many didn't even bother to vote gives tacit consent.

So let's call a spade a spade everyone.
It's not social security reform. It's social security privatization, and it begins now.

Over at DU, this was noticed:

The assertion by pundits/Bushies that exit polling was 'way off', and thus, exit polls, which showed an easy Kerry victory in both Ohio and Florida, were incorrecty skewed and did not represent the electorate, is completely bogus.
This is disproved in minutes by simply noting the entire rest of the suite of exit polls conducted by AP and distributed to the news media. View here:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/president

more

Another View:
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By JOHN EISENHOWER
Guest Commentary

THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 31/2 years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.

<snip>

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration's decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

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.

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=44657

From over at MyDD:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/8/12/22752/1826#readmore

While I was sifting through 2000 Bush-Gore debate transcripts in order to reacquaint myself with Bush's debating style, I ran across this eye-popping quote:

The coalition against Saddam has fallen apart or it's unraveling, let's put it that way. The sanctions are being violated. We don't know whether he's developing weapons of mass destruction. He'd better not be or there's going to be a consequence, should I be the president.

This quote dates from October 11, 2000 exactly eleven months before the attacks that supposedly changed everything. Now, look at this quote from the third debate one week later:

Our coalition against Saddam is unraveling. Sanctions are loosened. The man who may be developing weapons of mass destruction, we don't know because inspectors aren't in.