From CNN today:

The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition [Pat Robertson] said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, “We’re not going to have any casualties.”

I hope Kerry goes big with this, along with Bush’s statement that he’s not too concerned about Bin Laden. Daddy Bush may not have known how much a quart of milk costs, but sonny-boy’s fiction-based presidency is getting us killed.

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From Ron Suskind’s scary article in the NYTimes about Bush’s aversion to facts:

Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ”I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,” he began, ”and I was telling the president of my many concerns” — concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. ”’Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?”’

Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. ”My instincts,” he said. ”My instincts.”

Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ”I said, ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough!”’

Another snippet:

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.”

Yeah, that famous Bush instinct. As he said after his first meeting with the tin-horn Stalinist Putin: “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” Good call, George.

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I only caught the last five minutes, but it seemed like Stewart is pushing harder on his shtick: Blurting out the truth. He’s becoming our public conscience. Has a comedian played this role before? There certainly have been comedians who were funny because they were truth-tellers — Lenny Bruce on culture, Richard Pryor on race, Billy Connelly on his life. But have any had the political focus and cultural impact Stewart has?

Dave points to this transcript, these bittorrent captures in wmv and avi, and this mp3.

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Fascinating article by Noam Scheiber in The New Republic that tries to discern what moves Bush to act. Primarily, it seems there’s an heroic narrative running through his head. The piece is filled with its own disparate stories of weird presidential decision-making that make sense within the article’s thesis.

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Can we please just have election day already? We’ve heard everything we’re going to hear. All that’s left are $100M in stupid ads. Can we please just get it over with tomorrow?

Thank you.

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I heard the last five minutes of NPR’s On Point show tonight, just as Jay Rosen was explaining why Farnaz Fassihi’s email about the reality of life in Iraq has hit so hard when other journalists have discussed the same issues in print. I was in the car, so I won’t do Jay’s point justice, but he said that it was a matter of language and tone (what I might call “voice”). The official reportage keeps itself flat and safe, Jay said (approximately) because there are so many forces ready to pounce at the slightest sign of “bias.” So, when we hear a voice that speaks the truth and that “bears witness” (Jay’s exactly-right phrase), we listen.

My sense was that most of the show was devoted to the question of why Fassihi’s email evoked such a reaction, and Jay banged the nail on the head for them. They should have asked Jay first, and then they would have 55 minutes to talk about John Edward’s hair or W’s back lump…

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From Kevin Marks, Boy Genius:

I took Dave Winer’s mp3 , and the joho chatroom transcript, and synced them up.

http://homepage.mac.com/kevinmarks/johodebate.mov

Even handier in QT player, as you can search for words there.

Hybrid audio/text gang-blogging.

Enjoy.

Thanks, Kevin! This is a really interesting experiment. I’m just a little nervous about the semiprivateness of a chat being exposed in the full public of the Web, but, hell anyone could have joined. The joining of the sound and audio does change the medium if only because in this instance the chat goes by line by line so you can’t see the entire scrolling transcript. (And I should perhaps explain that the random references to “doggy-style” are an homage to Halley’s scathingly funny post about bed and breakfasts (blogged here).)

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Want to know what cognitive dissonance sounds like? Yahoo Local is running radio ads featuring Howard Dean pitching their product. You can hear it here.

It’s a funny ad. In both senses. And it sure raises some questions: Why the hell is Howard Dean pitching products? Although the ad is charmingly self-deprecating, why would Dean want to put himself in William Shatner Land? Couldn’t he have waited until after the election? Is this a form of fund raising for his group, Democracy for America? And what will Dean be pitching next? Sedatives? Throat lozenges?

It’s a coup for Yahoo Local. It does not feel like a coup for Dean, although because the ad is so funny and self-mocking, it could be a lot worse.

[Disclosure: I am an unpaid advisor to Yahoo Local.]

Bogus Contest!

What product endorsements would make sense for Kerry? Bush? Nader? Other politicians?

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Doonesbury today refers to a column by Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter. As a public service, you can click here instead of typing in the 3-line url yourself. In the column, Bereuter explains why he thinks the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Why, he actually cites Paul Krugman!

Bereuter is not running for re-election.

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Personally? Having just seen the last debate, I’ve decided to vote for Kerry.

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