I am finding myself getting excited about nov 7!! But not

[rodeodance]

too excited

even given the article below---


Below the Guardian has a cute comment about Laura and Barney. te he.

I think the story "Republicans say top Democrats support 'group of gay paedophiles'----really is off the wall!!


Fri Oct-20-06 06:00 AM
Original message
GOP hopes to scare up votes this Halloween, read for a good laugh
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15338793 /

WASHINGTON - With top Republican strategists now privately predicting substantial House losses, President Bush and top GOP officials plan to spend the final days of the 2006 campaign attempting to rally partisans and limit conservative defections with dire warnings about the consequences of a Democratic Congress.

Amid predictions that demoralized conservative voters might sit out the election, Bush and other senior Republicans will escalate charges that Democrats will raise taxes, weaken national security and liberalize social policies. Bush struck those themes in campaign appearances yesterday in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and White House senior adviser Karl Rove said he "will consistently refresh that message" between now and Election Day.


Beyond the White House, however, there is increasing anxiety among Republicans about whether new efforts to frame the party's message can be effective in turning a tide that seems to be running powerfully against them as a result of the Iraq war and the Mark Foley page scandal.

For months, Republican leaders have sought to reassure candidates and activists with a succession of strategies. These included efforts to transcend the national environment by focusing House and Senate races on local issues, as well as high-profile speeches by Bush casting Iraq as just one theater in a larger war against terrorists. But none of these approaches has succeeded over a sustained time in reversing polls showing deep voter unrest and willingness to punish Republicans for the performance of Washington
----------------
then the article goes on to say the GOP is in a downbeat mode.
........
800 Shiite militiamen seizes total control over Iraqi city
Posted by NNN0LHI

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4275318.ht...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Shiite militia run by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized total control of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah on Friday in one of the boldest acts of defiance yet by one of the country's powerful, unofficial armies, witnesses and police said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dispatched an emergency security delegation that included the Minister of State for Security Affairs and top officials from the Interior and Defense ministries, Yassin Majid, the prime minister's media adviser, told The Associated Press.

The Mahdi Army fighters stormed three main police stations Friday morning, planting explosives that flattened the buildings, residents said.

About 800 black-clad militiamen with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were patrolling city streets in commandeered police vehicles, eyewitnesses said. Other fighters had set up roadblocks on routes into the city and sound trucks circulated telling residents to stay indoors.
.......
Fri Oct-20-06 08:10 AM
Original message
AFP: Bush: US troops to remain in Iraq until 'terrorists' defeated
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061020/pl_afp/usiraqunres... ;_ylt=Ah4FPXZ4kwbo2LGuX1PRFUzMWM0F;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

Bush: US troops to remain in Iraq until 'terrorists' defeated

by Laurent Lozano Fri Oct 20, 3:38 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) -President George W. Bush insisted that US troops would not pull out of
Iraq before "the terrorists are defeated," a day after acknowledging a possible parallel between violence there and the Tet Offensive during the US war in Vietnam.

The comments, coming less than three weeks before crucial elections, follow his acknowledgement on Wednesday that the current steep spike in violence in Iraq "could be" compared to the Tet Offensive, widely considered to be key to souring US public opinion on the Vietnam War.

"Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging. Our goal is victory," said Bush, speaking at a rally Thursday for embattled Republican congressman Don Sherwood in the town of La Plume, Pennsylvania.

"We are a nation at war, and we must do everything in our power to win that war," he said.

"We will not pull out our troops from Iraq before the terrorists are defeated. We will not pull out before Iraq can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself," he said.


http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-iraqpol20oct20,1,3744931.story?coll=la-headlines-politics
GOP's Solidarity on War Is Cracking
On the campaign trail, 'stay the course' is a nonstarter, even among Bush's staunchest allies.
By Noam N. Levey, Janet Hook and Richard Simon
Times Staff Writers

October 20, 2006

WASHINGTON — Public anxiety over the Iraq war, already reflected in polls and demands from some Democrats to withdraw U.S. troops, is now prompting calls for change from some unlikely quarters: Republican congressional candidates.

Across the country, GOP candidates are breaking with the White House over how long troops should remain in Iraq and who should lead the war effort.

Even some of President Bush's staunchest allies in solidly Republican states are publicly questioning the administration's war policies, while others are scrambling to find new ways to talk about Iraq in the face of rising voter frustration over management of the war.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who earlier this year stood by Bush during some of the most damaging sectarian violence, this week said that Iraq was in "chaos" and that it was "worth trying" to partition the country into semiautonomous regions, a proposal that sharply diverged from White House policy.

In Washington state this week, the Republican candidate for the Senate called on Bush to replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a position also taken by a Republican congressman from Connecticut and the party's Senate candidate in New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr........

Thu Oct-19-06 08:02 PM
Original message
Republicans say top Democrats support 'group of gay paedophiles'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article190...

Republicans say top Democrats support 'group of gay paedophiles'

<snip>
Republicans aren't going after their Democratic challengers much on Iraq, or the war on terror, or nuclear proliferation. Instead, members of President Bush's party are accusing their adversaries of being apologists for gay sex between adults and children.

In Ohio, the Republican candidate for governor, Kenneth Blackwell, went on a tear against his Democratic challenger, Ted Strickland, in their concluding televised debate this week, accusing him of cosying up to an eccentric group called the North American Man Boy Love Association, or Nambla, and associating himself with a man convicted of exposing himself to young children.
...
In California, a struggling Republican congressman called John Doolittle has argued that since his opponent, Charlie Brown, is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and since the ACLU has in the past defended Nambla's free-speech rights, he is tainted by association. "It is astounding," Mr Doolittle said in a recent press release, "that anyone could defend a group dedicated to aiding and abetting paedophiles." (Mr Doolittle failed to mention that he once acted as a character witness for a friend convicted of sexually assaulting six of his patients.)

The Nambla charge has also been thrown at Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco congresswoman who would become the next Speaker of the House if the Democrats win a majority on 7 November and who has thus become a multi-purpose pincushion for the Republicans. The maverick right-winger and erstwhile presidential candidate Pat Buchanan told a television interviewer this week that Ms Pelosi had been on gay pride parades where Nambla members were also present and had thus been "marching with paedophiles".....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2570893&mesg_id=2570893

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061019/ts_nm/usa_politics_election_bush_dc;_ylt=AlSJmJQqU9Hon5JNdCcvplus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

Bush big factor in congressional elections

By Ed Stoddard Thu Oct 19, 10:48 AM ET

DALLAS (Reuters) -
President George W. Bush won re-election in 2004 cast as a strong wartime leader, but in this year's congressional races his handling of the
Iraq war has given many voters a reason to vote against Republicans.


Bush's Republicans are fighting to keep their control of the U.S. Congress, but polls and analysts suggest Democrats could capture the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.

Republicans have sought to keep the focus on individual races, the war on terrorism and the economy rather than Bush, but Democrats appear to be gaining ground in their attempts to capitalize on the unpopularity among voters of the Iraq war.

"We have such a big mess in Washington. Bush is terrible and Iraq was a disaster," said 56-year-old Bill Caster of Kansas City, Missouri.

Fri Oct-20-06 07:00 AM
Original message
(Jim) Gibbons says he did nothing 'inappropriate' (NV-Gov)
LAS VEGAS - Clenching his wife's hand, a Republican Nevada congressman running for governor on Thursday repeated denials that he had assaulted and propositioned a casino cocktail waitress after a night out with campaign donors.

"I did nothing wrong last Friday. I did not act inappropriately with anyone," U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons said a day after police released reports detailing events that ended in three 911 calls and an assault allegation against him three weeks before Election Day.

"I'm a happily married man, a father and a grandfather. My reputation means everything to me," he said at a brief news conference. He wouldn't take any questions from reporters.

Chrissy Mazzeo, 32, told police that the 61-year-old congressman grabbed her arms, pushed her up against a wall and propositioned her in a parking garage near a bar where the two had met earlier in the night.

http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20061020/NEWS/11020...
- - -

Hmm, Republican Congressman, allegations of adultery and assault, why does this story sound familiar?


Fri Oct-20-06 06:29 AM
Original message
We've lost battle for Baghdad, US admits
Edited on Fri Oct-20-06 06:30 AM by shadowknows69

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday October 20, 2006
The Guardian


A day after George Bush conceded for the first time that America may have reached the equivalent of a Tet offensive in Iraq, the Pentagon yesterday admitted defeat in its strategy of securing Baghdad.
The admission from President Bush that the US may have arrived at a turning point in this war - the Tet offensive led to a massive loss of confidence in the American presence in Vietnam - comes during one of the deadliest months for US forces since the invasion.

Yesterday the number of US troops killed since October 1 rose to 73, deepening the sense that America is trapped in an unwinnable situation and further damaging Republican chances in midterm elections that are less than three weeks away...........

"Operation Together Forward has made a difference in the focus areas but has not met our overall expectations in sustaining a reduction in the level of violence," Gen Caldwell said.

The bleak assessment arrives as official thinking appears to be shifting on the war, with reports that a study group led by a Bush family loyalist and former secretary of state, James Baker, could be drawing up an exit plan for US forces in Iraq.

Such a strategy would once have been unthinkable for Mr Bush, who famously vowed to keep US forces in Iraq even if he was supported only by his wife, Laura, and dog, Barney.

But the president now appears willing to acknowledge that the public is losing confidence in his administration's involvement in Iraq.

On Wednesday Mr Bush admitted for the first time the existence of a parallel between Iraq and Vietnam.........More <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1926809,00.html >
Fri Oct-20-06 12:44 AM
Original message
Iraq Aims to Limit Mortality Data
Since July 2005, the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad, which is controlled by the Iraqi health ministry, has supplied U.N. investigators with raw figures from morgues on civilians who have died violently. The health ministry's department of operation has provided the United Nations with similar figures from the country's hospitals.

Those numbers attracted relatively little attention until June, when the U.N. human rights office in Baghdad estimated that more than 100 people a day were dying in Iraq. In August, the office recorded the largest spike of violence since the invasion, with more than 6,600 people killed in Iraq in July and August.

A spokesman for the prime minister subsequently voiced suspicion to the United Nations that the health ministry, which is controlled by officials linked to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, was overstating the numbers, according to Qazi.

Qazi said the prime minister's office sent a letter to the Iraqi health minister instructing him to "no longer release data on mortality." The prime minister's communications director, the letter stated, would be responsible for "centralizing and disseminating such information in the future," Qazi wrote.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...