(US election 2004) Bush versus Kerry, vijfde ronde.

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The Enron creeps, too—a reminder of how certain environments and particular habits of mind can erode common decency. People noticed. A tipping point had been reached. The issue of credibility was back on the table. The L-word was in circulation. Not the tired old bromide liberal. That's so 1988. No, this time something much more potent: liar.

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The far-right wing of the country—nearly one third of us by some estimates—continues to regard all who refuse to drink the Kool-Aid (liberals, rationalists, Europeans, et cetera) as agents of Satan. Bush could show up on video canoodling with Paris Hilton and still bank their vote.

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It's one thing to get trashed by Michael Moore. But when Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos.

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Does anyone really favor an administration that so shamelessly lies? One that so tenaciously clings to secrecy, not to protect the American people, but to protect itself? That so willfully misrepresents its true aims and so knowingly misleads the people from whom it derives its power? I simply cannot think so.

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Update: Top Artists To Rock Swing States

Updating a story first posted here yesterday (Aug. 3), artists such as Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks and the Dave Matthews Band have teamed up for the Vote for Change tour, which will visit 28 cities in nine presidential election battleground states.

The tour will kick off Oct. 1 with a concerted effort in Pennsylvania, where Springsteen & the E Street Band will play Philadelphia with R.E.M., John Fogerty and Bright Eyes, while Pearl Jam will play Reading, Pa., with Death Cab For Cutie.

State College, Pa. will get the Dave Matthews Band, Jurassic 5 and My Morning Jacket on that date and the Dixie Chicks will team up with James Taylor to play Pittsburgh. John Mellencamp and Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds will perform together in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo' will stir things up in Williamsport, Pa.

Other states that will see some or all of the shows are Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina and Florida.

Vote for Change is presented by MoveOn.Org's political action committee MoveOn PAC and America Coming Together (ACT), an organization advocating change in government.

The full lineup is still coming together but early details are available via MoveOn's Web site.

"There isn't going to be any illusion in the audience about why we're there," Matthews said on NBC's "The Today Show" this morning. Adds R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills, "This unprecedented coming together of musicians underscores the depth of the desire for change in our country's direction, and it feels right to use some of the freedoms granted to us in a democracy to try and effect that change."

"This is the fourth presidential election which Pearl Jam has engaged in as a band, and we feel it's the most important one of our lifetime," Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder says in a statement. "We believe in the power of the first amendment, and have always exercised our right to free speech in every aspect of our lives and music. This year there is no more powerful way for all Americans to exercise that right than by voting.”

Springsteen is expected to discuss the tour tonight during an interview with Ted Koppel on ABC's "Nightline."


-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y. and Ray Waddell, Nashville

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"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

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Op vrijdag 6 augustus 2004 04:21 schreef Nood-kloon het volgende:
Het is dat het zo triest is anders zou je er om lachen! Gaat Amerika zijn eigen mensen aanvallen. Via de site van Michael Moore kwam ik op de volgende quote van Bush.
[..]

Het staat er echt! Op de site van Witte Huis!

Vrij vertaald:
"Onze vijanden zijn innovatief en vindingrijk, net als wij. Ze zullen nooit ophouden met nadenken over nieuwe manieren om ons land en ons volk te beschadigen, net als wij(!)"

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Op 30 juli 2004 2004 zei John F. Kerry het volgende:
We will double our Special Forces to conduct terrorist operations

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Is nu elke verspreking al nieuws ?

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Op vrijdag 6 augustus 2004 09:26 schreef Speth het volgende:
idd... ik zag die reporter op het journaal al glunderen. Het is helemaal geen nieuws, iedereen weet inmiddels wel dat die man zich soms ongelukkig uitdrukt...

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Bush verspreekt zich weer eens
Nu de verkiezingen dichterbij komen, probeert Bush indruk te maken met ferme uitspraken, maar dat gaat wel eens mis .



Verspreking
George Bush staat erom bekend dat hij zich regelmatig verspreekt en gisteren was het weer raak. Bush was in Washington waar hij zijn handtekening zou zetten onder een wet die voorziet in 417 miljard dollar aan defensieuitgaven.

Vijanden
Voorafgaand aan de ondertekening sprak hij de zaal toe: 'Onze vijanden zijn innovatief, en dat zijn wij ook. Ze verzinnen altijd nieuwe manieren om ons land en onze mensen te beschadigen, en dat doen wij ook...'

Bron: http://www.rtl.nl/(/actue(...)verspreking_0645.xml

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"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee --that says, fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me ... You can't get fooled again."

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"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."

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U.S. economy added 32,000 jobs in July
Monthly gain smallest since December and below expectations
_{MSNBC News Services
Updated: 11:58 a.m. ET Aug. 6, 2004}

WASHINGTON - The nation’s payroll growth slowed dramatically in July with a paltry 32,000 jobs being added— a potentially troubling sign that the rough patch the economy hit in June was no aberration.

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The unemployment rate, however, dipped down a notch to 5.5 percent last month, from 5.6 percent in June, the Labor Department reported Friday. The new jobless rate was the lowest since October 2001.

The payrolls figure and the unemployment rate can sometimes go in different directions because they are derived from two separate statistical surveys.

Economists, however, look more closely at the payroll figure as a better barometer of the health of the jobs market. The 32,000 net jobs added in July represented the smallest gain in hiring since December and followed a revised gain of just 78,000 in June, even less than previously reported. May’s payrolls also were revised down to show a gain of 208,000.

“Employers got cold feet,” said economist Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. “Employers just don’t have the confidence in the economy that we need to sustain the kind of economic growth that we’ve seen.”

The Bush administration seized on the drop in the jobless rate, calling it a bright spot. “We’re not satisfied,” Treasury Secretary Snow told reporters in Pittsburgh. “We’re encouraged, though, by the fact that the unemployment rate came down.”

Soaring energy costs, which have hit companies bottom lines’, may have played a factor in businesses being more cautious in their hiring, economists said.

The unemployment rate is calculated based on a survey of around 60,000 households — a sort of poll — in which people are asked to state whether they have jobs or are looking for work. The seasonally adjusted civilian unemployment rate thus is the percentage of the labor force represented by those who are either listed as officially unemployed or searching for work.

The survey used to calculate the payroll figure is based on information from about 160,000 businesses and government agencies, covering roughly 400,000 individual work sites.

Analysts were expecting the economy to add anywhere from 215,000 to 247,000 jobs in July. They were predicting the jobless rate to hold steady at 5.6 percent.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, appearing before Congress last month, said that the economy hit a “soft patch” in June. But he expressed confidence that it would be short-lived.

Jobs an election issue
President Bush and his Democratic rival, John Kerry, joust frequently over the health of the economy and the availability of jobs — prominent issues in the presidential campaign. Kerry says Bush’s economic policies aren’t working and squeeze the middle class. Bush insists his tax cuts have helped the economy rebound and that making those tax cuts permanent will spur more job creation. He’s counting on that to help him win another four-year term in November.

Since Bush took office in January 2001, the economy has lost a net 1.1 million jobs. “Economic growth is strong and getting stronger,” he told a conference of minority journalists Friday.

While the economic recovery is on a solid path, the labor market recovery has been spotty.

Greenspan, in his appearance before Congress last month, noted that businesses have not completely abandoned their cautionary stance toward hiring.

Still, with the job situation uneven, Federal Reserve policy-makers have leeway to raise short-term interest rates gradually to head off any inflation problems, economists said. The Fed meets next week; economists continue to expect policy-makers to boost rates by one-quarter percentage point. On June 30, the Fed increased interest rates for the first time in four years, raising a key rate to 1.25 percent from a 46-year low of 1 percent.

In light of the latest employment report, though, the Fed may opt to order fewer rate increases this year than economists had previously anticipated, analysts said.

Even with the disappointing job growth in July, it still marked the 11th month in a row that the economy added jobs.

And, in an encouraging note, manufacturers, after cutting 1,000 jobs in June, added 10,000 in July. Education and health services also expanded employment. But retailers shed jobs as did financial services firms and hospitality companies.

Separately Friday, consumer confidence surged in August to its highest level since the beginning of the year despite fresh terror threats and surging oil prices.

The AP-Ipsos consumer confidence index climbed to 104.8 in August, up from 92.0 in July, led by consumers’ perceptions of their own finances and optimism about the future.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Op vrijdag 6 augustus 2004 15:16 schreef RichardQuest het volgende:
Zal wel omdat 'ie zenuwachtig is....op de middelbare school verspreken zenuwachtige mensen zich ook gauw bij een spreekbeurt. Heeft Bush iets te vrezen/verbergen?

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Op zaterdag 7 augustus 2004 13:30 schreef zakjapannertje het volgende:
tip van http://www.electoral-vote.com/
[afbeelding]

lees er meer over op: http://juliusblog.blogspo(...)l#109174332697993966

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:: European team to observe US election ::

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will monitor the US election on 2 November. It will be the first time such a team has been present for a US presidential election.

Thirteen Democratic members of the House of Representatives had requested UN monitors for this year's presidential elections in an effort to avoid possible voting irregularities that plagued the 2000 election, the closest in history.

In a letter to the 13 Democrats, Assistant Secretary of State Paul Kelly did not mention their request for UN observers but said the United States had already invited the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe the 2004 presidential elections.

The OSCE, based in Vienna, Austria, has sent more than 10,000 personnel to monitor more than 150 elections and referenda in more than 30 countries during the past decade, spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir told CNN.

She also said the observer team would go to the US in September to plan how to monitor the election, including how many observers to send and where to deploy them.

Meer: http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=17057

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Op zaterdag 7 augustus 2004 13:30 schreef zakjapannertje het volgende:
tip van http://www.electoral-vote.com/
[afbeelding]

lees er meer over op: http://juliusblog.blogspo(...)l#109174332697993966

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John Kerry voorstander Irak-oorlog

15:06:45

WASHINGTON - De Amerikaanse Democratische presidentskandidaat John Kerry verduidelijkte gisteren tijdens een verkiezingshow in Arizona dat hij ook zou ingestemd hebben met een oorlog in Irak.
Ook wanneer hij toen met zekerheid zou geweten hebben dat er geen massavernietigingswapens in Irak aanwezig waren, zou Kerry de huidige Amerikaanse president George W. Bush de oorlog in Irak laten starten hebben.

,,Ja, ik zou ook achteraf deze bevoegdheid aan president Bush geven. Het was een juiste beslissing'', aldus Kerry. Hij voegde er wel enkele scherpe kritische bemerkingen aan toe over de manier waarop Bush de oorlog in ’goede banen’ heeft geleid.

Zo vindt Kerry bijvoorbeeld dat de Republikeinse president te overhaast heeft beslist om de oorlog te beginnen, zonder eerst na te denken over een manier om vrede te verkrijgen in Irak.

John Kerry kondigde bovendien ook aan dat wanneer hij de komende presidentsverkiezingen van 2 november wint, hij de eerste zes maanden de Amerikaanse troepen in Irak zal verkleinen. Dat wil hij vooral kunnen realiseren door diplomatische inspanningen en een versterkte hulp van andere landen.
10/08/2004 - dpa - cdm