Kerry stronger - here come the Terror alerts!

Remember when Kerry was was ahead in the polls in June and July and after the convention.

There sure were alot of Terror Alerts!

Since late August until this past week, though, with Bush ahead in the polls... waddaya know, the terrorists have been taking a siesta or something. Maybe it's cuz the French take August off for holiday, right?

NOW, though, now that that polls show that the race has returned to a tie (within the margin of error), comes the first rumblings of the next terror alert.

I predict that once Kerry shows higher National polls than Bush, suddenly the terrorists will remove their sombreros and get back to work - Terror Alert Time!
(I'm hardly the only one having these premonitions.)

Stoned Slacker Poll: Daily Show Viewers MOST INFORMED GROUP!

As mentioned earlier, O'Reilly thinks all us daily show viewers are "stoned slackers."

Well.

Turns out, though, according to an Annenberg Poll:

Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers - even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration.

emphasis mine

And a nice big sample this: 19,013 people.

Hey! We is smart-like!

Pass the bong!

Kerry on Letterman- VIDEO and AUDIO

If I get a transcript I will post it.

[UPDATE] Video and Audio are both HERE!


The BEST I've ever seen him. He was quite comfortable.
He also gave some of the clearest series of policy statements AND attacks on Bush&Co, I have seen EVER.
It had a LOT of substance with clarity and humor.

This all falls in line with his speeches and campaign appearences in the last 2 weeks.

FWIW, much better then the Daily Show appearence, which was more playful and un-serious (emmy winning fake news, after all)

O'Reilly: Daily Show Viewers "Stoned Slackers"

Jon Stewart was on Bill O'Reilly last night. Stewart is the master!

The transcript is officially at
http://www dot foxnews dot com/story/0,2933,132946,00.html
but I won't link to Fox: linking to them will send a stream of slimey ooze spewing all over my place.

Here's another site with the transcript.
Small bit here:

O'REILLY: You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary.

STEWART: If that were so, that would be quite frightening.

O'REILLY: But it is. It's true. I mean, you've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night, OK, and they can vote.

STEWART: Yeah.

O'REILLY: You can't stop them.

STEWART: Yeah, I just don't know how motivated they would be, these stoned slackers.

O'REILLY: Yeah, it just depends if they have to go out that day.

STEWART: What am I, a Cheech and Chong movie? Stoned slackers?

O'REILLY: Come on, you do the research, you know the research on your program.

STEWART: No, we don't.

O'REILLY: Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it. You didn't see that?

STEWART: No, I didn't realize that.

O'REILLY: Yeah, we have that there.

STEWART: We come on right after, I believe, puppets that make crank calls...

O'Reilly with another one of his made-up facts. O'Reilly really is a pathological lier.

Kerry's Plan for Iraq. Great Speech!

I'm just lazy again. Here I quote from The Al Franken Show, who sums up Kerry's fantastic attack today:

Read Kerry’s speech.

Read it.

He’s hitting Bush on Iraq--hard. Directly.

His two main rationales – weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaeda/September 11 connection – have been proved false… by the President’s own weapons inspectors… and by the 9/11 Commission. Just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged the facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the earth is flat.

And:

Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bi-partisan Congressional hearings… major outside studies… and even some in the administration itself… predicted virtually every problem we now face in Iraq.

This President was in denial. He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military. The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible consequences.

He’s right. And it’s clear. He runs through the litany. Then:

In Iraq, this administration has consistently over-promised and under-performed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence. And the President has held no one accountable, including himself.

In fact, the only officials who lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.

Bam! And then Kerry goes into the officials who told the truth and got the boot.

And it’s clear from the speech that not only has Bush done a terrible job--Kerry will do a better one. Why? Simple.

George Bush has no strategy for Iraq. I do.

Is that direct, or what? That’s the difference between Bush and Kerry.

George Bush has no strategy for Iraq. I do.

The specifics of the plan:

1. Hold an emergency summit of major allies and Iraq’s neighbors to rebuild the coalition.
   
2. Greatly expand the project to train Iraq’s troops, and make sure they’re trained better--he’d double classroom training time.
   
3. Fire the officials responsible for screwing up Iraq’s reconstruction and hire more Iraqi firms instead of Halliburton. Actually spend the reconstruction money.
   
4. Pull together a U.N. protection force to make sure the elections go forward.

Good ideas. (If people tell you that Bush’s plan is the same as Kerry’s, ask them to list the Pentagon officials who’ve been fired for mismanaging the reconstruction. And ask them which countries are invited to Bush’s emergency summit.)

The key thing, though, is that if people recognize that Kerry has a plan and Bush doesn’t, Kerry will win.

Spread the word: if you still think Kerry isn’t fighting back, you aren’t paying attention.

A Wake-up call from Michael Moore!

Full Quote from his website. Read it!

Put Away Your Hankies...a message from Michael Moore

9/20/04

Dear Friends,

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.

Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!"

No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.

My friends, it is time for a reality check.

1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people. Finally, most of the polls are weighted with too many Republicans, as pollster John Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.

2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team. Instead of shunning Clinton (as Gore did), Kerry has decided to not make that mistake.

3. Traveling around the country, as I've been doing, I gotta tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of unrest out there. Much of it is not being captured by the mainstream press. But it is simmering and it is real. Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of angry white people scare you. Turn off the TV! (Except Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is just a sugar-coated lie).

4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is decided on "9/11" (the fear of terrorism), Bush wins. But if it is decided on the job we are doing in Iraq, then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell we used to call Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags will sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry meant by his original war vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their deaths -- and Mr. and Mrs. Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to show up when he was in the "service" he might have somewhat of a clue as to how to recognize an immoral war that cannot be "won." All he has delivered to Iraq was that plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this failure of monumental proportions that is going to cook his goose come this November.

So, do not despair. All is not over. Far from it. The Bush people need you to believe that it is over. They need you to slump back into your easy chair and feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate another four years of George W. Bush. They need you to wish we had a candidate who didn't windsurf and who was just as smart as we were when WE knew Bush was lying about WMD and Saddam planning 9/11. It's like Karl Rove is hypnotizing you -- "Kerry voted for the war...Kerry voted for the war...Kerrrrrryyy vooootted fooooor theeee warrrrrrrrrr..."

Yes...Yes...Yesssss....He did! HE DID! No sense in fighting now...what I need is sleep...sleeep...sleeeeeeppppp...

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS -- YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

Polling Balm and Worst Negatives for Bush

For what it's worth - this could change in the blink of an eye:

Look below at the current national poll bar chart from PollingReport.com.
Note the Gallup poll way out of synch with the rest?
On the national average (1000 people throughout the US) this race is close.

Further, in the brand new Zogby Battleground state polls, there is much improvement.
Quoting MyDD:

Kerry "leads" (I'm counting leads inside the MoE as leads for the sake of this post) in AR (0.1), FL (0.6), IA (3.0), MI (6.0), MN (9.7), NH (3.6), NM (12.7), OR (12.0), PA (3.1), WA (8.7) and WI (2.4). Bush leads in MO (5.4), NV (2.2), OH (3.3), TN (5.5) and WV (12.4). It all looks good except for West Virginia.

Especially important is that Kerry has surged to a double-digit lead in Oregon. Voting is already underway out there, so being ahead now counts as much as it does in many states on November 1st.

This should bring the very fluid Electoral-Vote map to a more pleasing level, probably Kerry up in the lead for an instant. Though I'm sure it will bounce all over the place before all is said and done.

Oh yeah and this from one of the most trusted pollsters:

President Bush's Ratings Slip to Lowest Level of His Presidency, According to Latest Harris Poll

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - September 17, 2004 - President Bush's ratings have slipped to 45 percent positive and 54 percent negative, the lowest ratings of his presidency, according to a new Harris Poll. These numbers compare to 50 percent positive, 49 percent negative in June and 48 percent positive, 51 percent negative in August. This downward trend no doubt helps to explain why the lead which the president enjoyed over Senator Kerry immediately after the Republican convention in New York - the so-called "convention bounce" - has now disappeared.