Expats Against Bush

Liberal Hate-Fest

Being expats, some of you will be missing Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central, and have had to rely on the Comedy Central website for your fix. And, every once in a while, the website earns its keep, and throws up a tasty morcel such as this clip on Conventional Wisdom (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love GOP Talking Points).

Outfoxed: The Memos

You may have heard about Outfoxed, the documentary about the Fox News Channel that said news channel are trying to block or at least discredit. Fresh on the heels of the controversy, the makers of said documentary have released to DC gossip blog Wonkette a nice selection of the memos that were sent out from the top levels of Fox News to the troops, guiding them on the editorial slant they should take. Some of these have been seen before, but some of them are new - and make hard reading:

The president is doing something that few of his predecessors dared undertake: putting the US case for mideast peace to an Arab summit. It's a distinctly skeptical crowd that Bush faces. His political courage and tactical cunning are worth noting in our reporting through the day.

Hogwash. Bush has made nothing more than a token effort towards peace in the Middle East, unlike most of his predecessors. It's obscene to claim that he is to be patted on the back for his "efforts." I mean, before the abortive "roadmap" last year he basically ignored the issue for two years.

The so-called 9/11 commission has already been meeting. In fact, this is the eighth session. The fact that former Clinton and both frmer and current Bush administration officials are testifying gives it a certain tension, but this is not "what did he know and when did he know it" stuff. Do not turn this into Watergate. Remember the fleeting sense of national unity that emerged from this tragedy. Let's not desecrate that.

Right. Let's not trouble our post-9/11 patriotic feelgood hug-a-thon with examining what went wrong or how we could prevent it next time.

Thursday update: the pictures from Abu Graeb prison are disturbing. They have rightly provoked outrage. Today we have a picture -- aired on Al Arabiya -- of an American hostage being held with a scarf over his eyes, clearly against his will. Who's outraged on his behalf?

Well we've been through this argument time and again on this site... Nobody expects terrorists to play nice. People expect better from us. Remember? We're the good guys.

Doesn't this just speak volumes?

Expats in the UK: NHS Experiences?

A freelance journalist recently contacted me about doing some interviews in relation to a couple of pieces he's doing about American expats in the UK. Specifically, he's looking for experiences you have had dealing with the NHS, especially concerning major health problems / procedures, and your opinions of how this compares with your experience of the American medical system. I imagine he could be tapping into a rich vein here, no pun intended.

If you're willing to be interviewed, the journalist's name is Kabir Chhibber and he can be reached here.

I believe in the BBC

Our old friends Bloggerheads have come up with a brilliant new campaign in response to the Hutton Report's blasting of the BBC and the ensuing shakeup that has left the Corporation's future in doubt:

This is one initiative I support fully. The BBC is a venerable institution providing a service to the world, and to have it crippled or eliminated on the basis of an increasingly-questionable government investigation would be a travesty.

Blast from the past

Just when the Stop Bush march was starting to seem like ancient history (was it really only two weeks ago?) here comes, of all places, the Philadelphia City Paper with a story on the protests and our role in them. A decent little article, in my highly unbiased opinion:

Traditionally, expats have been regarded as having chosen to remove themselves from the domestic political life of the U.S. in favor of living and paying tax elsewhere. However, Expats Against Bush, with no official political affiliation, is maneuvering its way through international protests, preaching to expats, while having the inadvertent effect of influencing how foreign electorates regard their leaders.

Well, I think that might be slightly overstating things, but I like to think we're able to at least make our presence felt.

More on the RNC Bush ad - WaPo

Richard Cohen writes:

[A]bout the only way to find out what really happened is through the political process. This is especially the case because the Senate has gone from being the world's greatest deliberative body to the world's greatest rubber stamp. Naturally and predictably, the White House would like to avoid any accounting whatever and is likely to respond to criticism with demagogic appeals to patriotism. I hope it doesn't work. I love my country and I love the truth and I always thought the best thing about being an American is that you don't have to choose.

Paul Krugman on Bush's 1st Ad Offensive

Krugman strikes again for the NYT, this time laying into the new RNC ad which equates being critical of Bush with being "soft on terror". As Mr Krugman so eloquently points out, and as we've said here till we're blue in the face, nobody has an issue with the general idea of combating terrorism - but we have a real issue with the way that Bush is going about it - ergo diverting attention away from the real centers of terror (i.e. Afghanistan) and destabilizing areas that were previously well-contained (i.e. Iraq):

What the critics say is that this loss of focus seriously damaged the campaign against terrorism. Strategic assets in limited supply, like Special Forces soldiers and Predator drone aircraft, were shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, while intelligence resources, including translators, were shifted from the pursuit of Al Qaeda to the coming invasion. This probably allowed Qaeda members, including Osama bin Laden, to get away, and definitely helped the Taliban stage its ominous comeback. And the Iraq war has, by all accounts, done wonders for Qaeda recruiting. Is saying all this attacking the president for attacking the terrorists?

The challenge for the Democrats now will be to counter this sort of ad effectively in a way which reaches your everyday voter without shooting themselves in the foot.

Goldman Sachs: "The US budget is out of control"

Isn't the GOP supposed to be the party of small goverment? Reining in spending, fiscal discipline, that sort of thing?

Possibly not.

Perhaps if they weren't so inclined to help certain folks out at the expense of others, then they could start to grab hold of the "solvency issue".

Between you and me, I have always been really suspect as soon as people start carping on about "corporate cronyism" and the like - it usually sets off my liberal rant filter and I make my excuses. But I'm starting to think there's something to the idea that big business have really got a hold on this administration to a degree that we haven't seen before, and it's not a good thing.

Time: Love him or loathe him?

There's an interesting article in Time this week about how Bush has polarized Americans to an amazing extent - he's changed the equation from 40/40/20 Dems/Repubs/Undecided to 45/45/10 - meaning that there's an ever-shrinking pool of neutral or "swing" voters.

The article is also very illuminating regarding the tactics that Bush's folks have been using when he's been stumping on behalf of candidates in various elections this year - tactics that will be used again when things heat up next year.

The Democratic Party, and indeed all of us, will really have to to out-think and out-maneuver the Republicans in order to win this one. I hope that we can get all our ducks in a row in time, and avoid shooting ourselves in the foot through infighting and indecision.

I say "we" knowing full well that it's not just Democrats opposed to a Bush reelection. There are Republicans abroad who have written to me to tell me they abhor Bush, as well as Green Party members who've come on board. Everybody is welcome. But we have to be honest here.

The Republican candidate for President next year will be Bush.

Nader.... Well I hope that people are more sensible this year. Throwing away votes doesn't help anyone, and Nader is downright unelectable.

The only candidate capable of beating Bush next year will come from the Democratic Party. But we won't know who that candidate will be until the Democratic National Convention next year.

Thus, we will have a much shorter relative amount of time to unite behind the chosen candidate - and we need to be ready to put on a full-court-press when that candidate is chosen. We need to have people already signed up as Democrats or committed to voting Democratic when the day comes.

We need to start now. Later today I will post details on how you can sign up to join Democrats Abroad, and get yourself and your friends and family involved as the election year kicks off properly.

For the record again, Expats Against Bush is candidate-neutral until a candidate is chosen at the Convention. We will not be endorsing any one candidate at the expense of any other until the proper time.