According to The Charleston Post and Courier, 40 percent of Army reservists have failed to report to duty at Fort Jackson as ordered.

Hmmm...if the reservists don't show up where ordered they will be considered deserters? Interesting.

But here's where it gets really interesting as blogged by Digby:

No. You're good, Digby. Nicely done.

Kicking demonstrators, pulling their hair, punching them in the face, beating them up in the name of Jesus, and now burning and vandalizing their property...for the second time.

Is there nothing Bush Supporters won't do? Just "spreading freedom", I guess.

While I found John Kerry's appearance on Letterman last night less than impressive, and largely a wasted opportunity, he seems to have more than made up for it today at my alma mater, NYU.

Here's a couple of notable paragraphs in a speech that was entirely notable. Especially in light of the smoke blown by Bush at the U.N. (speaking of wasted opportunities!) where he received a predictably unimpressed...well, downright chilly reception.

I'd encourage you to check out Kerry's whole speech today. Particularly you Bush fans who have no idea what Kerry really says about anything. So here's just a few on-the-money thoughts from him today:

Mr. Bush, you got served.

Responding to Kerry's remarks about Bush's "colossal failures of judgment" today Bush told reporters at the U.N., "My opponent has taken so many different positions on Iraq that his statements are hardly credible at all."

Well, alright Mr. "President", I guess we'll now have to take another look at the many wild and various positions you have dreamt up so far throughout this misadventure to justify your illegal, immoral, and wholly misguided war on Iraq.

Each time one justification became inoperative, you simply made up a new one! So here's John Aravosis' compiled list of 27 such reasons (so far) that you guys have offered to try and justify this foolish war.

Perhaps it was the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the adjacent report about another American hostage killed today in Iraq. Or perhaps it was just one of those rare moments when Fox News realized the irony of one of their own front page headlines.

Either way, their website's original front page headline for their report on Bush's U.N. speech today was "A New Definition of Security" before it was hastily changed to the more on-message "Freedom Will Find a Way".

A new definition of security, indeed. Hopefully nobody noticed.

(Thanks to the sharp eye of home sick BRAD BLOG regular, Jaime, who did notice! Get well soon, Jaime!)

Uh, oh. Looks like the Bush Administration may have learned all they need to know to start another new war. This time in Iran:

By this administration's standards, that's almost a guarantee that we're goin' in!

If things get much worse in Iraq or Bush's poll numbers start to slide, I'd say "Watch out, Mullahs! More 'Freedom' is on it's way!"

Bush/Cheney '04: Why change horsemen mid-apocalypse?

It's much easier to run for the White House when you have neither scruples, morals, or a conscience. The Right proves that every day.

The hypocrites that support George W. Bush have been breathless in their sycophantic rush to say "see I told ya so!" about the potential errors in part of Dan Rather's report. Predictably they go so far as to say that those errors somehow "prove what we've been saying all along" that somehow this demonstrates a "liberal bias" at CBS, and oh, while we're at it, the rest of the "mainstream media".

Happily, of course, they ignore the year long series of acknowledged incorrect and faulty reports of The New York Times who, under the byline of Judith Miller and others, and with the help of the Bush Administration and their discredited allies in the name of Ahmad Chalabi and friends, frightened the United States into an entire war over completely wrong and wholly disproven premises.

The New York Times was hardly alone, of course, who can ever forget the "accurate" reporting in The Washington Post like their Dec. 12, 2002 story, errantly aiding the run-up to war in their story headlined "U.S. Suspects Al Qaeda Got Nerve Agent From Iraqis; Analysts: Chemical May Be VX, And Was Smuggled Via Turkey"?

In other words, when the bias (accidental or otherwise) and faulty reporting ends up serving the desires of the Right --- and in the cases mentioned above, ironically, via the Right's other favorite whipping boys, the supposedly "liberal" New York Times and Washington Post --- you'll hear not a peep from the same folks who are simply "outraged" when an error occurs in a report whose information (true or otherwise) they don't like.

Need more proof? Where is the "outrage" and armchair amateur typographer's when it came to demonstrating that George W. Bush had used forged documents to make a case for war in his own State of the Union Address? The documents Bush used to suggest that Saddam was attempting to purchase uranium in Niger were long ago discovered to have been forgeries, and even acknowledged as such by the 9/11 Commission.

And yet, not a single amateur document specialist slash rightwing blogger seemed outraged over that mistake, by the "Commander-in-Chief", and one that also sent us on a path towards a mistaken war.

What, no self-righteous indignation over that one either?

And what of the story from just two days ago, screamed by Drudge and dutifully picked up and reported by both Rush and Sean that Drudge headlined "GIRL CRIES AFTER BUSH/CHENEY SIGN RIPPED BY THUGS..." The one with the picture of the poor little girl in tears on her father's shoulders after thugs in union t-shirts tore up her Bush/Cheney sign. The father, it turns out, who, in addition to happily making his six-year-old daughter cry so pictures could be taken, astoundingly, for the third election year in a row, was harrassed by "thugs" from the opposition party.

As it turns out those "thugs" were the father's other children. His sons. The story, which once run on Drudge will run everywhere else, was a fake.

None the less, the Rightwing D.C. rag The Washington Times picked it up and ran their own breathless and outraged feature on this fake story.

Haven't yet heard the wingnuts wailing and crying about the "outrageous" bias of Drudge and The Washington Times on the matter. How very strange.

Yesterday, Fox's "Campaign" Carl Cameron said that John Kerry, in a speech yesterday, called Bush "a warmonger who wants a perpetual state of war around the world". Well, Bush may be a proven warmonger, and he has suggested that we will now be in a perpetual state of war around the world. But the trouble is, John Kerry never said it. I wish he would. But he didn't.

Again, not so curiously perhaps, no outrage about the bias of Fox News from the Right.

I could, of course, go on and on pointing out one biased news report after another, based on fake information or simply out and out lies from the Right, in both Conservative media and the supposed (yet non-existant) "Liberal" media. From CNN's Bill Schneider who baselessly claimed on Sunday, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda "would very much like to defeat President Bush" (an absurd suggestion if ever there was one) to newspaper after newspaper which, to this day, continue to quote "information" from the discredited "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" even now after nearly every one of their allegations has been proven false and/or baseless by official contemperaneous documents from the Military themselves.

No cries of "See! Look how biased the media is!" from the Right in regard to such every day occurences. Stop by Media Matters for America for an endless cataloging of such blatant anti-liberal, pro-conservative bias in every quarter of the media, not just the expected culprits, as updated every five minutes or so.

But, like the evidence of a mistaken War, waged for no good reason, or the 25 or so different and ever-changing ones that Bush has continually created to justify his actions once each previous justification became "inoperable", hard evidence is no match for an immoral, power-hungry group of rabid partisans willing to lie their way across the consciousness of the good, but largely too-busy-to-keep-up-with-this-bullshit American people.

Yes, there are a few Republicans and/or Conservatives who still have a conscience. Even the thinly disguised Conservative Bill O'Reilly has the decency to point out that CBS was most likely the victim of shabby reporting rather than any sort of malicious bias. But for the most part, for the winning-is-everything crowd on the Right, such honest admissions are a rarity, and rather off-message for the Bush worshipping, zombified opportunists.

So, on they press, lying their way to the White House. "Things are improving in Iraq", "Freedom is on the march", "America is safer" and "the Mainstream Media has a Liberal Bias". All without the blink of an eye or the blush of a conscience.

Meanwhile, the lies and or misleads of factually challenged Rightwingers have directly lead to the deaths of thousands of innocents across this globe during George W. Bush's Reign of Error. Far more than the number that perished on September 11th, 2001. And there is little doubt that thousands more will die via such lies before the cycle can balance itself out. All the while, Drudge, Rush, Sean, the Fox "News" team and all of their immoral admirers likely sleep well at night, albeit with a loaded pistol beneath their pillows to keep them safe should any God-loathing, America-hating "Liberals" break into their house at night and threaten the only thing they actually care about; Themselves.

Though the Pentagon has just made it much more difficult for U.S. Citizens overseas to register to vote this year (not military personnel mind you, just U.S. ex-patriots living overseas who are likely to vote againt Bush!), you can still get it done in time!

In 2000, six different states were decided by fewer than 8000 votes! Two of those states were deciced by less than 600 votes!

If you're living in the United States and you haven't registered yet, what are you waiting for?! The Republicans hope that you don't vote! Don't help them out!

The following links should take care of all registration needs! Click one of them NOW! Deadlines are now just days away! Bush will be defeated by turnout! But only if you do your civic duty this year!

Living overseas?
Click here to register to vote NOW via www.OverseasVote2004.com

Living in the US?
Click here to register to vote NOW via 'Rock the Vote'!

Living in the US in a "solid state" but going to school in a "swing state"?
Do what Dick Cheney did!
Register where your vote will count the most!
Click here to register to vote NOW via SwingStateVoter.com

Attacks by Insurgents per day:
80 avg.

Cities and Towns in Hostile Hands:
36

U.S. Military Dead:
1,033

U.S. Military Amputees, Wounded, Injured & Psychologically Disabled,
All now evacuated from Iraq:
27,450 est.

Iraqi Civilians Killed:
20,600 est.

Iraqi Military Killed (by end of "major hostilities"):
28,000 est.

Total Iraqis Killed (Civilian and Military):
48,600 est.

Population of Iraq:
25 million

Killed in the US on 9/11:
2,973

Population of US:
293 million

Stockpiles of WMD's found in Iraq so far:
0

Sources: Iraq Coalition Casuality Count, U.S. Dept. of Defense, McLaughlin Group

(From James Wolcott via BRAD BLOG tipster Bryan)

Yes, another Rightwingnut has pissed me off. This time the honor goes to that great American Christian, Jimmy Swaggert who was kind enough recently to remind us why the hell we've got to take our country back from the fundamentalist extremist goons that are turning America into everything it was designed NOT to be.

And so, another new BRAD BLOG video for you. Keep spreading the word, gang! And thanks for supporting the BRAD BLOG!

(If the downloads are slow, please check back soon, should be getting more hosts on board by tomorrow! Feel free to let me know if you are also able to host this video to spread the bandwidth demands! These things are getting very popular!)

A few other pieces excerpted via today's "Today in Iraq", apparently one of the few places that bothers to deliver daily war news anymore.

In sum, listen to the experts. Those commanders on the ground, in the theater, or in the know, and who aren't running for anything...

As Josh Marshall said yesterday, "Bush on Iraq: Who you gonna believe? Me, or your lyin' eyes?"

While it may have been another quiet week in Lake Wobegon, it was anything but quiet in Iraq. According to "Iraq Coalition Casualty Count" --- a website that posts publically released Pentagon data on Iraq casualties, but is blocked by the Pentagon in Iraq so that troops there cannot have access to it --- there have been 1,032 US Troops killed so far.

And here's what you probably haven't heard all that much about over the last two days there. Once again from "Today in Iraq" (another site blocked from troops in Iraq by the Pentagon):