According to Cheney, the poor economic data is flawed because it skips all those people selling crap on eBay. Riiiiight.

“If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking,” [John] Edwards said in a statement.

We don’t really listen to Keillor’s show much, but after reading a piece like this, we may need to reconsider:

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil ArmstrongÕs moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, NewtÕs evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks weÕre deaf, dumb and dangerous. Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace. Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedyÑthe single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the presidentÕs personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

As quoted by Atrios:

And finally, New Rule: You can’t run on a mistake. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t run for re-election claiming Pearl Harbor was his finest hour. Abe Lincoln was a great president, but the high point of his second term wasn’t theater security. 9/11 wasn’t a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuck-up by a guy on vacation. Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr. President. I’m not blaming you for 9/11. We have blue-ribbon commissions to do that. And I’m not saying there was anything improper about your immediate response to the attacks. Someone had to stay in that classroom and protect those kids from Chechen rebels. But by the looks of your convention, you’d think that the worst thing that ever happened to us was the best thing that ever happened to you. You just can’t keep celebrating the deadliest attack ever as if it’s your personal rendezvous with greatness. You don’t see old men who were shot down during World War II jumping out of a plane every year. I mean, other than your dad. … So I say, if you absolutely must win an election on the backs of dead people, do it like they do in Chicago, and have them actually vote for you. Cite

This Onion story just isn’t anywhere nearly as funny was it was four years ago:

“We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two,” Bush said. “Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there’s much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”

Sigh.

Head on over to Defective Yeti for a hi-larious riff on the scripted Q&A sessions our President has been enjoying of late. Trust me on this, and read all the way to the end of the entry.

Cheney: Vote for us, or you might DIE.

TPM has the text of a letter from former President Jimmy Carter to Zell Miller.

As it happens, some of the people that the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” cited as supporters of their cause had no idea their names were being used, and aren’t too happy about it.

As if they couldn’t sink lower. Christ.

Molly Ivins has quite a bit to say about the RNC. It’s worth a read.

From Sen. Kerry:

Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without healthcare makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi Royal Family control our energy costs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton while you’re still on their payroll makes you unfit. That’s the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And it’s not going to change. I believe it’s time to move America in a new direction; I believe it’s time to set a new course for America.

Atrios has more, natch.

The Agonist points out a bit of a “Harper’s Index” rundown of Bush’s administration from The Independent.

This, we presume, is what went through Alan Keyes noggin before he gave these quotes.

The always-excellent Fred Clark over at Slacktivist points out a long piece in the upcoming New Yorker about the direction of Bush’s economic policies. Short answer: if you earn a living, you’ll be taxed, but if you live off wealth, the trend is toward eliminating those taxes.

Dennis Hastert — the Speaker of the House, for crying out loud — suggested in an interview with Chris Wallace that progressive patron George Soros was funded by drug lords:

On “Fox News Sunday,” the Illinois Republican insinuated that billionaire financier George Soros, who’s funding an independent media campaign to dislodge President Bush, is getting his big bucks from shady sources. “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where – if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from,” Hastert mused. An astonished Chris Wallace asked: “Excuse me?” The Speaker went on: “Well, that’s what he’s been for a number years – George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he’s got a lot of ancillary interests out there.” Wallace: “You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?” Hastert: “I’m saying I don’t know where groups – could be people who support this type of thing. I’m saying we don’t know.” Daily News, via TPM

As Josh Marshall put it, there’s literally no depth to which these people won’t sink. Lest you think this is just a case of loose lips, Marshall notes that Hastert has been repeating the charge at the convention this week, a technique we might call the Big Lie, because that’s what it is. Soros, however, isn’t taking this lying down, and has issued a public challenge for Hastert to put up or shut up:

I’ve talked to reporters who’ve asked Hastert this around the convention hall. And he’s been aggressively restating the ‘charge.’ I’m told he even shoved his finger in the chest of one of them when repeating it. Now Soros has written this letter to Hastert, asking him to put up or shut up, or, more specifically “either substantiate these claims — which you canont do because they are false — or publicly apologize for attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation.” Whatever you think of Soros, this is the sort of slur that only comes from a real pig. And to think that the author of it is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and out in the light of day. TPM

Remember: one side of this race has aggressively mislead the American people at every possible turn, and when they’re not misleading they’re stonewalling (e.g., the 9/11 commission, or GWB’s military records). Their fetish for secrecy is anathema to the freedoms we claim to cherish. They have and will continue to disparage the records of honored veterans with ridiculous insinuations (see Cleland, Max) or outright lies (see Kerry, John). They’ll even recruit other honored veterans who know better (see Dole, Bob). If someone with resources puts his money where his mouth is, they insinuate that he’s up to no good just because he’s against their agenda. They do this because they cannot compete on ideas and merits, and know the only way they can keep power is to keep the debate from every becoming substantive by cultivating a culture of fear and lies. They will keep doing this until someone calls them on their bullshit, and you can be damned sure the lapdog mainstream media won’t do that. Pay attention.

Excessive governmental secrecy and freedom are not compatible; The Agonist has more. Read it.

Update: The Memory Hole has a bit more, wherein the DOJ redacted a portion of a Supreme Court ruling before releasing the material in question. How fucked up is that?

The RNC will open with a speech by Sheri Dew. Atrios gives us a sample of her work wherein she compares those who fail to oppose gay marriage to those who failed to stop Hitler. Interestingly for the Fundie-dominated GOP, she’s a Mormon.

Salon explains the history of Karl Rove’s political dirty tricks and outright evil.