N. Gregory Mankiw , a former adviser to George Bush, and current adviser to Mitt Romney, has a piece in the New York Times this morning spewing more of the Republican lies about the status of the American health care system. Let's spend a few moments deconstructing those lies:

Frank Rich, an Op-ed columnist appearing in the NYT today has it all wrong--he thinks the entire election hinges on whether or not Bush bombs Iran--and believes that if war with Iran doesn't occur between now and the election, that the Democrats will lose.

Mr. Rich, while absolutely correct in pointing out that the Bush administration has spewed forth a great deal of pre-Iraq style misinformation about Iran in an attempt to whet Americans' appetite for another war, underestimates how truly unhappy Americans are with the Republican party in general.

They have seen the news reports of the young men and women dying in Iraq for a war based on lies--and many have attended the funerals of family members and young people from their own communities. Those people have seen the horror of this war up close and personal, and know the cost better than anyone else, save the soldiers themselves.

Just a few hours ago, the AP reported that we are having yet another recall of contaminated food--this time, it's from the meat processor Cargill, Inc. According to the article, over 1 million pounds of hamburger meat may have been contaminated with E. Coli 0157:H7. Click here to read the full article.

I have a few questions about voter suppression for everybody on Dkos. I've been away from here for a few months, and during that period, I have been hearing about some things going on in certain counties in Kentucky that I find a little disturbing--things I believe may constitute voter suppression directed towards poor people.

Reading the diary on the Rec list by DrSteveB earlier today inspired me to write this diary.

Over the last year or so, I have been giving a lot of thought to the problem that despite the fact that we are the Party of the People, we have a ways to go when it comes to promoting our ideas to the general public. The Republicans, in particular the religious right, have a well-oiled machine in place to help them promote their views and candidates.

Yep, you read it right. Seems like members of the Family Research Council, that bastion of "Christian purity" and "family values" knew Mark Foley had a habit of chasing after young boys.

And not one of them said a word until after the scandal broke.

This diary probably won't mean much to people who live outside of Kentucky, but here goes.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about how corrupt the federal government has become.

These days, many politicians are more worried about serving the interests of the lobbying groups who fund their election campaigns than they are about the people living in their districts--and as a result, they have lost touch with their constituents, their needs, and their concerns.

Here's something I published on my blog the other day that I think is particularly suspicious in light of the news over the last few days.

Of course, I could be wrong. Read this and see what you think:

The Republican extremist's have stopped to new lows. According to this article published at Yahoo News, the Sober worm is "strongly correlated to Neo Nazi right-wing agendas", to use the words of the security expert in the interview. A new strain of the virus is going to be released on January 6.

The entry below is a research paper I wrote for one of my college classes.

Even a casual reading of The Prince, written by Niccolo Machiavelli, reveals many disturbing parallels between his political philosophy and many of the actions and policies taken by George W. Bush.  Although this president has sold himself to religious conservatives as a fundamentalist Christian, a careful review of his performance since the election of 2000 reveals a very different philosophy at play. Bush represents an almost textbook example of Machiavelli's philosophy at work.

Today, I started reading former President Jimmy Carter's new book, "Our Endangered Values". In it, he revealed something that is absolutely horrifying--the US is holding children as young as 8 years of age who have been captured in Afghanistan and Iraq in prison camps--namely, the one in Guantanamo, Cuba. Worse yet, Donald Rumsfeld knew about it. Read a short excerpt below: