Given his refusal — despite multiple entreaties — to speak at the NAACP convention, does Bush really wonder why the Edwards theme of "Two Americas" resonates so powerfully?

Bush, campaigning in Pennsylvania on Friday, said he would not attend this year’s NAACP event. He said his relationship with its leadership was "basically nonexistent" and he referred to being called "names" by organization members.

This is a man for whom dissent does not exist. Either you agree with him 100% or you have nothing he wants to listen to.

Billmon gives us a wonderful history of the ties between Enron and the Bush family and GOP. We should not forget this come November. We should not forget that Enron was “… collectively the GOP’s largest single corporate donor in the 2000 campaign.” And these guys were doing it for influence, make no mistake:

When Bush took office – even before, actually – Lay had his wish list ready. Kinder (the Enron president who had served as Enron’s in-house money tree shaker during the campaign) got a seat on a 17-member commission appointed to recommend an overhaul of the Texas state tax system. The commission eventually recommended a $3 billion tax cut (surprise!) for heavy industries, a category which included gas and power utilities – like, say, Enron, for example.

This is who we are up against. These people who have no real concern for the overall well-being of the country save how it affects their very limited and short-sighted best interests.

And on a much happier note — be sure to check out The Livingroom Candidate hosted by the American Museum of the Moving Image. It is a retrospective of television Presidential commercials since 1952, and it’s fascinating to look through it. A must see site for political junkies and media-heads alike.

From Kerry, here’s the human, American and yes, brown face of the Patriot Act.

http://www.brownequalsterrorist.com/ — be sure to read the Artist’s Statement about the story that spawned the web site.

The Patriot Act takes away our most basic rights in the name of protecting us from some unnamed and unknown threat. Two hundred years ago, Ben Franklin said "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." He was right then. He is right now. And today, the U.S. House of Representatives refused to return to the American people the right to buy whatever books they want without the government’s knowledge.

Don’t ever believe that the Patriot Act is patriotic. It is as anti-American a law as this country has seen since the days of the Sedition Act and Japanese internment. I can only hope that we will look back on these days, this act and this administration with embarassment and shame.