The other day in the New York Times, Bush "campaign strategist" Matthew Dowd was quoted saying he had "lost faith" in Bush. From the article, Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd says he has "lost faith in Bush."

"Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush's leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a "my way or the highway" mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides."

Through Think Progress, White House Claims Dowd Is Too Emotional, Turned On Bush Because Of 'Personal Turmoil' and The Huffington Post has the following video in White House Blames Matthew Dowd's Criticism Of Bush On "Personal Problems":

Picking up on the White House's cue, conservative weblog Captains Quarter's, in Dowd Bails On Bush, writes,

When Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth won the Oscar for Best Documentary, it didn't take him long to be attacked by the Right Wing $MEAR machine. (And the mainstream media didn't help much but not even checking out the basic facts of the story.)

So this morning when Laurie David and Sheryl Crow kicked off their Stop Global Warming tour, where they are doing outrageous things like discussing the reality of global warming and how concerned college students, aka our nation's future, can become involved, surely you didn't expect the oil companies to let them slide did you. Of course not.

Here are the first couple of shots. One accuses ABC NEWS of letting their on-air talent be used for a "political agenda."

For anyone who wants us to connect the dots, here they are.

1. Newsbusters is a project of The Media Research Center.

2. Media Research Center is, believe it or not, a charitable organization so if you give money to them, you get a tax deduction.

Founded in 1987, the MRC is a 501 (c)(3) non profit research and education foundation.

3. Media Research recently gave Rush Limbaugh an award for "Media Excellence." We can't make this shit up if we tried.

4. And who gives them a nice $50,000 check every year? And gets the tax deduction? ExxonMobil.

Let's be clear.

Global Warming is not a political issue, it is a scientific fact.

The attempt to turn it into a partisan issue is a political issue and is being done by the Right Wing donors, such as ExxonMobil, who have the most to lose if we move to alternative energies. If you can turn it into a political issue, you can begin to hide the facts.

Know the facts, and you know the truth. So get on the bus with Laurie and Sheryl.

Stay tuned for the first Smoking Politics Blog Talk Radio Show Wednesday April 11 at NOON EST! (Rescheduled)

Entries below this were originally posted at Huffington Post by Dave Johnson and James Boyce.

Today, we are launching a new web site, and a new radio show, and continuing a passion and partnership that has been developing over the past year. The site is Smoking Politics and on it we will track, expose and fight back - hard - every single day against the right's strategy of Fear and $mear. We will also host a weekly BlogTalkRadio show, The Smoking Politics Radio Hour, with our first show today at noon Eastern, 9:00 am Pacific. We will be taking calls.

Why do we call this project "Smoking Politics?" Because the origins of the conservative strategy of Fear and $mear come out of the golden age of the tobacco companies. The tobacco companies learned that with the right combination of psychological persuasion tactics and media budget that literally anything could be marketed to the American public.

They were so good that they could persuade people to kill themselves - and to hand over their money while they did it. The right saw the success of this strategy - and noted the total lack of facts and morals involved and decided - if people will pay to smoke, maybe they could be convinced to support a right-wing agenda which was equally deadly. Maybe they could actually convince blue-collar workers to accept the right-wing agenda that asked them to give up their health care and pensions so CEOs could buy bigger jets? So they took these tactics into the political realm.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company he keeps. And they say you can tell a lot about a politician by the donors he loves. In fairness, any politician can get money from rather unsavory sources, but when patterns emerge you can tell what a politician is like by the donor company he or she keeps.

If this holds true for Mitt Romney it would make him a push-polling, SwiftBoat-lying, racist, immigrant-hating, Hitler-using candidate.

Allow us to explain.

Noon EST TODAY! The call-in number is (718) 508-9604

We're going to talk about Mitt Romney's Dirty Money and other subjects on our "Smoking Politics Radio Show" at noon Eastern Wednesday. Taylor Marsh, of www.taylormarsh.com will join us with her wonderful and unique perspective.

Help us with our efforts to stop the smears!

You can donate through PayPal:

Smoking Politics
PO Box 391513
Cambridge Mass 02139

On our "Smoking Politics Radio Show" we just sent a simple message to Mitt Romney, and a fair one too:

Give SwiftBoat Donor Sam Fox his $100,000 back.

Sam Fox (now our Ambassador to Belgium you might recall thanks to President Bush's recess appointment) gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat Liars in 2004 and has since claimed that he didn't know what they were doing. Hah. Anyway.

Mitt Romney has no such excuse.

Mitt Romney knows that John O'Neill never served a single day in Vietnam with John Kerry. Mitt Romney knows that Swifties like O'Neill got big checks from the Swift Boat veterans. Mitt Romney should give Sam Fox his money back.

Because if Fox got an ambassadorship for $50,000, what did Romney promise for $100,000?

Here is Romney's campaign contact info.

Give the blood money back Mitt!

A quick visit to John Edwards's Presidential Campaign web site clearly shows what his passions are and what he wants to talk about. Not necessarily in order of his priority, but John Edwards wants to:

End the war in Iraq.

Guarantee affordable health care to every American.

Fight global warming.

Eliminate poverty in America.

Revitalize rural America.

Restore America's moral authority in the world.

Help solve the humanitarian crisis in Africa.

It's almost too many critical issues and is more than enough to talk about right?

Well, this past week, we have seen clearly, that the Right Wing doesn't want to talk about these issues. Let's break them down briefly:

The Smoking Politics BlogTalkRadio show with James Boyce and Dave Johnson will be live today at Noon EST, 9am Pacific. Give us a call! The call-in number is (718) 508-9604

Click this to listen live online:

Will America be safer with a Republican president?

This has been the big "elephant in the room" question: the Republican branding of "strong on defense." Did any of the candidates knock this down?

Senator Clinton Senatorially said it is a "disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality" and then dived into policy details. "We haven't secured our borders, our ports, our mass transit systems ... resources haven't gotten to the front lines where decisions are made in local government..."

Senator Dodd also filibustered with boring policy details. "our first responders are not getting the support they deserve. The administration has been resistant in supporting them ... , not building the kind of international support -- stateless terrorism is a multinational problem ... requires a multinational response ... institutions we need to build to effectively engage and fight back against terrorism ... need to have leadership that knows how to build those relationships, to encourage that kind of participation..."

The other candidates didn't get a chance to respond, and politely did not.

But this is the question. This is, to many, the only question. Why didn't these candidates knock it out of the park?

We would not have been so polite. We would have made Mike Gravel look tame and shy -- shouting and waving our arms. We would have said:

"This is a lie. This is a marketing fraud perpetuated by the Right Wing against the American people. This is a well funded marketing program that is determined to mislead the American people and give them the Right Wing the power to send our sons and daughters to their deaths. It is just false.

The facts are clear. The Republicans market the myth. The Democrats deal in the reality of serving their country on the battlefield when they're young and keeping this country safer when they serve in Washington."

Tune in to the Smoking Politics BlogTalkRadio show this Wednesday at NOON EST when Dave Johnson and James Boyce talk about the Bush Administration''s convenient use of fear of terrorism.

The Dial In Number is (718) 508-9604