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Wisdom from the Bush V: The Truth Slips Out

September 13th, 2003 Comments off

“There may be some tough times here in America. But this country has gone through tough times before, and we’re going to do it again.”—Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002; And he meant it, folks. In spades.

“My administration has been calling upon all the leaders in the—in the Middle East to do everything they can to stop the violence, to tell the different parties involved that peace will never happen.”—Crawford, Texas, Aug, 13, 2001; Not as long as Bush is in office, anyway.

“For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It’s just unacceptable. And we’re going to do something about it.”—Philadelphia, May 14, 2001; Yeah, the NRA has demanded that Bush up the number of fatal shootings.

“I appreciate that question because I, in the state of Texas, had heard a lot of discussion about a faith-based initiative eroding the important bridge between church and state.”—Question and answer session with the press, Jan. 29, 2001; He said it, I didn’t. Like the title says, The Truth Slips Out, at least the way Bush sees it.

“The great thing about America is everybody should vote.”—Austin, Texas, Dec. 8, 2000; Too bad Katherine Harris and so many more like her in the GOP prevent them from doing it.

“The legislature’s job is to write law. It’s the executive branch’s job to interpret law.”—Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000; You’d think this was a mistake, but no… he really believes it.

“I don’t know whether I’m going to win or not. I think I am. I do know I’m ready for the job. And, if not, that’s just the way it goes.”—Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 21, 2000; Oh, swell. “That’s the way it goes.” That about sums up the last three years.

“If you’re sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign.”—Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000; No disagreement here.

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Walter Cronkite: Still a Man to Admire

September 12th, 2003 2 comments

Walter Cronkite was a guest on Larry King Live on September the 10th (the 11th in Japan), and acquitted himself in his usual dignity and straightforwardness. The frank honesty that made him so popular with America remains undiminished. And in the recent times of mass patriotic obeisance to the Bush administration, Cronkite’s no-nonsense truthfulness was a breath of fresh air. There is so much I would like to quote from this interview, but cannot. I am posting a fair amount, but I strongly urge you to read the entire transcript. For here and now, some key excerpts from the interview:

KING: John Ashcroft will be here tomorrow night. He’s, as you know, going around the country on behalf of the Patriot Act. What do you think of that Act?

CRONKITE: I think it is disastrously severe. When you darn well know that we must be exceedingly careful these days and we need new rules and regulations in order to be as safe as we possibly can be from the terrorist threats, but the Patriot Act goes far too far. Far too far. […]

One of the principal things that bothers so many of us is this incredible business of giving the FBI the right to go into any library, any bookstore, and look at all of their records to find out what people are reading, what individuals are reading. Clearly it is the reverse side of freedom of speech and press. This is the freedom to think, the freedom to research one’s faith. What business does the government in doing that? If they have legitimate reason, they have a suspect in mind, then they could go to a court and get the proper authority to do that kind of search which is in the law anyway. But they are waiving all of that. They don’t have to go to court at all. They are — doing a pro forma thing of going to a particular court in this regard, but that court is closed to public examination. The public isn’t permitted into the court, and its rulings are not even printed. And actually, it’s a rubber stamp for the FBI’s to go anywhere they want.


KING: I mean, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus. We put Japanese Americans in interment camps. […] Both of which are highly anti-constitutional.

CRONKITE: Sure, as this is, as what the attorney general is doing now with the Patriot Act. There are moves in Congress, as you know, to amend that act so that some of these more heinous, I would say, actions, which severely impact upon our freedom as Americans, and in that case we’ve got to balance certainly our protection from the terrorists and our own freedoms. If we destroy our own freedoms in order to protect ourselves from the terrorists, what is the value of protecting ourselves from the terrorists in the first place if what we think of as America is gone?

We can’t put up with that, it seems to me. And also, you know, this whole idea of patriotism is a very important part of the course of our souls, our very bodies. But it’s got to be defined very carefully. The charge of those who are unpatriotic because they disagree with the government at any given moment on any given issue is very likely a false accusation.


KING: Were you opposed to the war in Iraq? Were you opposed to going?

CRONKITE: Yes, I was. I was indeed. I felt that we were not giving the inspections time enough. I felt there was a mistake going unilaterally. I thought it was a great mistake to bypass the United Nations, and I think we’ve been proved — those of us who felt that way — right. If we’d stuck with our — with the United Nations in the first place and played along with them and gotten their permission eventually, making some concessions, of course, to the French, the Germans and the Russians, but at the same time getting a United Nations action, we wouldn’t be in this mess we are in now. It would already be internationalized.

KING: But Saddam Hussein would still be running that country.

CRONKITE: Maybe. I’m not so sure of that. I don’t — I’m not so sure that we wouldn’t have gotten the United Nations’ approval if we’d gone at it perhaps a little more diplomatically, if we — had the president had not in that original speech he made, where he made a perfectly good case for going into Iraq, but he ended that speech by saying, “On the other hand, it doesn’t matter what you do at the United Nations. We’re going in anyway, unilaterally.” Well, that was hardly the way to get an agreement out of the United Nations. I think we might have done it if we’d played our hand a little differently.

KING: What are you — what’s your worst fear about the current situation?

CRONKITE: Well, my worst fear is that we are indeed inspiring a hatred greater than existed before among the Arab peoples for the United States and out intervention in their affairs, as they would interpret it. The — as much as they might have agreed, many of them, that they should get rid of Hussein and his regime, we have in a sense overplayed our hand, and they’re angry. […] We haven’t handled this very well.

[…] We’re having to eat crow, is what we’re doing, and we might as well admit it. We’re having to go to the United Nations and say, “We’re sorry, the way we treated you before. Now come along with us. Now come along — now that we’re in the hole, now it’s going to cost you more. Now it’s going to cost you more people, more troops than it did before, but still we need you desperately. Please help us.”

KING: Do you think this is a mistake or do you think we were misled? […] By the administration, weapons of mass destruction and the like, fed to the United States.

CRONKITE: Oh, yes. I think we were misled. I think it’s a question seriously of whether that was deliberately done or whether it was just their vocabulary got ahead of their thinking.

KING: Do you think they wanted to go to war in Iraq?

CRONKITE: Oh, I don’t have any doubt about that, no. They saw this as a necessity and they were making whatever case they could to convince us all that we had to go and go then.


CRONKITE: I like California. I enjoy it. I have a lot of dear friends out there. Visit it every chance I can get. But this misuse of democracy…

KING: The recall, you mean.

CRONKITE: For the recall […] is a dangerous move. If other states adopt that similar thing, our elections mean nothing. […] I personally would like to see the recall fail. I have no particular — I’m not carrying a dossier here for the present governor, but just to preserve the democracy and the way it works. If you can recall the governor anytime that you decide that he’s not functioning well, you’re going to have chaos around the country.

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September 11

September 11th, 2003 Comments off

Here we are again. the second anniversary is always more subdued than the first. But it is still very much on our minds.

The new political blog site, xpat.org, is now up and running. I have my 9/11 editorial up there; Sako’s will be up by tonight.

I am still very unhappy about where Bush has taken us since then. He seems more interested in using 9/11 to justify a conservative agenda he wanted before 9/11; he is less interested in actually protecting the United States. While he spends in excess of $100 billion on the war in Iraq, local security lags and suffers. Bush has not given funding anywhere near sufficient for the U.S. to protect itself, with states and local communities not having enough money to police their borders or support emergency crews in case of another terrorist attack. As Bush hands out multi-hundred-billion-dollar tax cuts to his rich friends, he tells us to use duct tape. Our borders are still unprotected, and Bush can’t even get the CIA, FBI and Department of Homeland Security to work together, which is pitiful.

I also remain extremely uncomfortable with the fact that Bush’s poll numbers continue to follow their mathematical trend downward, broken only by upward surges on 9/11 and the Iraq war. The math, which Bush must himself see, clearly says that Bush will lose the next election–unless there is another war or major terror attack. Now combine the following three facts: (1) Bush has not caught bin Laden nor come close to shutting down al Qaeda; (2) Bush has alienated our allies and started a war in Iraq that has inflamed hatred to the U.S. in the Middle East; and (3) Bush has underfunded our security at home.

Does this not worry anyone else?

Meanwhile, in other areas, Bush is performing miserably. He apparently thought that to bring peace to Israel, all he had to do was to slap together prior peace initiatives, claim it was his idea, and then give it a snappy name, the “Roadmap to Peace.” And the press bought into it; everyone was talking about how it had such a good chance of success. I mean, come on. As if nobody could guess that we would have suicide bombings followed by Israeli attacks on Hamas targets followed by a derailed peace plan. Yeah, that’s never happened before.

Meanwhile, Bush continues to abuse the terrorism scare, slipping the word “terrorist” into the Iraq issue every chance he gets. There is still no proof that there are any terrorists in Iraq, just the presence of guerillas one can expect in any war front. But he is succeeding in getting the press to go along with it, and now, as an amazing seventy percent of Americans think that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, he has succeeded in implanting the idea that the war on terror is justification for the debacle in Iraq.

America is better than that. I really believe it.

UPDATE: Here is another good article, revealing how the “war on terror” has made little, if any, progress. At least the British press isn’t scared spitless to publish something that doesn’t praise the government when it comes to the “terror” mess.

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Wisdom from the Bush IV: Whah?

September 11th, 2003 1 comment

“We are making steadfast progress.”—Washington, D.C., June 9, 2003; and it’s moving nowhere fast.

“One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end.”—Washington, D.C., Jan. 8, 2003; it is possible that this was a time-traveling George W. Bush.

“In other words, I don’t think people ought to be compelled to make the decision which they think is best for their family.”—Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002; everyone has the right to screw up their family if they want to.

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002; No foolin’?

“I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region.”—Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002; and in those Arab nations, too.

“But I also made it clear to [Vladimir Putin] that it’s important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe.”—Washington, D.C., May 1, 2001; –more proof that Bush is a cockroach.

“I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.”—Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2001; again with the time-traveling.

“Well, I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.”–CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000; this explains a lot.

“We ought to make the pie higher.”—South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000; Whah?

“The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.”—San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000; there he goes again, trying to win the crucial transvestite vote.

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000; yeah, they keep moving around.

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Steal From The Poor and Give To The Rich

September 10th, 2003 Comments off

If the GOP is the “party of the people,” is supposedly for the common man and not just the wealthy and corporations, why are they so intent to cut taxes for and give juicy handouts to the wealthy and corporations, and so eager to cut the pay and benefits for the common worker?

Right now, a majority of those in the Senate have followed the Democratic lead to turn down President Bush’s plan to eliminate overtime pay for eight million workers, but the Republicans, with a razor’s edge of a majority, are refusing to allow it to come to a vote, at least as long as the Democratic candidates are in D.C. The GOP hopes to wait for a dark and lonely evening, like they have done so often over the past two years, when no one is looking, to pass this law. And this Bush pay decrease would come at a time when countless American families depend on both parents working overtime just to get by.

It comes on the heels of other Bush proposals to cut pay, benefits, and education funding for the same working stiffs and soldiers in the military who are fighting Bush’s wars, as Bush ladles out lucrative, non-competitive contracts to businesses the administration has close ties to.

Add to this the measly token of a tax cut given to many, but not all of the middle class, while people making millions or billions get huge amounts of what little they still pay in taxes returned to them because “it’s only fair.” And the GOP’s traditional grudge against ever raising the minimum wage–each and every time, they claim it will put companies in a crunch and cause workers to be fired, and every time nothing of the sort comes close to happening.

Party of the people? For the common man? Just like Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” and the GOP’s claim to “inclusiveness,” these are lip-service platitudes that have no standing in reality. Ever wonder why labor unions so regularly support the Democrats?

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Evidence: A Clear Example of Republican Lies

September 10th, 2003 2 comments

In my previous article on the Cut-And-Run Straw Man, I mentioned a right-wing politician on CNN blaming the Democrats for suggesting we retreat from Iraq. Here is the quote, with supporting evidence to demonstrate what an outrageous lie that is:

Republican National Committee communications director Cliff May:

… But if you have a Democratic candidate who says what you heard Tom Harkin saying and Kennedy saying, which is essentially, we should cut and run, we should turn our back, we can get away from these — well, they’re implying that it is.

Here is what Harkin and Kennedy actually said:

Ted Kennedy:

“It’s not enough to go to the United Nations with a resolution. We must go with the right resolution, and it’s not clear that this administration is ready to swallow its pride and do that. Words don’t matter. We need deeds.”

“[I] had hoped to hear acknowledgment from the president of our failures in Iraq, the war on terrorism and the administration’s concrete plans for solving them with our allies and through the United Nations.”

“The president owes our troops and their families a plan before we give the administration a blank check.”

Tom Harkin:

“As we move ahead in the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, we must ensure that we think about the needs of people with disabilities up front and not later on.”

“This may not be Vietnam, but boy, it sure smells like it. And every time I see these bills coming down for the money, it’s costing like Vietnam, too.”

“We’ve got $13 billion a month for Iraq and Afghanistan, and we can’t fund [education]?”

There is not a single word that they have said that even hints, much less “implies,” at the idea that we should “cut and run” from Iraq. Harkin spoke of the underspending on Education and the overspending on the war–a result of “going it alone.” He never implied that we should desert Iraq–rather that if money can be found to fund the Iraq mess, we should be able to find the money for education as well.

Both he and Kennedy positively stated the need for funding our presence in Iraq and bringing in international assistance to help rebuild and police Iraq.

For May to claim that any of this is “cut and run,” even by implication, is a complete and utter fiction, a lie that is being repeated and amplified by the GOP.

These kinds of fabrications must be pointed out whenever and wherever they occur. Please pass on the word.

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Welcome to Fantasy Island

September 9th, 2003 Comments off

Boy, conservatives sure love to fantasize. This one, in the New York Post, imagines that as Bush’s numbers drop, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore will jump back into the race, and that if Dean makes it to the nomination, Bush will clean the floor with him. He also calls Dean, a governor with many conservative leanings, an “ultra-liberal.” A month or so ago, conservatives like Tucker Carlson were talking seriously about Al Sharpton winning the nomination, which, of course, the GOP would have fits of glee over.

Of course, none of that is happening. Gore and Clinton have both ruled themselves out in such clear and unmistakable terms that it is pretty much impossible for them to go back on that without taking major hits. And Sharpton isn’t really even on the radar screens as far as the numbers go.

What’s happening is that the right is starting to sweat over Bush’s plummeting poll numbers. And now a Democrat emerges who not only has the moxie to tear into Bush for his failures, but has the moral authority to do so as he criticized Bush from the start. And now Dean’s leading the entire party out of kowtow mode and into full-blast Bush-bashing mode. And Americans are warming to it. And oh yeah, he’s balanced his budgets.

Nor does the “ultra-liberal” label work, either–if anything, Dean has a history for leaning to the right, with a record of being pro-gun, and favoring businesses, sometimes over the environment. In his state, he was seen as a moderate who was fiscally conservative; a right-wing think tank analyst remarked, “The Howard Dean you are seeing on the national scene is not the Dean that we saw around here for the last decade.” His now-famous civil unions law and the progressive financing of education were, according to many, not Dean’s agenda; he just went along with the courts. Many believe that if he wind the nomination, he will steer back to the center.

So this conservative Fantasy Island mentality is, at best, panicked wishful thinking.

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The Cut-And-Run Straw Man

September 9th, 2003 1 comment

What do you do when your political opponent catches you in a major blunder and holds you publicly accountable for it?

You claim that your opponent said something despicable that they never said, and then criticize them for it.

That’s the latest tactic from the conservative side, with their claim that Democrats are calling for us to cut and run from Iraq, to retreat and leave it behind. And it is a ludicrously false assertion. But they know that if you act like it’s true with enough sincerity, enough people will believe it and your opponents will be blunted by it.

You know that Bush botched the war effort, trying to get it done quick so he could win an election, and not have the U.N. bog it down with irrelevancies like weapons inspections and diplomacy. He insulted our allies and cobbled together a skeleton “coalition,” leaving the U.S. and Britain holding the bag, the U.S. most at stake economically. With no exit strategy and no projection on how much it would cost, Bush flew in to do the job before anyone realized the scam. And in the end, we found out that Bush’s arguments were not much more than hot air: no WMD, no nuclear program, no terrorists, no threat to the U.S.

In short, he rushed to war, broke the bank doing it, and there was not enough of a good reason in the American national interest to have done it.

So the Democrats made the reasonable charge that Bush planned and executed the war in an incompetent manner, and now we’re stuck with the quagmire. Now that the damage is done and we’re in Iraq, we have no choice but to follow through, whatever the cost. But there is excellent reason to criticize Bush for having brought us into this mess.

The right-wing play on that: the Democrats are saying it’s too expensive and they want us to retreat, to cut and run, but we conservatives are too brave for that; we’re staying and we’re gonna beat the terrorists. And so on.

Of course, no Democrat ever suggested we “cut and run.” In fact, they have been the first ones to make it crystal clear, in the debate last week and elsewhere, that we cannot and must not retreat from Iraq. Carol Moseley Braun, one of the more liberal candidates, said simply, “We don’t cut and run.”

But the truth doesn’t stop conservatives when they feel they’ve got a good thing going.

This columnist says we should not follow “the Democrats’ cut and run advice.” Huh? This one takes a more subtle course, claiming that “the constant carping of the media and the Democrats gives the terrorists and our other enemies in the region the hope that the Vietnam experience will be repeated and we’ll cut and run.” That, of course, is in line with Rumsfeld’s recent charge that anyone who criticizes the Bush administration is giving aid and comfort to the enemy and hurting our armed forces, so just shut up and give us the money.

And now the talking heads on TV are disseminating the charge, claiming that Democrats want us to give up and run, tail between our legs. I’ve heard it more than once from the left-right guests brought in on the news shows, one just a few minutes ago on CNN–the right-wing guest making the clear assertion that liberal criticism means they want us to just high-tail it out of Iraq.

Something tells me, though, that this high-speed spin cycle won’t really buy much slack from the American people. A new Zogby poll puts Bush down to 45%. There’s only so far you can lie outrageously to them before they start to tire of it and wonder how they’re going to fare in the future with half-trillion dollar deficits, rising unemployment rates, and what little money we have going to places like Iraq.

There’s no question we have to finish the job there. The point is, we shouldn’t have gone there in the first place, and Bush is to blame for that.

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Wisdom from the Bush III: Remarkable Insight

September 9th, 2003 Comments off

“Iran would be dangerous if they have a nuclear weapon.”—Washington, D.C., June 18, 2003

“I recently met with the finance minister of the Palestinian Authority, was very impressed by his grasp of finances.”—Washington, D.C., May 29, 2003

“Our nation must come together to unite.”—Tampa, Fla., June 4, 2001

“I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.”—Interview with the Associated Press, Jan. 18, 2001

“Dick Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want anybody who can find work to be able to find work.”—60 Minutes II, Dec. 5, 2000

“They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it’s some kind of federal program.”—St. Charles, Mo., Nov. 2, 2000

“More and more of our imports come from overseas.”—Beaverton, Ore., Sep. 25, 2000

“I think we agree, the past is over.”—On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000

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Bush Yet Again Proves He Can Read a TelePrompter

September 8th, 2003 2 comments

President Bush just finished his well-prepared speech, posed to ask Congress for seed money to clean up the mess in Iraq. Predictably, Bush uses the opportunity to try to justify the Iraq war as part of the war on terror.

Here are my comments, point by point, on Bush’s speech:


In Iraq, we are helping the longsuffering people of that country to build a decent and democratic society at the center of the Middle East.

Baloney. That’s the last thing the Bush administration wants. Since Japan and Germany, there has hardly been a country we’ve “liberated” that has become a democracy. What America wants is yet another puppet government. If Iraq were let alone to be a democracy, another theocracy like Iran may very well be the result.

The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and on the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace.

Then why was Iraq free from terrorist attacks when Hussein was in power, and besieged by what Bush calls “terrorism” today?

Some of the attackers are foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations.

As I have stated before, there has not been one shred of evidence to support this claim. It is a back-door attempt to usher in a justification for the war in Iraq by linking the country to terrorism.

There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal.

Okay. Now they’re all “terrorists” apparently. The metamorphosis (killers, to terrorists and loyalists, to terrorists) in complete. We went into Iraq because there was terrorism there, and this is a war on terror. Right. After the middle of the speech, Bush never again mentions killers or loyalists; he only repeats “terrorist” again and again. During the speech, he says “terror” four times, “terrorism” twice, and “terrorist” 16 times.

Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front.

Like I said, he’s trying to justify Iraq as part of the war on terror. This must be spoken on, publicly–the president cannot be allowed to get away with this blatant revisionism to justify a grab for votes and oil and to satisfy the hawks.

Iraq is not a front in the war on terror. It is a distraction from it.

And even the “war on terror” itself is a bogus war–one of those unending political wars rather than an actual war, and for the Bush administration, an excuse to carry out the real wars they want to, and to slip into place the policies and programs they would never be able to get the American public to agree to otherwise.

We are encouraging the orderly transfer of sovereignty and authority to the Iraqi people.

Again, baloney. If so, then why not allow the U.N. to share in the authority in rebuilding? They have a much better record than we do in building democracies. Bush wants to keep the authority in Iraq precisely because he does not want a true democracy, he does not want to truly liberate the Iraqi people. He wants a lapdog, not a country with its own agenda, which probably will not go along with ours.

I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion.

Two things should be noted here. First, a year after Bush started his drumbeat to war, this is the first time Bush has presented a figure to the public stating how much the post-war clean-up will cost. Second: this is the first figure presented, and these things always end up costing way more than the initial estimates.

And, incidentally, better start revising the deficit numbers upward again.


It should be noted that Bush did not mention that Saddam has not yet been captured, nor that WMD have not yet been found. It was just terror, terrorists, terrorism.

Then there is the oil question: why is no one mentioning this as a means of financing the rebuilding? Bush did not mention oil once in the speech. Oil should be able to pay for this whole thing, and certainly, America now has its hands on that oil. So who is making the money from that?

In the post-speech analysis, Bob Graham made the solid points that Bush did not mention who would pay for the $87 billion for Iraq, and that it would represent more than we spend on education in the U.S., and twice what we spend on repairing our own failing infrastructure. It may be true that we need to do this in Iraq–this is not being challenged. The complaint in that (a) Bush waited more than a year after he started seriously pumping the whole war idea before he finally predicts some costs, which were very much predictable ($100 billion was predicted a year ago), and (b) that we shouldn’t have gotten into this war in the first place, as we cannot afford it, and Saddam was no threat in the first place–Bush just lied about that to get us into the war. Again, it was about votes, oil, and the desires of the hawks.

And those are not good enough reasons for all of this.

We should not be here right now. We should be rebuilding our own country, not invading and then rebuilding others that really were no threat to us in the first place. We should be concentrating on working, both in enforcement and in winning hearts and minds, to reduce the hatred against us and to be a positive force in the world.

But now? Now, we have a huge mess on our hands. The world alternately laughs at us and virulently resents us. Bush has done more to encourage terrorists than to discourage them. We have a half-trillion dollar yearly deficit where we should have surpluses. Wealthy people are in a good place, but the rest of us suffer from wars, unemployment and the burden of debt.

The state of the union is not good. We need better than this.

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Wisdom from the Bush II: Subject-Verb Agreement

September 8th, 2003 1 comment

“What is life choices about?” —Washington, D.C., Feb. 24, 2003

“In other words, what is your ambitions?” —Speech to students in Little Rock, Ark., Aug. 29, 2002

“The true greatness of America are the people.” —Washington, D.C., July 2, 2001

“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.” —LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

“Our priorities is our faith.” —Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10, 2000

“Laura and I really don’t realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis.” —CNBC, April 15, 2000

“Reading is the basics for all learning.” —Announcing his “Reading First” initiative in Reston, Va., March 28, 2000

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

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Bush on Schedule for 40% and Lower By Year End

September 8th, 2003 Comments off

A new Time/CNN poll put Bush’s popularity at 52%, but their polls usually come out on the high end favoring Bush. A CBS poll just out has him treading water at 46%. Another CNN poll shows that 41% of Americans will “definitely vote against him,” with only 29% definitely voting for him. It’s kind of hard to find these poll numbers on CNN’s own site, but they’re there, buried somewhat. Gallup had him at 51% a few weeks ago.

Take his Gallup numbers since March, plug them into an Excel chart, and extrapolate a linear trendline (best outcome for Bush). It shows Bush dropping to as low as 35% by the end of the year. Hey, you might interject, those numbers might go up. Well, not really. So far his numbers have only gone up twice: after 9/11 and after the Iraq invasion. That’s it. Aside from those two blips, his popularity has followed a downward trend at a surprisingly steady rate. Look at the chart for yourself.

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Wisdom from the Bush

September 8th, 2003 1 comment

“I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you disarm, or we will.”

—George W. Bush
Speaking about Saddam Hussein
Manchester, N.H., Oct. 5, 2002
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Bush Fumbles Dog

September 7th, 2003 Comments off
A story went by without many people noticing last week: President Bush, while greeting little leaguers at an airfield in Texas, dropped his dog Barney on the tarmac as Laura Bush tried to hand the Scottish Terrier to him.

Naturally, comedians had a field day. Bill Maher, apparently, kept insisting that Bush had thrown the dog to the ground for some reason. But Jay Leno had the best gag:

“Did you see this over the weekend? President Bush dropped his dog Barney. Held the dog–dropped the dog. First he chokes on a pretzel. Then he falls off a scooter. Now he drops a dog. How old is our President, five?”


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Those Darn Fundies

September 7th, 2003 2 comments

OK, here we go again.

It seems like every fundamentalist in the country, especially those holding political office, has his or her undies in a bunch about the Alabama thing and feels the need to act on it somehow. This time it is Alabama Representative Robert Aderholt (R, what else?), who has submitted a bill that would essentially make it OK for state government offices to display religious monuments. Because, after all, that is the answer to all of society’s problems. A big piece of granite. Yeah. That’ll do it.

“The simple display of the Ten Commandments can in no way be considered an establishment of religion,” Aderholt claimed. Apparently, Aderholt does not possess a dictionary. Or maybe he just got tired of reading after the first three or four definitions of the word “establish” and figured the rest were just gonna be boring.

It’s gonna be a long Autumn….

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Crocodile Tears

September 6th, 2003 Comments off

Conservatives in Washington are venting anger at Democrats for derailing the nomination of Miguel Estrada for a D.C. Court of Appeals seat. “Racism,” the National Review calls it. A “hate crime,” according to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. “Two- faced Democrats,” rages Robert Novak.

Crocodile tears, all of them. The assertion that Democrats are racist and refused to rubber-stamp Estrada just because he is Hispanic is so completely ludicrous that the GOP must think Americans will believe anything. Even the timing of the withdrawal is suspicious, coming on the same day Democrats gathered in New Mexico for a debate to be broadcast nationwide on Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the U.S. The GOP is already trying to make this a campaign issue for the coming election.

Of course, it’s all nonsense; Clinton nominated far more minority judges than Bush has, and the GOP blocked the nomination of not one, but three Hispanic judges. Richard Paez, a Mexican-American nominated by Clinton, was held up for four years by Republicans, including a filibuster, which the GOP is now demonizing the Democrats for (the same kind of filibuster that Bush now wants outlawed). It is hard to get more hypocritical than that.

Estrada was one of a line of ultra-conservative minority judges Republicans have been trying to get through so they can put on the token appearance of multiculturalism without having to actually accept multiculturalism itself. Just as with Clarence Thomas–an embarrassment to the Supreme Court–the GOP is looking for young, militantly conservative minority judges with little or no track record so they can stack the courts and at the same time look like they are being inclusive. It is racial exploitation at its worst, using members of an ethnic minority against the plurality of the members of that minority–and then calling whomever objects a racist.

It is especially galling for the GOP to hypocritically play the same race card they always accuse the Democrats of playing, and to pretend that they are somehow the champions of Hispanic values, at a time when the administration and its party are working to attack issues that Hispanics tend to favor. The GOP is dedicated to wiping out Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity laws to promote fair hiring, to require English-only education, cut off education and medical services for illegal immigrants, and have been on the wrong side of just about every issue important to the Hispanic community. But hey, the president speaks Spanish! That oughta be worth something! And he managed to find a token ultra-conservative Hispanic judge to nominate. Well, you sold me!

The reason why the GOP is so hot on trying to win over Hispanics is because they know the demographics as well as anyone. Hispanics passed blacks as the largest minority in the U.S. in 2001, comprising 13% of the population, and are growing very fast. Already a key voting bloc, Hispanics will be invaluable in the future.

The GOP is trying its best to attract that demographic without actually serving the interests they deem valuable. Instead of actually trying to do things to help the Hispanic community, Republicans are giving little more than lip service, are standing up token Hispanic appointments in front of a nearly all-white membership, and are taking every effort to smear Democrats as racist and anti-Hispanic.

Well isn’t that special?

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News Updates

September 5th, 2003 1 comment

On CNN’s Crossfire, Bob Novak dug into John Kerry for making the statement that he voted to grant the president the power to go to war in Iraq in order to authorize a credible threat of force so that Hussein might allow inspections and the matter might end peacefully. Novak asked where he got that idea from (transcript); Fox News chips in also, asking, in a fair and balanced way, I presume, how Kerry can say that when he authorized full force?

Conservative pundits seem to have short memory spans. A quote from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz from last October: the only hope of “achieving the peaceful outcome is if we can confront the Iraqi regime with a credible threat of force behind our diplomacy.”

Where indeed did he get that crazy idea? The only thing we can fault Kerry for is being fool enough to go along with the president and his wacky administration.

Arnold Schwarzenegger promised loudly on the campaign trail yesterday, “egged on” by the crowd, that he would not, absolutely never, accept money from unions. My first thought: oh, goodie, because I was afraid the AFL-CIO would want to shower him with millions. His promise sounded as thin and hypocritical as a Democratic candidate promising that he would never accept donations from the NRA.

But the world is full of surprises, and Arnold had yet another “Oops” moment in store. It turns out that he had already received a donation from a union–this one a union of L.A. sheriffs. Arnold says he’ll be returning it.

Best one-liner of the day: “This guy owes me bacon now.”

Here’s a very good article in the Washington Post about why Howard Dean and Al Franken are so popular right now (the article covers many other issues as well). Now, I admire most Democrats for their stance on most issues and the fact that they are less bloodthirsty, hypocritical and merciless in their political play than most Republicans, but their downfall is that they have little spine when pressed hard. When the GOP was pushing its post-9/11 agree-with-everything-we-say-and-do-or-we’ll-call-you-traitors strategy, the Dems knuckled under. It was very hard to find any Democrat who was not in full support of the president, even when you could tell they didn’t really want to be. So now Dean is a front-runner, in part because he’s one of the only ones who can say “I have always been against the war” and not look like a liar when he says it–and we need someone who can say that. That’s also one reason why Clark would be a fitting VP candidate for him (not to mention the North-South combo there).

Get ready for this… some Egyptians are preparing to sue Jewish people worldwide because their ancestors, when freed from slavery in Egypt by Moses, stole “gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more.” My only comment: okay, this past-reparations thing is going a bit too far….

Britney Spears apparently told Tucker Carlson that she believes “we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know?”

She also said she didn’t know her kiss with Madonna “was gonna be that long and everything.”

We’re obviously dealing with a high-level intellectual here. Better do what she says.

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If We Are a Humble Nation, They Will Respect Us

September 4th, 2003 1 comment

We’re a freedom-loving nation and if we are an arrogant nation [foreign countries] will view us that way, but if we’re a humble nation they’ll respect us.
— George W. Bush, October 11, 2000


You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.
— George W. Bush, November 6, 2001


Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding or will it be irrelevant?
— George W. Bush, to UN General Assembly, September 12, 2002


There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is: Bring ’em on. We’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation. … Anybody who wants to help, we’ll welcome the help. But we’ve got plenty tough force there right now to make sure the situation is secure.
— George W. Bush, July 2, 2003

Well, he was very much correct about arrogance and humility.

That was before he was elected, of course, and was in full-blast B.S. mode. He didn’t have to wait until September 11 to start being arrogant, that just made him pump up the volume. He had already abrogated half a dozen or so international treaties, had gotten us kicked out of important U.N. councils, and was well on his way to making the U.S. into a world pariah. Then 9-11 came, and the world turned to us with sympathy. But instead of fostering that sympathy and building new relations with it, something everyone except Bush realized was vital in the days to come, Bush immediately started the abuse again with his “with us or against us” rhetoric. Since then, it’s been nothing but arrogance.

And now? Now, Bush is demanding that the U.N. come in to Iraq and clean up for us. After bullying other nations, after disregarding the U.N., then turning around and demanding they help invade Iraq or become “irrelevant,” after demanding inspections and then dismissing them before they had time to finish, after being condescending and insulting to nations that refused to participate, after making haughty and bellicose statements for all this time–now Bush realizes he’s in over his head, and wants those countries he ridiculed and dismissed to send their young men into Iraq to fight and die for us.

And get this: he’ll only allow them in if the U.S. stays in command of all of them, and they must not even think of wanting to share in the spoils of war.

And the sad thing is, it will be hard for anyone to slap Bush in the face like they all want to–because Bush is essentially holding the Iraqi people hostage. Everyone knows that the Iraqis are suffering, that the situation could devolve into chaos easily, and the U.N. peacekeepers could do a lot of good, perhaps even bring legitimacy to a new Iraq now that the damage is done.

The problem is, it is galling as hell, as the only way Bush will let anyone helps is on his terms, with all command, credit and profit going to him–plus it would at least in part legitimize Bush’s invasion into Iraq. However, everyone is certain that Bush would sooner let the Iraqi people suffer and the situation go to hell in a handbasket before giving an inch, or, God forbid, being the humble leader he promised he would be.

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On the Trail Again

September 2nd, 2003 Comments off

Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Bush were both out campaigning again today, Bush after a month-long vacation, addressed a crowd in an appropriate setting of rain, the people looking for hope to get out of the economic bad weather as much as they would the dark, wet weather they stood in. In Ohio, where so many people have lost manufacturing jobs during this administration, On a sourly ironic Labor Day, Bush promised that his massive tax cuts for wealthy people would, in some nebulous fashion, somehow translate into jobs for them.

Pointing to the quivering needles on the country’s economic gas tank that signal something may be happening, Bush claimed that it was the tax cuts starting to change things. One might expect the administration’s new motto to be “post hoc, ergo proctor hoc.” Do something useless, then wait for something to change, then claim a connection. Of course, the problem is, the tentative signs of an economic comeback do not seem to be affecting the job market at all, and in fact, wages continue to fall–Bush remains the president with the worst record on unemployment, and a better economy will mean very little to millions of Americans if they have no jobs. The question is, will the economy make a real comeback, will it be in time for Bush, and, if he gets the credit for it, will it be enough to compensate for all the damage he has done in the eyes of the voters?

Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, has been busy morphing, like the special effects Terminator he fought in “T2,” from the “people’s candidate” he claimed to be when he entered the race, into a politician’s politician. Taking cues for George W., he has initiated a campaign of rigorous fundraising from special interests ($4 million to date), has been avoiding the press while making easy, camera-intensive PR photo-op stops. He avoids talking to the press like the plague, and has ducked out of any early debates, promising to attend only one debate, just before the election (“it will be great for the California broadcasters”–that, after all, is the point of the election, right?). This, presumably, is in line with his policy of being totally unclear on what he would do as governor, giving as little information as late as possible and hoping there will not be enough time to check him out before voters go to the polling booths.

What a coward.

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And The Show Goes On

September 1st, 2003 Comments off

Predictably, when it is a case of standing by their principles or picking a potential winner for the party, many conservatives will go for winning. Schwarzenegger, who is left-leaning on many social issues and displayed a past most conservatives would find absolutely unacceptable (if he were a Democrat, that is), will nevertheless vote for him because no other Republican stands a chance of winning in California.

But that may not be good enough. When this recall process started, conservatives were cackling with glee over how they had a hands-down winner of a candidate while the Democrats seemed to be tripping over themselves. Now, the reverse is true: Schwarzenegger is lagging back in the polls and is offset by two nameworthy Republicans (McClintock and Ueberroth), while Bustamante, with a commanding lead in the polls, is the sole Democratic candidate of note. While Huffington and Camejo may draw votes away from Bustamante, their combined poll numbers are much less than McClintock, who soaked up many of the departing Simon’s votes, and will do more damage to Schwarzenegger’s standing.

To make matters worse for him, Schwarzenegger has, for some reason, decided not to join in the first debate, which will feature Bustamante, McClintock, Ueberroth, Huffington and Camejo; this will make him look weaker, unable to discuss the issues, and like he is somehow out of the main group of candidates. He’ll have to come up with a whopper of an excuse to make Californians accept why he doesn’t want to speak. It certainly doesn’t help that he has already broken his first promise, that he would not accept money from anyone he might have to do business with as California governor; he has already raised more than a million dollars from land developers, high-tech companies and other interests.

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