"Bush Era" Over

[Jake]

Responses to a selection, just for argument's sake:

My responses to your responses just for argument's sake...lol


Actually, that would be the Civil War, even if you don't count the Confederates.

In battle deaths Civil War is not even close...Civil War Battle Deaths Union 140,414 + Conf. 74,534= 214,948. TOTAL while WWII was 291,557.

I don't know how valid is the argument of counting non-combat deaths, a large % of them are wounded soldiers but also disease and malnutrition which would've happened anyway.


Abroad or in the U.S.? Again, Civil War.
Abroad, since someone brought in the Iraqi civilian deaths figure.



I dunno...looking back at the country's state under the Articles of Confederation, you'd be tempted to ask, "What economy"? :D

FDR inherited a pretty ****ed up country just as Bush inherited Clinton's stellar China deal which is leaving us at this trade deficit.



Hitler siezed power in January of 1933, a few days after Roosevelt took office. Anything that could have been done to prevent

Bush took office about 7 years after al-Queda decided to strike the WTC again.



Eh, do you blame Germany for invading Poland, or Britain and France for declaring war/appeasing Germany? American entry into the war was late, not that had we gotten involved from the beginning there wasn't much that we could have done; the Netherlands had a larger and better military than the U.S. did in 1939.

Poland's problem was that it never build up a military because of guarantees from Britain and France that they would protect it from Germany. I don't believe it would've been wise for the US to enter the war earlier but the legacy of the late entry were apparent for the next 60 years, namely, the hostility of the USSR in part due to the feeling that the US was playing in N.African sand while millions of Russians were dying, and the ultimate loss of the race for Berlin which left Russia with most of the technology it has today, namely, the plans for early missile, nuclear, helicopter, tank, assault rifle technology....all taken from the Germans.



I dunno, have you seen pictures of Mamie Eisenhower? Probably a nice broad, but yikes!
http://www.cdc.gov/od/spotlight/nwhw/firstlady/images/mamie_lg.gifhttp://i.timeinc.net/time/time100/images/main_eleanor.jpg

[MrSpice]

I'm sure it was an oversight, but you didn't answer this question.




Now, I took the time to answer your questions. If we are not there to get the WMDs like Bush said, then what is our goal?

WHAT IS THE GOAL OF THIS WAR YOU BELIEVE WE MUST REMAIN ENGAGED IN???

First of all, I appreciate you using a really large font for your posts. That makes it easier to read and understand. If you really want to know what I beleive is (I don't think you do since you have very strong entrenched view and don't want to think outside the box).

I think that the war is over. What we are doing now is trying to leave gracefully. We want to minimize potential problems that will certainly occur once the US army leaves. We want to minimize the chances of civil war breaking out in Iraq after we leave. Are we succeeding? Based on the news that I see every day, we don't seem to be succeeding. I agree that at this point, it seems like no matter what we do, Iraq is in for a long, bloody ride. I think the US army is trying to work behind the scences and put the "Iraqi" face on the operations as much as possible. That's why most people that die daily in Iraq are Iraqis themselves. I hope we will start drawing troops soon. I hope that people 10 times smarter than me are planning the exit strategy without announcing that this the exit so that the terrosists can take credit for it. I think it's a common sense in DC that we should leave Iraq. The only question is when and how. So, I am not sure why you're hyperventilating.

Regarding home ownership - the article you site talks about the slowdown in real estate that is certainly happening at the moment. It was obvious to most market observers that this speculative wave of real estate inflation cannot continue at this pace where price often doubled in 2-3 year period. Still, the last 5-6 years were pretty good economically for most people in the US. The unemployment is low, the percentage of home owners is the highest in the US history. You can see it in Park Slope, on Upper West Side, in Manhattan and in other cities in this country. The economy has been growing at 3-4 percent each year. Unemployment is below 5%. Mortgage rates are still low. I am not saying the GW Bush deserves all or even any credit. Part of it is the economic cycle and the effects of globalization that made the US firms much more efficient and competitive. But to deny that we've had some good news in the last few years is silly.

[Ninjahedge]

Spice, some of the main motivating factors in the real estate boom were:

A lousy stock market
Lower interest rates.


That was about it. There were other demographics that entered into the frey, but when people are looking for something to invest in, and they switch to a "safer" investment like real estate, you see prices rise.

When that is hyped by all the financial magazines siting these little pockets doubling in worth, you get speculative buyers and flippers moving in. You should have seen it here in Hoboken! (We have about 42 different realtors in a city no bigger thana square mile).

People were quitting their jobs on wall street just to work at a realty agency in Hoboken. NOT to sell houses, really, but to get first dibs on anything that passed through the office.

This rabid consumption of property jumped prices in Hoboken, and similar areas, VERY sharply and it has only begun to slow now due to rising interest rates, increase on loan defaulting (ARM's are starting to run out) and other factors. Lending institutions are less willing, and in some cases legally forbidden to offer such relaxed mortgage contracts (No principal, no down payment, ARM's, etc) and it is getting harder for a typical family to afford what they could not afford, but still get a few years ago.


So I would not put the real estate bubble on Bush. I would not put its failure on it. I WOULD, however, look to the fact that we were doing pretty good with our budget riding the wave in on Clinton, and when Bush came in, he did not seek to reduce the spending to match the slowly subsiding rush, but instead he increased spending and hastened the reduction in tax income to appeal to his supporting ($$) base.

he was a good-time president who was originally elected not on any real merit. He was practically a Gore clone during the first election! He was elected to try to take some of that surplus and redistribute it to the people that got him into office (and no, I do not mean the voters).

He did it. He did his "job". Unfortunately, he was not the best president for recession spending OR for wartime, but xenophobic patriotism combined with religious ties make it hard to depose an existing leader figure during a time of crisis (Even if that crisis was, if not created, propogated by that leaders actions).

So I do not know where else to go with this. He is supposed to be the figurhead of our nation, but in the very things where just appearance can make a load of difference (international relations, etc) he has failed miserably.

We need to stop being so insular with US and US policy or we run the risk of becoming a capitolistic USSR and fail under our own weight of commercialism and unwillingness to actually MERGE with the rest of the world rather than precariously sit on top of it.

While I do not, for an instant, believe that Bush, or any other president can be blamed or expected to solve this, it is a sad indication of what we, our political machine, and our general public believe and express.

[MrSpice]

Spice, some of the main motivating factors in the real estate boom were:

A lousy stock market
Lower interest rates.



You forgot to mention other important factors of this real estate boom:
- Low unemployment
- A healthy economic growth and rising incomes (average income rose 3% or more over the last few years)
- Lower tax rates (yes, GW had something to do with that). Lower taxes may have contributed to the deficits which is bad, but they definitely left more money in people's pockets and some of this money was flowing into real estate, especially investment properties
- Baby boomers are now buying second homes in droves
- Changing mindsets that the stock market can go up and down but your home is the best investment you can make

[Ninjahedge]

Lower tax rates (yes, GW had something to do with that). Lower taxes may have contributed to the deficits which is bad, but they definitely left more money in people's pockets and some of this money was flowing into real estate, especially investment properties


No, taxes were not it.

AAMOF, they did not help the biggest market at all. The marriage penalty is still there, and people who are still in the upper bracket of middle class get the highest taxation with the littlest compensation/exemption from the federal government. It was a real eye opener to me and the fiancee when we went into the accountant this year!

The ones that benefitted from the tax cuts were the upper class. Period. The middle class is still carying much of the country on its shoulders and will continue to do so so long as our representatives are supported either by corporate or special interest groups instead of the bulk of american society in the first place.


As for real estate being the best investment, that is also a fallacy with many caveats. It WAS the best investment over the past few years, but so were tech stocks a few years before that.

So whatever. All I am saying is that there are many factors that contributed to the recession and slow recovery, and siting Bush at fault or credit for either is a little short sighted.

He IS, however, responsible for current spending policies which WILL hurt us in the long run.

[lofter1]

I think that the war is over. ... I hope that people 10 times smarter than me are planning the exit strategy without announcing that this the exit so that the terrosists can take credit for it.
Wow ... what to say ...

First, I'm sure we're all aware that we aren't in a "war" in the legal sense (per the US Constitution).

In fact, the US hasn't fought a "war" since good old WWII.

But moving beyond that trivial bit of semantics ...

If "the war is over" why are Americans -- and others -- still dying every day?

What leads you to believe that any of those in decision making positions (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Handey, Hastert, Frist, etc.) are 10 times smarter than you? You really can't believe that your intelligence is so low, can you?

There is no "exit strategy". The strategy is to maintain bases in and around Iraq. How else will the area become "Stabilized" -- especially considering the brilliant results that have been achieved with the training of Iraqi police / army?

I knew in my gut that this invasion was a lost cause when reporters arrived in central Iraq shortly after the US moved in only to find that all of the Iraqi military had "melted away". We were then shown shots of bootless men wandering back to their homes, as if we were to believe that the entire army was going to go back to tend their -- what, farms? date groves?? Thes were warriors, trained by Saddam and his gang to tangle.

It was quite apparent back then that those who had training didn't melt away but simply blended back in to the citizenry -- waiting to see what the future would hold. Couple this with the fact that Bremer chose to isolate any of those who served in the military (aka "Bathists" -- as if there was much of achoice back in the days of Saddam) and a powder keg was created.

Now -- 3 years on -- many of those well trained individuals have seen that the "new" Iraq is offering them very little of what was promised and they are returning to what they were trained for: war, death and fighting.

This is a quagmire, a tar-pit, a black hole. None of those things understand the meaning of the word "over".

The Pandora's Box has been opened. None of the people in charge are smart enough to close it. It will go on ...

[lofter1]

The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war if America pulled out of the country too soon.
"Pandora's box": http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=86945&postcount=277

[MrSpice]

Wow ... what to say ...

First, I'm sure we're all aware that we aren't in a "war" in the legal sense (per the US Constitution).

If "the war is over" why are Americans -- and others -- still dying every day?

What leads you to believe that any of those in decision making positions (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Handey, Hastert, Frist, etc.) are 10 times smarter than you? You really can't believe that your intelligence is so low, can you?


I am saying that unless you're an army commander that has access to all of the intelligence and internal information and have an experience managing complex military operations, you cannot make a good and sound judgement on what is the best way to get out of this mess. This debate is going on right now - in the Congress, on TV sets, in newspapers and in both parties. You see many prominent democrats and republicans disagree on the best way to proceed. I admit that I don't know what the best solution is. I am afraid that Iraq can become a huge mess in either case. For the record, I don't think that GW Bush smarter than me :)

The main question here is: what should we do having long-term interests of this country in mind? Can we do anything in order to minimize the possibility of civil war in Iraq by staying there longer or not? I saw many intelligent and thought-out articles and opinions for and against the early withdrawal. But I think calls for early withdrawal will increase dramatically as time goes on just because people are tired of mounting caualities and the polititians are nervous and want to show they care.

[TLOZ Link5]

Lets try to get Bush a third term he was such a good president. Hopefully someone like him will be our next pres.

I think Bush should get some toughness in him and drop a nuke on Bagdad. Saying this is in vengance for 9/11.
Thats what I would do and if anymore terror acts happened do this to another city like Tehran with lots of people.
After two or three cities going poof we will have a stop in terror activity.

I hope and pray that you are not serious.

[lofter1]

The conservatives go after the traitor in their midst ...

At Conservative Forum on Bush, Everybody's a Critic

By Dana Milbank (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/Dana+Milbank/)
Washington Post
March 8, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701403.html

If the ancient political wisdom is correct that a charge unanswered is a charge agreed to, the Bush White House pleaded guilty yesterday at the Cato Institute to some extraordinary allegations.

"We did ask a few members of the Bush economic team to come," explained David Boaz, the think tank's executive vice president, as he moderated a discussion between two prominent conservatives about President Bush. "We didn't get that."

Now why would the administration pass up such an invitation?

Well, it could have been because of the first speaker, former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett. Author of the new book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," Bartlett called the administration "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."

It might also have had something to do with speaker No. 2, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan. Author of the forthcoming "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How to Get It Back," Sullivan called Bush "reckless" and "a socialist," and accused him of betraying "almost every principle conservatism has ever stood for."

Nor was moderator Boaz a voice of moderation. He blamed Bush for "a 48 percent increase in spending in just six years," a "federalization of public schools" and "the biggest entitlement since LBJ."

True, the small-government libertarians represented by Cato have always been the odd men out of the Bush coalition. But the standing-room-only forum yesterday, where just a single questioner offered even a tepid defense of the president, underscored some deep disillusionment among conservatives over Bush's big-spending answer to Medicare and Hurricane Katrina, his vast claims of executive power, and his handling of postwar Iraq.

Bartlett, who lost his job at the free-market National Center for Policy Analysis because of his book, said that if conservatives were honest, more would join his complaint. "They're reticent to address the issues that I've raised for fear that they might have to agree with them," he told the group.
"And a lot of Washington think tanks and groups of that sort, they know that this White House is very vindictive."

Waiting for the talk to start, some in the audience expressed their ambivalence.

"It's gonna hit the lists, I'm sure," said Cato's legal expert, Roger Pilon.

"Typical Bruce," replied John Taylor of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.

Admitted Pilon: "He's got a lot of material to work with."

Bartlett certainly thought so. He began by predicting [B]a big tax increase "to finance the inevitable growth of government that is in the pipeline that President Bush is largely responsible for." He also said many fellow conservatives don't know about the "quite dreadful" traits of the administration, such as the absence of "anybody who does any serious analysis" on policy issues.

Boaz assured the audience that he told the White House that "if there's a rebuttal to what Bruce has said, please come and provide it."

Instead, Sullivan was on hand to second the critique. "This is a big-government agenda," he said. "It is fueled by a new ideology, the ideology of Christian fundamentalism." The bearded pundit offered his own indictment of Bush: "complete contempt" for democratic processes, torture of detainees, ignoring habeas corpus and a "vast expansion of the federal government."

The notion, he said, that the "Thatcher-Reagan legacy that many of us grew up to love and support would end this way is an astonishing paradox and a great tragedy."

The question period gave the two a chance to come up with new insults.

"If Bush were running today against Bill Clinton, I'd vote for Clinton," Bartlett served.

"You have to understand the people in this administration have no principles," Sullivan volleyed. "Any principles that get in the way of the electoral map have to be dispensed with."

Boaz renewed his plea. "Any Bush economists hiding in the audience?"

There was, in fact, one Bush Treasury official on the attendance roster, but he did not surface. The only man who came close to defending Bush, environmental conservative Fred Singer, said he was "willing to overlook" the faults because of the president's Supreme Court nominations. Even Richard Walker, representing the think tank that fired Bartlett, declined to argue. "I agree with most of it," he said later.

Unchallenged, the Bartlett-Sullivan tag team continued. "The entire intellectual game has been given away by the Republican president," said Sullivan. "He's a socialist in so many respects, a Christian socialist."

Bartlett argued that Richard Nixon "is the model for everything Bush is doing."

Sullivan said Karl Rove's political strategy is "pathetic."

Bartlett said that "the administration lies about budget numbers."

"He is not a responsible human being; he is a phenomenally reckless human being," Sullivan proclaimed. "There is a level of recklessness involved that is beyond any ideology."

"Gosh," Boaz interjected. "I wish we had a senior White House aide up here."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[ZippyTheChimp]

March 9, 2006
News Analysis

A Rebellion in the G.O.P. on Security, a Signature Issue

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, March 8 — After more than five years of allowing President Bush relatively free rein to set their course, Republicans in Congress are suddenly, if selectively, in rebellion, a mutiny all the more surprising since it centers on the party's signature issue of national security.

In a rebuke to the White House, House Republicans are moving aggressively to put the brakes on the takeover by a Dubai company of some port terminal operations in several large American cities, an effort that moved forward on Wednesday with broad bipartisan support.

At the same time, Republicans in the Senate are wrestling with how hard to press the White House for more authority over Mr. Bush's eavesdropping program, seeking a middle ground between Democratic calls for an investigation of the program and White House demands to keep hands off.

In the case of the port deal, the political considerations are clearly paramount for Republicans and are compelling. Public opinion appears to be strongly against allowing an Arab company to manage some port terminals in the United States, Democrats are hammering Republicans on the issue, and the White House has been unable to provide much political cover to its allies on Capitol Hill.

When it comes to the debate over how and whether to allow eavesdropping without warrants on terror suspects, the politics are more muddled. The White House has had considerable success defining that issue on its terms, as antiterrorist surveillance, and there has been no broad public outcry against it. Republicans on Capitol Hill have been left grappling with how to balance their concerns about granting the president wide wartime powers against the perception that they might weaken a program that the administration says protects Americans from attack.

Still, even a limited move to place a check on the eavesdropping program, like the one contained in a deal worked out by the White House with Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, contributes to a sense that Mr. Bush's own party is edging away from him — or, in the case of the port deal, abandoning him and his dismal poll numbers with the greatest possible haste. A perception that conditions in Iraq show little improvement is not helping the relationship.

The president and his Congressional allies have been at cross-purposes before, but it has never reached the level of the port confrontation. The conflict reflects a view held by many Republicans that the White House has asked a lot of them over the years, but has responded with dismissive and occasionally arrogant treatment — a style crystallized in Mr. Bush's quick threat, with little or no consultation, to veto any effort to hold up the port deal legislatively.

Intramural fights in politics often have an element of calculation if not orchestration, and the White House's political shop is no doubt aware that allowing Congressional Republicans to put some distance between themselves and Mr. Bush in an election year could serve the party's long-term interest.

Whether theatrics or something more fundamental, some Republicans say that the port fight and scrutiny of the surveillance program show a new willingness to confront the White House and that it is a fitting moment for Congress to declare its independence.

"If there was ever a good time for Congress to figure out oversight, it would be in the sixth year of a presidency," said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 3 House Republican, well aware that the party in power typically loses seats at the midpoint of a president's second term.

That instinct for political survival is helping to stiffen the Congressional spine. Republicans have held a significant political advantage over Democrats on the issue of national security, offsetting Democratic strength on social policy. Given the uproar at home over the port deal and nervousness about the implications of eavesdropping without warrants, Republicans are worried about losing their edge. Democrats say they should be.

In a memorandum to Senate Democrats that quickly made its way to reporters, a pollster reported Wednesday that the opposition to the port proposal and uncertainty over Iraq have significantly eroded Republican advantages among voters when it comes to security concerns.

"With huge majorities opposing the president's proposal to sell control of U.S. ports to Dubai and the failure of the president's Iraq policy, Republicans' once-yawning advantage on security issues has been largely neutralized," said the pollster, Mark Mellman.

Democrats tried to press their advantage Wednesday in the Senate. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York surprised Republicans with an amendment to a lobbying bill that would ban any company "wholly owned or controlled by any foreign government that recognized the Taliban" from managing port facilities. The company at issue, DP World of Dubai, fits that description.

Senate Republican leaders, trying to buy the administration some time on the port fight as their counterparts in the House deserted Mr. Bush, blocked a vote. But a showdown appeared inevitable.

"We know what the people of America think," said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. "This is a very bad idea."

There was no hesitation on the part of House Republicans, as the Appropriations Committee voted 62 to 2 to bar DP World from taking over any port operations, adding the ban to a $92 billion spending measure for Iraq and Hurricane Katrina recovery that could reach the floor next week.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said the House opposition to the deal was less about politics than national security. "We will continue to use our best judgment on how to protect the American people," he told reporters.

While the ruptures over national security have been striking, the administration and Congressional Republicans are likely to be parting ways on other issues waiting in the wings. They include immigration policy, spending cuts, trade and perhaps a stem cell research proposal that many Republicans believe is crucial to winning moderate voters.

The rifts reflect different strains of ideology within the party, many of which have been tamped down until now by Mr. Bush's ability to hold Republicans together, a degree of clout that seems to be ebbing.

Mr. Bush's strength has largely been anchored in his standing on national security. And in elections since the attacks of 2001, that has been good politics as Republicans have claimed the mantle of the party best able to prevent another terror strike.

In the Senate, this week's maneuvering over the surveillance program showed a more cautious approach to confronting the administration. Republicans feared being accused of tampering with an antiterror technique, but some were genuinely troubled by the eavesdropping and refused to reject Democratic calls for an inquiry without taking some action.

The result was a proposal for close oversight by a new subcommittee. But what was most striking was how hard Republicans involved in the negotiations sought to make clear that the agreement was a concession by the White House, not a victory for Mr. Bush.

"They wanted the status quo," said Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

One thing is clear: Republicans on Capitol Hill are no longer entrusting security issues solely to Mr. Bush. They now realize that in some cases, they must protect themselves.

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

One thing is clear: Republicans on Capitol Hill are no longer entrusting security issues solely to Mr. Bush. They now realize that in some cases, they must protect themselves.

Protect themselves?

What about the country???

Self-serving slop ...

[lofter1]

Another Bushie traitor bites the dust ...

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=87574&postcount=48

It seems that Norton left out the fifth "C" that she abides by:

CORRUPTION ...

http://www.doi.gov/welcome.html

http://www.doi.gov/images/gale_norton2.jpg
"I am firmly committed to a process called the Four C's:
they are communication, consultation, and cooperation –
all in the service of conservation."

Uhhh, Gale, are you sure that's not "... all in the service of CONSERVATIVES" ???

[MrSpice]

CORRUPTION ...


Uhhh, Gale, are you sure that's not "... all in the service of CONSERVATIVES" ???

Do you have any proof that she was involved in some kind of corruption or illegal activity? Can you provide a link to an article (as you like to ask) where this has been alleged? What is your beef with Norton?

[MidtownGuy]

A disgusting traitor to National lands and the environment. An enemy to American Indians.

Are you feigning ignorance of her misdeeds?

[MrSpice]

A disgusting traitor to National lands and the environment. An enemy to American Indians.

Are you feigning ignorance of her misdeeds?

Maybe you don't realize it, but this is your personal opinion based soltely on your prejudice, not fact. I must admit I did not follow her policies very closely. I do know that she was in favor of limited drilling in Alaska (ANWAR) which I personally feel would be a good thing (they already drill in Alaska and many environmentally clean areas in the world like Norway embraces responsible drilling and oil exploration). I doubt she is an "enemy to American indians". I seriously doubt their lives have changed much in the past 5 years. You're seperating them from the general population as if they uniquely suffered from Ms. Norton's policies. Just because she was less friendly towards extreme environmental policies and more business friendly, does not make her to be the evil you implied her to be.

[RandySavage]

"Under her watch, the Interior Department stripped protection from areas previously managed as wilderness, opened forests to increased logging, reopened Yellowstone National Park to snowmobiles and urged federal land managers to speed up drilling for gas on public land. She also was the administration’s biggest advocate for opening part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska’s North Slope to oil drilling." - MSNBC article.

She's a typical Bush admin sycophant/deceiver. She would do one thing and then try to "greenwash" her actions and paint herself as "pro-environment" or conservation-oriented on Earth Day.

It is one thing to take the position that public lands/resources should be given away to private industries (that happen to be enjoying record profits) in the name of keeping toilet paper, copper and natural gas at the lowest possible prices for everyone's economic benefit. It is another thing to take that position and then try to deceive the American public that what you're doing is somehow good for the environment. Just tell the goddam truth for once.

[ZippyTheChimp]

James Watt in a skirt

[lofter1]

My problem with Norton?

You mean aside from the fact that she is a whore for mining / petroleum interests? And that it seems she lined her political pockets to make deals happen?? ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9913002/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9913002/) ) :

WASHINGTON - Investigators have unearthed e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay’s office tried to help lobbyist Jack Abramoff get a high-level Bush administration meeting for Indian clients, an effort that succeeded after the tribes began making $250,000 in donations.

Tribal money went both to a group founded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the Cabinet secretary Abramoff was trying to meet, as well as to DeLay’s personal charity.

“Do you think you could call that friend and set up a meeting?” then-DeLay staffer Tony Rudy asked fellow House aide Thomas Pyle in a Dec. 29, 2000, e-mail titled “Gale Norton-Interior Secretary.” President Bush had nominated Norton to the post the day before.

Rudy wrote Abramoff that same day promising he had “good news” about securing a meeting with Norton, forwarding information about the environmental group Norton had founded, according to e-mails obtained by investigators and reviewed by The Associated Press. Rudy’s message to Abramoff was sent from Congress’ official e-mail system.

More on the Abramoff / Norton slime bucket ( http://www.alternet.org/story/29827/ ) :Making Sense of the Abramoff Scandal

The ever-widening scandal surrounding Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff threatens to take down at least a half-dozen Congressmen in 2006, more of their aides, Executive Branch employees, and untold numbers of other members of the Republican Beltway hierarchy. At least four dozen lawmakers from both parties are documented as having taken actions favorable to Abramoff clients around the time they received large donations from Abramoff and/or his clients.

It's a sordid tale of Washington corruption, and of crony capitalism at its worst, and it is so dizzyingly complex that few media outlets and even fewer members of the public have yet appreciated just how thoroughly it indicts not just Republican leadership, but the entire bipartisan way of crafting public policy that masquerades as 21st century American democracy.

Appallingly, it's hard to tell with many of Abramoff's activities whether they are crimes, D.C. business as usual, or both. Here, then, compiled from The Washington Post and other sources, is a summary in alphabetical order of 25 of the key players involved, how they relate to each other, and what they're suspected of. It's rather long and exhaustive (of what we know so far), but then, the indictments will be far longer. Read it, keep it as a scorecard, and weep for democracy...

Itallia Federici: Mutual friend of and conduit between Abramoff and Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles. Federici worked for a Republican environmental group, Republicans for Environmental Advocacy , founded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton ( see below** , or go here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Council_of_Republicans_for_Environ mental_Advocacy (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Council_of_Republicans_for_Environ mental_Advocacy) ).

Abramoff had Federici seek inside information and help from Griles, such as the federal recognition of one of Abramoff's clients, the Mashpee Wampanoag, and the squelching of a proposed casino from the Jena band of Chocaw that would compete with another client. At least 33 lawmakers who wrote letters to Norton opposing the Jena casino received, in total, more than $830,000 in Abramoff-related donations from 2001 to 2004. Between 2000 and 2003, Abramoff poured over $500,000 into Federici's group in his efforts to lobby Griles through her.

Going back further, Norton is one of those fools who believes that self-auditing is a viable way to protect the environment ( http://www.knowthecandidates.org/ktc/BushGang/gailnortonexpose.htm ):As attorney general (Colorado), Ms. Norton was a strong advocate of
Colorado's "self-audit" law, which lets companies conduct voluntary
audits to determine whether they are complying with environmental
requirements. The law gives businesses immunity from litigation and
fines if they report and correct the violations, and it and others
like it have faced strong opposition from the Environmental

Protection Agency.

From the Sierra Club ( http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0105-04.htm ) :


"Gale Norton would be a natural disaster as Interior Secretary. Norton is the oil, mining and timber industry's choice. She favors increasing the commercial and environmentally destructive development of our national parks, forests and wild lands," said Carl Pope, Executive Director for the Sierra Club.

Norton formerly worked at the extremist Mountain States Legal Foundation, where she was a protege of James Watt. Watt was later ousted as Secretary of Interior for his radical anti-lands agenda. During the Reagan administration, Norton served as associate solicitor at the Interior Department, authoring legal opinions to support drilling the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an issue that will be hotly debated at the beginning of the 107th Congress. Norton has also labeled government protections of endangered species an example of excessive regulation.

Norton is also the founder and serves on the advisory committee of the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates (CREA), which is considered by the Republicans for Environmental Protection (a legitimate GOP environmental group) to be "a transparent attempt to fool voters who care about environmental protection." Contributors to CREA include several energy companies and associations representing the mining, logging, chemical and coal industries.

Norton is a strong advocate of Colorado's "self-audit" law, which gives businesses immunity from legal penalties if they report and correct their violations of environmental standards. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has objected to these self-audit laws.

Excerpted from the NY Times opinion section:Gale Norton, the former Colorado attorney general, chosen for Interior, brings
considerable familiarity with environmental issues but also a reputation as a
dedicated property rights advocate with deep reservations about the Clinton administration's
aggressive efforts to enlarge federal protections for wilderness and wildlife.
Nortons political pedigree is deeply disturbing. She has been associated with
two of the worst Interior secretaries in the department's history, James Watt and Donald Hodel,
both appointed by Ronald Reagan. As a young attorney she was hired by Mr. Watt for
a staff position at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a sort of right-wing answer
to the Sierra Club that favors traditional Western economic interests like ranching,
mining and forestry, and has litigated vigorously against the Endangered Species Act
and other basic federal statutes that the Interior Department is sworn to uphold.

In the mid-1980's Ms. Norton served as associate solicitor at Interior,
where she helped craft the legal basis for Mr. Hodel's efforts to open the coastal plain
of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Mr. Bush promised during his campaign
to ask Congress to open the plain for drilling, and in Ms. Norton he has an enthusiastic ally.




**Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy

From SourceWatch: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Council_of_Republicans_for_Environ mental_Advocacy
Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) states that it "believes conservation benefits all Americans".

"President George W. Bush has made great strides in protecting and improving the quality of America's air, land and water. Yet, some excessive adn intolerant groups are attacking the president because his policies don't exclude people from the environment in which we live, work and play," they state on their website.

"CREA's mission is to foster environmental protection by promoting fair, community based solutions to environmental challenges, highlighting Republican environmental accomplishments and building on our Republican tradition of conservation. CREA believes that environmental goals are reached by finding common ground between individuals, the private sector and local conservationists...results that would be impossible to achieve without cooperation,"it states. [1] (http://crea-online.org/crea/media/mission.pdf) (http://crea-online.org/crea/media/mission.pdf)

HistoryCREA was founded in 1998 by Gale Norton (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gale_Norton), George W. Bush (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_W._Bush)'s Bush's Secretary of the Interior.

In a profile of Norton, the Natural Resources Defense Council (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Natural_Resources_Defense_Council) wrote of CREA that "true pro-environment Republicans, the Republicans for Environmental Protection (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Republicans_for_Environmental_Prot ection&action=edit), have called her group a 'green scam'."

In August 2004 a coalition of environmental groups released a report based on documents obtained under the freedom of information act revealing "that a Bush administration policy directive has eliminated federal Clean Water Act protections for streams, wetlands, lakes and rivers across the nation." [2] (http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=889) (http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=889)

At the heart of the report were 15 case studies documenting "how the administration's January 2003 policy directive has prompted federal regulators to avoid protecting ponds, lakes, rivers, and entire watersheds from toxic pollution."

CREA fired off a media release denouncing the report that the groups "will" release before it had even read the report. (Presumably CREA was responding to the details contained in a media advisory). CREA president Italia Federici (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Italia_Federici) claimed that if the groups were detailing 15 case studies, by implication "these organizations agreed with approximately 99,985 wetlands decisions made by the Corps -- a whopping 99.99%." [3] (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040812/dcth026_1.html) (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040812/dcth026_1.html)

FundingIn a profile of Norton, the Natural Reseaource Defense Council referred to CREA as being "a group sponsored by mining, chemical and chlorine industries." [4] (http://www.nrdc.org/legislation/norton/execsum.asp) (http://www.nrdc.org/legislation/norton/execsum.asp)
Beginning early in 2001, Indian tribes gave more than $250,000 to CREA.

The donations were made at the recommendation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff); the tribes were his clients. The suggestion for donations had come from staffers of Representative Tom DeLay (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tom_DeLay), who were advising Abramoff on how to gain influence with Norton. On September 24, 2001, at a private fundraising dinner arranged by CREA, Coushatta tribal chairman Lovelin Poncho and Abramoff sat at Norton's table, while tribal attorney Kathy Van Hoof sat at another table with Norton's top deputy, Steven Griles (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steven_Griles). The Gun Lake tribe of Pottawatomi, one of the rivals of Abramoff's tribal clients, has said that it believed Abramoff's lobbying stalled Interior's approval of its casino by at least 14 months. [5] (http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8DL1LPG0.html) (http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8DL1LPG0.html)

Personnel

Italia Federici (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Italia_Federici) President
A 2002 article on CREA states that "CREA's Board of Advisors is comprised of current and former chairmen,presidents,directors and trustees from America's leading environmental organizations.

For more information about CREA's mission and Board of Advisors, please visit www.creaonline.org." [6] (http://www.crea-online.org/crea/media/riponarticle.pdf) (http://www.crea-online.org/crea/media/riponarticle.pdf) However, there are no details of the Board of Advisers on the organization's website.

Contact information2117 L Street, NW • Number 303
Washington, DC 20037
Phone: 202.625.7110
Web: http://www.crea-online.org (http://www.crea-online.org/)

(A late July 2004 media release listed the organizations address as 2100 M Street, NW • Number 303 Washington, DC 20037).

External links

Earthjustice, "America's Waters Vulnerable to Development, Pollution: Bush administration policy should be reversed (http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=889) (http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=889)", Media Release, August 12th, 2004.
Earthjustice, National Wildlife Federation, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), and Sierra Club, "Reckless Abandon: How the Bush Administration is Exposing America's Waters to Harm (http://www.earthjustice.org/news/documents/8-04/CWA_Jurisdiction_8-12-04.pdf) (http://www.earthjustice.org/news/documents/8-04/CWA_Jurisdiction_8-12-04.pdf)", August 2004 .
Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, "'Reckless Abandon' Filled With Reckless Disregard; Truth, Rule of Law Are Casualties of Sham NRDC, Sierra Club 'Report' (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040812/dcth026_1.html) (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040812/dcth026_1.html)", August 12, 2004.

[MidtownGuy]

Mr. Spice, as my friend lofter1 has kindly documented, my opinions are indeed based on facts. As you admit, you have not followed her policies closely. I have followed them very closely.
On various threads, repeatedly you have accused others of having opinions not based on facts, and repeatedly the facts were then posted.
It is highly advisable to start watching, listening, or reading more closely about the policies of this administration. The rabbit hole goes very deep, if you are willing to follow it.

[MidtownGuy]

There are so many ways that Indians have been on the losing end of policies spearheaded by Norton.

an excerpt from an article at Daily Kos:

Colorado native Norton is of the James Watt school of pillage the environment (she entered the Reagan Administration to work for him) and her entire career has been to forward the interests of oil and gas, mining and forestry industries. And in the West, that means easy access to cheap federal land leases, hundreds of millions of acres of land rich with natural resources.

A large chunk of those federal lands are Indian Trust Fund lands, taken into trust in the late 1800s via the Dawes Act, and leased out to industries, ranchers and farmers at cut-rate prices. The money was then to be managed by Interior and paid out to native landowners. Of course, that didn't happen - hence Cobell v. Norton.

The courts have ordered a full accounting of the Trust. Problem is, many of the documents were destroyed, including a slew of them under Norton. So the plaintiffs decided a few years back that the only way to get a real accounting is to audit the industries' books. That's what makes everyone so nervous, as plaintiff experts, having done some sampling, estimate we're talking over $150 billion in underpayments and fraud, along with interest, of course. Yes, $150 BILLION. And the pressure would be huge for Congress to force a repayment by the guilty. If not, then it comes out of the taxpayers' pockets, as the courts have already ordered the accounts be properly audited and brought up to date. Hence, the concern of the oil/gas, mining, ranching, forestry and agriculture interests which use/abuse the land lease process.

So Norton did what she could to subvert the case, but as the heat was turned up, and the Administration losing appeal after appeal, she started pushing for Congressional Republicans to take the case and force a settlement. A settlement for a fraction of the potential amount, but one which would prevent an audit of industry accounts. Who is the chief supporter of a Congressional settlement? None other than the puppet of the oil, gas and mining industry, Richard Pombo. Twice Pombo has written legislation ordering a settlement (both times with no settlement figures, of course), but Delay intervened. Not because he likes Indians, but because he figures that it's safer to stall than to provide even the smallest chance the industry books will be audited. (Delay and most oilmen Congressmen voted against the original Indian Trust Accountability Act back in 1994 - only 36 Reps did.) So from 2002 to 2005, Delay ordered, despite a court order, that no accounting of the trust fund occur (or at least there'd be no funding for it, which, of course, means it doesn't happen.)

This is where Abramoff comes in. He was the slush fund operator. Indians thought they were paying Pombo and others on House Resources and Senate Indian Affairs, et al., for help with gaming issues, and Abramoff was in fact padding coffers necessary to protect the industry from auditing.

Think this is all too far-fetched? Just last week, the NYTimes posted an article on three months' of research into federal land leases (including Indian trust lands) and found rampant fraud and underpayment. In addition, numerous whistleblowers were fired, including Norton and Griles trustee for the BIA, who refused to testify before Congress that the Trust was fine. Accountants and fund managers were fired for doing a good job and finding fraud.

McCain and Pombo are once again pushing for a settlement, and in the increasingly hostile environment for Indians due to success in portraying Abramoff's tribal clients as villains, not victims, they'll most likely get it, at rock-bottom prices. And the industry books will remain safely closed.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/2/1/195344/1903

[MidtownGuy]

Nuclear Waste May Stay in Reactor Communities
Treaty may prevent nuclear storage March 11, 2005 by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today

LAS VEGAS - Attorney Treva Hearne, partner at Hager and Hearne in Reno and counsel to the Western Shoshone National Council, said it is time for the United States to honor its treaties with American Indians and halt its longstanding history of human rights abuses.

The U.S. plans to entomb 77,000 tons of highly radioactive commercial, industrial and military waste at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Although Congress and the Bush administration selected the site in 2002, a planned 2010 opening has been delayed by budget, legal and technical difficulties.

A lawsuit filed March 4 by the Western Shoshone National Council in federal district court in Las Vegas seeks declaratory and injunctive relief to stop the plan, as the area has long been held as significant to the Western Shoshone Nation and included within the tribe's boundaries as described in Article 5 of the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.

The United States, U.S. Interior and U.S. Department of Energy are named as defendants, and two people are specifically named: Secretary of Interior Gayle Norton and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

Hearne, co-counsel filing the suit, said the treaty only allows for communities, mining, agriculture and the development of roads and a railroad. A nuclear waste dump would prevent all of this.

''That land would be lost,'' Hearne told Indian Country Today. ''It would be lost for 10,000 years. In other words - it would be lost forever. ''The Western Shoshone are speaking for all of the people of Nevada who do not want this land lost to humans forever.''

Responding to the pattern of nuclear waste dumps on Indian lands, Hearne said, ''Unfortunately we have more human rights violations against Indian people in the United States than there are human rights violations against any people in any of the other countries we accuse of this.'' Hearne said toxic waste dumps on Indian lands reflect the U.S. government's lack of respect for the culture and rights of Indian people.

Western Shoshone National Council Chairman Raymond Yowell said the fact that Indian nations are sovereign and not subject to the same U.S. environmental protection laws as the states has made Indian nations targets for deadly nuclear dumping. Indian nations have also been targeted because of their need to boost their economies, he said.

Yowell warned against the proposal for the temporary nuclear waste dump on Goshute land in Utah. ''Our view is, once they get it there, they will never move it.''

While Goshutes are split on the proposal, he pointed out that some Goshute accepted the U.S. government promise of dollars. ''They offered them money and bought their way in,'' Yowell said.

''High-level nuclear waste must not be stored in the breast of Mother Earth at Yucca Mountain,'' the Council said.

A hearing will be scheduled by the court and could be held as early as the end of March, Western Shoshone said in a written statement.

A federal Energy Department spokesman declined comment.

[MidtownGuy]

Interior Secretary on Trial for Contempt

Interior Secretary Gayle Norton went to court
December 10 to face contempt charges. A class action
lawsuit brought by a conglomeration of Indian tribes
alleges mismanagement of $10 billion in tribal assets by
the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. Two years ago, after the Interior Department
and BIA’s systems were found to be faulty, U.S. District
Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the Interior Department to
overhaul its accounting system and piece together how much
the Indian beneficiaries were owed. Neither has been done. The
system tracks $500 million a year in royalties from 54 million
acres of Indian land held in trust since 1887. Along with sloppy
accounting, in early December a hacker hired by a court
investigator broke into the Department’s system and
easily accessed funds. The action caused Lamberth to
order the Internet systems of the Interior Department
to be shut down to protect the Indian trust fund. The
systems have since been ordered reopened.

[MidtownGuy]

I can continue to post these all night, but I have proven my point.
I will say it again, that Norton is a walking, talking, menace; just one
spook in an illegitimate administration that is the most corrupt in American history.

[lofter1]

I can continue to post these all night, but I have proven my point.
I will say it again, that Norton is a walking, talking, menace; just one
spook in an illegitimate administration that is the most corrupt in American history.
Good job, MG.


It all comes down to this:

GALE NORTON = CORRUPT

[lofter1]

And from Norton's home state paper:

Gale Norton resigns from Cabinet

By Mike Soraghan
Denver Post Staff Writer (msoraghan@denverpost.com)
Denver Post
March 19, 2006

Washington - Gale Norton resigned today after serving more than five years as secretary of the Interior and overseeing a dramatic expansion of drilling, logging and development on the public lands of the West.

But the former Colorado attorney general is to leave office at the end of the month without achieving her highest-profile political goal, opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling.

“Now I feel it is time for me to leave this mountain you gave me to climb, catch my breath, then set my sights on new goals to achieve in the private sector,” Norton said in a two-page resignation letter to President Bush.

"Gale Norton has been a strong advocate for the wise use and protection of our Nation's natural resources and a valuable member of my Administration," Bush said. "I appreciate Gale's dedicated service to our country, and I wish Gale and John all the best."

Norton Resignation:Click here (http://www.doi.gov/secretary/resignation.pdf) to see Norton's resignation letter.

A source who requested anonymity said she is not leaving because of any problems, and is expected to cite water issues and her push for "cooperative conservation" among her accomplishments.

"She wants to go home for a while," the source said.

No successor has been named, but the confirmation hearings could give Democrats an opening to highlight their dissatisfaction with Bush on environmental issues. They could also use it as a way to highlight administration connections to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who lobbied the department on Indian casino issues.

Norton, who was the first female Interior secretary, has served since the earliest days of the Bush administration. Her background working with polarizing former Interior Secretary James Watt for logging and mining interests made her one of Bush's most controversial cabinet nominees.

A much more careful speaker, she proved less fiery than Watt, but achieved more in the way of opening up public lands for development. Under her watch, the department stripped protection from areas previously managed as wilderness, opened up forests to increased logging, sent snowmobiles back into Yellowstone and pressed federal land managers to speed up drilling for gas on public lands.

While natural gas supplies increased, the environment suffered, according to environmentalists and government auditors. A report by the Government Accountability Office last year found that the focus on processing drilling permits for gas companies often left environmental monitoring undone.

Norton, however, stressed that she was working toward "cooperative conservation," a way to achieve environmental results by partnering with landowners and developers rather than regulating them.

Norton's tenure was also marked by repeated ethical controversies. Norton cleared her top deputy, former lobbyist J. Steven Griles, after her inspector general said his conduct showed that the department's ethics system was "a train wreck waiting to happen."

Griles is now under investigation for allegations that he did the bidding of convicted Indian casino lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Norton is still supporting him.

Abramoff also funneled more than $500,000 to one of Norton's former political aides, Italia Federici, to gain access to her department, which makes key decisions about which tribes can open casinos. Norton said she had no qualms about Federici's activities.

Federici, president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, quickly released a statement praising Norton.

“The environmental benefits of her actions on behalf of Cooperative Conservation will be reaped for years to come,” Federici said in the statement.

Norton also suffered bad publicity when the head of the National Park Service police was fired after talking to a reporter and congressional staff about budget shortfalls.

Norton was also the first Bush cabinet official to be held in contempt, though the ruling regarding Indian trust issues was later overruled by an appeals court.

The Indian trust case metastasized from an obscure bookkeeping mess to a drain on Norton's entire department. She once said the issue occupied her top staff more than any other issue.

In the National Journal Political Insider's Poll last year, she was voted the second-most underrated Bush cabinet secretary by Republican operatives who credited her with pursuing Bush's pro-development agenda with a minimum of bad publicity.

All contents Copyright 2006 The Denver Post

[lofter1]

And they all start shoveling (but it's so deep, they'll never get it off) ...

Dobson site denies lobbying Norton for Abramoff

RAW STORY (http://rawstory.com/)
March 10, 2006

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Dobson_site_denies_lobbying_Norton_for_0310.html

In a message posted on his Focus on the Family website (http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0039768.cfm), Dr. James Dobson's group has denied lobbying outgoing Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton on behalf of fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"There is no connection," Dobson's site says flatly.

However, in already public e-mails and letters sent in early 2002 between former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and Abramoff, Reed insists that he has secured Dobson's support for Abramoff's gaming interest clients in Louisiana, in opposition of allowing competing tribes to expand the state's access to legal gambling.

http://rawstory.com/images/new/dobson1.jpg

Just three days after Reed's guarantee, Dobson did indeed write a letter to Norton, urging her to intervene in blocking rival casinos. (Read the letter here (http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Dobson_writes_Norton_takes_position_of_0310.html). ) Schlafly also penned a letter.

The Dobson-helmed Focus on the Family website explains, "Those e-mails are examples of Mr. Abramoff bragging about events that did not happen."

However, even a cursory examination of the documents reveals that it was not Mr. Abramoff, but in fact Dobson ally Ralph Reed, who claimed to have secured Dobson's involvement.

Focus goes on to address the contents of the e-mails, often attempting to deflect criticism away from Dobson and Reed, and on to Abramoff. In a point- by- point Q & A style list, Focus attempts to distance Dobson and Reed from Abramoff's lobby.

"[The e-mails claim that] Dr. Dobson would record and air radio commercial advertisements against the Jena Choctaw casino opposed by one of Abramoff's Louisiana clients," the argument begins.

In the e-mails, Abramoff and his associates discuss the budget for the "state" advertisements, which they hope to feature Dobson. At no point do they indicate that Dobson has agreed to appear. Reed is reported to have requested $150,000 for the deal, which Abramoff and his associates considered countering with a $60,000 offer.

http://rawstory.com/images/new/dobson2.jpg

Reed continued to pressure for funds for the spots, while Abramoff discussed with associate Michael Scanlon offering some "chump change" or "a token" to make it happen.

http://rawstory.com/images/new/dobson4.jpg

Focus on the Family concedes that VP of Public Policy Tom Minnery and host Bob Ditmer did publicly oppose the rival tribe's casino plans on a "special edition" radio broadcast aired only in the state, explaining that, "These discussions were not radio commercials." Rather, they were "'state-only' radio content geared to important issues."

Focus goes on to identify another purported falsehood in the e-mails: Claims that, "Dr. Dobson would go on the air to 'hit Haley' Barbour, who at the time was a D.C. lobbyist who'd been hired by the Jena Choctaws, the Indian tribe whose casino project was opposed by Abramoff's clients." The group counters that, "No one from Focus mentioned Barbour on the air, let alone urged listeners to 'hit' him with phone calls or e-mails."

Reed and Abramoff seem to be discussing an appearance by Abramoff on talk radio, most likely his own show, which has discussed the topic of legalized gambling over 200 times. However, at no point in the e-mails do Reed, Abramoff, or any of Abramoff's associates claim that Dobson plans to attack former RNC chair Barbour on the air, encouraging listeners to call the lobbyist.

In fact, they appear to grow anxious that Dobson will not appear.

http://rawstory.com/images/new/dobson3.jpg

Rather, Reed seems to indicate that Dobson's "history" with Barbour will likely impassion his opposition. Strangely, Focus goes on to verify this claim, explaining that, "Many years before, Dr. Dobson opposed Barbour's role in allowing the Republican Party to take gambling money."

http://rawstory.com/images/new/dobson5.jpg

The final claim addressed by Focus, Reed's guarantee that "Dr. Dobson would privately urge Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to oppose the Jena Choctaw casino," it concedes to be true. Dobson, along with Focus Senior VP Tom Minnery, did indeed write (http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Dobson_writes_Norton_takes_position_of_0310.html) Norton directly to express their opposition.

They claim this was not due to Reed's urging.

The Q & A closes with an attempt to portray Reed, now a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, as a victim of Abramoff: "It appears Mr. Abramoff attempted to use Mr. Reed's respect among social conservatives to further the goals of his casino clients." It denies that Dobson had any knowledge of Reed's ties to the lobbyist.
"We have only one record of a call from Mr. Reed during this time, but it was made after we had already received multiple requests to write letters to Gale Norton from our longtime Louisiana allies. It is not clear whether Reed was calling Dr. Dobson to thank him for writing to Norton, or to ask him to do so."In the e-mails, Reed reports to have placed his call to Dobson on February 19, 2002. Dobson penned his letter to Norton three days later, on February 22. This timeline is inconsistent with the possible explanation that Reed had placed the call to thank Dobson for the letter.

[lofter1]

Norton's replacement (for now) ...

http://www.thestate.com/mld/mercurynews/news/nation/14074802.htm?source=rss&channel=mercurynews_nation

... Until Bush appoints a successor, Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett will take the helm of the Interior Department. A Santa Barbara resident, Scarlett is former president of the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles think tank with libertarian leanings. She has worked to promote free-market solutions to environmental problems.

In a 1997 editorial in Reason Magazine, Scarlett wrote, "Environmentalism is a coherent ideology that rivals Marxism in its challenge to the classic liberal view of government as protector of individual rights.''

Reason Foundation website: http://www.reason.org/

The lowdown from sourcewatch.org: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reason_Foundation

Funding

Between 1985 and 2001, the Foundation received $5,214,712 in 106 separate grants from only eleven foundations.[2] (http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=286) (http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=286)



Earhart Foundation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Earhart_Foundation)
JM Foundation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=JM_Foundation)
Koch Family Foundations (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations) (David H. Koch Foundation, Charles G. Koch Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Foundation): ~ $2,200,000
John M. Olin Foundation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_M._Olin_Foundation), Inc.: ~ $275,000
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lynde_and_Harry_Bradley_Foundation ): ~ $880,000
Scaife Foundations (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Scaife_Foundations)* (Scaife Family**, Sarah Mellon Scaife**, Carthage***): ~ $1,750,000 (see below)
Smith Richardson Foundation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Smith_Richardson_Foundation): ~ $100,000
* Scaife Foundations donations:**: ~ $1,400,000 (1985 - 2005)
***: ~ $350,000 (1985 - 2005): http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=286



Selected Corporate Supporters (2000)

3M
American Forest & Paper Association
American Petroleum Institute
Bank of America (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bank_of_America_Corp.)
Bayer Corporation
California Association of Realtors
California Water Service Company
Ken and Colleen Butler, Capital Partnerships
Chevron Corporation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Chevron_Corporation)
Coca-Cola Co. (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coca-Cola_Company)
Consulting Engineers & Land Surveyors of California
Council of New York State, Inc.
Continental Airlines
Corrections Corporation of America
DaimlerChrysler Corp.
Dart Container Corporation
Delta Air Lines
Dow Chemical USA
Eastman Chemical Company
Eberle & Associates, Inc.
Edison Electric Institute
ENRON (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Enron_Corporation)
ExxonMobil (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ExxonMobil) Corporation
Ford Motor Company
Freedom Communications
General Motors Corporation (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=General_Motors_Corporation)
LCOR Incorporated
Lehman Brothers (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lehman_Brothers), Inc.
Eli Lilly (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Eli_Lilly) and Co.
Microsoft (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Microsoft) Corporation
National Air Transportation Association
National Beer Wholesalers Association
Nossaman, Guthner, Knox & Elliott
Pfizer (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pfizer_Inc), Inc
Philip Morris (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Philip_Morris) Companies
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Privatized Emergency Services Association
Procter & Gamble
Shell Oil (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Shell_Oil) Co.
Southern California Water
Techcentralstation.com
Union Carbide Corporation
Virco
Wackenhut Corrections Co.
Watson Land Company
Western States Petroleum Association

[MidtownGuy]

Another enemy of the environment heading the department. When Bush makes an appointment, clutch your purse, hold your kids close, and say goodbye to reason. If there's anything left of this country after they're gone
it will be a miracle.
It appears that Scarlett is another Dominionist devil. These people get up early every morning to file down their horns.

[lofter1]

It appears that Scarlett is another Dominionist devil. These people get up early every morning to file down their horns.
I think I can still see the horns ...

http://www.abetterearth.org/images/page-spec/LynnScarlet.jpg

http://www.abetterearth.org/article.php/647.html

[lofter1]

How is it that these groups are all funded by the same small circle of people????

Lynn Scarlet is listed as a member of the "Seminar Faculty" for a gorup called "The Institute for Humane Studies" : http://www.theihs.org/article.php/647.html

Funding for IHS comes mainly from the Scaife, Koch, Bradley and Olin Foundations (same gang that funds Gale Norton's "Reason Foundation", see above): http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?169

[lofter1]

I'm torn about posting this because in some ways it seems to trivialize where Bush has brought us ...

But what the Hell!!

http://www.blogslut.com/prot06.jpg

http://www.blogslut.com/

[ManhattanKnight]

Talking Point

The Bushies play fast and loose at home and abroad
By Ed Gold

In addition to its chaotic governance, the Bush era will be remembered for distorting history, as well as its bizarre semantics.

On the history front, there is Bush’s lecture to the Senegalese on slavery: “The slaves who left here to go to America because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America.”

O.K., so he was only a C student. But along comes Rumsfeld just recently to suggest that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be comparable to abandoning Europe to the Nazis in World War II. Equating the Iraqi insurgency with the Nazi conquest of Europe and the slaughter of millions has made a number of noted historians wince.

The religious right, a core Bush group, has been conspicuous in tampering with history, denigrating Darwin and attempting to insert biblical teachings into biology curriculum.

The tragic story of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo brought out the worst in the religious right as Congress, led by Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, tried to reverse the historical role of our independent court system, and Bush got off his horse in Texas to rush back to the White House to deal with this manufactured national crisis.

The courts had for years taken testimony from doctors who had thoroughly examined Schiavo and had found her condition irreversible. But Dr. Frist, to his shame, looked at a video clip and came up with a medical opinion that Schiavo showed promise, probably the first time in history that a licensed doctor made a diagnosis from a TV clip.

Religion has apparently also moved conservatives from their historic position that budgets should be balanced. We are now carrying a national debt of $9 trillion and columnist/author Kevin Phillips contends that the core Bush vote no longer cares about economic policy but is “just preparing for the Second Coming.”

As for maligning the English language, Bush, when unscripted, can’t help himself. Five years ago at a conference in Canada he said he didn’t want to be interviewed “in English, French or Mexican.” He has also maintained that we should maintain “good relations with the Grecians.” And it was a slip of the tongue, no doubt, at Bob Jones University when he declared, “I don’t have to accept their tenants.”

Those faux pas did no serious damage, but the Bushies have mangled words that have caused much harm and confusion. For example, Bush doctrine still speaks of Iraqi “liberation,” while the Iraqis and the rest of the world see it as occupation. Webster tells us that liberation is “to free a country from domination by a foreign power.” No wonder there were no flowers.

Those of us who opposed the Iraq adventure pay a heavy price in Bushland. We are constantly told we are “demoralizing our troops and aiding the terrorists.”

If the troops are demoralized it’s because they are bogged down in a near-civil war with no end in sight after we had all been told in May 2003 by the president: “In the battle of Iraq the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Yeah.

As for aiding terrorists, nothing has strengthened Al Qaeda more than the preemptive strike by the world’s only superpower, which chose invasion of a Muslim nation that was no threat to our national security and had nothing to do with 9/11.

Now the master of deception, Karl Rove, has introduced a new pejorative word, “isolationism,” to characterize all those against the war.

Webster tells us that isolationism is “a policy of national isolation by abstention from alliances and other international, political and economic relations.”

Today we have troops and trading partners all over the planet. Isolationism went out of business with World War II. Incapable of avoiding distortions, Cheney tells us that the destruction of a sacred Shiite shrine in Iraq proves the “desperation” of the insurgency, which, as he keeps telling us, gets weaker by the moment.

Domestically, the Bush people play the same tune. They call the estate tax, which mostly hits the very rich, “a death penalty.” The E.P.A., whose mission is to protect the environment, loosens requirements for polluters and it takes a court of appeals to tell the Bush-run agency that they could only get away with their actions in a “Humpty Dumpty world.”

Jon Stewart comes to Bush’s defense on Katrina, in his own style. The president insisted that no one could have foreseen the hurricane destroying the levees that protected New Orleans. But on TV Bush is shown listening to weather experts telling him and aides that the levees were vulnerable.

“Bush has a good excuse,” Stewart says. “He just wasn’t paying attention.”

As language and history continue to get mangled, people are beginning to catch on. A blue-collar worker is seen commenting on CNN: “That’s the last time I vote for a guy just because I think I’d enjoy having a beer with him.”

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_152/talkingpoint.html

[TLOZ Link5]

Brrrr. Has anyone else besides me been re-reading Nineteen Eighty-Four?

[BrooklynRider]

I never read it. More relevant than ever?

[Ninjahedge]

Brrrr. Has anyone else besides me been re-reading Nineteen Eighty-Four?

Yep.

I am smiling at my wall right now!!!!

[lofter1]

Exclusive: Tom DeLay Says He Will Give Up His Seat

The embattled former Republican leader tells TIME that he will leave Congress and not seek reelection

By MIKE ALLEN (javascript:void(0))
SUGAR LAND, TEXAS
TIME (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1179853,00.html) Magazine
Apr. 03, 2006

Exclusive Interview: DeLay Tells TIME Why He's Quitting Congress (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1179857,00.html)
Rep. Tom DeLay, whose iron hold on the House Republicans melted as a lobbying corruption scandal engulfed the Capitol, told TIME that he will not seek reelection and will leave Congress within months.

Taking defiant swipes at "the left" and the press, he said he feels "liberated" and vowed to pursue an aggressive speaking and organizing campaign aimed at promoting foster care, Republican candidates and a closer connection between religion and government...

Copyright © //-- var currentTime = new Date() var year = currentTime.getFullYear() document.write(year) // 2006 Time Inc

[lofter1]

DNC statement: 'The beginning of the reckoning'

RAW STORY (http://rawstory.com/)
Tuesday April 4, 2006


Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney today issued the following statement in response to reports that scandal-plagued former Republican House Majority Leader Tom has decided to withdraw from his re-election race:"Tom DeLay's announcement is just the beginning of the reckoning of the Republican culture of corruption that has gripped Washington for too long. From DeLay, to Scooter Libby, to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to Duke Cunningham, to Bob Ney, to David Safavian--the list goes on and on.

Make no mistake, this Fall the American people are going to have a clear choice between Democrats who offer a bold vision based on honest leadership and real security, and Republicans who can only offer more of the same Republican culture of corruption and incompetence."

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://nymag.com/

The Bush-Cheney Era Ends Here

If Chuck Schumer can make his dream of a Democratic-controlled senate come true.

By Ryan Lizza

Democrats have a dream. They dream that they will wake up on November 8 and that West Virginia senator Robert Byrd, the 88-year-old antiwar firebrand, will be in charge of appropriating every dollar spent in Iraq. They dream that Patrick Leahy, the Vermont senator who led the effort against Samuel Alito, will be the man deciding which Bush judges get considered. They dream that a senator from South Dakota named Tim Johnson will be running the now-dormant Ethics Committee, aggressively investigating GOP lobbyists looting their way through Washington. They dream of a vote on a minimum-wage increase and public hearings on global warming. And Democrats soothe themselves to sleep every night with visions of beating six years’ worth of secrets out of the Bush administration—on pre-9/11 intelligence, the Plame affair, Katrina, Dubai Ports World, Halliburton—through the fearsome power of the subpoena.

Democrats dream that they will once again matter in Washington. In short, they dream of taking control of the United States Senate.

In an election year that offers Democrats a target-rich environment, no goal is more coveted than that of reclaiming the upper chamber of Congress. Democrats are poised to take back governor’s mansions scattered from coast to coast, but those races are local ones and will have almost no impact on Bush or his agenda. The party needs a net gain of fifteen seats to regain the House of Representatives, and while that is starting to look less impossible than it did just a few months ago, deftly gerrymandered districts serve as powerful structural impediments to a Democratic takeover.

The Senate is different. It has 44 Democrats and one independent who votes with them. Because ties are broken by Dick Cheney, six seats need to change hands to bring the body under Democratic control. Unlike reclaiming the House, or the far-off presidential race, it is a goal that seems tangible, achievable. Any Democrat in Washington can rattle off the six states of greatest opportunity—Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, Montana, Rhode Island, and Tennessee—and explain how each can be won. And if Election Day were tomorrow, according to the latest polls, the Democrats would stand a reasonable chance of sweeping all six. Such a colossal victory would spell the end of the Bush era.

The man orchestrating the Senate takeover is New York’s senior senator, Charles Schumer, who is the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and has already managed the unlikely task of out-fund-raising his Republican counterparts.

Despite the intensity of this moment, Schumer has a disarmingly casual air when I meet him at his Capitol Hill office. He’s kicked off his shoes and sits with his feet propped up on a coffee table. Aides march in and out without knocking, always addressing him as Chuck. One tosses him an apple across the room.

Although he has never been as captivated by the trappings of the Senate as some of his colleagues, and hasn’t quite brushed off the scrappiness of his eighteen years in the House, Schumer brings to the DSCC a mastery of the two basics of modern politics: money and media. He is, famously, the Senate’s greatest fund-raiser and greatest TV hound, important qualifications for his new job. Schumer thought about running for governor this year but instead leveraged the threat of leaving the Senate to secure a spot on the powerful Finance Committee, which writes the nation’s tax laws and, not insignificant, is a perch that puts him in constant contact with the political donor class. “That was my dream,” he says. “I always wanted to be on the Finance Committee.”

Agreeing to run the DSCC was a tougher call. The job is not always considered a great gig for a senator. Schumer calls it “a lemon.” But he took it, he insists, leaning forward and getting animated for the first time in our interview, because the GOP coalition of what he delicately calls “theocrats” and “economic royalists” is on the cusp of total victory in Washington. “The only barrier between these people and the America we’ve all come to know and love are the 45 Democrats in the Senate. And if we were to lose three seats, which looked very possible in December of 2004, it would be gone, because the magic number in the Senate is 41, not 51. So I said I had to take the job.”

On the Republican side, the lemon was awarded to North Carolina senator Elizabeth Dole. As head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, she is the anti-Schumer. He relishes politics and is his own best consultant, while Dole can hardly get dressed in the morning without an adviser. Schumer’s most rehearsed lines seem to be off the cuff, while Dole’s every utterance is a robotic drone. Schumer envelops the press with love. Dole rarely submits to on-the-record interviews. He has shattered fund-raising records. She has failed to keep pace.

In another year, her mistakes wouldn’t matter much because much of the NRSC’s political work would actually be done by Karl Rove—she’d just be the one with her name on the stationery. But 2005 happened to be the year Rove was waylaid by the Plame-leak investigation, forcing Dole to run the committee on her own and making Schumer shine by comparison.

Part of the reason Schumer took the job is that he was able to join Minority Leader Harry Reid’s Senate leadership team, which allows him to craft the party’s message with an eye toward the Senate races. He has embraced that job as if he’d spent his career representing Dubuque rather than Brooklyn. He is obsessed with the health of what he calls his “marginals,” red-state Democrats who live in fear of being too closely associated with, well, New York liberals like Schumer. He treats the marginals like fragile vases in constant danger of being knocked off their pedestals.

Schumer considers every Washington debate in terms of how it will affect the marginals. “There were some in our caucus that wanted to let the Patriot Act lapse,” he tells me. “I said that I think we got to change it, and I’ll work to change it, but to let it lapse would be a disaster, particularly for our Democrats in red states. You know, when I go to a drawing room in Manhattan and they say, ‘You got to appeal to our base!’ I say, ‘There is no base in North Dakota!’ ”

When Schumer took the helm of the DSCC last year, he became personally immersed in the weeds of the operation, hiring his own team, messing around in primaries, recruiting candidates, and personally lecturing them about how to run a campaign using what he calls the Schumer Method. That’s his secret recipe for his own New York victory, and he is now franchising it out. He instructs his candidates to very carefully define the prototypical swing voters in their home states—for him, it’s the imaginary Joe and Ilene O’Reilly from Massapequa—and then craft a campaign to meet their needs. To reach these local Joes and Ilenes regularly, he also coaches his candidates to get home and hit every media market in their state at least once a month. “The head of the DSCC used to be just a fund-raiser,” says Schumer’s communications director, Phil Singer. “He’s become more of a strategist and tactician.”

Schumer hired a top party fund-raiser, Julianna Smoot, and a well-respected political director, Guy Cecil. To do press, he brought in Singer, a wound-up master opposition researcher and favorite of Washington reporters, who looks like a trim, 30-year-old version of Schumer. He installed J. B. Poersch as executive director. A dead-ringer for the late comedian Chris Farley, Poersch is a coveted operative whose last stint was running the Kerry campaign in Ohio, the Waterloo for Democrats in 2004. After that searing near-victory, Poersch, like Schumer, gravitated to the DSCC out of a sense of foreboding about what would happen if the Democrats lost three more seats. “This is the place of last refuge,” he says.

Even with this new team in place, the DSCC was still weighted down by the past, including $4 million in debt. Nothing is more depressing to donors than being called after a humiliating defeat and begged to pay off the old credit-card bill. “They hated that,” Schumer says. “Because they were paying for past mistakes.” Instead, Schumer and Reid demanded that Democratic senators themselves retire the debt. In a month, the DSCC was solvent.

And still things looked fairly grim. Democrats hold eighteen seats up for reelection this year, while Republicans hold fifteen. Most sitting senators glide to victory; their reelection rate is 80 percent. Open seats are where the genuine battles tend to be waged. In 2002 and 2004, the greatest predictor of who would win a competitive Senate race was how well Bush had fared in the state. Compounding the problem for Democrats in 2004 was that several red-state senators, some elected decades earlier, retired and were replaced with fresh new Republicans. In 2002, Democrats lost seats in Georgia and Missouri. In 2004, they lost another Georgia seat and ones in South Dakota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. Since there are 31 red states and 19 blue states, this is a very unhappy trend for Senate Democrats.

Schumer’s first job was to put a finger in this dike. He badgered the five Democrats up for reelection this year in red states—New Mexico, North Dakota, Florida, Nebraska, and West Virginia—not to retire. One by one, Schumer and Reid sat down with these five men and played Let’s Make a Deal. “We basically begged them to stay,” says Schumer. “They came to Harry’s office and we said, ‘What do you need?’ ” Some got a seat on a prized committee. Others received assurances that their pet legislative issues or pork-barrel requests would be given priority. And everyone was promised that the DSCC would help out aggressively with fund-raising and that Schumer would talk up the candidates to his donors.

http://newyorkmetro.com/news/politics/bushcheney060403_2_560.gif
The Blue-State Tipping Point Of the 33 Senate seats up for election this fall, eight are essentially in play (Republicans would say at least nine, claiming they’ve got a shot in New Jersey, but we’ll see). Two of the eight contested seats are held by Democrats, and six of them are Republican. The map below shows the battlegrounds—and gives a snapshot of where the Democrats will need to win to have a shot at going from 45 seats (counting the independent who dependably votes with them) to a solid majority.
(Photo: Illustration by Knickerbocker)



SCHUMER’S PUNCH LIST

Six states with Republican-held seats are attracting a lot of Chuck Schumer’s attention these days. In each one, there’s good reason to believe that the Democrats could steal the seat if things break their way between now and Election Day.

Pennsylvania
Schumer showed how far the party is willing to go to win when he made a full-court press to recruit pro-life Bob Casey Jr. to challenge Rick Santorum. A recent poll shows Casey up by double digits.

Missouri
Claire McCaskill, the state auditor, was more interested in being governor before Schumer started selling her—and her reluctant husband—on the benefits of serving in D.C. Up three over Jim Talent.

Tennessee
The seat that will be vacated by presidential aspirant Bill Frist is being sought by Representative Harold Ford Jr., a onetime rising star who has so far failed to impress insiders with his work ethic.

Ohio
Schumer switched horses midway, ditching Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett in favor of Sherrod Brown, a liberal almost as far left as Dennis Kucinich. The campaign is focusing on corruption.

Montana
The Republican incumbent, Senator Conrad Burns, has been badly weakened by his close association with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Schumer is neutral about the Democrats running in the primary.

Rhode Island
Another primary here for the Democrats—and another weak GOP incumbent. Lincoln Chafee is an old-school New England Republican who is facing his own tough primary from a challenger on the right.



Octogenarian Robert Byrd was flirting with retirement, and keeping him on became an especially crucial mission. Once a reliably Democratic state, West Virginia has, through the Bush years, grown steadily more conservative. In 2000, Bush captured it with 52 percent of the vote, and in 2004 with 56 percent. If Byrd had left this year, the seat would almost surely have been lost to Republican congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, a young up-and-comer in the state whose father was governor. Schumer and other Democrats persuaded Byrd to stick around partly by promising him that they would do most of his fund-raising for him. Schumer, Reid, Dick Durbin, and former majority leader Tom Daschle all held early fund-raisers for Byrd to convince him they were serious. By September, with almost $2 million banked, Byrd announced his reelection bid. Similar horse-trading persuaded his four red-state colleagues to do the same.

“When I go to a drawing room in Manhattan and they say, ‘You got to appeal to our base!’ I say, ‘There is no base in North Dakota!’ ”

Schumer had less success keeping all his blue-state senators. Three are retiring. Independent Jim Jeffords is leaving, though his Vermont seat is likely to be won by a Democrat. Maryland’s Paul Sarbanes is also quitting, producing a long-shot opportunity for Republicans in that state. More worrisome for Democrats is holding onto the seat of Minnesota’s Mark Dayton. Schumer’s relentlessness helped push Dayton out. Best known as the only senator to vacate his Washington office last fall after a vague terrorism threat, Dayton retired partly because he couldn’t stomach the fund-raising pace demanded by Schumer. “Every time I’d see Chuck Schumer . . . he’d say, ‘Raise money, Mark. Go raise money. Raise money,’ ” Dayton told his hometown paper after announcing his retirement. According to sources close to Schumer, the senator privately believed Dayton was a sitting duck who had lost the hunger to serve. He wanted Dayton to quit, and he quickly recruited a less-vulnerable replacement. “That was the one retirement they were actually happy about,” says Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races for The Cook Political Report.

In exchange for helping candidates raise money, Schumer makes a demand: no amateurs. Anybody who wants DSCC help must have a campaign manager, a finance director, and a communications director personally approved by Schumer and his aides. “To preapprove the top three spots is about as hands-on as I’ve ever heard,” says Duffy.

But the truth is that an incumbent senator’s great hope is that he never has to use that campaign staff. “The goal is not to win your race,” says Phil Singer. “The goal is not to have a race.” And the first year of Schumer’s DSCC service was devoted to making sure that vulnerable Democrats faced no serious opposition in 2006. Through a mix of luck, heavy fund-raising, hardball politics, Elizabeth Dole’s anemic performance, and a major assist from Bush’s deteriorating political situation, the top Republicans in state after state decided not to challenge weak Democrats. In North Dakota, Republicans tried to get popular governor John Hoeven to run against Democratic senator Kent Conrad. “He voted against the war,” says Schumer, explaining how worried he was about Conrad, one of his marginals, “and against the anti-gay-marriage amendment. And Kent, amazingly enough, to his everlasting credit, was the 34th vote blocking a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning, which would have been the first time the Bill of Rights had ever been amended. In North Dakota! That would have been hard to do in any state.”

Bush twisted Hoeven’s arm aboard Air Force One and fêted him during a two-night sleepover at the White House, but Hoeven declined to jump into the race. Conrad now has $3 million in the bank and no serious Republican opponent.

In Nebraska, another vulnerable red-stater, Ben Nelson, wanted to scare off a challenge from Governor Mike Johanns. Nelson came to Schumer and Reid in late 2004 and told them that if he could raise $1 million in one month, Johanns wouldn’t challenge him. Schumer personally tapped his own base of New York donors, many of whom had never heard of Nelson. They coughed up tens of thousands of dollars. In his last Senate election campaign, Nelson raised a total of $50,395 from New Yorkers; this cycle, he’s already netted $130,500. His ratio of Nebraska money to New York money used to be thirteen to one. Now it’s three to one. Sure enough, a month after the fund-raising blitz began, and with $1 million in the bank, Johanns decided to join the Bush administration as secretary of Agriculture, and other top Republicans in the state declined to enter the race.

In West Virginia, nudging Capito out of the race became a matter of some urgency. Byrd is in no shape to campaign around the state. One of his first radio interviews after he announced he was running turned into a rambling, semi-coherent soliloquy about how much he loved the people of West Virginia. So Byrd, Schumer, and the DSCC, working with West Virginia’s Democratic governor, Joe Manchin, sought to scare off potential sources of Republican funding, threatening and browbeating state donors into not giving a dime to Capito. Their efforts may have had only a marginal impact, but combined with Bush’s slipping popularity and the NRSC’s paltry fund-raising, that did the trick. Capito decided not to run.

The story was similar in Washington, Michigan, and Florida. In the top six races targeted by Republicans, the Democratic incumbents didn’t retire and their toughest adversaries declined to run. “Every one of the six candidates faced down their major opponent,” Schumer boasts.

Schumer’s early success at preventing retirements and strengthening his most vulnerable colleagues puts Senate Democrats in their strongest defensive position since the 2000 election. Their most at-risk seat is in Minnesota, though Washington’s Senator Maria Cantwell is also facing a spirited challenge. In six other states targeted by the GOP—Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Maryland, and Vermont—Democrats currently look safe. This surprisingly strong start has allowed Schumer to play offense and concentrate his firepower on the six states Democrats recite in their dreams: Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, Montana, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.

Schumer has spent an inordinate amount of his time recruiting candidates to challenge the five vulnerable incumbent Republicans in these states (Tennessee has an open seat). He set the tone early last year in Pennsylvania when he risked the wrath of pro-choice Democrats by begging pro-lifer Bob Casey Jr. to run against Senator Rick Santorum, whom Democrats call “our Daschle,” referring to the zeal with which Republicans attacked and defeated Tom Daschle in 2004. “I must admit there’s probably a degree of payback,” says Schumer. In 2005, every poll showed Casey as Santorum’s toughest opponent, but he was planning to run for governor instead. Meanwhile, a pro-choice Democrat, Barbara Hafer, was already in the race. Schumer plotted with outgoing governor Ed Rendell, who persuaded Hafer not to run. Schumer then worked on Casey, luring him into the race with assurances that he could win and a promise that he would be rewarded with the DSCC’s best campaign manager. (“J.B. has a stable of these guys,” says Schumer, who allocates them according to need.) Schumer knew that the full fury of pro-choice Democrats would rain down on him when Casey announced his candidacy. But that was exactly the point. By pissing off the party’s most loyal supporters, Schumer sent a message that he was serious about winning, one that rippled into other states and helped persuade reluctant recruiting targets to run. “I said, ‘Hey, we have to win!’ If we had 58 seats, maybe you wouldn’t do this, but our back is against the wall,” Schumer says.

Casey now enjoys double-digit leads over Santorum, who is surely the Republican senator most likely to be unemployed come November. Santorum dodged Bush on a recent presidential visit to the state, something unthinkable for a Republican senator two years ago. And instead of running strictly on national security, Santorum has been forced to woo suburban women by softening his religious-conservative image. One of his first ads, “Dreamers,” stars his 14-year-old daughter praising her father’s commitment to education.

In Missouri, a onetime swing state that has become redder and redder in the Bush era, the plan to beat incumbent Jim Talent called for finding a Democrat who could reconnect with the state’s rural, religious population outside the Democratic islands of Kansas City and St. Louis. Once Schumer decided that state auditor Claire McCaskill was that candidate, he courted her with all the ardor of a love-struck teenager. There was rarely a day he didn’t talk to her or send her something. “The No. 1 word that I can use to describe a successful recruiter is relentless,” Schumer says. “You just have to keep calling and calling and calling.”

State by state, Schumer’s operatives have relentlessly spread anti-GOP stories, “taking little things and beating them to death.”

He learned that McCaskill’s new husband, Joseph Shepard, was the problem. So when Schumer heard that the whole McCaskill family would be in London at the same time as the Schumers, he sought them out and organized a dinner, planting himself beside Shepard, a wealthy businessman who invested a good chunk of his real-estate fortune into his wife’s losing 2004 campaign for governor, an office they both still covet. Schumer weaned them off their obsession with the gubernatorial race and assured Shepard that his wife’s Senate job would still have her home to him at a reasonable hour every night, a somewhat dubious promise considering Schumer’s wife lives in New York and most weekdays in Washington he works until midnight. But within two weeks of the London dinner, McCaskill decided to run. “You have to gently envelop the candidate and show them that the Senate is just an incredibly good job,” Schumer says, explaining the recruiting of McCaskill. “I instinctively felt that if we did it with our families, we could make it happen.”

The Missouri race is crucial to understanding the challenge Democrats face this year. Bush’s approval rating may be in the thirties nationally, but it’s higher in Missouri. Washington Democrats may talk of censure, but McCaskill’s campaign wants nothing to do with any of that. Recently, McCaskill has pointedly distanced herself from Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton, and, though pro-choice, has proclaimed, “I am not for abortion.” Races like Missouri will force Senate Democrats in Washington to be extremely vigilant about how bold their agenda gets this year and how much Bush-bashing they do. Although “check on Bush” is the mantra Schumer uses to pull money out of Democratic donors, it’s not necessarily a winning message for all his candidates. In essence, national Democrats can move only as far left as their most conservative Senate candidate in the six target states, four of which were carried by Bush in 2000 and 2004.

So far, McCaskill and her Washington-based colleagues are navigating these shoals effectively. Recent polls show her with a narrow lead over Talent. She has even found a wedge issue to confound Republicans: stem cells. Talent wanted to criminalize a type of stem-cell research requiring embryonic cloning, a position he reversed in February. For weeks, the campaign has been about little else. And taking a page from the Republican playbook of 2004, when the GOP added a gay-marriage initiative to the ballot in Ohio to help maximize conservative turnout, Democrats have added a stem-cell initiative to the ballot in Missouri.

These red-state political moves aren’t just helping Democrats this cycle. They are serving as a road test for the potential platform of the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, whoever that turns out to be. Democratic victories in red states this year will be seized upon by party strategists as pointing the way forward for 2008. In that way, Schumer is helping the party define a kind of centrism that, if successful, could also help win the White House.

In Ohio, Schumer’s aggressive recruiting proved too successful. Iraq veteran Paul Hackett became the darling of liberal Democrats last year by nearly defeating a Republican in a special House election in an extremely pro-Bush Ohio district. He was then pushed into the Senate race by Schumer and Reid, whose first and second choices decided not to run. Schumer’s hard sell even included a call from his wife to Hackett’s wife to allay any spousal concerns. But months later, when the second-choice candidate, Sherrod Brown, changed his mind, Schumer changed his mind about Hackett. Hackett, in turn, quit the race, angrily firing away at Schumer as he left the stage. “Schumer, in particular,” he wrote in a newspaper column, “actively sought to undermine my insurgent campaign, in part by calling up my donors and telling them not to raise money for me, which is like a doctor cutting off oxygen to a patient. He also worked through others to get state and local politicians to publicly urge me to quit.” It worked.

Ohio is now the test case for how much harm corruption scandals have inflicted on the GOP. The Republican governor has pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges for taking gifts. A byzantine scandal regarding a Bush donor who invested part of Ohio’s workers’ compensation fund into rare coins has tarred almost every Republican in the state. Meanwhile, conservatives are fuming at the already vulnerable Republican senator Mike DeWine for signing on to the so-called Gang of Fourteen deal, which prevented Republicans from banning the use of a filibuster to block judicial nominees. The Democratic strategy is simple: a relentless focus on corruption, punctuated more recently by almost Pat Buchanan–like attacks on Arab-owned firms that have anything to do with American security. Brown is a fairly liberal candidate for the state—think a more polished Dennis Kucinich—but the scandals, the Dubai issue, and declining support for Bush and the war have combined to give him a 50-50 chance at victory.

Montana has been a showcase for another skill that Schumer’s DSCC has elevated to an art this cycle—the ability to inject anti-GOP stories into the state press. “This is what the DSCC is good at,” says the Cook Report’s Duffy. “They are good at taking little things and beating them to death.”

In Montana, the story of lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been transformed from an obscure inside-Washington tale into a local Montana feeding frenzy. Republican senator Conrad Burns assisted Abramoff’s Indian clients, and, with some help from Singer at the DSCC, the Montana press has explored every cranny of Burns’s connection to the lobbyist. In 2000, Burns won with only 51 percent, pushed over the edge by Bush’s strong showing in the state. He’s a mediocre campaigner and has been slow to organize. In late March, rumors flew around Washington that he was quitting the race.

But he hasn’t dropped out. Like other GOP candidates, Burns has decided to run on state micro-issues rather than national ones. His latest TV ad isn’t about Iraq but the “scourge [that] is threatening Montana’s children: methamphetamine addiction.” As in Ohio, Democrats are drilling away at GOP scandals, but as in Missouri, they tread carefully around social issues and eschew Bush-bashing. After Santorum, Burns is the most likely Republican to go down this year.

In Rhode Island, Schumer failed to recruit his top candidate. He wanted pro-life congressman Jim Langevin, but a second pro-lifer proved to be too much for many Democrats to take, especially in liberal Rhode Island, and Langevin declined to run. The Republican incumbent is Lincoln Chafee, one of the last GOP moderates from New England left in Congress. Chafee famously refused to vote for Bush in 2004, writing in the name of the president’s father instead. That and other heresies have attracted a conservative primary opponent who is sure to send him into the general election bloodied and weakened. To his credit, Chafee has been unwilling to shift rightward in response. He even said he would consider backing Senator Russ Feingold’s resolution to censure Bush (though he later offered a tortuous clarification). Rhode Island is the bluest state in America with a Republican senator. Bush lost there in 2004 by 21 points, and it is looking increasingly doubtful that Chafee’s storied name (his dad was a senator) or fierce independence can save him in a year with such an anti-Republican undertow.

Finally, in Tennessee, where Majority Leader Bill Frist is retiring to pursue an increasingly quixotic campaign for president, the Republicans have abjectly failed to be as ruthless and top-down as Schumer has been. Instead of handpicking their strongest candidate, the party has allowed a raucous primary to break out, one that won’t end until August 3, which won’t give the eventual winner much time to regroup. Still, it will be a difficult seat for the Democrats to claim. Their nominee, Congressman Harold Ford Jr., has a reputation in Washington for being more of a show horse than a workhorse, and questions of maturity have long dogged him. He seems preoccupied about whether Tennessee is enlightened enough to send a black man to represent it in the Senate or whether he might be blamed for the sins of an uncle caught up in a bribery scandal. Like McCaskill, he has been forced to distance himself from Washington Democrats and stress his opposition to gay marriage and “partial birth” abortion.

Winning all six of these races as well as the open seat in Minnesota while holding on to all their vulnerable incumbents is hardly a sure thing for Democrats. But the national climate is getting more poisonous for the GOP, and polls show that the mood of the country is as sour now as it was at this point in 1994 when Democrats were turned out of power. But it is still a dream.

Some Democrats, however, have been flirting with a slightly altered version of the dream. Wouldn’t it be better, they wonder, if they came close to winning back the Senate this year, but accomplished the task only in 2008? After all, a slim Senate majority would make it difficult to govern, perhaps giving Bush the opportunity to turn the new Senate leadership into a useful foil, just as Bill Clinton did to Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, and thereby revive his presidency. Furthermore, this alternate dream scenario goes, in 2008, there are 21 Republicans up for reelection and only 12 Democrats. Wouldn’t that be the moment for Democrats to come sweeping back into power?

It would be unusual, but people who have watched Schumer over the past year and a half as he has become increasingly consumed by his DSCC work believe that he would be willing to stay in the job for another two years if he falls short this year. Aides close to him agree. Asked about that scenario, Schumer will only say, “Let’s see how I do this time.”

[lofter1]

Any volunteers?

[lofter1]

Poll Finds Bush Job Rating at New Low

An Election-Year Blow to the GOP

By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
April 11, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/10/AR2006041000259_pf.html

Political reversals at home and continued bad news from Iraq have dragged President Bush's standing with the public to a new low, at the same time that Republican fortunes on Capitol Hill also are deteriorating, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that 38 percent of the public approve of the job Bush is doing, down three percentage points in the past month and his worst showing in Post-ABC polling since he became president. Sixty percent disapprove of his performance.

With less than seven months remaining before the midterm elections, Bush's political troubles already appear to be casting a long shadow over them. Barely a third of registered voters, 35 percent, approve of the way the Republican-led Congress is doing its job -- the lowest level of support in nine years.

[lofter1]

Neil Young, Son of Famed Reporter, Records "Impeach the President" Song

By E&P Staff
April 14, 2006

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002344436


NEW YORK As an E&P "Pressing Issues" column (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=10023126 25) recently noted, rock star Neil Young is the son of a famed Canadian journalist, so it should not surprise many that he recently recorded a song in California with a very reportorial -- or at least pundit -- feel to it.

It’s called “Impeach the President,” so there can be little question what it is about.

Apparently it was recorded with a 100-voice choir. Rumors have circulated the past few days on the Web, but E&P has tracked down the strongest confirmation in a blog kept by Sherman Oaks, Ca. musician/singer Alicia Morgan.

Previous reports quoted hints by Young and Jonathan Demme (who directed the new documentary “Heart of Gold”) that Neil was working on a hard-rocking political or “anti-Bush” CD.

Last Friday, Morgan wrote on her LastLeftB4Hooterville blog that she had been “summoned” to a local studio to sing on the new record with 99 others. “I'm not going to give the whole thing away, but the first line of one of the songs was ‘Let's impeach the President for lyin'!’ Turns out the whole thing is a classic beautiful protest record. The session was like being at a 12-hour peace rally. Every time new lyrics would come up on the screen, there were cheers, tears and applause. It was a spiritual experience. I can't believe my good fortune at being a part of this.

“We finished the session by singing an a capella version of 'America the Beautiful' and there was not a dry eye in the house.

“Neil said it should be out in 6 to 8 weeks."

Harp magazine reported on its Web site Thursday that Demme had confirmed in an e-mail, “Neil just finished writing and recording -- with no warning -- a new album called 'Living With War.' It all happened in three days… It is a brilliant electric assault, accompanied by a 100-voice choir, on Bush and the war in Iraq… Truly mind blowing. Will be in stores soon.”

The magazine continued: “Details are pretty scarce, but the featured track, titled ‘Impeach the President,’ features a rap with Bush’s voice set to the choir chanting ‘flip/flop’ and the like.”

Young has always been a maverick politically as well as musically. Although he has recorded a few songs with a "liberal" slant, he also drew criticism from the left for pro-Reagan comments many years ago. Most of his albums contain few if any political songs.

© 2006 VNU eMedia Inc (http://www.vnuemedia.com/)

[lofter1]

Thanks, Rummy

The Moose expresses his appreciation to the Secretary of Defense.

Friday, April 14, 2006
BullMoose (http://bullmooseblogger.blogspot.com/)

Donald Rumsfeld has accomplished something no government official has achieved.
Rummy has brought the country together.
He is truly a uniter and not a divider.

Republican and Democrat.
Conservative and Liberal.
Civilian and Military.
Red State and Blue State.
All together.

America is agreed.
We are a united nation.

There is a national consensus - Donald Rumsfeld must go.

The lead story in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/washington/14military.html?hp&ex=1145073600& amp;amp;en=bdbb556e9e293705&ei=5094&partner=homepage) following a similar front page story in yesterday's Washington Post,

"The widening circle of retired generals who have stepped forward to call for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsfeld/index.html?inline=nyt-per) resignation is shaping up as an unusual outcry that could pose a significant challenge to Mr. Rumsfeld's leadership, current and former generals said on Thursday."

It appears that there are only two holdouts on this national consensus - Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. It is a curious moment. The Administration is in a free fall and yet the President is refusing to take dramatic action. Is W. engaged in a perverse competition with Richard Nixon for which President can achieve the lowest popularity numbers?

The President must decide what he values more - winning the war or retaining Rummy. David Ignatius makes an important point, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/13/AR2006041301238.html)

"Rumsfeld should resign because the Bush administration is losing the war on the home front. As bad as things are in Baghdad, America won't be defeated there militarily. But it may be forced into a hasty and chaotic retreat by mounting domestic opposition to its policy. Much of the American public has simply stopped believing the administration's arguments about Iraq, and Rumsfeld is a symbol of that credibility gap. He is a spent force, reduced to squabbling with the secretary of state about whether "tactical errors" were made in the war's conduct."

What does Rummy have on the President? The only thing less credible in the Nation's Capital than the Secretary of Defense is the Washington Nationals' offense.

But at least for the moment we are one.

[ablarc]

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/funnyposter/01.JPG

Funny poster.

[lofter1]

Chimperor's record-shattering downward spiral: 39%

Pam's House Blend
Sunday, April 16, 2006

http://www.pamspaulding.com/weblog/

http://www.pamspaulding.com/graphics/bush39.jpg

http://www.pamspaulding.com/graphics/chimpperformance.jpg


Rasmussen Reports (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm), the most accurate polling firm during the 2004 Presidential election, drops this bomb today:Thirty-nine percent (39%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. That's the lowest level of approval ever measured by Rasmussen Reports.

Sixty percent (60%) disapprove of Bush's job performance, the highest level ever recorded.

The question is, will the the Rethug up for election get flushed down into the sewer with Dear Leader? The bad news continues. Break out the hankies... ::sniff:: ::sniff::More people now identify themselves as Democrats than they did around Election 2004. Month-by-month party affiliation (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/April%20Dailies/Partisan%20Trends.htm) numbers show that the Republicans gained ground during 2004 and have been losing ground ever since.

Thirty-eight percent (38%) of Americans believe that President Bush should be censured (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/March%20Dailies/Censure.htm), or formally reprimanded, by the U.S. Senate. The proposal, advocated by Senator Feingold, is not necessarily good news for the Democratic Party, but it has the potential to boost Feingold's standing within the Party.

For the first time ever, a majority of Americans (52%) say that the U.S. mission in Iraq will be judged a failure (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/War%20on%20Terror_Monthly_Update.htm). Just 32% believe history will judge it a success.

I guess this means the bombs will start dropping on Iran shortly and/or the terror alert level kicks up a notch.

I had to go over to the swamp to measure the level of denial and hand-wringing. Many are actually ready to cut and run from the guy; a bunch of the really drunk-on-Kool Aid freepi are blaming the "general's revolt" on Iraq/Rumsfelt on the Left (!). Jeezus.

[BrooklynRider]

I'm not sure how long they will be there, but some interesting pictures of me in front of the White House this weekend are here:

www.yellowcakewalk.net


Hmmmm. Which one is me?

[lofter1]

Keep diggin', George ...

Harpers (http://www.harpers.org/CartoonApprovalRating.html)

http://www.harpers.org/art/cartoons/mrfish/ApprovalRating_499.jpg

[lofter1]

GWB just makes this stuff TOO EASY ...

Fairly BRILLIANT cover here:

Click for MUSIC: http://decider.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

I'M THE DECIDER

(Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo)

http://decider.cf.huffingtonpost.com/TheDecider.jpg

I am me and Rummy's he, Iraq is free and we are all together
See the world run when Dick shoots his gun, see how I lie
I'm Lying...

Sitting on my own brain, waiting for the end of days
Corporation profits, Bloody oil money
I'm above the law and I'll decide what's right or wrong

I am the egg head, I'm the Commander, I'm the Decider

Koo-Koo-Kachoo

Baghdad city policeman sitting pretty little targets in a row
See how they die when the shrapnel flies see mothers cry
I'm Lying...I'm Ly-ing...I'm Lying...I'm Ly-ing

Yellow cake plutonium, imaginary WMD's
Declassifying facts, exposing secret agents
Tax cuts for the wealthy leaving all the poor behind

CHORUS

Sitting in the White house garden talking to the Lord
My thoughts would be busy busy hatching If I only had a brain

CHORUS

(courtesy of Paul Hipp)

[MrSpice]

GWB just makes this stuff TOO EASY ...

Sitting on my own brain, waiting for the end of days
Corporation profits, Bloody oil money
I'm above the law and I'll decide what's right or wrong

Tax cuts for the wealthy leaving all the poor behind


It's sort of humorous and somewhat true up to a point. I think this talk about "tax cuts for the wealthy leaving all the poor behind" is nothing but a left-wing propaganda. One can argue that those who are welthy benefited more from GW's tax cuts. But no one left anyoner behind. And certainly, many people that belong to the middle class benefited from 15% divident and capital gain taxes, as well as lower income taxes and higher child credits. We also need to note that the unemployment rates is one of the lowest on record - only 4.7%. So the number of those who can be considered poor has decreased as well. New York is the financial capital of the US. Does it look poor now? It seems to me that this town is booming, just like many other cities in this country.

[lofter1]

Sorry, I can't hear you -- cuz I'm listening to "I'm the Decider" for the 5th time ...

[ZippyTheChimp]

The unemployment rate, as a good measure of economic health, is probably the most bullshit statistic released by the government.

But no one left anyoner behind.Define what you mean by left behind.

[Ninjahedge]

Spice.

All you have to do is look at the average debt that the citizens have incurred in the past 7 years or so and you will get an idea of how fragile that outward appearance of "success" can be.

[MrSpice]

The unemployment rate, as a good measure of economic health, is probably the most bullshit statistic released by the government.


It's certainly one of the most important measures of economic growth. There are many private indicators that suggest a very healthy job market.

[ZippyTheChimp]

An unemployment rate of 4.7% means that 4.7% of the total work force are still enrolled in a federal program for assistance in finding employment. It means nothing else. Once they drop off these programs, or find part-time employment, or are forced onto disability (the latest clever device), they are removed from the database.

The total workforce numbers can also be inflated, thus reducing the rate. During the Reagan administration, those on active duty in the military were considered employed instead of the correct not in the labor force.

The numbers have been so manipulated by both parties over the years that the rate as reported is only useful as a propaganda tool.

[ablarc]

An unemployment rate of 4.7% means that 4.7% of the total work force are still enrolled in a federal program for assistance in finding employment. It means nothing else.
If anything it makes the situation look bad. Think about it: one in twenty members of the work force is collecting unemployment. That seems like a higher fraction than you would want in a healthy situation.

[lofter1]

The Three Stooges ...

EXIT: Stage RIGHT >>>>>>>>>>>>>

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/19/us/20bush450.1.jpg
Doug Mills/The New York Times

[NYatKNIGHT]

While the official unemployed rate may be low, the quality of the jobs are in decline. More and more of the employed have low paying jobs and provide few if any benefits, and many are part-time and/or or low stability jobs. The number of jobs in high paying sectors has declined, and the number of jobs in low paying sectors has increased.

[Ninjahedge]

Just wait until the mexicans learn HTML!!!!

;)

[lofter1]

I'd get at least a reprimand if I were caught sleeping on the job ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/ap/cheney.jpg From Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

Huffington (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/04/21/vice-president-cheney-sle_n_19564.html)

The NY Times today reported that Chinese officials were outraged over the White House accrediting a reporter who screamed at Mr. Hu from the stands, and mistakenly referring to China by the name of its archrival Taiwan. Adding insult to injury, here’s a picture of Vice President Dick Cheney sleeping during Mr. Hu’s press conference.

[lofter1]

Cheney now claims he wasn't napping ^^ but studying his notes ...

Meanwhile:

If Past Is Prologue,
George Bush Is Becoming An Increasingly Dangerous President

By JOHN W. DEAN
(http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean)FindLaw (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060421.html)
Friday, Apr. 21, 2006

President George W. Bush's presidency is a disaster - one that's still unfolding. In a mid-2004 column (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040521.html), I argued that, at that point, Bush had already demonstrated that he possessed the least attractive and most troubling traits among those that political scientist James Dave Barber has cataloged in his study of Presidents' personality types.

Now, in early 2006, Bush has continued to sink lower in his public approval ratings, as the result of a series of events that have sapped the public of confidence in its President, and for which he is directly responsible. This Administration goes through scandals like a compulsive eater does candy bars; the wrapper is barely off one before we've moved on to another.

Currently, President Bush is busy reshuffling his staff to reinvigorate his presidency. But if Dr. Barber's work holds true for this president -- as it has for others - the hiring and firing of subordinates will not touch the core problems that have plagued Bush's tenure.

That is because the problems belong to the President - not his staff. And they are problems that go to character, not to strategy.

Barber's Analysis of Presidential Character

As I discussed in my prior column, Barber, after analyzing all the presidents through Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, found repeating patterns of common elements relating to character, worldview, style, approach to dealing with power, and expectations. Based on these findings, Barber concluded that presidents fell into clusters of characteristics.

He also found in this data Presidential work patterns which he described as "active" or "passive." For example, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were highly active; Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan were highly passive.

Barber further analyzed the emotional relationship of presidents toward their work - dividing them into presidents who found their work an emotionally satisfying experience, and thus "positive," and those who found the job emotionally taxing, and thus "negative." Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan, for example, were presidents who enjoyed their work; Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon had "negative" feeling toward it.

From these measurements, Barber developed four repeating categories into which he was able to place all presidents: those like FDR who actively pursued their work and had positive feelings about their efforts (active/positives); those like Nixon who actively pursued the job but had negative feelings about it (active/negatives); those like Reagan who were passive about the job but enjoyed it (passive/positives); and, finally, those who followed the pattern of Thomas Jefferson -- who both was passive and did not enjoy the work (passive/negatives).

Interestingly, the category of presidents who proved troublesome under Barber's analysis is that of those who turned out to be active/negatives.

Barber placed Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in this class.

In my prior column (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040521.html), I found that the evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush is another active/negative president, and the past two years, since making that initial finding, have only further confirmed my conclusion.

Because active/negative presidencies do not end well, it is instructive to look at where Bush's may be heading.

Bush's "Active/Negative" Presidency

Recent events provide an especially good illustration of Bush's fateful - perhaps fatal - approach. Six generals who have served under Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have called for his resignation - making a strong substantive case as to why he should resign. And they are not alone: Editorialists have also persuasively attacked Rumsfeld on the merits.

Yet Bush's defense of Rumsfeld was entirely substance-free. Bush simply told reporters in the Rose Garden that Rumsfeld would stay because "I'm the decider and I decide what's best." He sounded much like a parent telling children how things would be: "I'm the Daddy, that's why."

This, indeed, is how Bush sees the presidency, and it is a point of view that will cause him trouble.

Bush has never understood what presidential scholar Richard Neustadt discovered many years ago: In a democracy, the only real power the presidency commands is the power to persuade. Presidents have their bully pulpit, and the full attention of the news media, 24/7. In addition, they are given the benefit of the doubt when they go to the American people to ask for their support. But as effective as this power can be, it can be equally devastating when it languishes unused - or when a president pretends not to need to use it, as Bush has done.

Apparently, Bush does not realize that to lead he must continually renew his approval with the public. He is not, as he thinks, the decider. The public is the decider.

Bush is following the classic mistaken pattern of active/negative presidents: As Barber explained, they issue order after order, without public support, until they eventually dissipate the real powers they have -- until "nothing left but the shell of the office." Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon all followed this pattern.

Active/negative presidents are risk-takers. (Consider the colossal risk Bush took with the Iraq invasion). And once they have taken a position, they lock on to failed courses of action and insist on rigidly holding steady, even when new facts indicate that flexibility is required.

The source of their rigidity is that they've become emotionally attached to their own positions; to change them, in their minds, would be to change their personal identity, their very essence. That, they are not willing to do at any cost.

Wilson rode his unpopular League of Nations proposal to his ruin; Hoover refused to let the federal government intervene to prevent or lessen a fiscal depression; Johnson escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam while misleading Americans (thereby making himself unelectable); and Nixon went down with his bogus defense of Watergate.

George Bush has misled America into a preemptive war in Iraq; he is using terrorism to claim that as Commander-in-Chief, he is above the law; and he refuses to acknowledge that American law prohibits torturing our enemies and warrantlessly wiretapping Americans.

Americans, increasingly, are not buying his justifications for any of these positions. Yet Bush has made no effort to persuade them that his actions are sound, prudent or productive; rather, he takes offense when anyone questions his unilateral powers. He responds as if personally insulted.

And this may be his only option: With Bush's limited rhetorical skills, it would be all but impossible for him to persuade any others than his most loyal supporters of his positions. His single salient virtue - as a campaigner - was the ability to stay on-message. He effectively (though inaccurately) portrayed both Al Gore and John Kerry as wafflers, whereas he found consistency in (over)simplifying the issues. But now, he cannot absorb the fact that his message is not one Americans want to hear - that he is being questioned, severely, and that staying on-message will be his downfall.

Other Presidents - other leaders, generally - have been able to listen to critics relatively impassively, believing that there is nothing personal about a debate about how best to achieve shared goals. Some have even turned detractors into supporters - something it's virtually impossible to imagine Bush doing. But not active/negative presidents. And not likely Bush.

The Danger of the "Active/Negative" President Facing A Congressional Rout

Active/negative presidents -- Barber tells us, and history shows -- are driven, persistent, and emphatic. Barber says their pervasive feeling is "I must."

Barber's collective portrait of Wilson, Hoover, Johnson and Nixon now fits George W. Bush too: "He sees himself as having begun with a high purpose, but as being continually forced to compromise in order to achieve the end state he vaguely envisions," Barber writes. He continues, "Battered from all sides . . . he begins to feel his integrity slipping away from him . . . [and] after enduring all this for longer than any mortal should, he rebels and stands his ground. Masking his decision in whatever rhetoric is necessary, he rides the tiger to the end."

Bush's policies have incorporated risk from the outset. A few examples make that clear.

He took the risk that he could capture Osama bin Laden with a small group of CIA operatives and U.S. Army Special forces - and he failed. He took the risk that he could invade Iraq and control the country with fewer troops and less planning than the generals and State Department told him would be possible - and he failed. He took the risk that he could ignore the criminal laws prohibiting torture and the warrantless wiretapping of Americans without being caught - he failed. And he's taken the risk that he can cut the taxes for the rich and run up huge financial deficits without hurting the economy.

This, too, will fail, though the consequences will likely fall on future presidents and generations who must repay Bush's debts.

What We Can Expect From Bush in the Future, Based on Barber's Model

As the 2006 midterm elections approach, this active/negative president can be expected to take further risks. If anyone doubts that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their confidants are planning an "October Surprise" to prevent the Republicans from losing control of Congress, then he or she has not been observing this presidency very closely.

What will that surprise be? It's the most closely held secret of the Administration.

How risky will it be? Bush is a whatever-it-takes risk-taker, the consequences be damned.

One possibility is that Dick Cheney will resign as Vice President for "health reasons," and become a senior counselor to the president. And Bush will name a new vice president - a choice geared to increase his popularity, as well as someone electable in 2008. It would give his sinking administration a new face, and new life.

The immensely popular Rudy Giuliani seems the most likely pick, if Giuliani is willing. (A better option for Giuliani might be to hold off, and tacitly position himself as the Republican anti-Bush in 2008.) But Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Bill Frist, and more are possibilities.

Bush's second and more likely, surprise could be in the area of national security: If he could achieve a Great Powers coalition (of Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and so on) presenting a united-front "no nukes" stance to Iran, it would be his first diplomatic coup and a political triumph.

But more likely, Bush may mount a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - hoping to rev up his popularity. (It's a risky strategy: A unilateral hit on Iran may both trigger devastating Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks in Iraq, with high death tolls, and increase international dislike of Bush for his bypass of the U.N. But as an active/negative President, Bush hardly shies away from risk.) Another rabbit-out-of-the-hat possibility: the capture of Osama bin Laden.

If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways.

There is, however, the possibility of another terrorist attack, and if one occurred, Americans would again rally around the president - wrongly so, since this is a presidency that lives on fear-mongering about terror, but does little to truly address it. The possibility that we might both suffer an attack, and see a boost to Bush come from it, is truly a terrifying thought.

[I]Copyright © 1994-2006 FindLaw

[lofter1]

The most troubling aspect of the Dean / Barber analysis:

What We Can Expect From Bush in the Future

If anyone doubts that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their confidants are planning an "October Surprise" to prevent the Republicans from losing control of Congress, then he or she has not been observing this presidency very closely.

What will that surprise be? It's the most closely held secret of the Administration.

How risky will it be? Bush is a whatever-it-takes risk-taker, the consequences be damned.

... more likely, Bush may mount a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - hoping to rev up his popularity ...

If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways.

[lofter1]

Welcome to the White House nap-time (maybe it was the food) ...

http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/nm_condi_cheney_060421_ssh.jpg

[lofter1]

http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gifhttp://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gifProtesters force Bush to move Stanford meeting

Mercury News
Apr. 21, 2006

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/the_valley/14400850.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

President Bush's visit to Stanford University's Hoover Institution was quickly moved to another location after more than 1,000 protesters converged around the Hoover tower.

The White House said the protesters blocked the only road into the central area of the campus where Hoover is located, which forced a meeting with several Hoover fellows to be moved to the campus home of former Secretary of State George Shultz, a Hoover fellow who organized the gathering.

The motorcade instead traveled to the house, which is on the outer edge of campus.

The change in plans delayed the president's arrival by about 15 minutes.

Protesters said they were disappointed that the President would not see them and accused the President of sneaking around to avoid them.

© 2006 MercuryNews.com and wire service sources

[Ninjahedge]

He does not want to see people that do not like him.

As for the Surprise, I can see something radical, or something coming from other angles. Notice how Osama has popped up again?

Wouldn't it be interesting if there was an attack that was allowed to try to consolodate people against the common enemy again? I refuse to believe that he would do such a thing, but I also would not be overly surprised.

As for Cheney stepping down, that looks feasable, but I think they just had the Rove team out digging up dirt on eevryone to try to re-activate the smear-cannons in time for the next election.

I have heard so little about Frist and the others being said or done that it looks like they are just using the "ignore it and it will go away" tactic. At least, "away" enough so that their smear will be more effective.


As for Bush being an active Negative, I do not know if he really fits that. He is more of a self-righteous spoiled individual that never really had to deal with anyone not giving him what he wanted. He is not secure enough in his own image to tolerate criticism and relies on an innocent looking "Why me worry?" face to get him through life.

He would have been perfect if we did not have a recession and a war already in the planning. He is not an action president, he was put in so the corporate interests could get whatever they could through the whitehouse BEFORE the recession that they saw coming hit.

So whatever. He is doing "Gods" work so I guess it is all right.

I just wonder what God he sees and if that one has the cajones to tell him he is wrong.

[lofter1]

I just wonder what God he sees and if that one has the cajones to tell him he is wrong.
So you believe that he actually does converse with "God"?

[lofter1]

The Bush / Bolten "5 Point Plan" (aka "Smoke & Mirrors") to dig GWB out of his ever-deepening hole:

Can The New Sheriff Tame The West Wing?

Josh Bolten started by shaking up the staff.
Next comes a five-point White House "recovery plan"

By MIKE ALLEN (http://javascript<b></b>:void(0))
TIME (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1186555,00.html) Magazine
Sunday, Apr. 23, 2006

... the White House is now on a survival footing, and Bolten is essentially planning a six-month campaign that will not only prevent a Republican hemorrhage in the fall but might even produce accomplishments for Bush in his lame-duck years.

... Friends and colleagues of Bolten told TIME about an informal, five-point "recovery plan" for Bush that is aimed at pushing him up slightly in opinion polls and reassuring Republican activists, whose disaffection could cost him dearly in November. The White House has no visions of expanding the G.O.P.'s position in the midterms; the mission is just to hold on to control of Congress by playing to the base.

Here is the Bolten plan:

1) DEPLOY GUNS AND BADGES. This is an unabashed play to members of the conservative base who are worried about illegal immigration. Under the banner of homeland security, the White House plans to seek more funding for an extremely visible enforcement crackdown at the Mexican border, including a beefed-up force of agents patrolling on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). "It'll be more guys with guns and badges," said a proponent of the plan. "Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an ATV." Bush has long insisted he wants a guest-worker program paired with stricter border enforcement, but House Republicans have balked at temporary legalization for immigrants, so the President's ambition of using the issue to make the party more welcoming to Hispanics may have to wait.

2) MAKE WALL STREET HAPPY. In an effort to curry favor with dispirited Bush backers in the investment world, the Administration will focus on two tax measures already in the legislative pipeline--extensions of the rate cuts for stock dividends and capital gains. "We need all these financial TV shows to be talking about how great the economy is, and that only happens when their guests from Wall Street talk about it," said a presidential adviser. "This is very popular with investors, and a lot of Republicans are investors."

3) BRAG MORE. White House officials who track coverage of Bush in media markets around the country said he garnered his best publicity in months from a tour to promote enrollment in Medicare's new prescription-drug plan. So they are planning a more focused and consistent effort to talk about the program's successes after months of press reports on start-up difficulties. Bolten's plan also calls for more happy talk about the economy. With gas prices a heavy drain on Bush's popularity, his aides want to trumpet the lofty stock market and stable inflation and interest rates. They also plan to highlight any glimmer of success in Iraq, especially the formation of a new government, in an effort to balance the negative impression voters get from continued signs of an incubating civil war.

4) RECLAIM SECURITY CREDIBILITY. This is the riskiest, and potentially most consequential, element of the plan, keyed to the vow by Iran to continue its nuclear program despite the opposition of several major world powers. Presidential advisers believe that by putting pressure on Iran, Bush may be able to rehabilitate himself on national security, a core strength that has been compromised by a discouraging outlook in Iraq. "In the face of the Iranian menace, the Democrats will lose," said a Republican frequently consulted by the White House. However, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this April 8-11, found that 54% of respondents did not trust Bush to "make the right decision about whether we should go to war with Iran."

5) COURT THE PRESS. Bolten is extremely guarded around reporters, but he knows them and, unlike some of his colleagues, is not scared of them. Administration officials said he believes the White House can work more astutely with journalists to make its case to the public, and he recognizes that the President has paid a price for the inclination of some on his staff to treat them dismissively or high-handedly. His first move, working with counselor Dan Bartlett, was to offer the press secretary job to Tony Snow of Fox News radio and television, a former newspaper editorial writer and onetime host of Fox News Sunday who served George H.W. Bush as speechwriting director. Snow, a father of three and a sax player, is the bona fide outsider that Republican allies have long prescribed for Bushworld and would bring irreverence to a place that hasn't seen a lot of fun lately. "White Houses are weird places," he told a 2004 panel on White House speechwriting. Snow had his colon removed after he was found to have cancer last year, but his doctors have approved the possibility of his taking the grueling post.

(NOTE: Snow denied on today's "Meet the Press" that he had any intention of accepting the offer to become WH press secretary.)

Copyright © //-- var currentTime = new Date() var year = currentTime.getFullYear() document.write(year) // 2006 Time Inc.

[Ninjahedge]

So you believe that he actually does converse with "God"?

Sure. I hear his aids say he can be heard saying "God Dammit" quite a bit these days!

[BrooklynRider]

As urbanites, all we need to pray for are soaring, exhorbitant and unforgiving rises in gas prices. Bush's support came from predominantly rural areas, where auto is the primary means of transportation. Those people showed absolutely no interest in what was best for the country and chastised people in need with the mantra of "take responsibility for your own lives." Heart-warming, I know.

The only way to budge these self-centered, blind beyond their driveway no-nothings is to make their lives so uncomfortable that the start-a-wishin' for good ol' Democratic Rules and Regulations. Bush=Oil. When Oil companies finally become the enemy in middle America, the Bush era will truly be over. No other issue is going to dent their suppor of this dolting idiot.

Oh, and prepare ye... Be on the look out for same sex marriage, stem cell research, abstinence, family planning, faith-based everything, prayer in school, the ten commandments and every other so called "moral" issue out there. It's all they have left to run on. Sad thing is all the Democrats offer us is "We're not Bush." Running as an anti-candidate offers voters nothing (ask John Kerry).

Pray for paralyzing oil price inflation if you want Bush out of office.

[MidtownGuy]

Welcome to the White House nap-time (maybe it was the food) ...



lol..

my wish- she's having a revelation, praying for forgiveness for her collusion with a wicked cult and her crimes against humanity.

[MrSpice]

As urbanites, all we need to pray for are soaring, exhorbitant and unforgiving rises in gas prices. Bush's support came from predominantly rural areas, where auto is the primary means of transportation. Those people showed absolutely no interest in what was best for the country and chastised people in need with the mantra of "take responsibility for your own lives." Heart-warming, I know.


So for you anything that gets the Bush low ratings is a good thing? By the way, many New York families will pay through the roof for the heat this upcoming winter. High gas and oil prices affect the prices for everything else - from food to transportation costs. And many New Yorkers still have to drive even in this city. Who do you think fills up FDR and other highways in the area every single day?

There's more to life in this country than Bush and your hate for his administration. There are many social and economic problems that existed before Bush (lack of any healthcare for millions of Americans, immigration system that needs fixing, etc.)

[MidtownGuy]

And his regime has worsened every single one of them.

[lofter1]

There are many social and economic problems that existed before Bush (lack of any healthcare for millions of Americans, immigration system that needs fixing, etc.)
But Bush and his gang of Republicans have had ample opportunity (contolling all branches of the Federal Government -- that is a VERY rare thing in American politics) and have FAILED to either deal with or solve the problems you mention.

Why is the Republican majority in the legislature so complacent as to let these problems continue to compound?

Unfortunately America will have to suffer for 2+ years of Bush. But if things go well in the November elections then the Republican lethargy might be shaken off.

We can all moan about the Democrats lack of vision if we want, but it's a bit difficult and disingenuous to lay any real blame at their doorstep.

[lofter1]

So whatever. He is doing "Gods" work so I guess it is all right.

Confirmed by GWB himself (but his riff on the Constitution is a bit murky -- maybe it's those rose-colored glasses) ...

Bush Says He Tried to Avoid War 'To The Max,'
Explains How God Shapes His Foreign Policy

By E&P Staff
April 24, 2006

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002385210

NEW YORK - President Bush today said he had tried to avoid war with Iraq "diplomatically to the max."

Speaking to a business group in Irvine, Ca., he admitted mistakes were made in planning for the Iraq invasion, but he defended the troop level, saying "it was the troop level necessary to do the job," and he would commit the same number if given a second chance.

The remarks came as another former general joined seven others who in recent days have called for the resignation of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, saying he had mismanaged the planning and execution of the war.

Bush also explained, in unusually stark terms, how his belief in God influences his foreign policy. "I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true," he said. "One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

"I believe liberty is universal. I believe people want to be free. And I know that democracies do not war with each other."

A new CNN poll released today shows Bush with his lowest approval rating in any poll so far, at 32%.

Taking questions from members of the Orange County Business Council, Bush said the United States erred in attempting large reconstruction projects soon after the invasion was completed. This "didn't make any sense," he said, because they "became convenient targets for the enemy."

Bush said he'd sat in a California church on Sunday near a mother and stepfather grieving for their son who had been killed in Iraq. "I also want to let you know that before you commit troops that you must do everything that you can to solve the problem diplomatically," he commented. "And I can look you in the eye and tell you I feel I tried to solve the problem diplomatically to the max and would have committed troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq, knowing what I know today."

One decision he questions: After the successful invasion, "preparing an Iraqi army for an external threat. Well, it turns out there may have been an external threat but it's nothing compared to the internal threat." He did not explain what external threat the Iraqis were being trained for.

In his remarks, the president repeatedly referred to the need to stay in Iraq to deny terrorists a "safe haven." He asserted, according to the White House transcript that, "Iraq has -- had weapons of mass destruction and has the knowledge as to how to produce weapons of mass destruction." He also said that our enemies "know, and it doesn't take much to realize, that when you put carnage on our TV screens, it causes us to weep."

He also said: "It's not easy work, by the way, to go from tyranny to democracy. We had kind of a round go ourself, if you look back at our history. My Secretary of State's relatives were enslaved in the United States even though we had a Constitution that said all were -- that believed in the dignity, or at least proclaimed to believe in the dignity of all. The Articles of Confederation wasn't exactly a real smooth start for our government to begin. And what you're watching on your TV screens is a new democracy emerging."

© 2006 VNU eMedia Inc (http://www.vnuemedia.com/)

[Ninjahedge]

So he realizes his SoS is black?

I wonder how long it takes him to realize that she has a gap in her teeth.

[MrSpice]

But Bush and his gang of Republicans have had ample opportunity (contolling all branches of the Federal Government -- that is a VERY rare thing in American politics) and have FAILED to either deal with or solve the problems you mention.

Why is the Republican majority in the legislature so complacent as to let these problems continue to compound?

Unfortunately America will have to suffer for 2+ years of Bush. But if things go well in the November elections then the Republican lethargy might be shaken off.

We can all moan about the Democrats lack of vision if we want, but it's a bit difficult and disingenuous to lay any real blame at their doorstep.

I cannot agree more. I think new blood - both republican and democratic - will be good for the country.

[lofter1]

ATTACK OF THE GENERALS (http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060425/cm_thenation/20060508vonhoffman;_ylt=A86.I0osZU5EcBgBQAb9wxIF;_ ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA)

http://www.miqel.com/images_1/random_images/r1/bush-fakes-it.jpg

[lofter1]

Neil Young's new ALBUM (http://www.hyfntrak.com/neilyoung2/AFF23448/), "Living With War" -- hear the whole album FREE (stream)

NEIL YOUNG - Living With War

http://www.livingwithwar.blogspot.com/ (http://www.livingwithwar.blogspot.com/)

"...this is about exchanging ideas... it's about getting a message out. It's about empowering people by giving them a voice. I know not everyone believes what I say is what they think. But like I said before.. ya know.. red and blue is not black and white. We're all together. It's a record about unification." -Neil Young (4/18/06)

[lofter1]

OK, it's not OVER yet, but the HITS just keep on comin' ...

Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner --
President Does Not Seem Amused

editorandpublisher.com (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002425363)
By E&P Staff
April 29, 2006
11:40 PM ET

WASHINGTON A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.

Earlier, the president had delivered his talk to the 2700 attendees, including many celebrities and top officials, with the help of a Bush impersonator.

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face—“and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."

He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, just three tables away from Karl Rove, and that he had brought " Valerie Plame." Then, worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, "Uh, I mean... he brought Joseph Wilson's wife." He might have "dodged the bullet," he said, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't there.

Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, “photo ops” on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, melting glaciers and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face. He advised the crowd, "if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail. "

Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, "When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday."

Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side." He also reflected on the alleged good old days, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.

Addressing the reporters, he said, "You should spend more time with your families, write that novel you've always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know-- fiction."

He claimed that the Secret Service name for Bush's new press secretary is "Snow Job." Colbert closed his routine with a video fantasy where he gets to be White House Press Secretary, complete with a special “Gannon” button on his podium. By the end, he had to run from Helen Thomas and her questions about why the U.S. really invaded Iraq and killed all those people.

As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling, and handshakes, and left immediately.

E&P's Joe Strupp, in the crowd, observed that quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting--or too much speaking "truthiness" to power.

Asked by E&P after it was over if he thought he'd been too harsh, Colbert said, "Not at all." Was he trying to make a point politically or just get laughs? "Just for laughs," he said. He said he did not pull any material for being too strong, just for time reasons. (He later said the president told him "good job" when he walked off.)

Helen Thomas told Strupp her segment with Colbert was "just for fun."

In its report on the affair, USA Today asserted that some in the crowd cracked up over Colbert but others were "bewildered." Wolf Blitzer of CNN said he thought Colbert was funny and "a little on the edge."

Earlier, the president had addrssed the crowd with a Bush impersonator alongside, with the faux-Bush speaking precisely and the real Bush deliberately mispronouncing words, such as the inevitable "nuclear." At the close, Bush called the imposter "a fine talent. In fact, he did all my debates with Senator Kerry."

Among attendees at the black tie event: Morgan Fairchild, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, Justice Antonin Scalia, George Clooney, and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of the Doobie Brothers--in a kilt.

© 2005 VNU eMedia Inc (http://www.vnuemedia.com/).

[lofter1]

Colbert Does the White House Correspondents' dinner (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/29.html#a8104)

Colbert Does the White House Correspondents' dinner:

Was he snubbed?

Crooks and Liars
Saturday, April 29, 2006

http://www.crooksandliars.com/images/WH-Colbert.jpg

Stephen Colbert spoke tonight at the dinner and lampooned pretty much everything he could think of and Helen Thomas. I used the second half of his performance because it included the Generals, Scalia, the Faux press briefing and as E&P reported (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002425363):

"As he walked from the podium the president and First Lady gave Colbert quick nods, unsmiling, and left. E&P's Joe Strupp, in the crowd, observed that quite a few felt the material was, perhaps, uncomfortably biting."
Video (http://movies.crooksandliars.com/WH-Dinner-Colbert.wmv)-WMP (low res)

Video (http://movies.crooksandliars.com/WH-Dinner-Colber.mov) QT (it's a big file)


"Colbert complained that he was "surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides-the president's side and the vice president's side."

He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, as well as " Valerie Plame." Then, pretending to be worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, "Uh, I mean... Joseph Wilson's wife." He asserted that it might be okay, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was probably not there.

Colbert's show (http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/index.jhtml) on Comedy Central, is "Must See TV" at this point already and these types of performances are the toughest in the business to pull off when he's tackling issues that obviously made most of the crowd nervous.

C-Span is running it again (http://www.cspan.org/watch/index...&ArchiveDays=30) in it's entirety.

Atrios has a picture (http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_04_23_atrios_archive.html#114636669004016081) posted about Gannon.

© 2006

[BrooklynRider]

He was dead on. No wonder there were so few laughs. Not so funny to hear the truth if you're a Bush fan.

[BrooklynRider]

Bush's best moment in office? Reeling in big perch (Reuters)

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.

"You know, I've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Bush said the worst moment was September 11 when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=t...

[lofter1]

U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office ...

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

GWB's bigger catch ...

http://www.flags-now.com/prodimages/product%20flags/Religious/fish1.gif

[BrooklynRider]

Pollster Suggests Bush Moves Might Be Too Little, Too Late
By Eric Pianin and Chris Cillizza
Sunday, May 7, 2006; A05

The recent White House shake-up was an attempt to jump-start the administration and boost President Bush's rock-bottom approval ratings, but have those efforts come too late to salvage the presidency? A prominent GOP pollster thinks that may be the case.

"This administration may be over," Lance Tarrance, a chief architect of the Republicans' 1960s and '70s Southern strategy, told a gathering of journalists and political wonks last week. "By and large, if you want to be tough about it, the relevancy of this administration on policy may be over."

A new poll by RT Strategies, the firm headed by Tarrance and Democratic pollster Thomas Riehle, shows that 59 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance, while 36 percent approve -- a finding in line with other recent polls.

Tarrance said it would be extremely difficult for any president to bounce back this late in his administration and reassert influence on Capitol Hill when his approval rating barely exceeds his party's base support and half of all adults surveyed said they "strongly disapprove" of his performance. An overwhelming 73 percent of independents disapprove of Bush's performance, and two-thirds of those "strongly disapprove."

The new poll of 1,003 adults was conducted April 27-30 (after Bush had picked a new chief of staff, budget director and press secretary) and was released at a conference sponsored by the Cook Political Report. It contains plenty of other bad news for Bush and the Republican Party, and suggests that the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war may be turning this year's midterm congressional elections from local to national issues.

Forty-eight percent of respondents said they would like to see the Democrats back in control of Congress, while 37 percent want Republicans to remain in charge. The war looms large as a concern of voters, the poll shows, along with jobs, health care, gas prices and immigration. Combating terrorism -- long the president's strong suit -- is far less of a concern.

Thirty percent of those surveyed said they will vote for a candidate for Congress specifically to express opposition to Bush, while 16 percent said they will vote for a candidate to express their support for the president. Half said Bush will not be a factor in their voting.

"We will have a referendum on Iraq for the first time in '06, and the '08 election may be similar," Tarrance said. The two years "are going to be relatively bundled together because of Iraq."

Gore Displays a Midas Touch

White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten recently said the Bush administration is trying to get back its "mojo." The man President Bush defeated in 2000 has already found his -- at least when it comes to raising money.

Former vice president Al Gore sent an e-mail to Democratic donors recently to "commemorate" the final 1,000 days of the Bush administration.

"I am here to tell you that we simply cannot afford to wait 1,000 days to put the brakes on the Bush agenda," wrote Gore, adding that "the level of cynicism and crass political calculation . . . is truly breathtaking."

The goal of the appeal was to collect $150,000 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- or $10,000 for each of the 15 seats the party needs to regain the House majority in November. Aides at the committee said the e-mail -- the first Gore had done on behalf of House Democrats this cycle -- brought in more than $200,000.

"He is the most successful signature on an e-mail that we have ever had," said DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.). Emanuel added that Gore, who many think still has presidential ambitions, has agreed to campaign for House candidates this fall as long as they favor measures to curtail global warming, long his pet issue.

Candidate Ford vs. 'Big Oil'

Tennessee Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. is betting that voters' discontent with rising prices at the gas pump will translate into a desire for change at the ballot box this fall.

Ford, the lone Democrat running for the seat of retiring Sen. Bill Frist (R), plans to launch television and radio ads Monday attacking the oil companies for getting rich off of the average American family.

In the television commercials, Ford is shown pumping gas at an Exxon station while detailing the $100 billion in profits "Big Oil" made in 2005, and the $400 million retirement package for former Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond that "you and I paid for."

Ford goes on to propose an elimination of tax breaks for oil companies and an investment in alternative fuel technology while also making an appeal for change. "If you're fed up every time you fill up, send a new generation to the Senate," he says.

When Ford, a fifth-term congressman, announced his candidacy last May, he was given little chance of winning because in recent years Republicans have dominated open-seat elections in the South and because his family has had high-profile problems. (His uncle, John Ford, was arrested by the FBI on bribery charges the day after Harold entered the Senate race.)


© 2006 The Washington Post Company

[MrSpice]

He was dead on. No wonder there were so few laughs. Not so funny to hear the truth if you're a Bush fan.

I am not a big fan and I thought he was not that funny. I actually feel that his program that follows the daily show is not that funny and is over the top. I guess it depends on your sense of humor.

[BrooklynRider]

*The U.S. Army’s new interrogation manual will ban waterboarding, “the controversial practice of submerging a prisoner’s head in water in an effort to make him talk.” Waterboarding was one of the interrogation techniques reportedly sanctioned by an Aug. 2002 Justice Department memo.

*With the May 15 deadline to enroll in the new Medicare prescription drug program fast approaching, USA Today reports the program “is being used least by those who could benefit most: poor, often minority Medicare beneficiaries.” Only 24 percent of such beneficiaries have been approved or have enrolled.

*Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the U.S. commander in charge of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, believes American troops in Iraq have been their “own worst enemy,” unintentionally creating new insurgents by treating the Iraqi people in a heavy-handed or insensitive manner.

*The Senate adopts Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-TN) resolution, agreeing that “The Star-Spangled Banner” and other “statements of national unity” should be sung in English. The resolution has no binding effect.

*Last March, President Bush signed a bill to raise the national debt ceiling to a record $9 trillion. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. “A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion,” the fifth such increase under Bush.

*Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has dubbed this week “Health Week.” But instead of taking up universal health care proposals, Frist yesterday pressed a vote “to limit damages for pain and suffering in medical malpractice lawsuits,” a move which would affect private health insurance premiums by a just one half of one percent. Democrats blocked the bill.

http://thinkprogress.org/

[BrooklynRider]

EXCLUSIVE:
CIA Nominee Hayden Linked to MZM
By Justin Rood - May 8, 2006, 11:33 AM

While director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden contracted the services of a top executive at the company at the center of the Cunningham bribery scandal, according to two former employees of the company.

Hayden, President Bush's pick to replace Porter Goss as head of the CIA, contracted with MZM Inc. for the services of Lt. Gen. James C. King, then a senior vice president of the company, the sources say. MZM was owned and operated by Mitchell Wade, who has admitted to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham with $1.4 million in money and gifts. Wade has also reportedly told investigators he helped arrange for prostitutes to entertain the disgraced lawmaker, and he continues to cooperate with a federal inquiry into the matter.

King has not been implicated in the growing scandal around Wade's illegal activities. However, federal records show he contributed to some of Wade's favored lawmakers, including $6000 to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and $4000 to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL).

Before joining MZM in December 2001, King served under Hayden as the NSA's associate deputy director for operations, and as head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

King worked at NSA Headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland, in 2004 and 2005, both sources told me. "King was out there working on same floor as Hayden," one former employee with firsthand knowledge of the arrangement said. "He was doing special projects for Hayden as an MZM employee." Neither former employee knew details of King's work for Hayden; one said he thought he was doing "special projects" for the director, while the other speculated it was "high-ranking advisory work."

The NSA did not immediately respond to my request for comment. Hayden left the NSA in April 2005 to take the post of Deputy Director of National Intelligence. The DNI office referred my call on the matter to the NSA.

As an MZM employee, King was involved in a number of controversial projects. In 2002, he was a key adviser to the team creating CIFA, the Pentagon's domestic surveillance operation. In 2004, he was one of three MZM staffers who worked on the White House Robb-Silberman Commission, which recommended expanding CIFA's powers.

NSA is home to its own controversial project, of course -- the post-9/11 warrantless domestic wiretapping operation known as the "terrorist surveillance program." There is no indication that King has been involved in that project.

"I don't see anything nefarious" about King's work for Hayden, one employee told me, although he conceded he did not know what projects King worked on. "I think Hayden needed help."

King became president of MZM when Wade left the company in June 2005, following revelations he bribed Cunningham to win lucrative federal contracts. The company has since been sold and renamed Athena Innovative Solutions. It did not return my call for comment.

[BrooklynRider]

Wealthy US poor on infant survival

Tuesday 09 May 2006

Only Latvia had a worse record among developed countries

America may be the world's superpower, but its survival rate for newborn babies ranks near the bottom among developed nations.

Among 33 industrialised nations examined in a new study, the United States tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with a death rate of nearly five per 1,000 babies.

Mary Beth Powers, a reproductive health adviser for Save the Children, said: "We are the wealthiest country in the world, but there are still pockets of our population who are not getting the healthcare they need."

Rankings were compiled based on health data from countries and agencies worldwide.

Black women

Researchers have noted that the United States is more racially diverse and has a greater degree of economic disparity than many other developed countries.

They said providing culturally appropriate healthcare was thus more challenging.

The report, which was released on Monday, also said a lack of national health insurance and short maternity leaves probably contributed to the poor US rankings.

Other possible factors in the United States include teen pregnancies and obesity rates, which both disproportionately affect African-American women and also increase risk for premature births and low birth weights.

In black households, there are nine deaths per 1,000 live births, closer to rates in developing nations than to those in the industrialised world.

One US paediatrician, Dr Mark Schuster, said: "Every time I see these kinds of statistics, I'm always amazed to see where the United States is because we are a country that prides itself on having such advanced medical care and developing new technology ... and new approaches to treating illness. "But at the same time, not everybody has access to those new technologies." Schuster is Rand Co researcher and paediatrician with the University of California, Los Angeles.

Japan does best

In the analysis of global infant mortality, Japan had the lowest newborn death rate, 1.8 per 1,000 and four countries tied for second place with two per 1,000 - the Czech Republic, Finland, Iceland and Norway.

Still, it is the impoverished nations that feel the full brunt of infant mortality, since they account for 99% of the four million annual deaths of babies in their first month.

Only about 16,000 of those are in the United States, according to Save the Children.

The highest rates globally were in Africa and South Asia.

With a newborn death rate of 65 out of 1,000 live births, Liberia ranked the worst.

Premature births

In the United States, about half a million babies are born prematurely each year, data show.

African-American babies are twice as likely as white infants to be premature, to have a low birth weight, and to die at birth, according to Save the Children.

The lack of national health insurance and short maternity leaves in the US can lead to poor health care before and during pregnancy.

These factors increase risks for premature births and low birth weight, which are the leading causes of newborn death in industrialised countries.

Infections are the main culprit in developing nations, the report said.

In past reports by Save the Children, US mothers' well-being has consistently ranked far ahead of those in developing countries but poorly among industrialised nations.

This year, the United States tied for last place with the United Kingdom on indicators including mortality risks and contraception use.

Lacking primary healthcare

While the gaps for infants and mothers contrast sharply with the nation's image as a world leader, Kenneth Thorpe, a health policy expert at Emory University, said the numbers were not surprising.

"Our healthcare system focuses on providing hi-tech services for complicated cases. We do this very well.

"What we do not do is provide basic primary and preventive healthcare services. We do not pay for these services, and do not have a delivery system that is designed to provide either primary prevention, or adequately treat patients with chronic diseases."


AP

[BrooklynRider]

Breaking: House, Senate Conservatives Agree on $70 Billion In New Tax Cuts for the Rich

House and Senate conservatives just agreed to move forward on another budget-busting tax bill favoring the wealthiest Americans. The latest plan — announced today “after months of tense negotiations and slipped deadlines” — will spend $70 billion to extend the 15 percent tax rate for capital gains and dividends until 2010. The agreement “paves the way for House approval of the measure as early as Wednesday. The Senate could clear the bill for Bush’s desk by week’s end.”

According to a study by the Tax Policy Center, the tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans:

The top tenth of 1 percent, whose average income is $5.3 million, would save an average of $82,415. Those in the top group would see their tax bill cut 4.8 percent, while Americans at the center of the income distribution — the middle fifth of taxpayers, who will earn an average of $36,000 this year — could expect a 0.4 percent reduction in their tax bill, or about $20.

Those who make less than $75,000 — which includes about 75 percent of all taxpayers — would save, at most, $110 each. Those making more than $1 million would save, on average, almost $42,000.

Despite administration claims to the contrary, Federal Reserve economists have found these investment tax cuts haven’t boosted the stock market, and the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation has found that any economic benefits of the cuts are “eventually likely to be outweighed by the reduction in national savings due to increasing Federal government deficits.”

For full coverage, stay tuned to American Progress’ BudgetBlog.

[MrSpice]

Breaking: House, Senate Conservatives Agree on $70 Billion In New Tax Cuts for the Rich

House and Senate conservatives just agreed to move forward on another budget-busting tax bill favoring the wealthiest Americans. The latest plan — announced today “after months of tense negotiations and slipped deadlines” — will spend $70 billion to extend the 15 percent tax rate for capital gains and dividends until 2010. The agreement “paves the way for House approval of the measure as early as Wednesday. The Senate could clear the bill for Bush’s desk by week’s end.”

According to a study by the Tax Policy Center, the tax cuts overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans:

The top tenth of 1 percent, whose average income is $5.3 million, would save an average of $82,415. Those in the top group would see their tax bill cut 4.8 percent, while Americans at the center of the income distribution — the middle fifth of taxpayers, who will earn an average of $36,000 this year — could expect a 0.4 percent reduction in their tax bill, or about $20.

Those who make less than $75,000 — which includes about 75 percent of all taxpayers — would save, at most, $110 each. Those making more than $1 million would save, on average, almost $42,000.

Despite administration claims to the contrary, Federal Reserve economists have found these investment tax cuts haven’t boosted the stock market, and the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation has found that any economic benefits of the cuts are “eventually likely to be outweighed by the reduction in national savings due to increasing Federal government deficits.”

For full coverage, stay tuned to American Progress’ BudgetBlog.

This is a ridiculous assessment. Obviously, the rich save more because they tend to keep the most of their savings in stocks and funds. The point of those low investment taxes is to stimulate investment. The low divident taxes encourage large conmpanies to pay out more dividends which is in itself very healthy for the economy. You cannot base all economic policies on who benefits more. Any investment credit or tax break will always benefit the rich more because those who build plants and create jobs are generally wealthy. That does not mean it's not a good economic policy. In other words, you cannot just look at the direct monetary effect in percentage and dollars to estimate the effectiveness of low investment taxes. Many economists and bankers argued for years that it's best to abolish divident and capital gain taxes or least keep them very low as a means to spur investment.

And us, New Yorkers, benefit more than anyone from these kinds of tax cuts because the incomes here are way above the average in the US, and so are the costs. New Yorkers would be disproportionally struck by the increasing AMT tax if this measure was not approved. That's why our democratic senators - Clinton and Schumer - strongly supported it.

[BrooklynRider]

You want to try and defend that tax cut as debt ceilings are about to be raised to $10 Trillion? The fifth debt limit increase UNDER BUSH.

[MrSpice]

You want to try and defend that tax cut as debt ceilings are about to be raised to $10 Trillion? The fifth debt limit increase UNDER BUSH.

You cannot blame Bush for everything. Once again, this $70 billion bill is not the reason the debt ceiling was increased so much. You can blame runaway spending on big government (military, homeland security, medical programs including prescription drug benefit programs) and the war in Iraq. The main reason we have so much debt is not the tax cuts but rapidly increasing expenses. You can and should blame GW and the leadership in congress for that. But the divident tax and AMT recuction have very little to do with that. You cite the assessment of some libveral think tank that would probably blame any tax cut that somehow benefits the "rich"

Although I don't think anyone making 100K can be considered rich in this town where 1br can cost 700K and more.

[BrooklynRider]

You cannot blame Bush for everything.

You're right. There's enough blame to lay some at Dick Cheney's door as well as at the door of Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Tom Delay, Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert.

Once again, this $70 billion bill is not the reason the debt ceiling was increased so much. You can blame runaway spending on big government (military, homeland security, medical programs including prescription drug benefit programs) and the war in Iraq. The main reason we have so much debt is not the tax cuts but rapidly increasing expenses.

Well, we both agree that under the Bush Administration and this Republican Majority and Leadership in Congress we have "runaway spending." I think it would be more akin to a near fatal hemorrhage. The spending in and of itself is atrocious - but let's be clear about where our tax money is going - IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN and the creation of Domestic Military referred to as "HOMELAND SECURITY." The debt ceiling is being increased because this government has driven spending through the roof while cutting the revenue it generates by giving tax cuts to the uber-wealthy, the wealthy. the semi-wealthy, real estate developers, chemical producers, the oil industry, the coal industry, the auto industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry and of course anyone who will provide a learjet and a hooker to a Republican. It is also caused by the low-wage jobs being created to replace the middle-class jobs in this country, decreasing payroll income tax payments. You answer is similar to a response one might expect from a Fox News zombie or an adherent to the fantasy worlrd of right-wingf extremist radio news farce - like Limbaugh and Hannity. Sooner or later the people in your reality zone worshipping wealth and the Dow Jones Average will wake up one day and find out how hollow and narcissistic those values are.

[MrSpice]

You're right. There's enough blame to lay some at Dick Cheney's door as well as at the door of Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Tom Delay, Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert.



Well, we both agree that under the Bush Administration and this Republican Majority and Leadership in Congress we have "runaway spending." I think it would be more akin to a near fatal hemorrhage. The spending in and of itself is atrocious - but let's be clear about where our tax money is going - IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN and the creation of Domestic Military referred to as "HOMELAND SECURITY." The debt ceiling is being increased because this government has driven spending through the roof while cutting the revenue it generates by giving tax cuts to the uber-wealthy, the wealthy. the semi-wealthy, real estate developers, chemical producers, the oil industry, the coal industry, the auto industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry and of course anyone who will provide a learjet and a hooker to a Republican. It is also caused by the low-wage jobs being created to replace the middle-class jobs in this country, decreasing payroll income tax payments. You answer is similar to a response one might expect from a Fox News zombie or an adherent to the fantasy worlrd of right-wingf extremist radio news farce - like Limbaugh and Hannity. Sooner or later the people in your reality zone worshipping wealth and the Dow Jones Average will wake up one day and find out how hollow and narcissistic those values are.

All this is only partially right. The largest expenses have ocurred in Medicare and Medicare prescription drug benefits. Medical expenses are taking larger and larger percentage of the budget and federal expenses. All this talk about low-wage jobs that are replacing middle class jobs is a total nonsense and has no statistical or practical justification. If the middle class is doing so poorly, why have real estiate prices everywhere gone up so quickly and so much and so many people are able to afford nice homes and nice cars? And why do we have some of the lowest unemployment rates in history? Why are so many middle class people by investment and vacation property? And why does New York, Las Vegas and Caribbean destinations see a record number of tourists visiting those places? What is the middle class that you're referring to? All the people I know who are middle class in New York, are doing quite well (medical and energy costs are clouding this picture, but people are working, earning good money and bonuses across the board). Look at middle class neighborhoods in this city like Bay Ridge, Park Slope, Clinton Hill, etc - they are booming with shops, restaurants and people. And those people are not oilmen.

The reality is that the middle class is doing quite well. The economic growth is solid (over 3.5% every year over the past few years). The job market is very strong. The debt problem is serious and real, but it has much more to do with enormous and unsustainable increases in government spending, especially Medicaid and Medicare that democrats love to support as well. You're talking about republicans in congress and how they waste people's money. I have never seen a democrat who would not support increased medicare spending. I have not seen much resistance to increasing the size of goverment on the part of democrats. The reality is that this is not the republican problem, it's a problem with spending additiction where people's representatives will spend anything to get elected for a short-term gain even if it means long-term problems with debt and deficits. That includes pork-barrel projects. It seems like Democrats only suggest they will be more responsible in terms of spending when Republicans are in power. Look at this graph and article:

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=6060&sequence=0

Long term deficits come not from Iraq, but from explosive new spending on Medicare and other entitlements.

[BrooklynRider]

Long term deficits come not from Iraq, but from explosive new spending on Medicare and other entitlements.

You know how utterly ridiculous this sounds, right? There is no "new spending" in Medicare - as a matter of FACT spending was cut in the last budget.

For Medicare, the focus in FY2006 will be the implementation of the Medicare Modernization Act. The law’s main features include the new prescription drug benefit (Part D) and a strengthening of the Medicare Advantage program – steps that bring Medicare’s benefits up to date – and many other provisions to make Medicare payments more accurate and efficient.



Lower Overall Medicare Spending Than Mid-Session Review Estimates

FY 2006 net Medicare spending (benefits minus premiums) in the President’s FY 2006 budget (PB2006) is estimated to be $345.2 billion. This is the first year that Medicare’s costs include the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Part D).

The projected FY2006 net spending is $5.4 billion or 1.6 percent lower than the most recent estimate from the FY 2005 mid-session review.

FY 2006 Part A spending in PB2006 is estimated to be $7.6 billion (4 percent) lower than in Mid-Session Review 2005.

FY 2006 Part B spending in PB2006 is estimated to be $1.8 billion (1.6 percent) higher than in Mid-Session Review 2005.

FY 2006 Part D spending in PB2006 is virtually unchanged since the Mid-Session Review 2005 – up $0.4 billion or 0.7 percent, and unchanged over

FY 2006-10
Five-year spending is estimated to be $2.1 trillion, $35 billion (1.7 percent) lower than the Mid-Session Review 2005 estimate.

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/apps/media/press/release.asp?Counter=1350

[BrooklynRider]

Where your income tax money really goes.

HOW THESE FIGURES WERE DETERMINED

Current military” includes Dept. of Defense ($449 billion), the military portion from other departments ($114 billion), and an unbudgetted estimate of supplemental appropriations ($100 billion). “Past military” represents veterans’ benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt.*

These figures are from an analysis of detailed tables in the “Analytical Perspectives” book of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2007. The figures are federal funds, which do not include trust funds — such as Social Security — that are raised and spent separately from income taxes. What you pay (or don’t pay) by April 17, 2006, goes to the federal funds portion of the budget. The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller.

*Analysts differ on how much of the debt stems from the military; other groups estimate 50% to 60%. We use 80% because we believe if there had been no military spending most (if not all) of the national debt would have been eliminated. For further explanation, please see box at bottom of page.

Source: New York Times, Feb. 7, 2005, based on
Budget of the United States FY2007.

[BrooklynRider]

The Government Deception

The pie chart below is the government view of the budget. This is a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security), and the expenses of past military spending are not distinguished from nonmilitary spending. For a more accurate representation of how your Federal income tax dollar is really spent, see the large chart (above).

[MrSpice]

You know how utterly ridiculous this sounds, right? There is no "new spending" in Medicare - as a matter of FACT spending was cut in the last budget.


I am not talking about 2005, but about the trend of medicaid and medicare spending in the future when baby boomers retire in droves and that spending will explode. Those medicare cuts you're referring to are very small in terms of overall spending. We are talking about long term deficits that will result from inctreasing entitlement expenses. There's no question that the war in Iraq is very costly and I totally agree that it would be wonderful if we started pulling out forces and stopped spending this money. However, the biggest long term challenges when it comes to deficits and budgets are entitlement expenses that will increase simply because of the demographics. We cannot grow out way out of this problem because we have no control over this. And I don't see democrats addressing this challenge.

[BrooklynRider]

You are talking about trends in the future. I have spoken about the debt ceiling being raised in then next 60 days. So, the trends by your own admission have nothing to do with the current situation and reason for raising the debt limit.

[BrooklynRider]

Hard-core Republicans Fleeing The President
Spending, Immigration Cited by Conservatives

Thursday, May 11, 2006; A01

Disaffection over spending and immigration have caused conservatives to take flight from President Bush and the Republican Congress at a rapid pace in recent weeks, sending Bush's approval ratings to record lows and presenting a new threat to the GOP's 12-year reign on Capitol Hill, according to White House officials, lawmakers and new polling data.

Bush and Congress have suffered a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year, a trend that has accelerated with alarming implications for Bush's governing strategy.

(snip)

There are also significant pockets of conservatives turning on Bush and Congress over the their failure to tighten immigration laws, restrict gay marriage and to put an end to the Iraq war and the rash of political scandals, according to lawmakers and pollsters.

Bush won two presidential elections by pursuing a political and governing model that was predicated on winning and sustaining the loyal backing of social, economic and foreign policy conservatives. The strategy was based on the belief that conservatives, who are often more politically active than the general public, could be inspired to vote in larger numbers and would serve as a reliable foundation for his presidency. The theory, as explained by Bush strategists, is that the president would enjoy a floor below which his support would never fall.

It is now apparent that this floor has weakened dramatically and collapsed in places.


more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

[BrooklynRider]

Bush Dips Into the 20s

President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. Approval ratings for Congress overall also sank, and now stand at 18%.

Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say “things in the country are going in the right direction,” while 69% say “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.” This has been the trend since January, when 33% said the nation was heading in the right direction. Iraq remains a key concern for the general public, as 28% of Americans said they consider Iraq to be one of the top two most important issues the government should address, up from 23% in April. The immigration debate also prompted 16% of Americans to consider it a top issue, down from 19% last month, but still sharply higher from 4% in March.

The Harris poll comes two days after a downbeat assessement of Bush in a New York Times/CBS News poll. The Times, in analyzing the results, said “Americans have a bleaker view of the country’s direction than at any time in more than two decades.”

[lofter1]

BS detector reveals ...

...

[BrooklynRider]

One Final GOP Rip-Off Before November

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted May 12, 2006.

The GOP knows their gig will be up in November, but that won't stop them from one final rush to top off their overflowing accounts with taxpayers' money.

Remember the rampant looting that followed the fall of Saddam? You may have thought that was a pretty brazen display of thievery.

Forget about it. Those Iraqis were pikers compared to the Republican-engineered looting about to begin right here at home. Context being everything, let me set the stage.

The GOP can read the polls. They know the jig is up. Americans are onto them, and we fully intend to throw them out of power beginning with this November's midterm elections.

Which is why the rush is on to top off their booty accounts and those of their well-heeled friends. It's every man, woman and contractor for him or herself now -- and never mind appearances. Just start stuffing the cash into old duffel bags until they're dragged, kicking and screaming, away from the till.

Which brings me to the measure passed by the Republican Senate this week. When you're looking for loose cash these days, where better to look than Iraq and Afghanistan? And this week they went straight for it. The Senate was considering a supplemental bill to fund reconstruction in the countries we deconstructed during Bush's first term in office. The sum the White House requested: a lip-smacking $109 billion.

You might remember that soon after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, Halliburton and other administration-connected contractors were caught stealing hundreds of millions. ("Stealing": such an ugly word. They prefer "billing disputes" and "cost overruns.")

The flap over those early capers resulted in the appointment of Stuart Bowen as special inspector for Iraq reconstruction. Bowen was given a $24 million annual budget and a staff of 55 junkyard dog auditors.

Apparently, the White House failed to conduct its usual background checks of Mr. Bowen. Because, if they had, he would have never been hired. Unlike the standard issue administration yes-men, Bowen turned out to be the real deal. He and his small auditors thought they were actually supposed to catch cheats. And, sure enough, they began catching contractors forcing them to put the cookies back in the jar.

Which explains this week's White House hat trick. The administration had GOP senators on the appropriation committee to make a tiny change in wording to the new $109 billion authorization. It was a tiny change and, I am sure, they hoped it would go unnoticed.

Under prior authorizations, Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction funds were described as "relief and reconstruction" funds. Under the measure passed by the Senate this week, the newly authorized funds would fall under the description "foreign operation" funds.

Here's the rub: Under law, relief and reconstruction funds must be audited by Stuart Bowen's bean counters. But Bowen has no authority over appropriations designated as foreign operations funds. Those funds are audited by the State Department inspector general.

Now, remember … Bowen's annual budget is $24 million, and he has 55 seasoned auditors. (Auditors who have gotten to know the perps and their tricks very, very well.)

The State Department inspector general has a budget more like the Mayberry Police Department: $1.3 million and just 4 auditors.


"This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to shut down the only effective oversight of this massive reconstruction program, which has been plagued by fraud and mismanagement." (Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt.)

So with the Republican majority's days likely to end in six months, and the inevitable end of the U.S. occupation in Iraq sure to follow soon thereafter, it was time for one final all-out, all-you-can-steal, grab it-and-dash romp through the Federal Treasury.

Oh, and don't bother complaining or denouncing the "Republican culture of corruption," because they know you know. They've been caught redhanded so many times now, we react to new allegations the way we react when we hear that Michael Jackson or a priest has molested another kid. So what else is new?

These guys are so past being ashamed by their behavior. They know what they are. They know we know what they are. And they're OK with that -- I mean, really OK. After six years at sucking at the federal tit, they're laughing all the way to the (offshore) bank. They may lose power for a while, but the money they stole will assure that they will, at least, experience a (very) soft landing.

More grapes

Of course, not every GOP suppoter can be a defense contractor. Some are in other businesses, like oil and finance. But they too have been taken care of, thanks to the Bush tax cuts on income, dividends and capital gains.

But like war profiteering, fat tax cuts were threatened. They were set to next year, just as Democrats might win back the majority. Holy emergency Bat-Bush!

Something had to be done and done fast. So the GOP majority passed bills this week extending those tax cuts, despite the exploding national debt created by the first round of cuts.

And, just as it was with the first round of Bush tax cuts, the extension benefits the wealthy far, far, far more than it benefits ordinary working families. Someone making a million bucks a year will get a $42,000 tax break. Someone making $25,000 a year will get a $10 tax break. If you make under $50,000 a year, you'll get around $50.

Caution: Your tax dollars at work

So I guess the moral here is that, between now and November, do not get between a GOP member of Congress -- or one of their big business supporters -- and any lose federal money. The final harvest is in full swing now, and you will get trampled.

What we will witness over the next few months will be one final, unembarassed, undisguised squeezing of the American taxpayer.

"Final" might be too optimistic. Because they've done it before, been thrown out, and returned to do it to us again. So let me qualify that. One final squeezing -- until the next time the GOP and its supporters can snooker enough Americans to believe in their phony "supply-side" Ponzi scheme.

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

[MrSpice]

Hard-core Republicans Fleeing The President

Spending, Immigration Cited by Conservatives



Thursday, May 11, 2006; A01

Disaffection over spending and immigration have caused conservatives to take flight from President Bush and the Republican Congress at a rapid pace in recent weeks, sending Bush's approval ratings to record lows and presenting a new threat to the GOP's 12-year reign on Capitol Hill, according to White House officials, lawmakers and new polling data.

Bush and Congress have suffered a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year, a trend that has accelerated with alarming implications for Bush's governing strategy.

(snip)

There are also significant pockets of conservatives turning on Bush and Congress over the their failure to tighten immigration laws, restrict gay marriage and to put an end to the Iraq war and the rash of political scandals, according to lawmakers and pollsters.

Bush won two presidential elections by pursuing a political and governing model that was predicated on winning and sustaining the loyal backing of social, economic and foreign policy conservatives. The strategy was based on the belief that conservatives, who are often more politically active than the general public, could be inspired to vote in larger numbers and would serve as a reliable foundation for his presidency. The theory, as explained by Bush strategists, is that the president would enjoy a floor below which his support would never fall.

It is now apparent that this floor has weakened dramatically and collapsed in places.


more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

If they are fleeing the president, why do they support all those tax cuts and increased debt ceilings that you mentioned in the previous posts? Certainly, if all democrats and all those "fiscally conservative" republicans were against those policies, they'd never pass in Congress. Someone is voting "yes", right?

[BrooklynRider]

The ones supporting the president are the people who are in Congress - not the voters. The congressmen were paid for by corporate America and brought to you by the voting machines of Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S. These congressmen and women have no voter constituencies and therefore no obligation to place the value of Americans at the forefront. READ THE ARTICLE MRSPICE - It CLEARLY states that congressional Republicans know the party is over for them and that is why they (a solid majority) are cramming through these self-serving, bills that are criminal in their long-term implications for this country.

The willful ignorance in your posts is astounding. If you have no interest in reading the information, then please refrain from commenting on it as if you did.

[MrSpice]

The ones supporting the president are the people who are in Congress - not the voters. The congressmen were paid for by corporate America and brought to you by the voting machines of Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S. These congressmen and women have no voter constituencies and therefore no obligation to place the value of Americans at the forefront. READ THE ARTICLE MRSPICE - It CLEARLY states that congressional Republicans know the party is over for them and that is why they (a solid majority) are cramming through these self-serving, bills that are criminal in their long-term implications for this country.

The willful ignorance in your posts is astounding. If you have no interest in reading the information, then please refrain from commenting on it as if you did.

Some of the information you're providing is not objective, but rather partisan outbursts that ignore some facts and realities. Saying that people vote in congress certain iway just because they paid by "corporate america" is simplistic and wrong. The last tax legislation (70 bil) that kept low divident and capital gains taxes as well as AMT tax relief had strong support from many democrats beucase millions of middle class taxpayers would be hit with AMT if not for that deal. And over 50% of Americans own stocks and funds - so there's reluctance to increase taxes on investment gains even among many middle class people. If the public did not support these policies they would never be approved by those in congress. When the policy is unpopular with the reguilar folks, it cannot win even if corporate america supports it. You gave too little credit to the congress when it deserves some. Yes, some republicans will lose their seats because the current policies (gas prices and Iraq) are very unpopular. But it's not going to be a revolution, but a minor change. We are talking about few extra seats for democrats in the Senata and House. Let's keep it real.

[MidtownGuy]

Spice doesn't actually read things- he skims until he finds something to charge his battery and then goes off half-cocked.

[MrSpice]

Spice doesn't actually read things- he skims until he finds something to charge his battery and then goes off half-cocked.

Thanks for that brillian analysis, MidtownGuy :)

You seem to know everything about me.

[Ninjahedge]

We know you start your responses with inflamatory comments.

If you are not looking for an arguement, try not to call the person, right or wrong, an idiot with the first words out of your mouth (or on your screen).


But of course, you are a smart man and already know this.

So I guess you are just looking for a fight, not to really convince anybody of anything.

My bad. Carry on!

[kliq6]

if your truly a "fiscal conservative" this President, who has spent more money then and President in the history of the country and has not vetoed 1 single spening bill in 6 years, should make you SICK!!!

I just dont get it, with his 30 pecent approval rating, i want to know who those 30% are!!!!

[BrooklynRider]

Some of the information you're providing is not objective, but rather partisan outbursts that ignore some facts and realities. Saying that people vote in congress certain way just because they paid by "corporate america" is simplistic and wrong.

Once again you show how incredibly misinformed you are. You are looking for "objective information" and I am posting facts.

You state with certainty:

The last tax legislation (70 bil) that kept low divident and capital gains taxes as well as AMT tax relief had strong support from many democrats beucase millions of middle class taxpayers would be hit with AMT if not for that deal.

The FACTS are the renewal vote on H.R.4297 Conference Report; Tax Relief Act of 2005 was as follows:

The Senate vote passed 54-44 with two members of the Senate not voting (1 Dem / 1 Rep).
The vote was supported by 51 Rrepublicans and 3 Democrats.
The vote was opposed by 40 Democrats and 1 Independent.

The House vote passed 244-185 with four members of the House not voting (all Dems).
The vote was supported by 229 Rrepublicans and 15 Democrats.
The vote was opposed by 182 Democrats, 1 Independent and 2 Republicans.

That would be 6% of the entire Democrat Senate Causcus and 7% of the entire Democrat House Caucus which you are calling "strong support from many Democrats."

If the public did not support these policies they would never be approved by those in congress. When the policy is unpopular with the reguilar folks, it cannot win even if corporate america supports it.

This Congress and administration has been one of lies, corruption, cheating and deception. As you have so perfectly proven, the public is often incredibly unaware of what bills are being passed or the impact it might have on their lives. Republicans spout off about "tax cuts", nevermind that the primary beneficiaries are millionaires and billionaires. Have you read a single article on what this act will do for "average Americans" making under $75K per year? Here for your FURTHER education from the NY Times:

The top tenth of 1 percent, whose average income is $5.3 million, would save an average of $82,415. Those in the top group would see their tax bill cut 4.8 percent, while Americans at the center of the income distribution — the middle fifth of taxpayers, who will earn an average of $36,000 this year — could expect a 0.4 percent reduction in their tax bill, or about $20.

Those who make less than $75,000 — which includes about 75 percent of all taxpayers — would save, at most, $110 each. Those making more than $1 million would save, on average, almost $42,000.

Let's keep it real.

Yeah, MrSpice, let's keep it REAL. Can you see why one might get a little frustrated with your continued campaign of misinformation and intolerably ignorant postings?

[ablarc]

Yeah, MrSpice, let's keep it REAL. Can you see why one might get a little frustrated with your continued campaign of misinformation and intolerably ignorant postings?
One thing you have to give MrSpice: he has a thick skin, since he keeps coming back for more.

[BrooklynRider]

Laura Bush doesn't believe bad polls on husband
Sun May 14, 10:04 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First lady Laura Bush said on Sunday she does not believe opinion polls showing her husband's approval ratings at record low levels.

Interviewed on Fox News Sunday, Laura Bush said she did not think people were losing confidence in President George W. Bush, despite a series of polls showing support for him at its lowest point in his five-year presidency and among the lowest for any president in the past 50 years.

"I don't really believe those polls. I travel around the country. I see people, I see their responses to my husband. I see their response to me," she said.

"As I travel around the United States, I see a lot of appreciation for him. A lot of people come up to me and say, 'Stay the course'."

Many recent polls have put Bush's job approval rating below 35 percent. One, the Harris poll, published last Friday, measured his approval at 29 percent, the first time any survey has put his support below the 30 percent mark. Two other polls published last week put his job approval at 31 percent.

In a separate interview on ABC's "This Week," Laura Bush said her husband's popularity was suffering because the country had been through a difficult year.

We've had a very, very difficult year, starting with the hurricane last September, but already because of the terrorist attack in 2001 and then the war on terror since then," she said. "He's the one that has to make the hard decisions. And, of course, they don't please everyone."

Mrs. Bush complained that when her husband's popularity was high, newspapers did not put that on the front page. Now it was low, they took great delight in highlighting the fact.

Asked if she thought the media had been unfair, Mrs. Bush said: "No, I don't think it's necessarily unfair. I think it's just, you know, I think they may be enjoying this a little bit."

[MrSpice]

One thing you have to give MrSpice: he has a thick skin, since he keeps coming back for more.

Thanks for this compliment :)

BrooklynRider: 75K may be average in other places in the country. The average family working in the city probably makes more (take a typical couple where both people work in the finacial sector in Manhattan). And the point of investment tax cut is not to directly benefit the people. It's intent is to stimulate investment. There's no argument that most of the direct benefit will go the wealthy and the investment class simply because these are the people that keep a lot of money in investment portfolios. There's no argument about that. Therefore, I find these kinds of articles silly. It's like saying: "since only the very rich pay the top tax rate, let's increase it from 35% to 90% and just drop taxes for the middle class to 0." You have to look at the effect a particulat economic policy on the country and its economy, not only the direct impact.

And the portion of that bill is the AMT tax relief. As I said before, it would hit New Yorkers more than any other people in the country because of our high state and city tax rates. You keep repeating the national statistic but we don't live in North Carolina and the houses don't cost 200K here. And 100K is not a huge salary for someone living in either Greenvich Village or Park Slope anymore. I paid AMT for the first time last year and it was not pleasant to find out that for the first time you cannot deduct city tax on your return and you owe several thousand that you did not expect to pay.

The democrats objected to the investment portion of the bill but strongly supported fixing the AMT - even though it will primarily affect the upper middle class.

Here is more or less objective view of this legislation - with pros and cons:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0512/p01s01-usec.html

Read this about the AMT in New York:

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=473051&category=OPINION&newsdate=4/19/2006

And read this statement from the front-runner for president on the Democratic side: http://www.senate.gov/~clinton/news/statements/details.cfm?id=253860

[Ninjahedge]

"I don't really believe those polls. I travel around the country. I see people, I see their responses to my husband. I see their response to me," she said.


You mean like tose totally open "Town Hall" meetings Laura?

Your man is naked. Tell him to put on some clothes already!

We've had a very, very difficult year, starting with the hurricane last September, but already because of the terrorist attack in 2001 and then the war on terror since then," she said. "He's the one that has to make the hard decisions. And, of course, they don't please everyone."

Uh huh. Difficult year all because of the Hurricane. And that pesky "war on terror" that was planned before the attacks occured, or supposedly before anyone at the white house knew there was any terror attack impending.

I would have had more respect for her if she did not use the by-line and call it the war on terror and just called it the war in Iraq.


As for him making the decisions? Yep, he is "The Decider". :rolleyes:

[MrSpice]

There's a good pros and cons view of the investment tax cuts:

http://www.balancedpolitics.org/dividend_tax_cut.htm

Nothing is as black and white as BrooklynRider suggests.

[lofter1]

NYC Income Demographics (2003): http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/demographics/20030611/5/421
Manhattan is now the U.S. county with the highest disparity of income ... When comparing income inequality among all 3,200 counties in the United States, Brooklyn ranks 24th, the Bronx ranks 35th, Staten Island ranks 234th and Queens ranks in the middle of the pack.

http://www.gothamgazette.com/graphics/demo.highincome.jpg

[ZippyTheChimp]

Originally posted: June 1, 2006

Poll: Bush worst president since WWII

Posted by David Lightman of the Hartford Courant at 10:25 am CDT

A Quinnipiac Poll released today gives President Bush one more reason to be concerned about his approval numbers: Lots of voters not only think he's doing a lousy job, but also rate him as the worst president since World War II.

And to add to the sting: They say Bill Clinton was one of the best.

Bush was cited as the worst of the 11 post-war presidents by 34 percent of those surveyed between May 23 to 30, far outdistancing runnerup Richard Nixon, at 17 percent--and Clinton, at 16 percent.

The poll offered what has become routine public criticism of Bush's presidency--a 35 percent approval rating and only 38 percent saying they are very or somewhat satisfied with the way things are going in this country.

"Bush's job approval numbers remain in the cellar," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, "but he might finally have hit bottom."

There was some other comfort for Bush: His historic lows among the 11 post-war presidents often varied depending on age and party loyalty.

For instance, among 18 to 29 year olds, who barely remember any president before Bush's father, the current White House occupant was rated worst by 42 percent. The 43rd president rated worst among every other age group, but the older people got, the more likely they were to mention Jimmy Carter.

Nixon, who resigned in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal, remained unpopular across the board--he was rated worst by 18 pecent of the younger crowd, and 16 percent of those 65 and over.

Not surprisingly, Bush's numbers were dragged way down by Democrats. Fifty-six percent said he is the worst, compared to only 7 percent of Republicans.

Republicans tried to get even with Clinton, but only about one-third rated him awful. Too many GOP voters remembered Carter, so 28 percent dubbed him the worst.

In the best president category, Ronald Reagan edged Clinton, 28 to 25 percent, but again, party sentiment helped. Fifty-six percent of Republicans rated Reagan the best post-war president (compared to 7 pecent of Democrats). Democrats tried to rally around Clinton, but his 48 percent showing among loyalists was not enough--especially since he was only rated best by 2 percent of GOP voters.

And older Democrats were not even partial to making Clinton number one. Among voters 65 and older, John F. Kennedy and Harry S Truman finished just behind Reagan. Clinton was fourth.

Read the press release below.

FOR RELEASE: JUNE 1, 2006

BUSH TOPS LIST AS U.S. VOTERS NAME WORST PRESIDENT, QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY NATIONAL POLL FINDS; REAGAN, CLINTON TOP LIST AS BEST IN 61 YEARS

Strong Democratic sentiment pushes President George W. Bush to the top of the list when American voters pick the worst U.S. President in the last 61 years. Bush is named by 34 percent of voters, followed by Richard Nixon at 17 percent and Bill Clinton at 16 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. Leading the list for best President since 1945 is Ronald Reagan with 28 percent, and Clinton with 25 percent.

President Bush is ranked worst by 56 percent of Democrats, 35 percent of independent voters and 7 percent of Republicans, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Best ranking for Reagan comes from 56 percent of Republicans, 7 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of independent voters.

Among American voters 18 – 29 years old, Clinton leads the “best” list with 40 percent. Among young voters, 42 percent list Bush as worst. Clinton tops the “worst” list among white Protestants – 24 percent, and white evangelical Christians – 29 percent.

American voters disapprove 58 – 35 percent of the job Bush is doing, compared to 58 – 36 percent in a March 2 survey. Even voters in red states, where Bush’s margin was more than 5 percent in 2004, disapprove 52 – 39 percent.

“Democrats just plain don't like President Bush. His father, the 41st President, was voted out of the White House after one term. Nixon quit under fire. But most Democrats think Bush 43 wins the worst-president race,” said Maurice Carroll, Director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“Kennedy and Truman get big Democratic votes, especially among Baby Boomers (45 – 64 years old) and seniors (over 65), but recent memory counts,” Carroll said. “Democrats say Clinton’s the best and Republicans say he’s the worst. Republicans don't think much of Jimmy Carter either. There's no contest for the GOP favorite: It's the Gipper.”

“Bush's job-approval numbers remain in the cellar. But he might finally have hit bottom.”

The main reasons cited by American voters who approve of Bush are that he is a strong leader who does what he thinks is right – 18 percent; and that he is doing a good job handling terrorism –15 percent.

The main reason cited by voters who disapprove of Bush is the war in Iraq, listed by 43 percent.
A total of 38 percent of voters are “very satisfied” or “somewhat “satisfied” with the way things are going in the nation today, while 62 percent are “somewhat dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied,” matching the previous satisfaction low point from March 2.

In an open-ended question, where respondents can give any answer, 16 percent of voters say the war in Iraq is the most important problem facing the U.S. today, down from 23 percent in March. Another 12 percent list economic issues and 11 percent list immigration, the first time this issued has hit double digits in a national poll.

American voters say 56 – 39 percent that going to war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do.

The U.S. should remove all troops from Iraq, 29 percent of voters say, with 28 percent who want the U.S. to decrease the number of troops; 26 percent who want to maintain current troop levels and 11 percent who want to increase troop levels.

From May 23 - 30, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,534 registered voters nationwide. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points.

The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D., conducts public opinion surveys in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Florida and nationwide as a public service and for research.

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2006/06/posted_by_david.html

They could have gone a lot further back than WWII, probably all the way to GW.

[Ninjahedge]

Partisan BS.

What this shows me is that people are more willing to side with their party than on what the president HIMSELF actually did.

Clinton did very little and Reagan was not the central figure in a lot that was done (reputable or not) during his presidency. Carter was not the best, but he definitely wan't the worst, and Bush is bad, but I don't know compared to Nixon.

Thing is, Nixon was a scumbag, but he was a smart scumbag, not a smiling little daddy's boy that got where he was because of his support, not his own merits.

These polls are flakey anyway. I don't know why I even bother listening to them anymore.

[lofter1]

Especially hard to take polls seriously regarding historical events as most Americans show little knowledge as to what happened 30 days ago, let alone 30 years.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Partisan BS.

What this shows me is that people are more willing to side with their party than on what the president HIMSELF actually did.

I don't know what you expected. The poll indicates what people think, not whether they are right or wrong. And how they think is how they vote.

If your second statement is true, Bush would not have been reelected.

As for Bush-Nixon comparisons, there is no comparison, except maybe a "creepiness factor." Nixon was just a weird personality, a favorite of political satirists and comedians. Both may be equally dangerous, but two things put Nixon over Bush.

1. He didn't make America an international pariah.
2. He didn't inherit a country in a relatively good social health.

[Ninjahedge]

Especially hard to take polls seriously regarding historical events as most Americans show little knowledge as to what happened 30 days ago, let alone 30 years.

What happened 30 days ago?

You have to fill me in, I wasn't paying attension.....

[lofter1]

Nixon was just a weird personality ...

Plus Nixon (among many others) was instrumental in moving the USA in the direction where the military-industrial complex reigned supreme (excuse me -- reigns supreme -- Halliburton / Bechtel / etal ).

Despite warnings from his boss, President Eishenhower:

DDE SPEECH 1961 (http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html)


Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961


... In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together...

[lofter1]

POLL: Only 3 Percent Say Homosexuality is America’s ‘Most Serious Moral Crisis’

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/06/05/values-poll/

President Bush and congressional conservatives “are aiming the political spotlight this week on efforts to ban gay marriage (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONGRESS_GAY_MARRIAGE?SITE=GORBC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT),” a move that’s sure to renew debate over so-called “values voters.”

But as a poll released today (http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1728259) by the Center for American Progress shows, the moral concerns of the American people are nothing like what the right wing claims.

Below, some highlights:
– Asked to name the most serious moral crisis in America today, 28% of Americans cite “kids not raised with the right values”; followed by 22% saying “corruption in government/business”; 17% saying “greed and materialism” or “people too focused on themselves”; and only 3% citing “abortion and homosexuality.”

– On addressing poverty: 68% of voters strongly agree that “government should uphold the basic decency and dignity of all and take greater steps to help the poor and disadvantaged in America” (89% total agree).

– On religious freedom: 67% of voters believe that religious freedom is a “critical” part of their image of America compared to less than three in 10 who believe Judeo-Christian faith specifically is critical to this image.


(Click HERE (http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/%7bE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7d/FAMILYVALUESREPORT.PDF) for more details on the poll, and HERE (http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/%7bE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7d/FAITH%20VALUES%20AND%20COMMON%20GOOD.SWF) for a slideshow presentation on the findings. For what it’s worth, among voters who participated in the survey, 46% voted in 2004 for President Bush, while 36% voted for John Kerry.)

As Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times wrote this weekend, “the survey demonstrated again that the moral issues people worried about most in their daily lives were very different from the ones dominating political debate (http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-na-outlook4jun04,1,6281414.column?coll=la-news-columns).”



UPDATE: Via First Draft (http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6189), Gallup has released a similar poll:What issue do you think should be the top priority for the president and Congress to deal with?

The top five responses were:Situation in Iraq/war: 42%
Fuel/oil prices/lack of energy sources/the energy crisis: 29%
Immigration/illegal aliens: 23%
Economy in general: 14%
Poor healthcare/ hospitals; high cost of healthcare: 12%


I suppose gay marriage could be classed with “Ethics/moral/religious/family decline”, which was the 20th of the 28 issues listed by respondents, important to only 1% of those polled.

[lofter1]

Neo-Con Scag:

http://www.internetweekly.org/images/ann_coulter_card.jpg

[lofter1]

After a long night with Rush and the other oxycontin freaks ...

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/ann%20coulter%20scary1.jpg

[lofter1]

All dolled up on her way out for the night ...

http://www.markdery.com/archives/images/coulter.jpg

[MrSpice]

After a long night with Rush and the other oxycontin freaks ...



I don't understand how and why people buy her books and listen to her outbursts. She does not make any sense. She is one of those people that blames those "evil" liberals for everything and makes good money off that.

[lofter1]

Reporting for Duty ...

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/e/B/coulter_anniegun.jpg (http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blpic-coulteractionfigure.htm)

[lofter1]

Taking aim at 9/11 Widows ...

http://rushlimbaughtomy.blogspot.com/gun.jpg

[Ninjahedge]

I think the best thing that can be done is to not let her speak.

We are giving her too much air time, and there are plenty of hateful idiots out there that, when shown this material, will support her enough to keep her weak self image alive.

The only people that insist on yelling that much about everyone else are usually the ones that are the unhappiest about themselves.

[BrooklynRider]

Look, this is one testosterone driven bitch. She has all the classic features of a transexual or transvestite. The best way to silence someone like her is by cutting the tongue out of her head.

[lofter1]

The only people that insist on yelling that much about everyone else are usually the ones that are the unhappiest about themselves.

hatred of self > bulimia :

http://www.davidfeldmancomedy.com/archives/BULIMIA.gif

[Jake]

Not to defend Ann (though I like her) but how exactly is she different from Micheal Moore who was given an Academy Award for SAME work for the opposite side?

Ann Coulter is a bestselling author, give her some credit.

EDIT: lol, ok Bulimia? What exactly do you expect a women to weight?

[kz1000ps]

Look, this is one testosterone driven bitch. She has all the classic features of a transexual or transvestite. The best way to silence someone like her is by cutting the tongue out of her head.

AMEN brotha!

[MidtownGuy]

No way are they the same. That's just nuts, Jake.

[Jake]

Why is it nuts?

They both fabricate evidence to achieve their ends. I'd call Moore much worse as he is currently being sued for millions of dollars for illegal usage of video material. It is also 100% proven that Moore illegally entered his movie in the Academy Awards and therefore should be disqualified.


Everyone always jumps at conservatives like we're Hitler youth but liberals get carte blanche from the media to criticize all they want. Not to have a big debate about THAT one but I simply think it's wrong to criticize Ann Coulter while applauding Micheal Moore for even worse propaganda tactics.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Michael is nowhere near as funny as Ann.

And he should give her some of his donuts. It would do both of them a lot of good.

[Ninjahedge]

Not to defend Ann (though I like her) but how exactly is she different from Micheal Moore who was given an Academy Award for SAME work for the opposite side?

Ann Coulter is a bestselling author, give her some credit.

EDIT: lol, ok Bulimia? What exactly do you expect a women to weight?

No, he didn't.

He did not take potshots. A lot of his stuff gets to be quite irritating at times, but he does not stoop so low as to take the literary equivalent to a kick to the groin or a shoot-the-old-lady action.

MM is a man you have to not listen to directly as well. After 5 minutes he just starts ranting. He is a bit better in his movies whwre he has time to trim the fat (pun intended), but his position is undeniably slanted.



Ann is just plain hateful! Saying that these women enjoy reveling in the fact that their husbands burned alive is just inhuman pandering to a limited reactionary base. She is trying to get free press to her devotees and get the easy buck on a book she probably did no more research on than watching FOX news before going to bed.

[Ninjahedge]

Why is it nuts?

They both fabricate evidence to achieve their ends. I'd call Moore much worse as he is currently being sued for millions of dollars for illegal usage of video material. It is also 100% proven that Moore illegally entered his movie in the Academy Awards and therefore should be disqualified.


Everyone always jumps at conservatives like we're Hitler youth but liberals get carte blanche from the media to criticize all they want. Not to have a big debate about THAT one but I simply think it's wrong to criticize Ann Coulter while applauding Micheal Moore for even worse propaganda tactics.


Um, Jake, you are doing an "Us vs Them" argument that does not fly well in this forum.

Your position is full of holes. You are trying to make Moors actions directly comparable to Ann's and they are not.

Yes, they are both yelling, but Ann, for the most part, is just going 2nd tier and complaining about the complaints and complainers! She grouses about the classic "If you don't have a solution" thing, but yet presents no real workable solutions herself.

And complaining about MM getting into a film festival? WTH? What does that really matter? And what does that have to do with Ann insulting widows in an ill-mannered attempt to get her overbearingly loud and hateful voice heard over the sympathy base THAT HER OWN POLITICAL PARTY USED TO GET WHAT THEY WANTED OUT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

OK, it's fine if we use the widows of 9-11 as a sympathy plea to go to war with a country that had NOTHING to do with their husbands deaths, but that does not mean that they have a right to SAY anything or be used by the OTHER party for their own positions!!!!


Geez!

[lofter1]

Ann Coulter absolutely rejects the comparison with Michael Moore -- she said so on Lou Dobbs last night.

Instead she compared herself to H. L. Mencken (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.L._Mencken) and MARK TWAIN !!!!!

Delusion reigns.

Or, as Andrew Sullivan points out, you can look at it this way: Coulter is basically a post-modern performance artist who presents to us her construction of a right wing saviour-of-the-people (although IMO she sees herself as one-hot-babe) and that her presentation is so over-the-top that it can't be taken seriously as anything beyond theatre (think Ali-G). She seems to feed on the derision she receives from the left (as that disparagement just proves how right her arguments must be).

Does she know the difference?

Don't think she cares, as along as it sells books.

Or whatever else it is she's hawking:

http://www.davidfeldmancomedy.com/archives/PURGE.gif

[MrSpice]

Why is it nuts?

They both fabricate evidence to achieve their ends. I'd call Moore much worse as he is currently being sued for millions of dollars for illegal usage of video material. It is also 100% proven that Moore illegally entered his movie in the Academy Awards and therefore should be disqualified.

Everyone always jumps at conservatives

Even though I don't have any problems with conservative ideology in general, I do feel that Ann Coulter is a very mean-spirited person whose claim to fame is to scream "liberal" on every corner and eveyone who disagrees with any of the ideas of the right-wing republicans. After all, the whole notion of what conservative ideology is is being redefined. In the past (Barry Goldwater/Ronald Regan time), being conservative meant that you were in favor of small government, lower taxes, free markets, balanced budgets and other social issues were there, but no one really wanted to do anything about them. Regan talked about abortion only when he spoke to the right-wing crowds and only to get a few additional votes from his base.

But now what you see is 300+ bil dollar war. You see endless deficits. Huge government spending that is really dangerous now when just in a few years, millions of baby boomers will retire and strain this countries finances to the limit. How is this conervative?

And screaming about abortion contradicts the basic idea of the conservative movement by increasing government's control over what people do in their private lives.

Ann Coulter is much worse than Michael Moore simply because Moore's anti-war stance is now widespread - 70% of the population does not like this war and want it to end.

[lofter1]

From Andrew Sullivan ...

Coulter Kampf (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/06/coulter_kampf.html)

08 Jun 2006 11:54 am

The Anchoress, whom I fondly remember from years back when we were just email friends, unloads (http://theanchoressonline.com/2006/06/07/coulter-missing-a-humanity-gene/) on Pajama Media's big current advertizer. So does Rick Moran (http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2006/06/06/ann-coulter-conservative-lout/). Their comments are fair, it seems to me, and a good sign of how lively and internecine conservative debate now is. (Check out the Ramesh-Derb-Jonah cluster-cluck (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWZjOWZiYmMxNzlmZjFjODM3NjVjNWY3MTA0MDNkNDg=) for another leading indicator.) But the problem with Coulter is that she is a form of camp, is she not? The minute you take her seriously, you lose grip on her reality. She's not a social or political commentator. She's a drag queen impersonating a fascist. I don't even begin to believe she actually believes this stuff. It's post-modern performance-art.

I think of Coulter in that sense as more at home on the pomo-left than the Christianist right (which is why the joke, ultimately, is on the Republicans who like her). Devoid of sincerity, detached from any value but performance, juggling rhetoric for its own sake, she is Stanley Fish's model student. Half the time, I tend to think that a Hannity or O'Reilly or Malkin actually believes their own rhetoric. With Coulter, I don't believe it for a second. And so her vileness cannot be taken seriously.

She is worse than vile. She is just empty.

Permalink (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/06/coulter_kampf.html) :: E-Mail This (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/#) :: Trackback (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/06/coulter_kampf.html#trackback) (7)

[Jake]

Of course she'd reject that comparison, it's downright insulting to her :D

Yes she rants, that's her job but she gets what she deserves for it (widespread criticism) while Moore constantly gets cheers as if he was some great American hero.

Moore is somehow credited with "exposing" the Bush administration and gasp, the connection between war and industry. My problem is not with what Moore does but with the fact that people actually believe his works without doubt. People on this board are too intelligent to do this but come on, both Bowling and Fahrenheit were regarded as eye opening "documentaries" in their respective times. The fact that Bowling won an Academy Award shows the sheer stupidity of either the Academy of whoever was stupid enough to admit a film that didn't meet eligibility requirements. Bowling is more like a "inspired by true events" movie with its references to such completely irrelevant things as Lockheed's plant in CO and Heston's repeated "from my cold dead hands" quote that is ridiculously placed.

Moore gets praise from the NY Times while Coulter's books don't even get reviewed there, is that fair?

To get a little childish here, Moore is a college dropout who studied "fictional literature (hint hint)" and is somehow "an intelligent visionary" while Coulter, a graduate with honors, and a high profile lawyer gets treated like she knows less about everything.

Coulter gets accused of "propaganda" in her books all the time yet Fahrenheit 9/11 fits the definition of that word probably more than any motion picture in American history.

You can't honestly say that Republicans, who comprise 50.1% of this country, are anywhere near equally represented in this country's media.
I understand that Democrats will say negative things about the other party and vice versa but the volume of this stuff is sickening. Why is Bush regarded as Hitler here? Why is he ALWAYS portrayed as some idiot and traitor while having better grades than the last Dem nominee?

There is no patriotism or nationalism here anymore, just animosity towards the other side. Under Clinton every mishap was hushed up and quickly forgotten and yet you didn't get everybody screaming Hitler.

All I ask for is that people who so value their equality or diversity or whatever you call it ALSO value the fact that MOST (that's right MOST) people didn't agree with your side of the story in the last election.

NY is such a liberal fortress it makes me feel like I'm some lone missionary, things like calling our president an ineffective leader are OK comments but calling him an idiot violates the very principle of "respect" that the Dems have been pushing.

[TomAuch]

Did Michael Moore call the 9/11 families harpies? Did he suggest that their husbands were planning on divorcing them? Using Moore as a standard of "parity" with Ann Coulter is using apples and oranges. It's just like saying that Jack Abramoff was in the pockets of both parties when not a single Democrat took money from him (and those that took money from his tribal clients were taking it long before he was representing them.)

The GOP never has and never will be the majority party of this country, ideologically-speaking. A majority of Americans in November 2004 did NOT vote to privatize Social Security or scrap the New Deal as a whole. A majority of Americans did NOT vote for having Congress stick their noses in people's medical affairs a la Terri Schiavo. A majority of Americans did NOT vote for the "Heckuva job Brownie" style of running FEMA. And a majority of Americans did NOT vote for giving away our ports to Dubai. Bush got a whopping 51% of the vote because of his blatant politicization of 9/11, and because some people had their doubts about Kerry (a combination of his lack of aggressiveness as a campaigner, and because he didn't respond quick enough to the Swift Boat Liars.)

BTW, if Coulter and her apologists want to attack the Jersey Girls because they supported Kerry, then why aren't they going after Debra Burlingame, who supported Bush during 2004 (and recently has also been at the center of Memorial debate, even though she lost her brother at the Pentagon.) What about Ashley Faulkner, who appeared in a commercial for Bush? Three 9/11 widows (one of them Burlingame) even spoke at the Republican National Convention. What if I called them "harpies" and said that they were gold-diggers, what would your reaction to that be?

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/06/09/publiceye/entry1698354.shtml

[Jake]

No, Moore didn't but he said other things. Moore's style is that he doesn't SAY anything just asks you a question and follows it with a montage of totally unrelated images. If you show Bush followed by the Holocaust, you must understand "Bush is responsible for the Holocaust", both his movies are like that. I hate to use something as obvious as the opening to Fahrenhype 911 but Moore said "there is no terrorist threat" why isn't somebody crucifying him over that statement (which couldn't be more wrong) and when Coulter says something they're falling into some sort of frenzy.

I don't agree with Coulter on most things but I don't understand why is she treated so differently from Moore. Any intelligent person doesn't buy into either of their mostly-bullshit but they are really not different at all.

All I ask for is that people start throwing pies at Moore to even out the playing field. Let's call him a fascist more often. Let's talk about he's a fat bastard, hmmm?

I respect Coulter because she tells people she doesn't like them while Moore is a Soviet-type backstabber who lies to people he interviews to get good footage. I found it ridiculous that the fact that Heston walked away from him in Bowling implied some sort of guilt, why don't we send someone to ask Clinton if he eats children for breakfast, hmm, if he denies it or doesn't respond I guess he's guilty, right?

Bottom Line: Moore is as much of a lying scumbag as Coulter, yet they are treated entirely differently.


As far as America being 51% Republican, I'm just using the only reliable number available, I don't know what people think, maybe they did vote to do all those things you said, can't really read minds.

We have a Republican president and a Republican Congress and you may say not for long but it doesn't change that we are the majority party and are criticized about everything. Even if I started a "Regretfully the Bush Era nears end" thread I'd get 10 replies calling me and Bush and idiot. That is what I'm pissed off about.

I say love Lockheed Martin, love Exxon, love Halliburton, why? I own them. why do people complain? Everyone can buy them. In fact because I own them I'm doing more for America than all these people bitching about big business. I don't even understand how can people be against "big business" wtf does that mean? What are we supposed to be farmers? Communal farming, lol? Where do these people work?

For Ann's sake: Moore is a fat, uneducated liar who tried and failed to influence a democratic election through manipulation of the accounts of crippled heroes without their permission. Fahrenheit 911 as well as Bowling for Columbine are exact examples of the propaganda that Moore claims to battle. And never forget in Moore's own words he loves America "to an extent" I bet it's a short extent.

[NewYork2016]

Honeslty, anybody who's been assertive about our president and his actions, it would be fair game to criticize that person. Although I believe Ann sounded mean to a lot of people, her statement's message was right on target. The "Jersey Girls", as what they're called, are not immune to criticism. And while they continue criticizing and calling for the President's head in some way or another, then they can't use their grief as a blanket for their actions.

I for one, lost a lot of friends and a very close cousin on 9/11. These "Jersey Girls" don't represent what most 9/11 vicitims feel. It's just being exploited by the so called "Objective" Media because it fits their platform of bringing down the President.

[TomAuch]

Well to be honest, I don't follow most of the criticism of MM as I don't really pay attention to him beyond going to see F 9/11 two years ago, but in the example where the Iraqi vet has sued him, why did he wait two years to do it? Why did he also appear in a photo-op with Ted Kennedy (who is always a parennial target from the right? Also, Moore asked NBC for that footage and they gave it to him. If you use news footage, you are using something from the public domain.

And using "I love America to an extent" is a bit of an argumentive strawman, don't ya think? I love the values that we stand for (we are a LIBERAL democracy. Always have been. Our Founding Fathers were LIBERALS in their day, while the conservatives were Royalists or supporters of Divine-Right Monarchy.)but I don't "love" how we as a country act in practicing what we stand for. But I don't "hate" America, because we have done many good things for the world historically and even today, despite having a bad President. When Moore says that, gasp, he dare step beyond jingoism! Putting a million magnet ribbons on your car doesn't automatically make you more patriotic than everyone else.

Coulter has gotten away with bullshit that Michael Moore wouldn't be able to. I'm sorry, but if Moore said that Debra Burlingame is a "harpy," Limbaugh and Hannity would be orgasmic over that quote; playing it daily on their shows. Yet they defend Coulter.

I'm not against criticizing someone who is a 9/11 family member in the general sense (read some of the WTC threads. I can't stand the memorial activists, one of them also happens to be Ms. Burlingame.) but her WAY in which she has lashed out is insensitive and cruel. If Coulter wanted to make a comment like "some of the family activists are pushing their influence too far and have gotten more than what they've asked for with their demands" I would agree with her, with the exception of the 9/11 Commission whitewash (remember how Bush was against it until pressure from families -including the Jersey Girls - came? Remember how he flip flopped on letting Condi testify, and how he would only testify with Cheney besides him, and not under oath?)

No, Moore didn't but he said other things. Moore's style is that he doesn't SAY anything just asks you a question and follows it with a montage of totally unrelated images. If you show Bush followed by the Holocaust, you must understand "Bush is responsible for the Holocaust", both his movies are like that. I hate to use something as obvious as the opening to Fahrenhype 911 but Moore said "there is no terrorist threat" why isn't somebody crucifying him over that statement (which couldn't be more wrong) and when Coulter says something they're falling into some sort of frenzy.

I don't agree with Coulter on most things but I don't understand why is she treated so differently from Moore. Any intelligent person doesn't buy into either of their mostly-bullshit but they are really not different at all.

All I ask for is that people start throwing pies at Moore to even out the playing field. Let's call him a fascist more often. Let's talk about he's a fat bastard, hmmm?

I respect Coulter because she tells people she doesn't like them while Moore is a Soviet-type backstabber who lies to people he interviews to get good footage. I found it ridiculous that the fact that Heston walked away from him in Bowling implied some sort of guilt, why don't we send someone to ask Clinton if he eats children for breakfast, hmm, if he denies it or doesn't respond I guess he's guilty, right?

Bottom Line: Moore is as much of a lying scumbag as Coulter, yet they are treated entirely differently.


As far as America being 51% Republican, I'm just using the only reliable number available, I don't know what people think, maybe they did vote to do all those things you said, can't really read minds.

We have a Republican president and a Republican Congress and you may say not for long but it doesn't change that we are the majority party and are criticized about everything. Even if I started a "Regretfully the Bush Era nears end" thread I'd get 10 replies calling me and Bush and idiot. That is what I'm pissed off about.

I say love Lockheed Martin, love Exxon, love Halliburton, why? I own them. why do people complain? Everyone can buy them. In fact because I own them I'm doing more for America than all these people bitching about big business. I don't even understand how can people be against "big business" wtf does that mean? What are we supposed to be farmers? Communal farming, lol? Where do these people work?

For Ann's sake: Moore is a fat, uneducated liar who tried and failed to influence a democratic election through manipulation of the accounts of crippled heroes without their permission. Fahrenheit 911 as well as Bowling for Columbine are exact examples of the propaganda that Moore claims to battle. And never forget in Moore's own words he loves America "to an extent" I bet it's a short extent.

[lofter1]

... Coulter, a graduate with honors, and a high profile lawyer gets treated like she knows less about everything.

She ADMITS she knows less ...

Again on Lou Dobbs the other day, Dobbs tried, asking her to put aside her "rancor", to engage in a discussion about some economic issues (as those should be the true Republican issues, rather than the Culture Wars -- which is all that Coulter is about) and she replied that she really doesn't know enough to talk about those things.

[TomAuch]

She admits that every time she goes and speaks at colleges, yet she has written columns in the past...attacking the Democrats on economics!:

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/anncoulter/2002/01/24/162234.html

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/anncoulter/2002/02/21/167909.html

She ADMITS she knows less ...

Again on Lou Dobbs the other day, Dobbs tried, asking her to put aside her "rancor", to engage in a discussion about some economic issues (as those should be the true Republican issues, rather than the Culture Wars -- which is all that Coulter is about) and she replied that she really doesn't know enough to talk about those things.

[Jake]

Well I'd still argue that she's more intelligent than Moore who knows little about economics and probably vastly less about foreign policy.

You mention an interesting phenomenon. In fact most of our leaders don't know anything about economics, they're generally people with law backgrounds.

One of the flaws of democracy is that we have people who don't know much about the fields for which they pass laws. The only type of government that addresses that issue is, ironically, fascism.

And BTW, saying you don't know enough is not like saying you know less. For example I know basic facts about classical music which is more than 95% of the population but if I were to have a conversation with someone who really knows it I'd probably refrain from giving an opinion as I don't know enough. Saying you don't know enough is far more intelligent and honorable than proceeding with the conversation knowingly being ignorant of the topic at hand.

[lofter1]

Coulter serves the purpose of deflecting attention away from the very basic economic issues and pointing towards the hot-button "culture war" issues that get people riled up.

This is the Republican Strategy of Activating the Base -- while driving up the deficit and ignoring the financial issues that will affect the citizenry for generations to come.

[MidtownGuy]

No, Moore didn't but he said other things.

What "other things" did he ever say that were as viscious as Coulter's latest?
The tone is completely different.

All I ask for is that people start throwing pies at Moore to even out the playing field. Let's call him a fascist more often. Let's talk about he's a fat bastard, hmmm?

Your whole premise that Coulter is criticised more than Moore is false. We all know that Moore was loudly lambasted for everything from his views to, yes, his weight.
Furthermore, it would be inaccurate to call him a fascist, since none of his views are compatible with fascist ideology. Rather, the confluence of tighter social controls, corrupt corporatism dominating economic policy, ramped-up nationalism, and unquestioning advocacy of maniacal leaders points the finger of fascism more accurately at Coulter, this regime, and the Right Wing for which you are a great poster boy.

The fact that Coulter, at the moment, is receiving more criticism is because of the absurd PR blitz she is obviously engaged in for her book. When Moore's movie was out, the crap hit the fan over what he was saying. It's just timing.

Bottom Line: Moore is as much of a lying scumbag as Coulter

ALSO WRONG. To what "lies" are you referring? Provide quotes, please, not just your delusional generalities. Then we can debate the veracity of those statements individually. Here we have been referring to specific things Coulter has said.

You can't honestly say that Republicans, who comprise 50.1% of this country, are anywhere near equally represented in this country's media.

Voting? You must be joking. So many people don't even vote because the whole damn thing is a charade. Then, of course, the fact that Bush was not really elected.:eek: Yeah, that's right. We can debate that on another thread.

As for the media...OH GOD WHERE DO I START? The media in this country is dominated by a handful of gigantic players who have been working in lockstep with this regime. They have pending legislation with this administration involving billions of dollars in potential profits if things go their way. They are some of the biggest political donors. Surely your aware of such things? The debate on any given topic is allowed to happen within a certain set of parameters, and if there were a truly aggressive stance by the media in this country against the crimes of this administration, there would have been a f**cking revolution by now. It's the media that has blinded and sedated the American people into a mass coma from which they MAY just now be awakening, not because of agressive media coverage but because the horrors of what has been done in their name has grown to an undeniable level. More people are finally getting it that you can't rely on Big Media to put all the relevant facts on the front page or in a 18 minute news broadcast. In larger and larger numbers they are looking beyond the obvious sources.

News broadcasts, by the way, are sponsored by advertising from corporate giants who have their own agenda. The newsroom in America isn't about top-down censorship from government itself like with the old Pravda, but rather an insidious, and much more efficient system of self-censorsip, because you know what will land you in hot water and you don't dare bite the hand that feeds you.
So, to sum up Jake, the media in this country most certainly does not represent the interests of most Americans. It only looks like it from an un-nuanced and uninformed perspective.

I say love Lockheed Martin, love Exxon, love Halliburton, why? I own them. why do people complain? Everyone can buy them. In fact because I own them I'm doing more for America than all these people bitching about big business. I don't even understand how can people be against "big business" wtf does that mean? What are we supposed to be farmers? Communal farming, lol? Where do these people work?

Do you think it's that simple? You're either for lawless, corrupt corporatism, or you're ready for the kibbutz? lol, Gosh, Jake, give us a break!! I'm not against "big business". I don't know WTF that is being defined as, and that's a term you just brought up. You don't have to be against capitalism in general to be infuriated when the public good or safety is being jeopardized by plutocrats. You've tried to set up a false dichotomy.

For Ann's sake: Moore is a fat, uneducated liar who tried and failed to influence a democratic election through manipulation of the accounts of crippled heroes without their permission. Fahrenheit 911 as well as Bowling for Columbine are exact examples of the propaganda that Moore claims to battle. And never forget in Moore's own words he loves America "to an extent" I bet it's a short extent.

I won't dignify the absurd first part of that rant. As for Moore's love...He loves America in his own way. Who are you to try to guage how much. Do you love America more than him, or more than ME for that matter? Yeah, right. I was born here same as you, buddy. I love America for it's positives, but I don't hesitate to criticize those things that have gone astray. It's called being sensible and suggests a deep love for how we believe this country should be governed: legally and responsibly. This administration has done neither.

Here's a bottom line for you: Coulter is a trash-talking parrot who never speaks a word against Bush or anyone in his cabal. I'd take a muckraking, controversial filmmaker over a wormtongued government mouthpiece like Coulter any day of the week.

[Jake]

What "other things" did he ever say that were as viscious as Coulter's latest?
The tone is completely different.

"These bastards who run our country are a bunch of conniving, thieving, smug pricks who need to be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we control." MICHEAL MOORE

Your whole premise that Coulter is criticised more than Moore is false. We all know that Moore was loudly lambasted for everything from his views to, yes, his weight.
Furthermore, it would be inaccurate to call him a fascist, since none of his views are compatible with fascist ideology. Rather, the confluence of tighter social controls, corrupt corporatism dominating economic policy, ramped-up nationalism, and unquestioning advocacy of maniacal leaders points the finger of fascism more accurately at Coulter, this regime, and the Right Wing for which you are a great poster boy.

The fact that Coulter, at the moment, is receiving more criticism is because of the absurd PR blitz she is obviously engaged in for her book. When Moore's movie was out, the crap hit the fan over what he was saying. It's just timing.
oh yes forgive me, let's call him a communist, how "loudly" exactly was he criticized? Did he have pies thrown at him? He goes to one university that doesn't welcome him and he turns it into a whole "America doesn't love me" boo hoo deal.


ALSO WRONG. To what "lies" are you referring? Provide quotes, please, not just your delusional generalities. Then we can debate the veracity of those statements individually. Here we have been referring to specific things Coulter has said.
OH GOD WHERE DO I START?

"There is no terrorist threat?" hmm?

"You know he's [George W. Bush] there illegally. You know he was not elected either by the popular vote or by the vote in Florida."


Voting? You must be joking. So many people don't even vote because the whole damn thing is a charade. Then, of course, the fact that Bush was not really elected.:eek: Yeah, that's right. We can debate that on another thread.
Just say it with me...Bush...won...the....election....don't cry....Bush....won...both....elections.....Gore appealed....he lost....appealed....lost....appealed...lost...appe aled...lost.....if you want the election overturned I want Roe v Wade overturned since to be sarcastic the whole Supreme Court must be conspiring things

As for the media...OH GOD WHERE DO I START? The media in this country is dominated by a handful of gigantic players who have been working in lockstep with this regime. They have pending legislation with this administration involving billions of dollars in potential profits if things go their way. They are some of the biggest political donors. Surely your aware of such things? The debate on any given topic is allowed to happen within a certain set of parameters, and if there were a truly aggressive stance by the media in this country against the crimes of this administration, there would have been a f**cking revolution by now. It's the media that has blinded and sedated the American people into a mass coma from which they MAY just now be awakening, not because of agressive media coverage but because the horrors of what has been done in their name has grown to an undeniable level. More people are finally getting it that you can't rely on Big Media to put all the relevant facts on the front page or in a 18 minute news broadcast. In larger and larger numbers they are looking beyond the obvious sources.

News broadcasts, by the way, are sponsored by advertising from corporate giants who have their own agenda. The newsroom in America isn't about top-down censorship from government itself like with the old Pravda, but rather an insidious, and much more efficient system of self-censorsip, because you know what will land you in hot water and you don't dare bite the hand that feeds you.
So, to sum up Jake, the media in this country most certainly does not represent the interests of most Americans. It only looks like it from an un-nuanced and uninformed perspective.

you're right, most of this country is conservative, the media certainly doesn't represent us.

What agenda do advertisers have? That you buy Kleenex? No shit. Was there some commerical I missed that subliminaly made people vote for Bush? And every news venues chooses what they air, and they air liberal programming, what TV program exactly is there on national television that is conservative?


Do you think it's that simple? You're either for lawless, corrupt corporatism, or you're ready for the kibbutz? lol, Gosh, Jake, give us a break!! I'm not against "big business". I don't know WTF that is being defined as, and that's a term you just brought up. You don't have to be against capitalism in general to be infuriated when the public good or safety is being jeopardized by plutocrats. You've tried to set up a false dichotomy.
It is very simple, capitalism is the most straightforward system there is. Who owns these companies I mentioned? Americans do. People complain about these companies yet they keep their money with Citigroup. They criticize Halliburton, who builds the infrastructure to heat your home? Without Lockheed there'd be no television.

The only person that I can think off that could honestly criticize these companies was Ted Kaczynski.

People bitch about corporate profit while sitting on their Dells with their Microsoft programming connected to their Time Warner line.

I won't dignify the absurd first part of that rant. As for Moore's love...He loves America in his own way. Who are you to try to guage how much. Do you love America more than him, or more than ME for that matter? Yeah, right. I was born here same as you, buddy. I love America for it's positives, but I don't hesitate to criticize those things that have gone astray. It's called being sensible and suggests a deep love for how we believe this country should be governed: legally and responsibly. This administration has done neither.
well Coulter loves America in her own way too. I don't really care what Moore loves but can anyone categorize either of his films as "documentaries" they fail that definiton, they are simply propaganda, nothing more.

Here's a bottom line for you: Coulter is a trash-talking parrot who never speaks a word against Bush or anyone in his cabal. I'd take a muckraking, controversial filmmaker over a wormtongued government mouthpiece like Coulter any day of the week.
Coulter HAS SAID THINGS ABOUT BUSH. She criticizes Republicans as well, for their inability to halt illegal vote recounts among other things. We have different perceptions of what is vile, I consider it a much worse offense to release lies to the public on such a mass scale right before the election.

[MidtownGuy]

"These bastards who run our country are a bunch of conniving, thieving, smug pricks who need to be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we control." MICHEAL MOORE

The ABSOLUTE TRUTH. I repeat- Not as viscious as Coulter's latest about the 9/11 wives. It is just not as low.

oh yes forgive me, let's call him a communist, how "loudly" exactly was he criticized? Did he have pies thrown at him? He goes to one university that doesn't welcome him and he turns it into a whole "America doesn't love me" boo hoo deal.

Are you aware that communism and fascism are on opposite ends of the political spectrum? No pies. Big deal. Is that your criteria? The fact he was criticized loudly by every 2-cent conservative in this country.

"You know he's [George W. Bush] there illegally. You know he was not elected either by the popular vote or by the vote in Florida."
You repeat after me: THE REPUBLICANS STOLE BOTH ELECTIONS. CAN YOU SPELL D_I_R_T_Y__T_R_I_C_K_S?

OH GOD WHERE DO I START?

"There is no terrorist threat?" hmm?

Hmm, you like to take things out of context don't you. Here's the transcript of that interview on CNN http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0310/08/ltm.13.html

you're right, most of this country is conservative, the media certainly doesn't represent us
FANTASY. Everything I wrote flew right over your head. Not surprising.

What agenda do advertisers have? That you buy Kleenex? No shit.

Use your brain, just a little. I wasn't talking about buying the product. What a simplistic, and mistaken, interpretation of my assertion. It's not about the particular product per se, but about the conduct of the companies or industries making them, and whether or not they are likely to be investigated by the news team whose salaries they make possible.

but can anyone categorize either of his films as "documentaries" they fail that definiton, they are simply propaganda, nothing more.

This particular semantic dispute is pointless.

She criticizes Republicans as well, for their inability to halt illegal vote recounts among other things.

GIVE ME A BREAK. Is that your best example? An indirect criticism of Democrats? Pretty weak, Jake.

[Fabrizio]

Ann Coulter seems like maybe a character created by Lilly Tomlin in her prime. Only her lack of wit prevents her from being the high camp her look, mannerisms and voice promise.

Watch as Matt Lauer leaves her stuttering. What a DUMMY:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4xv05FK69KU&search=coulter

[ablarc]

Ann Coulter seems like maybe a character created by Lilly Tomlin in her prime.
Even looks like Lily Tomlin. (Sorry, Lily!)

[Jake]

Very insightful interview, let's just throw paragraph long quotes at people and make them respond in 2 seconds. What is Bush thinking RIGHT NOW? how about NOW?

Matt Lauer is another genius, NOT EVEN A COLLEGE GRADUATE, do you see a trend here?

You guys are completely blind to my side of these issues just like I am to yours.

There are things discussed here that to me seem completely absurd. Gay marriage, murdering the unborn, stem cell research, our foreign policy, I think all of those are near being properly addresses right now and we shouldn't do anything to change what we have in place.


To respond to MidtownGuy,

-"absolute truth" is that you guys overthrow the government and put in a liberal government you control? Congrats, you just lost the concept of democracy.

-Communist THEORY and fascism are opposite concepts, in reality communism and fascism work out nearly identically.
IMO Moore didn't get half the criticism that Coulter got but I can't prove that, it's just how I perceived it.

-Republicans did not steal the elections, there were investigations (some of which were illegal) that disproved these allegations. Your "proof" is simply wrong. You failed. There's more Republicans in this country. Bush is president. I know Dems feel like helpless losers who were beaten by this "monkey-stupid" guy but hey too bad, move on.

-Things out of context? That wouldn't be something that was done about every Rumsfeld and Ashcroft interview was it?

and this isn't out of context:
"But to say that there's a general terrorist threat every day, that just isn't true. It's important for the news media to keep that going. I just -- I watched a crawl across the bottom -- where is this thing? Oh, there it is -- going across CNN this morning. By the way, how do you watch this thing and watch the TV at the same time?"

well unless Moore KNOWS that there isn't an attack planned for today, then it is a lie, no?

Those 17 guys in Toronto, they weren't a terrorist threat, they just wanted to start a farm with 3 tons of fertilizer.

-The fantasy is that you think these 100 person polls "prove" that people would ever support something as stupid as gay marriage or mass murder of the unborn.

DEMOCRACY decided GAY MARRIAGE should not be allowed
DEMOCRACY decided ABORTION should not be allowed

the only injustice is that the first issue keeps getting attention and that the second was decided by people who weren't democratically elected.

-I don't believe that a news team would take it easy on Kleenex because their commerial is on during their next break. Once again you're searching for some conspiracy.

The more key thing here is that Lockheed and Halliburton DON'T ADVERTISE. You have P&G and J&J doing the bulk of commercials so even if there's a conspiracy we'll be a nation with clean floors, and nice hair.

-Moore's movies are not a semantic dispute

from M-W

PROPAGANDA- the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

Both his movies fit that definition EXACTLY, there's should be no dispute over that, especially since there were LIES (again should not be disputed) in both. The spreading of lies to hurt the Bush administration.
I read Coulter but would never quote her as my source, any person who would just take Moore's info at face value is unfortunately an idiot.

-I'm not saying Coulter is objective but she's not Reps, Reps, Reps, all day either.

[Jake]

You have things like this, this realy shows how intelligent this argument is


http://cdn.fastclick.net/fastclick.net/cid52652/Survey_720x300_bush_laptop.gif

[Fabrizio]

wow... perfecly round...makes Bush look like a pro.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Matt Lauer is another genius, NOT EVEN A COLLEGE GRADUATE, do you see a trend here? That even an uneducated, politically unsophisticated, info-news creampuff like Lauer can make Annie look like a babbling idiot?

[Jake]

^not really, but if I told you right now, "summarize all the failures of the Bush administration" could you organize that kind of thought right away (seeing as there are many)? Most interviews have people see the questions before hand, I could easily make someone not understand or stutter if I presented a difficult and unexpected question. A reasonable person would stop and think rather than say mindless stuff in response.

[MidtownGuy]

I don't believe that a news team would take it easy on Kleenex because their commerial is on during their next break. Once again you're searching for some conspiracy.

The more key thing here is that Lockheed and Halliburton DON'T ADVERTISE. You have P&G and J&J doing the bulk of commercials so even if there's a conspiracy we'll be a nation with clean floors, and nice hair.


Give the conspiracy crap a break. I'm not talking about smoke filled rooms here.
You always make up ridiculous straw man examples. There is a concept, which perhaps I am not doing a good enough job at explaining, that the news is influenced by corporate interests. I'm not proposing radical theories, here. It's common sense. Oops, forgot who I'm talking to. Look, so many insightful books by people in the news business have been written regarding this subject. I don't have time to rewrite any of them on this thread for you, but if you really wanted to get an objective view on the subject, you might take a look at a few of them. I'd be glad to put a list of readings together for you, but something tells me it would be a waste of my time, because you're not really interested in reading about all the examples of self-censorship, you just want to dismiss the whole idea with cheap cracks about kleenex.

http://static.flickr.com/68/165030029_68d2393214.jpg

[MidtownGuy]

could you organize that kind of thought right away

Yes. Truth would flow like a river. It's making up lies on the spot and concocting spin that would be harder to do spontaneously.

[Fabrizio]

For me the funniest thing about that inteview is that she´s wearing the same dress as on the cover of her book. Now THAT´S branding. (forget the fact that it´s like 8 in the morning and she´s dressed for cocktails...). More than anything, she comes off like an old-school fag-hag from hell. We gotta find her a date.

(before the PC chorus chimes in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fag_hag)

[MidtownGuy]

from that link...
"Synonyms include fruit fly and fairy godmother."

"A straight man who has a similar affinity with gay men is termed a fag stag, but, again, this usage is rarer."

:D :D

[lofter1]

Coulter sure knows how to generate ink for herself ...

Advertising mag asks Ann Coulter to kill herself

RAW STORY (http://rawstory.com/)
Monday June 12, 2006

LINK (http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Advertising_mag_asks_Ann_Coulter_to_0612.html)

http://amiga.adage.com/de/images/covers/current.gif

In a striking post, AdAge magazine, a leading magazine for the advertising community, has asked Godless author Ann Coulter to kill herself, RAW STORY (http://rawstory.com/) has discovered.

Buried in the article, a humorous attack on the mainstream media, was the following quote.

"Would it kill you, 'Godless' author Ann Coulter, to do us all a favor and kill yourself? (Oh, well, yeah, I guess it would kill you.)

"After her recent rabidly hateful, foaming-at-the-mouth, sub-human 'Today' show appearance -- in which she reiterated her assertion that 9/11 widows are "enjoying their husband's deaths" -- even her former supporters began to fantasize about how much nicer the world would be if it were Coulterless."

The AdAge article is here (http://www.adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=109799).

DEVELOPING....

[lofter1]

What do I pray for? That the "Bush Era" ends ASAP ...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/letters.asp

THURSDAY, JUNE 8, 2006

Born-again? Then support the president

[Joseph Farah:] Don't you know that you are aiding the enemy when you speak against President Bush? (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50533) I will bet you that of all the presidents since 1950, with the exception of President Ronald Reagan, President Bush is by far the best. We and hundreds of thousands of Americans stand by the president. Of course, he is not perfect, but he is a man of God. If you are a born-again Christian, you will support him and pray for him every day. We are called, no, commanded, to pray for our president.

Mary Beth Ethridge

[Fabrizio]

I imagine Ann Coulter killing herself with an overdose of poppers.

[MrSpice]

The most important question is: why does anyone care what Ann Coulter has to say and why what she says matters at all? She stroves for any publicity - that's how she sells book. I don't think any reasonable people of any persuasion - democratic or republican - ever took seriously.

[ryan]

I feel like a broken record...but again, if all you guys can manage to mock about Ann Coulter is her appearance and/or dating prowess...well, you're not trying very hard are you?

[Fabrizio]

ryan....I think we gotta find you a date too.

[ryan]

You can do better than that: misogyny doesn't work so well on men.

[ablarc]

ryan, you need a sense of humor.

[Azazello]

<snip> Born-again? Then support the president <snip>You know, Farah is right! Yet, you don't have to be Born-again to love Bush. Social conservatives love Bush, despite all his faults, because they know he's their Man in the White House. They are willing to put up with a "War Against Terror" (note the sarcastic quotemarks), rejection of decades-old conventions on treatment of "war"time combatants, legal and and moral(!) justifications for torture, scapegoating of ethnic groups with thinly-veined racist statements about these groups increasing crime and being unpatriotic -- all of this, as long as science textbooks are subverted with Christian doctrine, women have no say over what they do with their own bodies, and "those queers" are relegated to non-citizens, which any right-thinking Christian knows is what the Bible tells us to think.

lofter1, your, our, prayers were not answered. So many Red States showed that our country is so strictly conservative that we nearly match the fundamentalism of Islamic countries we apparently despise. Even some politicians are finally getting The Message (from God?) We have moderate politicians trying to out-conservative Conservatives (e.g. Mrs. Clinton), Democrats trying to out-republican Republicans (e.g. southern Democrat polits very publicly lauding their religious views to every potential voter that will listen, and more and more polits are getting very vocal about being against abortion).

Pray all we want, because many of us on this board are not social conservatives like most of the country (and some on this board – we know who you are…), we won’t get no play. And don’t expect help from :ee-gads!: The Left. Nobody wants to be tagged with the “L-word” nowadays. Now everybody is a “Progressive.” I recently read someone calling himself a “Liberal Progessive.” The height of farce.

You have to wonder - where will it all lead? Not with the End of the Bush Era, sadly.

[Fabrizio]

Ryan....misogyny doesn´t apply here...we´re talking about Ann Coulter.

[ryan]

Ok, so transphobia is more accurate, then?

[Fabrizio]

You said it....I didn´t

[ryan]

I'm just classifying the bigotry.

[Fabrizio]

I see you with a file cabinet overflowing.

[ryan]

Ah yes, I'm imagining it all - sexism, homophobia, transphobia... racism and xenophobia too? Ignorance is the ultimate privilege.

[Fabrizio]

I´ve got "ancraophobia". It´s the fear of wind.

[ryan]

Or perhaps sophophobia. Phobias also refer to hatred, and has become a colloquialism for prejudice. But you knew that - you're just having "fun."

[Fabrizio]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8c/Racheldratchdebbie.jpg

[ablarc]

I'm just classifying the bigotry.
Political correctness: the new McCarthyism.

.

[ryan]

Are you 12 years old?

[Ninjahedge]

I'm just classifying the bigotry.

You mean people are all the same?

There are no differences in people, and labeling them with the slanderous slurs that they use in the description of their own political adversaries is not suitably ironic?

Hmmm.....

[Ninjahedge]

Are you 12 years old?

ryan, it would help your arguement if you did not come in with pistols blazing every time someone mentions anything you take offense to.
Instead of proving your point, you just get a bunch of people rolling their eyes going "him again".

So if you are just doing this to vent, fine. But if you truly want to make a difference, you have to chose YOUR words wisely when criticising the words used by others. ;)

[ryan]

My first comment was hardly "guns blazing," ninjahedge, and it's not my responsibility to convince anyone that sexism exists. If anyone finds my calling a sexist joke a sexist joke "pc" [sic - I don't condone the use of republican pr machine-manufactured language] then ignore me and click over to Mens News Daily (http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/) to have your worldview reaffirmed.

ablarc - equating "pc" [sic again] to McCarthyism is not just stupid hyperbole, but really insulting to the people who were actually persecuted (like losing jobs and relationships).

[Fabrizio]

Ryan writes: "then ignore me and click over to Mens News Daily to have your worldview reaffirmed".

Ryan tell me about my worldview.

-------------------------

A little sumpthin´ for Ryan:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kaOeVAVenlc&search=Sarah%20Silverman

-------------

[Ninjahedge]

ryan, you are doing it again.

Relax man. You knew what you were doing, and what responses you were going to get from the start. If you want to start an arguement about it, there are plenty of other places to do that, but leave it at that, will ya?

[Ninjahedge]

PS, if they were ignoring you, they would not bother to click on your link... ;)

[eddhead]

[quote=MidtownGuy]What "other things" did he ever say that were as viscious as Coulter's latest?
The tone is completely different.



Your whole premise that Coulter is criticised more than Moore is false. We all know that Moore was loudly lambasted for everything from his views to, yes, his weight...

Great post.

[ablarc]

A little sumpthin´...
Droll, Fabrizio, how do you find all this stuff?

[lofter1]

Good Lord, save us ...

Bush accidentally mocks blind reporter's 'shades'

RAW STORY (http://rawstory.com/)
June 14, 2006

http://mms.tveyes.com/thumbnailsALL/06/06/14/10/FNC/FNC061406103610.jpg

Exchange between United States President George W. Bush and journalist Peter Wallsten at White House Rose Garden, June 14, 2006:
###

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah, Peter. You're going to ask that question with those shades on?

PETER WALLSTEN: I can take them off --

BUSH: No, I'm interested in the shade look, seriously here.

WALLSTEN: All right. I'll keep it then.

BUSH: For the viewers there's no sun. (Scattered laughter.)

WALLSTEN: I guess it depends on your perspective.

BUSH: (Laughs, laughter.) Touche. (Laughter.)

###

Peter Wallsten is blind.

[Ninjahedge]

I would not consider that heinous, but it is a definite whoopsie.....

I guess the reporter was not obvious about his blindness, but Bush couldn't just let it go. He had to try to make it funny..... :P

[lofter1]

http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/2006/1101060717_400.jpg (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601060717,00.html)

The End of Cowboy Diplomacy

Why the Bush Doctrine no longer guides the foreign policy of the Bush Administration

TIME (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211277,00.html)
By MIKE ALLEN AND ROMESH RATNESAR

The dress code at George W. Bush's white house is cuff- linked and starch collared, reflecting the temper of a President with a reputation for no-nonsense, alpha-male decisiveness. That's why the 200 guests gathered at the White House on Independence Day were surprised to learn that Bush had decided to rip up protocol. It was an early 60th-birthday party for the President, attended by former classmates from first grade to Yale, and Bush was in high spirits. He waved to supporters on the South Lawn who had assembled ...

Copyright © 2006 Time Inc.

__________________________________________________ _

DRUDGE (http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3.htm)


In the span of four years, the Bush Administration has been forced to rethink the pre-emptive "Bush doctrine" by which it hoped to remake the world, as the strategy's ineffectiveness was exposed by the very policies it prescribed, TIME's Mike Allen and Romesh Ratnesar report in this weeks cover story on 'The End of Cowboy Diplomacy' on newsstands Monday, July 9th.

President George W. Bush came to office pledging to focus on domestic issues and pursue a "humble" foreign policy that would avoid the entanglements of the Bill Clinton years. After Sept. 11, however, the Bush team embarked on a different path, outlining a muscular, idealistic, and unilateralist vision of American power and how to use it, TIME reports. They aimed to lay the foundation for a grand strategy to fight Islamic terrorists and rogue states, by spreading democracy around the world and pre-empting gathering threats before they materialize. And the U.S. wasn't willing to wait for others to help. The approach fit with Bush's personal style, his self-professed proclivity to dispense with the nuances of geopolitics and go with his gut. "The Bush Doctrine is actually being defined by action, as opposed to by words," Bush told Tom Brokaw aboard Air Force One in 2003.

The swaggering Commander in Chief who embodied the doctrine's aspirations has modulated himself too. At a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in May, Bush swore off the Wild West rhetoric of getting enemies "dead or alive," conceding, "in certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted." Bush's response to the North Korean missile test was equally revealing. Under the old Bush Doctrine, defiance by a dictator like Kim Jong Il would have merited threats of punitive U.S. action-or at least a tongue lashing. Instead, the Administration has mainly been talking up multilateralism and downplaying Pyongyang's provocation. As much as anything, it's confirmation of what Princeton political scientist Gary J. Bass calls "doctrinal flameout." Put another way: cowboy diplomacy, RIP.

Developing...

[lofter1]

Ally Warned Bush on Keeping Spying From Congress

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/washington/09hoekstra.html)
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
July 9, 2006

WASHINGTON, July 8 — In a sharply worded letter to President Bush in May, an important Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters.

The letter from Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the intelligence activities that he believed had been hidden from Congress.

But Mr. Hoekstra, who was briefed on and supported the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and the Treasury Department's tracking of international banking transactions, clearly was referring to programs that have not been publicly revealed.

Recently, after the harsh criticism from Mr. Hoekstra, intelligence officials have appeared at two closed committee briefings to answer questions from the chairman and other members. The briefings appear to have eased but not erased the concerns of Mr. Hoekstra and other lawmakers about whether the administration is sharing information on all of its intelligence operations.

A copy of the four-page letter dated May 18, which has not been previously disclosed, was obtained by The New York Times.

Hoekstra's Letter to Bush (pdf)

"I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed," Mr. Hoesktra wrote. "If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies."

He added: "The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution."

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on the concerns raised by Mr. Hoekstra but said that "we will continue to work closely with the chairman and other Congressional leaders on important national security issues."

A spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra, Jamal D. Ware, said he could not discuss the activities allegedly withheld from Congress. But he said that Mr. Hoekstra remained adamant that no intelligence programs could be hidden from oversight committees.

"Chairman Hoekstra has raised these issues with the administration to ensure that the Intelligence Committee is able to conduct its job of oversight," Mr. Ware said. "Intelligence officials have committed to being forthcoming with Congress, and Chairman Hoekstra is going to hold them to their word."

Mr. Hoekstra's blunt letter is evidence of a rift between the White House and House Republican leaders over the administration's perceived indifference to Congressional oversight and input on intelligence matters. Mr. Hoekstra wrote that he had shared his complaints with House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, and that the speaker "concurs with my concerns."

A spokesman for Mr. Hastert declined to comment.

The letter appears to have resulted at least in part from the White House's decision, made early in May, to name Gen. Michael V. Hayden to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, with Stephen R. Kappes as his deputy. The letter was sent the day of General Hayden's confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Hoekstra (pronounced HOOK-stra) complained publicly about the choices when they were announced, but his private letter to Mr. Bush was much harsher. He warned that the choice of Mr. Kappes, who he said was part of a group at the C.I.A. that "intentionally undermined the administration," sends "a clear signal that the days of collaborative reform between the White House and this committee may be over."

Mr. Hoekstra also expressed concern about the intelligence reorganization under John D. Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence, who he said was creating "a large, bureaucratic and hierarchical structure that will be less flexible and agile than our adversaries."

Mr. Hoekstra's views on oversight appear to be shared by some other Intelligence Committee members.

"I think the executive branch has been insufficiently forthcoming on a number of important programs," Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico, said in an interview. She would not discuss any programs on which the committee had not been briefed, but she said that in the Bush administration, "there's a presumption that if they don't tell anybody, a problem may get better or it will solve itself."

Ms. Wilson said she shared "deep concerns" about the pace and direction of intelligence reforms overseen by Mr. Negroponte's office. "We have some troubled programs," she said.

American intelligence agencies routinely conduct many secret programs, but under the National Security Act, the agencies are required to keep the Congressional intelligence committees "fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities." Even in the case of especially sensitive covert actions, the law requires briefings for at least the leaders from both parties of the committees and the House and Senate.

As the administration has asserted broad presidential authority to fight terrorism, concerns about Congressional oversight and checks and balances between the branches of government have become increasingly heated.

Democrats complained that the administration's failure to brief the full Intelligence Committees on the N.S.A. warrantless eavesdropping, which focuses on the international communications of Americans and others inside the United States, was a violation of the National Security law. Some members of Congress said they had been briefed on the Treasury Department's bank monitoring program, which examines international money transfers through a Brussels-based consortium, only after The New York Times began making inquiries in recent months.

But the assertion that other intelligence activities had been hidden from Congress is particularly surprising coming from Mr. Hoekstra, who defended the administration's limited briefings on the N.S.A. program against Democratic criticism.

An official familiar with recent exchanges between the intelligence agencies and the House committee said Friday that General Hayden had twice briefed the full committee and had addressed Mr. Hoekstra's questions about the intelligence activities referred to in the letter. The C.I.A. director promised "a free flow of information," and Mr. Hoekstra, who initially objected to placing a military officer in charge of the C.I.A., said he would work closely with the agency's new leadership.

The official, who spoke of the briefings only when granted anonymity because they were classified, declined to say anything about what the activities were or which agencies they involved.

Officials with both Mr. Negroponte's office and the C.I.A. declined to comment specifically on Mr. Hoekstra's letter. But Carl Kropf, a spokesman for Mr. Negroponte, said that over the past year his office had "engaged in hundreds of briefings, meetings and discussions with Congressional committees."

He added, "We value this dialogue with Congress, and we will continue to provide the committee with the information they need to fulfill their responsibilities."

Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a spokeswoman for General Hayden, said that "the director believes in the important oversight role Congress plays, and he will continue regular and transparent interactions with members."

Since his appointment as committee chairman in August 2004, Mr. Hoekstra has been a critical ally of the White House on intelligence matters. He has supported the administration's most controversial policies, including its treatment of terrorist suspects, and he has balked at Democratic demands for an investigation of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. He has defended the legality and necessity of the N.S.A. program and the bank monitoring.

Mr. Hoekstra has been one of the strongest advocates in Congress for a crackdown on leaks of classified information to the media, a cause championed by both Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

But in recent months, Mr. Hoekstra has begun to express some disaffection.

In March, he joined the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Representative Jane Harman of California, in a public critique of Mr. Negroponte's performance. He criticized intelligence officials for initially resisting his demand that thousands of captured Iraqi documents be posted on the Web. Like other House Republicans, he bristled when Porter J. Goss, a former House colleague, was forced out as C.I.A. director in early May.

Most recently, Mr. Hoekstra strongly criticized a news briefing arranged by Mr. Negroponte's office on an Army report that 500 pre-Gulf War chemical shells had been found scattered around Iraq. On June 29, Mr. Hoekstra, who had said the finding established that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, made public an angry letter to Mr. Negroponte calling the briefing "inaccurate, incomplete and occasionally misleading" and asserting that "attempts were made to downplay the significance of relevant facts."

A spokesman for Mr. Negroponte's office said he had not yet replied to the complaint.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

If it's not over yet then this sure would go a long way towards putting an end to it ...

A McCain-Lieberman ticket? (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneblog/archives/060810/a_mccainlieberm.htm)

Columnist, blogger, novelist, and Army Reserve Col. Austin Bay (has anyone else ever had those credentials?) calls for a McCain-Lieberman ticket (http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=1351) in 2008 ...

[lofter1]

Another Republican turns on the status quo ...

GOP candidate says 9/11 attacks were a hoax

http://www.maxwellforcongress.com/files/mary.jpg

Nashua Telegraph (http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060824/NEWS01/108240131/-1/business)
By Albert McKeon
Telegraph Staff
Aug 24, 2006

A Republican candidate for this area’s congressional seat said Wednesday that the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In an editorial board interview with The Telegraph on Wednesday, the candidate, Mary Maxwell (http://www.maxwellforcongress.com/menu), said the U.S. government had a role in killing nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, so it could make Americans hate Arabs and allow the military to bomb Muslim nations such as Iraq. Maxwell, 59, seeks the 2nd District congressional seat. The Concord resident opposes the incumbent, Charles Bass of Peterborough, and Berlin Mayor Bob Danderson in the Republican primary Sept. 12.

Maxwell would not specify if she holds the opinion that the government stood by while terrorists hijacked four domestic airliners and used them as weapons, or if it had a larger role by sanctioning and carrying out the attacks.

But she implicated the government by saying the Sept. 11 attacks were meant “to soften us up . . . to make us more willing to have more stringent laws here, which are totally against the Bill of Rights . . . to make us particularly focus on Arabs and Muslims . . . and those strange persons who spend all their time creating little bombs,” giving Americans a reason “to hate them and fear them and, therefore, bomb them in Iraq for other reasons.”

She said this strategy “would be normal” for governments, citing her belief that the British government – and not the Germany military – sank the Lusitania ocean liner in 1915. The deaths of Americans on the cruise liner helped galvanize U.S. support to enter World War I, and benefited England, she said.

In turn, the Sept. 11 attacks “made the ground fertile” for more stringent laws, such as the Patriot Act, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Maxwell said.

Near the end of the interview, Maxwell pounded her fist on the table and asked editors of The Telegraph why they weren’t publishing more stories about the government’s role in the terrorist attacks or proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Maxwell has no political experience. She lived abroad for the past quarter-century with her husband, George, a pediatrician, and only recently returned to the U.S., she said.

In the hour-long interview, Maxwell spoke at length about Constitutional law, U.S. law, nuclear weapons proliferation, and other domestic and foreign policy issues.

Maxwell said the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq. She also questioned whether Congress authorized the war and said its members can’t explain that 2002 vote. (Congress authorized the use of force to defend this country’s security and enforce United Nations resolutions on Iraq.)

“Legally, we shouldn’t have gone to Iraq if Congress can’t explain why,” she said.

Maxwell described herself as a strict Constitutionalist, a candidate who wants to bring the country “back to basics.” The Constitution grants more power to the legislative branch than the other two branches, but Congress has allowed the executive and judicial branches to diminish its influence, she said.

She also said the U.S. shouldn’t immerse itself in the international community by signing trade and security pacts. These agreements have weakened national sovereignty, she said.

© 2003, Telegraph Publishing Company, Nashua, New Hampshire

***

More from Mary Maxwell (via Maxwell for Congress (http://www.maxwellforcongress.com/menu) ) :

http://www.maxwellforcongress.com/signwriter-cache/3ad30ff833564ece29c5b231a66bc826.gif

15 Qestions and Answers on Martial Law - by Mary Maxwell, Ph.D.

1. Q: Is it likely that martial law is imminent in the U.S.?

A: Yes. The way has been partially cleared for it legally by the Homeland Security Act, that 'grandfathered in' the whole of a secret 1979 executive order dealing with emergency rule. One legal hurdle to martial law still remains, namely, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which explicitly forbids soldiers to participate in domestic law enforcement. However, Congress could easily annul the Posse Comitatus Act, and is being pressured by the attorney general and the Pentagon to do just that...

12. Q: Is it conceivable that mercenaries would be used domestically?

A: It is more than conceivable; it has already happened. Following Hurricane Katrina, Blackwater USA (and perhaps other mercenary units) were assigned to duty in Louisiana by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

13. Q: Where does FEMA get its authority?

A: As above mentioned, the Homeland Security Act established it legislatively. Section 502 of that act says" . . . there shall be transferred to the Secretary [of the new Homeland Security Department] the functions, personnel, assets, and liabilities of . . . the Federal Emergency Management Agency."


http://www.maxwellforcongress.com/signwriter-cache/c4eeb8c50fd5e100a64d8704ebd3401e.gif
http://www.maxwellforcongress.com/signwriter-cache/976e4a41d763923c7361a0e184ae35ee.gif

Vice Pres Cheney is now a burden to the Republican party

"Vice Pres Cheney is now a burden to the Republican party," says Mary Maxwell, who is running for Congress in NH. She points to:

• The latest Gallup poll, which shows Cheney’s national disapproval rating at over fifty percent.

• The rise to best seller status of John Dean’s book Conservatives Without Conscience which paints a devastating picture of Cheney, and

• The fact that very few Republican candidates will let Cheney appear on the stump with them.

"Not only that," she says, "but old-school Republicans, who revere the Constitution, are troubled by Cheney’s apparent motto, ‘Why bother with rule of law?’" Maxwell estimates that the House would have had the numbers to propose an impeachment of Cheney, but the session ended last week with no Democrat or Republican coming forward.

http://www.maxwellforcongress.com/signwriter-cache/a892fb55dba5ac7156814a25988de2f9.gif

It’s Not Too Late To Stop Nuclear Use

Americans who lived through the Cold War know that our main concern in those days was nuclear war. All sorts of planning was subjected to the overriding goal of avoiding the mushroom cloud. Even the East Europeans in the 1970s and ‘80s felt justified in protesting the Soviet plans to use n-weapons.

So when did this change? When did nuclear fallout stop being a problem? Did someone invent a weapon that uses uranium without causing health problems? Without causing genetic damage to offspring? In short, when did it become safe to release radioactive fallout into Earth’s atmosphere?

The answer is “Never.” We should still fear the mushroom cloud. We should wisely acknowledge that any open use of uranium is hazardous to human health. Believe me, the science of physics hasn’t come up with a new interpretation of radioactivity.

[lofter1]

Book: Bush told reporter Jews are 'all going to hell'

rawstory.com (http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Book_Bush_told_reporter_Jews_are_0902.html)
Larisa Alexandrovna
September 2, 2006

An upcoming book about presidential advisor Karl Rove reports allegations of anti-semitism by President George W. Bush, RAW STORY (http://rawstory.com/) has learned.

In The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power (http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Karl-Master-Absolute-Power/dp/0307237923/sr=1-1/qid=1157235713/ref=sr_1_1/104-1442331-8517551?ie=UTF8&s=books), Austin-based journalist James Moore and Wayne Slater, senior political reporter for the Dallas Morning News, will allege that Bush once made anti-semitic comments to a reporter.

"You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you Herman?" a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.

When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line:

"I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."

This quip never received wider media attention. RAW STORY (http://rawstory.com/) obtained a copy of The Architect late this week.

Bush's thoughts on the fate of non-Christian souls became a minor source of controversy after he told the Houston Post in 1993 that only those who "accept Jesus Christ" go to Heaven. However, the future president was also earlier briefly engaged to a half-Jewish woman.

The authors of The Architect assert that religion and ethnicity have been manipulated by Bush and Rove to "divide" and "conquer" the nation.

More information about the book, to be released Tuesday, can be found here (http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Karl-Master-Absolute-Power/dp/0307237923/sr=1-1/qid=1157235713/ref=sr_1_1/104-1442331-8517551?ie=UTF8&s=books).


http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0307237923.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V66499694_.jpg

[OmegaNYC]

For some reason, I always felt that Bush would tell Jew, Gay, and Black jokes.

[lofter1]

Nixon had a history (http://www.rotten.com/library/history/racism/anti-semitism/) of speaking ill of Jews and plain old anti-semitism (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/oct99/nixon6.htm) in private:


26 May 1971:President Richard M. Nixon (http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/presidents/richard-m-nixon/) observes (to H. R. [Bob] Haldeman): "You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."

[lofter1]

Oh-oh ... "President Bush's private mood has blackened accordingly" ... Will GWB now slip into the RMN mode?

Scandals stymie W's momentum

NY Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/459722p-386715c.html)
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
October 8, 2006

WASHINGTON - Suddenly, like the fierce "blue northers" that sweep across Texas each autumn, the political winds have turned bleaker for Republicans - and President Bush's private mood has blackened accordingly.

Just two weeks ago, as gasoline prices plummeted and his tough-talking terror counterattack began moving poll numbers his way, Bush turned bullish on the November elections.

"He's on scent and he's driving hard," a longtime political confidant of the President reported early this month. "He's got the microphone and thinks he's controlling the political debate."

First Lady Laura Bush, who is even more in demand than her husband on the political stump this cycle, also was telling aides she thought the tide had finally turned.

Now, however, friends, aides and close political allies tell the Daily News Bush is furious with his own side for helping create a political downdraft that has blunted his momentum and endangered GOP prospects for keeping control of Congress next month.

Some of his anger is directed at former aides who helped Watergate journalist Bob Woodward paint a lurid portrait of a dysfunctional, chaotic administration in his new book, "State of Denial."

In the obsessively private Bush clan, talking out of school is the ultimate act of disloyalty, and Bush feels betrayed from within.

"He's ticked off big-time," said a well-informed source, "even if what they said was the truth."

[Curiously, former chief of staff Andrew Card, who according to Woodward wanted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sacked, rode along on Air Force One with his former boss for the christening of the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush in Virginia yesterday.]

Moreover, Bush's personal disgust with the GOP sex scandal involving ex-Rep. Mark Foley has exacerbated his already-strained relations with congressional Republicans. While publicly embracing House Speaker Dennis Hastert, sources close to Bush say he thinks Hastert and other GOP House leaders have bungled their handling of the Foley affair and look like they've been engaged in a coverup.

Bush has complained, these sources said, that the scandal torpedoes furious GOP efforts to reenergize a dispirited political base - especially Christian conservatives.

"There's steam coming out of his ears over the Foley thing," someone who talks to the President regularly said. "The base is starting to get turned off again."

For all the misery, Bush remains defiantly resolute. He will campaign relentlessly in the next month and has told friends he's determined to prove his Democratic and media enemies wrong on Election Day. Bush is less worried about his standing with history, telling aides that George Washington's legacy is still being debated two centuries later. But he understands that losing one chamber of Congress will cripple his lame duck-weakened final two years. "He's remarkably optimistic," a Bush insider said.

"Like Ronald Reagan, he has a gift for looking beyond the morass in front of him and sticking to his goals, even if it's not popular."

All contents © 2006 Daily News, L.P.

[Ninjahedge]

"Like Ronald Reagan, he has a gift for looking beyond the morass in front of him and sticking to his goals, even if it's not popular."

That isn't a gift.

That is ignorance.

The gift is being able to see both the obstacles AND the solution AND have the ability to ford one to get to the other, not to get yourself stuck up to your waist in all this crap and deny it's very existence.

[lofter1]

Babs (http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1543) don't take no sh*t ... and with a beat ...

Listen To The Techno Version Of Streisand's
"SHUT THE F*** UP" If You Can't Take A Bush Joke ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/ap/streisandhand.jpg

www.huffingtonpost.com (http://www.huffingtonpost.com)
October 24, 2006

>>> listen-to-the-techno-version HERE (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/10/24/listen-to-the-techno-vers_n_32403.html)

[Capn_Birdseye]

Re: the title of this thread, the sooner the Bush era is over the better for all of us. I'm not American but from my propsective he's been a disaster for the US, he's made the world a much more dangerous place, and has proved that American foreign policy is impotent in the face of determined enemies - BIG missiles and BIG ships don't work Mr President!
He has also reduced America's effectiveness and credibility in dealing with other nations around the globe who all now see the emptiness of his policies.

[ablarc]

...the sooner the Bush era is over the better for all of us...he's been a disaster for the US, he's made the world a much more dangerous place, and has proved that American foreign policy is impotent in the face of determined enemies...

He has also reduced America's effectiveness and credibility in dealing with other nations around the globe...
A succinct summation of the Bush legacy. Can America and the world recover?

[Capn_Birdseye]

I know that Hitler had relatives who now live somewhere in the world.
Closer than you think Greg! Hitler's nephew William Patrick Hitler (now dead) married and lived with his wife in Long Island NY. They had three sons who still live there with their mother.

Read "The Last of the Hitlers" by David Gardner.

Funny old world isn't it!

[lofter1]

http://karenas.typepad.com/./photos/uncategorized/mccainbush.jpg

[lofter1]

Stick a fork in him ...

Bush diminished as world leader

As Oscar Wilde might have put it: "To lose one House may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."


bbc.com (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6129350.stm)
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent

Analysis

The mid-term elections have left President George W Bush diminished as a world leader.

The sudden news of the resignation of the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld adds to a sense that the ship of state is in rough seas.

The word abroad will be that George Bush is on the defensive and has taken a knock. Enemies will be encouraged. Friends will take cover.

To his own publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Iraq has been added voter dissatisfaction with him.

His party is even in danger of losing the Senate as well as the House of Representatives.

As Oscar Wilde might have put it: "To lose one House may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

Mr Bush will have to find a way to stop the slow strangulation that Iraq is now exercising on him and his party.

What now for US foreign policy?

And the question being asked now is whether the days of major US foreign policy interventions under this president are over.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gifBUSH POLLTRACKER

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42288000/gif/_42288168_tracker_nov203.gif
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/inline_dashed_line.gif

Bush's ratings over five years (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/6034543.stm)

Will the United States now conclude that the problems in Iraq and the lack of domestic support for them require a purely diplomatic approach, for example towards Iran and North Korea?

And above all, what will this mean for policy in Iraq itself, the root of his woes?

Vice-President Dick Cheney dismissed the election results in advance with a statement that policy in Iraq would go "full speed ahead".

One should not underestimate George Bush's determination. He has said proudly that he will stay the course in Iraq even if his wife and dog end up as his only supporters.

And it is the case that since the president controls foreign policy, he need not change course because of cries from the voters.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42119000/jpg/_42119196_soldiers203ap.jpg
There are about 147,000
US soldiers deployed in Iraq

In a post-election news conference, Mr Bush accepted that the voters "registered their displeasure" at the way Iraq had gone wrong. But he insisted yet again that to leave early would mean defeat. "We cannot accept defeat," he said.

Several times he mentioned the Iraq Study Group under his father's Secretary of State James Baker. He is to meet it soon and perhaps was hinting that he will take its recommendations seriously.

Not that the presidential options are many. Even before the election he laid down that the Iraqi government itself must do more, both politically and militarily, to go on justifying American support. That has to be given time to work through.

If there is any comfort in the Democratic party's successes for Mr Bush, it is that his opponents really have no more idea of what to do in Iraq than he has.

Their constant call is to "change course" but nobody has explained what that means. They cannot, because they do not know.

During his news conference, the president came close to admitting that he told an untruth when he informed reporters last week that Mr Rumsfeld would stay on. He said he had told them that because he did not want the issue to be injected into the campaign. He admitted that, at that stage, he had already spoken to Mr Rumsfeld about the need for a "fresh perspective".

The American Century

During his first term President Bush bestrode the world like a colossus.

He drew inspiration from the principles of the Project for the New American Century, drawn up in 1997. Among the signatories were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

It asked: "Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favourable to American principles and interests?"

The 9/11 attacks and the "war on terror" he declared in a speech soon afterwards allowed him to use the instruments of US power and diplomacy to topple the Taleban and gather support from around the world.

Then there was the "Forward Strategy of Freedom" announced in November 2003, for democracy in the Middle East. "Promoting democracy and freedom in the Middle East will be a massive and difficult undertaking, but it is worthy of America's effort and sacrifice, " he said.

Iraq and the disastrous course of events between Israel and its neighbours have lowered expectations for all that. And now the mid-term elections, which the Republicans thought earlier this year they had in the bag have confirmed that criticism from fellow Americans has caught up with criticism from around the world.

(C) BBC 2006

[ablarc]

"Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favourable to American principles and interests?"
November 9, 2013

I just unwrapped my new laptop from BestBuy and I realize they shipped me one of the experimental models that are rumored to exist –the one with the dial-a-time email feature. Lets you send emails into the past and future.

They don’t officially acknowledge the existence of these babies, so I expect a knock any moment now; I’m sure they’ll be around to retrieve the computer that doesn’t officially exist. So I have to type fast to tell you what happened in the last seven years.

President Obama has made friends with the world. Everybody loves us even more than in the Clinton years. France is fixing to send us a companion for the Statue of Liberty. They’re building the base for it right now on Governors Island; it’s called the Statue of Fraternity (but no one has seen it yet).

After shipping us all their plutonium and a thank you note, both North Korea and Iran have applied for statehood. They’ll be states 95 and 96 in President Obama’s “No Land Left Behind” policy. The deal is this: every man, woman and child gets $10,000 right out of the U.S. Treasury.

North Korea will cost us a hair under $240 billion to bring on board (that’s less than we used to spend in a week on the military and their activities; now that everybody loves us we don’t need those folks anymore). Governor Kim moves into North Korea’s executive mansion January 20; that day, Honored Leader Kim Jong Il retires to his new ranch in Montana. Newly-elected Senator Kim and Senator Kim are already in Washington, along with Representatives Kim, Kim and Kim. They’ve enlarged the Capitol.

Iraq and Afghanistan were first to join the Greater United States, way back in 2010 –when the Thousand Year Peace was officially inaugurated. At that time in the interest of global harmony we adopted a state religion. Now we’re all muslims, and there’s near-universal peace and harmony. There was a brief but amicable discussion about whether it should be the Sunni or Shiite branch, but in the interest of rapid conflict resolution the Shiites volunteered to convert.

By referendum in 2011, we near-unanimously approved President Obama’s optional Diversity Resolution, in which all of us singles pledged ourselves to marry someone of a different race from ourselves. It’s been a great success. Demographers tell us that recognizable racial traits will fade from the population by Century’s end. Then we’ll all be just the human race.

In addition to our pilgrimage to Mecca, the world’s people have resolved to make at least one hajj in a lifetime to New York’s Global Understanding and World Harmony Monument (formerly Ground Zero), which marks the spot where understanding and peace were born not long ago on September 11, 2001. Honorary Grand Marshal of the Monument is Osama bin Laden. He can be found daily at the Monument, signing autographs.

Global Warming was reversed in 2011, when President Obama’s Department of Environmental Research began seeding the ionosphere with reflective crystals that project a small part of the sun’s energy back into space. Sunshine’s diminished brightness was barely noticeable when introduced; now everyone’s grateful for the San Francisco-type weather that has resulted. Plans are to send satellite scrubbers to fine tune crystal concentration by scooping --just before the global climate starts to resemble London’s.

English is the global language, though specialized regional tongues survive for important special purposes, such as cooking (French) or opera (Italian). Everyone can read Arabic, so they can understand the Qur’an.

Constitutional lawyers are working on a revised version of the Equal Rights Amendment that will … Oops … I think I hear the muezzin, gotta get down on my rug now and pray.

And was that a knock on the door?

.

[OmegaNYC]

Obama is the prez? Ha! That will be the day. Jeb in 08 :)

[ablarc]

That will be the day.
It was indeed: Nov. 4, 2008.

[lofter1]

Bitter, Party of One (http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/11/bitter_party_of.html)

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/images/bushbrookskraftcorbisfortime_3.jpg (http://time.blogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/bushbrookskraftcorbisfortime_3.jpg)

Andrew Sullivan
08 Nov 2006

Watching the president's press conference, we have finally gotten to see what happens when George W. Bush is forced to face reality. It wasn't pretty. He was prickly from the word go, defensive, and also revealing. He was trying to say (I think) that he had already decided to fire Rumsfeld last week, even as he was insisting that Rummy would stay for two more years.

So Bush's own spin is that he was lying through his teeth last week. Good to have that confirmed in his own words.

The removal of the increasingly deranged Rumsfeld is, of course, great news. This blog has been calling for such a move for close to two years. Frankly, I doubt it would have happened without what Bush called the "thumping" of last night. But it's a start. If Bush were truly interested in reaching out, he would have picked a Democrat to replace him. I'm not sure what to make of Gates. But Rummy's removal shows we do not have a complete nutcase in the White House. Given recent comments, that's a relief.

(Photo: Brooks Kraft/Corbis for Time.)

[ablarc]

If Bush were truly interested in reaching out, he would have picked a Democrat to replace him.
Or better still, a muslim Democrat.

[ablarc]

Jeb in 08 :)
Is that what you predict or what you hope?

[OmegaNYC]

Is that what you predict or what you hope?

I hope that you will be prez in 08. But if you want me to go with Jeb.......:p

[MidtownGuy]

Jeb Bush wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell.
Neither does Obama. I'd love to think America is ready to elect a Black president, but it just isn't. Maybe by the time the baby boomers all die off.

Anyway the speculation about Obama running is just meaningless blather from the corporate media. What's wrong with him, egging them on with his cryptic and noncommital responses?

[Ninjahedge]

Hillary, Jeb and Obama do not stand a chance.

Just like Billy had nothing to do with Jimmy, his f-ups and disapproval hurt Jimmy's credibility. If GWB does something spectacularly right in the next few months, then maybe Jeb would stand a chance...

Hillary = woman. Regardless of how good she may or may not be, the general public is not ready to elect a woman into the presidency yet.

Obama = Black. It does not matter that he is really a medium tan, he is still a minority and will get scorn from people for no real reason. He will not be able to swing the majority.

McCain? Well, he lost my respect. I think he was crushed by the powers that be into compliance with whatever might have been going on. It is one thing to not be able to speak your mind in a live interview for fear of hurting your parties chances, but he seems to be preaching the wrong sermon nowadays...

SO who is left? Mr Macacca is out.... Anyone else in there that can go on a campaign circuit that is not a "minority" or one that insults them? :crosseyed:

[daver]

De plane! De plane!


Kerry: 'Botched' War Joke Won't Hurt Me

By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer

November 20, 2006, 12:49 AM EST
WASHINGTON -- Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry insisted on Sunday his "botched joke" about President Bush's Iraq policy would not undermine a possible White House campaign in 2008.

"Not in the least," Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, said when asked if the furor over his comment had caused him to reconsider a 2008 race. "The parlor game of who's up, who's down, today or tomorrow, if I listened to that stuff, I would never have won the nomination."

One of the GOP politicians mentioned in a crowded field for the White House, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said he would not make a decision until September -- a relatively late date in the campaign cycle -- to focus in the private sector on trade policies.

"We have lots of time for personal ambition," the Georgia Republican said. "And I think an awful lot of this early energy is wasted, and we ought to be focusing on, you know, how are you going to compete with China and India, how are you going to solve the problem in Iraq?"

Gingrich said Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, both of whom have set up presidential exploratory committees, were the likely GOP front-runners. But Gingrich said voters are yearning for a clearer conservative voice.

"I think Mitt Romney has an opportunity to fill that," Gingrich said, referring to the outgoing Massachusetts governor.

McCain said Giuliani was an "American hero" for his leadership in New York following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But McCain called himself the best presidential candidate based on a "record of being a conservative Republican, of knowledge on national security and defense issues."

McCain, who supports a ban on abortion except in cases of rape, incest and to save a mother's life, said he doubted a constitutional amendment could pass but that one would not be needed because "it's very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should -- could -- overturn Roe v. Wade."

The high court is deciding this term whether to uphold a 2003 federal law banning the procedure opponents call "partial-birth" abortion. It is a case that conservatives hope could be used to reverse the landmark 1973 decision that made abortion a constitutional right.

At least two conservatives, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have called on Roe to be overturned. Legal analysts have said if the court issues an anti-abortion ruling, justices would be more likely to impose restrictions rather than abolish the right.

"I'm a federalist," McCain said. "Just as I believe that the issue of gay marriage should be decided by the states, so do I believe that we would be better off by having Roe v. Wade return to the states. And I don't believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade."

McCain called the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays "very effective." He said he opposed gay marriage, but as to civil unions, "people ought to be able to enter into contracts, exchange powers of attorney, other ways that people who have relationship can enter into."

Meanwhile, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president, said Illinois Sen. Barack Obama should get into the race.

"I hope he runs. I think he should run," Edwards told The Associated Press. "This is such an important job that I would urge anybody who can make a serious contribution to the campaign and the dialogue -- either in our party or the other party -- to run.

Edwards isn't yet willing to commit to another run for president. He said whether Obama -- or any other candidate -- enters the race will have no bearing on his decision to make a second run for president. Edwards sought his party's nomination for the White House in 2004.

Kerry said he would decide early next year whether to run for president.

Shortly before the Nov. 7 elections that brought Democrats back into power in the House and Senate, Kerry retreated from public view following his remark to a college audience that young people might get "stuck in Iraq" if they do not study hard and do their homework.

"This is over. This was a misstatement. All of us make them in life. You wish you could have it back, but you can't," the senator said Sunday.

Kerry said Sunday he had made the decision to keep a low profile after the White House attacked the joke as insulting to U.S. troops and several Democrats called the comment a needless distraction before the pivotal congressional elections.

"Since we had very close races, I made the decision to make certain that I didn't distract. The results speak for themselves," he said.

On running in 2008, Kerry said he had not yet made a decision whether to set up an exploratory committee.

"Right now, my focus will be what happened on election day," he said, citing a need to work toward solutions on Iraq, energy independence and health care. "The American people are waiting for us to lift up an enormous challenge."

Both Kerry and Gingrich appeared on "Fox News Sunday." McCain was on "This Week" on ABC.

* __

Associated Press Writer Mike Baker in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
http://www.amny.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-white-house-2008,0,4677433.story

[MrSpice]

Jeb Bush wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell.
Neither does Obama. I'd love to think America is ready to elect a Black president, but it just isn't. Maybe by the time the baby boomers all die off.

Anyway the speculation about Obama running is just meaningless blather from the corporate media. What's wrong with him, egging them on with his cryptic and noncommital responses?

It would make sense to mention that Obama is not a typical American either. He father was from Kenya and his adopted father was an Indonesian, and he lived in Indonesia with his mother for a feblack w years. He also studied at Columbia and then Harvard Law. Hardly a biography Al Sharpton would find representative of a typical black person. But I think he would be a great candidate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#Early_life_and_career

[Ninjahedge]

I think so too.

But that is one of the reasons he could not win.

I wonder if he could run as VP, hopefully get in, then continue if the Pres is a good one......

[MrSpice]

As of right now, it seems that there are only 3 candidates that have a shot at winning - Rudy, John McCain and Hillary. That can change in 2 years. But if one had to bet now, McCain would be the likely winner because Rudy's social views can doom him once he starts running for real. Just a few commercials with the statements he made so many times when he was a major, and his numbers in the South fill fall like a rock. And Hillary is a controversial politician that many people don't like and will never like. Some of Clienton-era scandals that most people forgot by now will surface and do her quite a bit of damage. So, McCain looks like a winner right now.

[MidtownGuy]

Sadly, I guess I agree. Hillary has a lot of baggage. Rudy as president- oh my gosh that scares the bejeezus out 'a me. The rest of the country knows little of his considerably nasty qualities and inability to play cooperatively. He ran NYC like a dictator, he might have trouble governing that way on a national level, especially if there is a rebellious Congress. On the other hand, if he's prez with a Congress like Bush had, it would be the apocalypse:eek: His brain does not process nuance, and that's dangerous in a POTUS.

[MrSpice]

Sadly, I guess I agree. Hillary has a lot of baggage. Rudy as president- oh my gosh that scares the bejeezus out 'a me. The rest of the country knows little of his considerably nasty qualities and inability to play cooperatively. He ran NYC like a dictator, he might have trouble governing that way on a national level, especially if there is a rebellious Congress. On the other hand, if he's prez with a Congress like Bush had, it would be the apocalypse:eek: His brain does not process nuance, and that's dangerous in a POTUS.

I disagree. I think Rudy is much smarter and much more tolerant on social issues than Bush and his ilk. Rudy has been a brilliant student when he went to law school, he was a great prosecutor and was a very good major who turned the city around. No one is perfect, but governing such a largwe city that because basically "ungovernable" by the time he got in the office is no small task. I did work with the predominately democratic state assembly and city council every day - that's how he got so many things done. There were some unpleasant fights, and I cannot say I agree with some of the positions he took - especially on the first amendment issues. But you're exaggerating his faults and underemphasizing his abilities. I think he would make a very good president. I am just not sure his republican friends and primary voters will accept him with his liberal social views and values.

[pianoman11686]

This is a tough one for me. I really like and respect Rudy, but I think he's still largely unknown as a candidate, unlike someone such as Hillary or McCain. I'd really like to see him step into the spotlight a little more, and in that sense, I think he made a mistake by removing himself from politics following the end of his mayorship.

As someone who hates Bush and a lot of what Republicans stand for, I wouldn't mind voting for Rudy in 2008. I think he's a good leader, and that's an attribute that transcends party lines and middling issues like stem cells and abortion. Somehow, I don't see McCain or Hillary accomplishing the same feat under their terms. Anyway, that's my two Daily Show/Colbert Report-educated cents on politics.

[eddhead]

I may be opening myself up here, but what about Al Gore? I know he takes a lot of guff on the inventing the internet line, but for the record, here is what he actually said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."
Hardly a claim to have invented anything. Typical of Karl Rove's dirty tricks,

The fact is, as a senator he sponsored the legistation that funded the commercialization of the internet, which until that time was nothing more than a closed private network for the scientific community. Say what you will about him but Gore understood the power of the internet as a driver for e-commerce and social change very early on, perhaps earlier than any other mainstream politician. According to Vint Cerf and Robert E. Kahn , " ...there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. " In 2005, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences honored Gore at the Webby Awards for Lifetime Achievement for three decades of contributions to the Internet The fact that he stll gets mocked for his involvement in the internet is more of an indictment on this president and his administrations anti-intellectulist mindset than it is on Gore himself. It also says a lot about the american electorate, who are more suseptible to 15 second sound bites than they are with understanding the truth.

Gore has a lot going for him. He was right on the internet. He was right on Global Warming. He was right on the first gulf war, and he was right on iraq. Under his leadership as Vice President, the federal beauracracy was trimmed and the budget was balanced. It is also worth noting that while he opposed the Vietnam war personally, he enlisted and served in Vietnam. He arguably has the best record of public acheivement of any mainstream US politician. If he can overcome his tendancy to appear so da*m patronizing, and maybe grow a personality, he could be a real formidable candidate

[Borat]

.

[lofter1]

Webb: I Wanted To Slug The Commander-In-Chief… (http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/UndertheDome/112906.html)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thenewswire/archive/ap/commander2.jpg (http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/UndertheDome/112906.html)
AP

[Ninjahedge]

Typical Bush aplomb.

You wonder how many friends he had to buy to get where he is today....

[lofter1]

And how many of them will talk to him once he's out of office.

It could get lonely on that ranch in Crawford http://www.greensmilies.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/smiley_emoticons_frown.gif

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://www.newyorker.com/

COMMENT

IT’S HIS BIPARTY

by Hendrik Hertzberg
Issue of 2006-12-04
Posted 2006-11-27

According to the “Backwards Bush” countdown clock, available on the Web and in key-chain and desk-accessory form at selected novelty and toy stores around the nation, the sitting Administration in Washington will, as of this writing, be in office for another seven hundred and eighty-nine days, five hours, twenty-three minutes, and 36.2 seconds. But, if present trends continue, it’s going to feel like forever. On November 8th, the day after the midterm election, President Bush vowed to “find common ground,” “work with the new Congress in a bipartisan way,” and “overcome the temptation to divide this country between red and blue.” By way of launching “a new era of coöperation,” he announced a personnel change: Donald Rumsfeld was out as Secretary of Defense, to be replaced by Robert Gates, widely viewed as a member of the reality-based community. A day later, on November 9th, Bush had Nancy Pelosi, the incoming Speaker of the House, over for a nice lunch and an Oval Office photo op. “We’ve had a—I would call it a very constructive and very friendly conversation,” the President said, graciously. “We both extended the hand of friendship,” the Speaker-designate replied, graciously. “Thank you all,” the President concluded. Graciously.

While they were having lunch, the White House Press Office dropped the news that the nomination of John R. Bolton “to be the Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, with the rank and status of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,” had been resubmitted to the Senate. The new era of coöperation may or may not be definitively dead, but at the moment it appears to have been not so much an era as a news cycle.

The first time that John R. Bolton’s name was sent up to Capitol Hill, in March of last year, the nomination got nowhere, even though the Senate was in Republican hands. The Administration waited till Congress adjourned and then gave him a recess appointment, which will expire in January. Bolton is by all accounts a clever and energetic fellow, but cleverness is not competence, and energy can amplify vice as readily as virtue. At the U.N., Bolton has earned a reputation—in the not very diplomatic words of sixty-four former American Ambassadors and diplomats who recently signed a letter opposing him—for “egotistical intolerance,” “arrogant actions,” and a “hard-core, go-it-alone posture” that “has alienated the bulk of the diplomatic community and cost the United States its leadership role.” (“With so much at stake, our country cannot afford to permit John Bolton to continue his destructive course during the next two years,” the diplomats wrote.) “He has succeeded in putting almost everyone’s backs up, even among some of America’s closest allies,” last week’s issue of The Economist quotes a “senior Western diplomat” as saying. To put it another way, the man’s resemblance to Yosemite Sam does not end with the mustache.

There is little chance that the lame-duck Senate will confirm Bolton and no chance that the new one will. So the Administration is toying with the idea of giving him another recess appointment (which would enable him to keep the job without drawing the salary) or naming him to a deputy position without filling the top spot (which would enable him to stay on as “acting” Ambassador without the extraordinary and plenipotentiary title). Nor is the renomination of Bolton the only personnel-related sign that Bush’s commitment to comity may have already peaked. On November 14th, the President renominated Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, a former editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest and a close friend of Karl Rove, to be chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which supervises the Voice of America and other government radio and television operations aimed at overseas audiences. Never mind that last summer the State Department’s inspector general found that, among other antics, Tomlinson used his office to support a “horse racing operation” (he owns thoroughbreds), or that a year ago he had to resign from the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after that agency’s inspector general caught him violating rules meant to protect public broadcasting from political meddling. On November 15th, the President renominated four of his hardest-right candidates for the federal courts of appeals: a Defense Department lawyer who has been denounced by a score of retired generals and admirals for his role as an architect of the Administration’s infamous interrogation regime; a former Interior Department attorney and mining and ranching lobbyist who sees the Clean Water Act as “regulatory excess”; a district-court judge whose decisions have been reversed or vacated more than a hundred and fifty times, an astounding record that includes two reversals from the Supreme Court—one of them in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas—in voting-rights cases; and a former aide to Senator Trent Lott who is the first federal-appeals-court nominee in a quarter of a century to be unanimously rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association.

Finally (or maybe not so finally), on November 16th, Bush appointed one Eric Keroack to be the new chief of “population affairs” at the Department of Health and Human Services. In this post, Dr. Keroack, a gynecologist, will oversee what is called Title X, a Nixon-era program that distributes contraceptives to poor or uninsured women. Until recently, he was the medical director of a Christianist pregnancy-counselling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.” One of his odder theories makes him a sort of family-friendly version of General Jack D. Ripper. In Keroack’s case, the precious bodily fluid of concern is the hormone oxytocin, a.k.a. “God’s Super Glue.” Apparently, oxytocin is released during certain enjoyable activities, including hugging, massage, and, of course, sex. It is also, according to Keroack, the fluid that keeps married couples bound to each other. Therefore, if a young woman squanders her supply on too much fooling around, she can forget about ever becoming a committed wife. Keroack’s appointment, unlike the others, does not, alas, require Senate confirmation.

Perhaps what we are seeing is one last White House attempt to reënergize the legendary “base,” after which the new era of coöperation will resume. Or perhaps the President has simply reverted to type. Last week, he found himself in Vietnam, where the United States once fought a big, bloody, disastrous war of choice. In Hanoi, which under its nominally Communist rulers is more vibrantly capitalist than Ho Chi Minh City ever was when it was called Saigon, he was asked if the American experience in Vietnam offered any guidance about Iraq. “One lesson is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while,” he replied, and added, “We’ll succeed unless we quit.” What did he mean? That the peaceable, bustling, unthreatening (if unfree) Vietnam of today represents an American success, made possible by the fact that we didn’t quit until fifty-eight thousand Americans and three million Vietnamese were dead? Or that it represents an American failure, which would have been averted by another decade of war, another fifty-eight thousand, another three million? Who knows? And who knows, really, what this President has been taught by this month’s election? The present President Bush, after all, is a decider of decisions, not a learner of lessons. And he likes to decide that he was right all along.

[lofter1]

So scary ...



... And who knows, really, what this President has been taught by this month’s election?

The present President Bush, after all, is a decider of decisions, not a learner of lessons. And he likes to decide that he was right all along.

Some 780 odd days to go -- and counting ...

[Capn_Birdseye]

Where has American foreign policy been successful since the Marshall Plan at the end of WW2?

[MidtownGuy]

Where can I pick up one of those countdown clocks:confused:

[ablarc]

Where has American foreign policy been successful since the Marshall Plan at the end of WW2?
Reagan's Star Wars brought down the Evil Empire.

[lofter1]

Where can I pick up one of those countdown clocks:confused:

http://www.backwardsbush.com/

The Original "Dumb" Keychain
http://www.backwardsbush.com/images/productshots/OldKeychainLarge.jpg
The NEW "Dumber" Keychain
http://www.backwardsbush.com/images/productshots/NewKeychainLarge.jpg

[Capn_Birdseye]

Reagan's Star Wars brought down the Evil Empire.
... and the Moon is made of cheese .....

[212]

Where has American foreign policy been successful since the Marshall Plan at the end of WW2?

Northern Ireland, 1990s ...

[MidtownGuy]

seriously ablarc! I'm surprised that you subscribe to that old canard!

[ablarc]

The Berlin Wall, and with it ultimately the Soviet Bloc, collapsed in November of 1989, shortly after he left office. Historians have not yet formed a consensus; some consider Reagan the leading architect of the Soviet demise in 1991,[2] while others believe the disintegration was inevitable; Reagan simply hastened the day.[3] --Wikipedia

The use of the phrase "evil empire" by Reagan and U.S. conservatives was intentionally designed to highlight the moral divide of the Cold War, depicting the Soviet Union and its allies as acting in ways that were evil and undermined conventional moral ethos. Some contend that the depiction of the Soviet Union, in the mid to late-1980s, as "evil" marked a turning point in the Cold War, affording the U.S. a moral highground that allowed it to take vastly more aggressive steps to deter and rollback the Soviet Union's significant engagement in global affairs. The term was said often to be inspired by the Galactic Empire in Star Wars which went under the criteria of an oppressive regime that had committed unethical actions. --Wikipedia

[lofter1]

The more troubling question is how long will it take America to recover from the damage caused by the idiocy and incompetence of GWB ...

Washington Post editorials debate
if Bush is worst president ever

rawstory.com (http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Washington_Post_editorials_debate_if_Bush_1203.htm l)
Filed by Ron Brynaert
12/03/2006

Five editorials in Sunday's edition of The Washington Post argue whether or not George W. Bush is the worst president ever.

As Editor & Publisher (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003467728) notes, "The Washington Post editorial page has been a strong backer of the Iraq war from the beginning," and the five editorials "may set off an intriguing debate, pro and con."

In one editorial, Michael Lind, a Whitehead senior fellow at the New America Foundation, argues that it's "unfair" to call Bush the worst, since the policies of presidents James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and James Madison "were even more disastrous."

"By contrast, George W. Bush has inadvertently destroyed only Baghdad, not Washington, and the costs of the Iraq war in blood and treasure are far less than those of Korea and Vietnam," Lind writes.

"He's Only Fifth Worst" by Michael Lind can be read at this link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101475.html).

Rutgers University professor David Greenberg agrees that Bush ranks ahead of Nixon, but adds that "it's conceivable that the consequences of the invasion of Iraq may prove more destructive than those of Nixon's stubborn continuation of the Vietnam War."

"Should those things happen, Bush will be able to lay a claim to the mantle of U.S. history's worst president," Greenberg writes. "For now, though, I'm sticking with Dick."

"At Least He's Not Nixon" by David Greenberg can be read at this link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101506.html).

On the other hand, University of Massachusetts professor Vincent J. Cannato, believes that it's too early to tell, and slams the "left-leaning historical profession" for rushing to judgement.

"Much of Bush's legacy will rest on the future trajectory of the fight against terrorism, the nation's continued security and the evolving direction of the Middle East," Cannato writes. "Things may look grim today, but that doesn't ensure a grim future."

Cannato admits that he "worked briefly as a speechwriter in 2001" for the Bush Administration.

"Time's On His Side" by Vincent J. Cannato can be read at this link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101497.html).

The last two contributors both rank Bush at the bottom.

Columbia University professor Eric Foner notes that although it's "impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050 ... somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors."

"I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history," Foner writes.

"He's The Worst Ever" by Eric Foner can be read at this link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101509.html).

But historian and author Douglas Brinkley isn't ready to commit to Bush being the absolute worst, though he believes that he "has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president."

"Though Bush may be viewed as a laughingstock, he won't have the zero-integrity factors that have kept Nixon and Harding at the bottom in the presidential sweepstakes," Brinley writes.

"Move Over, Hoover" by Douglas Brinkley can be read at this link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101511.html).

[ablarc]

Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces...
Bush can't distinguish steadfastness from stubbornness. Stubbornness is steadfastness combined with bad judgment.

[pianoman11686]

^Or just a lack thereof...

[lofter1]

I just read today's NY Times column by Frank Rich (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/opinion/03rich.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26hp&OP=40e84d3bQ2FQ23Q22k_Q23eQ7EQ20bbeQ23Q24CCQ26Q23h Q24Q23C-Q23bRS7Sb7Q23C-Q20SKrQ7DrelZ) (a TimeSelect column, so can't post it here) ...Has He Started Talking to the Walls?The more President Bush loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.Rich is referring to the last days of the Nixon presidency when reportedly Nixon took to wandering the halls of the White House seeking counsel from the portraits of former Presidents. A sad and sorry spectacle.

I believe that the fool Bush will be scorned by the vast majority of the American people when he leaves office. Once the full scope of the damage that he and his administration have brought upon the country, both politically and financially -- and after more Americans peel the scales from their eyes -- I wouldn't be surprised if he is booed from just about any and every stage upon which he appears.

Businessmen will shun him -- who in their right mind would allow such an idiot near their boardroom? He will have no influence internationally -- and will take his life in his hands -- legally and figuratively -- when he leaves the protective boundaries of the USA.

Impeachment is not something the country needs to go through -- we need to focus on getting things back on track.

But there must be a legal / legislative way to strip from this Bush any and all benefits that are bestowed upon former presidents.

Exile him to his patch of scrub in Texas and let him fend for himself.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Northern Ireland, 1990s ...
Northern Ireland - For a long time America was part of the problem in allowing the IRA to raise funds and buy arms without any hinderance.
The real solution came not from the posturing and PR opportunities exploited by Clinton but by the work undertaken by Bertie Ahern and Blair, coupled with the fact that British Intelligence had penetrated the higher echelons of the IRA. Adams & McGuiness realised their "armed struggle" was up and decided to try the political route which has paid dividends for them to such an extent they now have seats in the Dail, the Irish parliament.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Poll: Iraq Going Badly And Getting Worse

NEW YORK, Dec. 11, 2006(CBS) Americans believe the war in Iraq is going badly and getting worse, and think it's time for the U.S. either to change its strategy or start getting out, according to a CBS News poll.

Forty-three percent say the U.S. should keep fighting, but with new tactics, while 50 percent say the U.S. should begin to end its involvement altogether. Only 4 percent say the U.S. should keep fighting as it is doing now.
(http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/dec06iraq.pdf)Just 21 percent approve of President Bush's handling of the war, the lowest number he's ever received, and an 8-point drop from just a month ago. Most of that drop has been among Republicans and conservatives. Three-quarters of Americans disapprove of how the president is handling Iraq.

BUSH’S JOB HANDLING IRAQ

Now
Approve
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif21%
Disapprove
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif75%

11/14/2006
Approve
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif29%
Disapprove
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif67%

Opposition to the war is now taking on historic proportions, with 62 percent saying it was "a mistake" to send U.S. troops to Iraq — slightly more than told a Gallup Poll in 1973 that it was a mistake to send U.S. forces to Vietnam.

Americans generally agree with the assessment of the Iraq Study Group, which called the situation in Iraq "grave and deteriorating." But fewer than half — 46 percent — think Mr. Bush will seriously consider the bipartisan panel's recommendations; 43 percent think he will not.

Seventy-one percent say the war is going badly, including 39 percent who believe the war is going very badly. Just 25 percent say it's going well. The negative assessment of the war was shared by a majority of Republicans, Democrats and Independents.

Half of all Americans believe the situation in Iraq is getting worse, while fewer than one in 10 think it's getting better.

IS THE SITUATION IN IRAQ…?

Getting better
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif8%
Getting worse
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif52%
Staying the same
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif38%

Only 15 percent of Americans — the lowest number ever — say the U.S. is currently winning the war. And for the first time, a majority (53 percent) believes it's not likely that the U.S. will ultimately succeed.

Sixty percent think that Iraq will never become a stable democracy — the highest number ever — while 85 percent now characterize the situation there as a civil war.

WILL THE U.S. SUCCEED IN IRAQ?

Very likely
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif9%
Somewhat likely
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif34%
Not very/not at all likely
http://www.cbsnews.com/common/images/blue.gif53%

Fifty-seven percent say Mr. Bush needs to make major changes in his Iraq policy, while 29 percent think only minor changes should be made. Just 8 percent think no changes in U.S. policy are needed.

By a 2-1 margin, Americans now say they have more confidence in congressional Democrats to handle the war than in the president.

Nearly six in 10 Americans want to see some kind of a drawdown in U.S. troop levels, including 25 percent who want all U.S. forces removed from Iraq.

Only 39 percent of Americans now say taking military action against Iraq was the right thing to do, tying the lowest number ever, while 55 percent say the U.S. should have stayed out. The country was evenly divided on this question as recently as a year ago.

For detailed information on how CBS News conducts public opinion surveys, click here. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/02/opinion/main299401.shtml)

This poll was conducted among a random sample of 922 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone Dec. 8-10, 2006. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.



©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Complete Poll results (http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/CBSNews_polls/dec06iraq.pdf)

[Eugenious]

When we got out of Vietnam they were saying that we are emboldening the commies and letting the Russians win. Well guess who won the cold war? Same thing in Iraq, these dimwits dont understand what they have done (disturbed a beehive of killer bees who hate eachother) and basically the only thing to do is run away before you get stung.

Today http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12/11/news/top_stories/12010611018.txt

[lofter1]

http://www.harpers.org/art/cartoons/mrfish/GeraldFord_629.jpg

http://www.harpers.org/Cartoon.html#CartoonGeraldFord-20061229

© 2006 Harper's Magazine Foundation

[BrooklynRider]

Well this was the funniest thing iin a while...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUvhC0onpuo