BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 09:03 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/26/alqaeda.book/index.html

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Paul Burke
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:05 AM

Leon Rosselson wrote:

Jumbo the elephant, he wasn't elegant,
and his intelligence was small
But he was a helluva nice sort of elephant,
willing and mild, like a lovable child
Obedient to everyone's call

Jumbo lived in the jingle jangle jungle of a concrete town
He worked clearing debris, hauling girders, heaving timber till the night came down
Never known another home,
he was as happy as he could be
Everyone gave him buns,
petted and petted him playfully

And the mayor, who owned half the town and Jumbo, too
And the mayor, taught him all the things that an elephant should do
And the mayor, when the town turned out for the liberty parade
And the mayor, when the crowd waved flags and the brass bands played
Proud as a cat in his cock-a-doodle hat, the fat mayor sat
-- on the elephant's back
Jumbo, the elephant....

Sunday evenings, all the town folk gathered in the market square
They came to watch the elephant performing all the tricks that he'd been taught by the mayor
He could dance, he could prance, everyone laughing to see the fun
Rhumba-ing, lumbering, keeping the time to the beat of the drum

And the mayor
-- the ways of an elephant were ways he understood
And the mayor
-- gave Jumbo champagne as a treat for being good
And the mayor
-- had the word of command as the great beast bowed
And the mayor
-- mounted like a rajah to the cheers of the crowd
Proud as a cat in his cock-a-doodle hat, the fat mayor sat
-- on the elephant's back

Jumbo the elephant....

Then one Sunday, as the dry winds flickered through the summer heat
The mayor was riding Jumbo, at the head of a procession, through the crowded street
Suddenly, for all to see, Jumbo stopped, heard the mayor call his name
Silently, defiantly, Jumbo was playing another game

And the elephant
-- raised his trunk and trumpeted, shattering the sky
And the elephant
-- the crowd fled in terror as they heard his jungle cry
And the elephant
-- rampaging and trampling through the town
And the elephant
-- "Jumbo!" cried the mayor, as he was hurled to the ground
A tit for a tat, you could hear the bones crack, as the elephant sat
-- On the fat mayor's back

Jumbo the elephant, he wasn't elegant, and his intelligence was small
But he was a helluva nice sort of elephant, till he turned wild, like a violent child
You can't trust an elephant at all

Subject: RE: BS: Doctorow on the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 25 Aug 05 - 05:33 PM

AN important writer speaks on Bush:

Subject: The Unfeeling President
Note: Edgar Lawrence Doctorow occupies a central position in the
history of American literature. He is generally considered to be among
the most talented, ambitious, and admired novelists of the second half
of the twentieth century. Doctorow has received the National Book
Award, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the PEN/Faulkner
Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howell
Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the
residentially conferred National Humanities Medal.


From the East Hampton Star - September 9, 2004

The Unfeeling President

An essay by E.L Doctorow

I fault this president (George W. Bush) for not knowing what death is.
He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to
be what they could be.

On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the
lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what
death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of
necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower
could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for
it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the
WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the
stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd,
smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't
understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a
speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the
brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their
country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an
emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he
has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for
the thousand dead young men and women who wanted be what they could
be.

They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or
wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly
torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance
of aborted life.... They come to his desk as a political liability
which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of
their coffins from Iraq.

How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets
nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as
he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his
bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his
mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than
controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it.

So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have
fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He
had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those
who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war
when it is one of the options, but when it is the only option; you go
not because you want to but because you have to.

This president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer
the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president
and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing --- to
take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of
themselves and their friends. A war will do that as well as anything.
You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent
becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not
contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and
wives and children.

He is the President who does not feel. He does not feel for the
families of the dead; he does not feel for the thirty five million of
us who live in poverty; he does not feel for the forty percent who
cannot afford health insurance; he does not feel for the miners whose
lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of
the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills ---
it is amazing for how many people in this country this President does
not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is
relieving the wealthiest one percent of the population of their tax
burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the
air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing
the safety regulations for coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs,
and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a- half benefits
for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising
them into the professional class.

And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and
the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to
our democracy is choking the life out of it.

But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember
the millions of people here and around the world who marched against
the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneously aroused oversoul of
alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it
happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen
coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time.

But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of
people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of
mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of
democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic
republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its
extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a
concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat
that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who
could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than
pre-emptive war.

The president we get is the country we get. With each president the
nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable
national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of
lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people
he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get
us into, is his characteristic trouble.

Finally the media amplify his character into our moral weather report.
He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail: How can
we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid
and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving,
and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is
a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

E.L. Doctorow

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Aug 05 - 09:18 PM

I'm not sure where to put this...maybe it deserves its own thread

Why I may start taking the anti-evolutionists seriously

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Aug 05 - 12:16 AM

"Don't try to make a monkey out of me, Mr President!" - Chongo Chimp

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 23 Aug 05 - 11:42 PM

"The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country." ....George W. Bush

If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." George W. Bush

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." .Governor George W. Bush

"Welcome to Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts." Governor George W. Bush

"Mars is essentially in the same orbit...Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." .Governor George W. Bush, 8/11/94

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century." Governor George W. Bush, 9/15/95

"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy but that could change." .Governor George W. Bush, 5/22/98

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'." Governor George W. Bush, 12/6/93

"Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things." Governor George W. Bush, 11/30/96

"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." Governor George W. Bush

"The future will be better tomorrow." Governor George W. Bush

"We're going to have the best educated American people in the world." Governor George W. Bush, 9/21/97

"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." Governor George W. Bush

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made." Governor George W. Bush to Sam Donaldson, 8/17/93

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 01:01 PM

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman revisits the criminal malfeasance of the RNC in 2000 and 2004 not in regret but in a spirit of forewarning.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 Aug 05 - 05:34 PM

More from my favorite chile roja, Maureen Dowd:

Biking Toward Nowhere
            
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: August 17, 2005

How could President Bush be cavorting around on a long vacation with American troops struggling with a spiraling crisis in Iraq?

Wasn't he worried that his vacation activities might send a frivolous signal at a time when he had put so many young Americans in harm's way?

"I'm determined that life goes on," Mr. Bush said stubbornly.

That wasn't the son, believe it or not. It was the father - 15 years ago. I was in Kennebunkport then to cover the first President Bush's frenetic attempts to relax while reporters were pressing him about how he could be taking a month to play around when he had started sending American troops to the Persian Gulf only three days before.

On Saturday, the current President Bush was pressed about how he could be taking five weeks to ride bikes and nap and fish and clear brush even though his occupation of Iraq had become a fiasco. "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life," W. said, "to keep a balanced life."

Pressed about how he could ride his bike while refusing to see a grieving mom of a dead soldier who's camped outside his ranch, he added: "So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so."

Ah, the insensitivity of reporters who ask the President Bushes how they can expect to deal with Middle East fighting while they're off fishing.

The first President Bush told us that he kept a telephone in his golf cart and his cigarette boat so he could easily stay on top of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. But at least he seemed worried that he was sending the wrong signal, as his boating and golfing was juxtaposed on the news with footage of the frightened families of troops leaving for the Middle East.

"I just don't like taking questions on serious matters on my vacation," the usually good-natured Bush senior barked at reporters on the golf course. "So I hope you'll understand if I, when I'm recreating, will recreate." His hot-tempered oldest son, who was golfing with his father that day, was even more irritated. "Hey! Hey!" W. snapped at reporters asking questions on the first tee. "Can't you wait until we finish hitting, at least?"

Junior always had his priorities straight.

...

"At long last, a senior Bush official admits that administration officials can no longer cling to their own version of reality. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning," the official told The Washington Post.

They had better start absorbing and shedding a lot faster, before many more American kids die to create a pawn of Iran. And they had better tell the Boy in the Bubble, who continues to dwell in delusion, hailing the fights and delays on the Iraqi constitution as "a tribute to democracy."

The president's pedaling as fast as he can, but he's going nowhere. "

---

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Aug 05 - 10:43 PM

From this web site, the following concerned citizen's remarks:

BUSH A COWARD

Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2005-08-15 17:00.
Niagara Falls Reporter

The President of the United States, who lacked the courage to serve his country during the Vietnam War, has once again shown his cowardice. Scores of brave American soldiers have given their lives since he went on vacation a couple of weeks ago. And yet, when the mother of one of our war dead -- Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed awhile back in Sadr City -- showed up at his Texas ranch asking to speak to him, he didn't even have the cojones to ask her in for a cup of coffee.

Instead, he had Karl Rove contact the Drudge Report and other sleazy news outlets across the land with a couple of comments Mrs. Sheehan made to her hometown paper in Vacaville, Calif., shortly after her son's death. Taken out of context, the quotes make her look like she spoke in favor of Bush and his dirty little war. On reading the full interview, however, it is clear that, from the beginning, she thought her son had died for nothing and was -- as we all might in such a situation -- just trying to be polite to the president.

What a coward. What a pathetic excuse for a man. To refuse to meet with, and then attempt to slime, a Gold Star Mother. It's inexcusable. In fact, it's beyond inexcusable.

The moral high ground in this, of course, belongs to Cindy Sheehan and the other mothers of dead soldiers who have joined her on her vigil down in Texas. It clearly does not belong to George W. Bush, who shirked his military commitment at a time when "wimps" like Al Gore and John Kerry were getting shot at in Southeast Asia.

Mrs. Sheehan, a Catholic youth minister for eight years, says the war is unjust, immoral and was predicated on a pack of lies emanating from the Bush administration. She is, of course, correct. No evidence has been produced to show a link between the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against the United States and the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the question of whether the Iraqis were in possession of weapons of mass destruction was resolved a couple of years ago.

They weren't, by the way, despite Colin Powell's masterful deception at the United Nations.

Our president is a coward who lied us into a war we can't possibly win. The blood of more than 1,850 American soldiers, 195 allied troops and at least 25,000 Iraqis is on his hands.

As the writer Juan Cole noted recently, "The war in Iraq is over, and the winner is ... Iran."

Niagara Falls Reporter
www.niagarafallsreporter.com
Aug. 16 2005

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Aug 05 - 10:06 PM

Well, well, well...

No cut and paste here, folks 'cause Iz here to tell ya what really going down with Bush...

Yeah, okay, the Wsahington Post today reported that Bush had beaten all the reporters in a bike race... Accordin' to my sources the reporters were are ordered to tank the race 'er be shot!!! Yep, according to sources within the administartion, sharpshooters from the Texas National Rifle Association had been brought in, deputized, and told to take out any commir reporter to pass Bush on a bike....

What else? Oh yeah, what is it with these Repubs... They are on a spending spree that makes anything that the liberals have ever dreamed of look like chump change... Yeah, in the last two weeks the Repubs have spread enough pork around toheir own states that would drown most kids under 3 foot tall but don't worry, the Federal Emergency Managemnt Agency (FEMA) has the pork flood on it's radar screen and is ready to jump in any time and pull out the little 'un's...

What else? Oh yeah, the Bush folks today have conceeded that the war in Iraq is lost... Well they didn't actually say that but is admitting that they perhaps has misfigurated the possibilities of actually setting up a democracy in Iraq was not gonna happen the US is now faced with no real reason to saty in Iraq... Yeah, Bush supporters will cintinue to say "Stay the course" but not that the administartion has sent out the message that the course is not reasonable, it would appear that these folks can go home now....

What else? Hmmmmmm? What if I told you that it is foriegn investors who are buying the mortgages of folks buying homes in America and that the housing industry is emplying over 2 million folks??? Would that be of any concern??? Well, it should because that is the situation... This so-called "recovery" is based soley on Americans taking on debt to buy bigger houses??? And Chines and Europeans are bankrollin' this splurge.... This ain't a recovery but a a big ol' fashion short-sheetin'.... When the bubble bursts so will Bush's so called legacy.. You can only hold the credit card out but so long befire the sales clerk says' "Sorry, but yer card has been denied"....

What else? Well, there are plenty... "No Child Left Behind" which is probably the cornerstone of what some might argue is a Bush success is on the rocks.. It's driving local school communities to turn down federal funds becuase the standards are too regid... Like, exactky why should kids with learning disabilities be expected to read on the same level as other kids their age??? These kids never have, never will yet Bush is perfectly willing to cut funding to schools that can't get their most challenges students up to reading at grade level??? Hey, these schools don't need Bush, they need Oral Roberts....

What else? Hey, I'm not sure that there are any Bushites left readin' this thread but I'd bee more than happy to take on an issue where you feel Bush is doing well...

Hey, don't matter which one 'cause I discovered a long time ago that when you come into office with screwed up thinking you ain't going go nowhere but more screwed up thinking...

What really pisses me off is that I mail a lot of money to these screw-ups and I am beginning to really resent ehir ineptitudeness... If I were their boss, I'd fire 'um all and start from scratch...

BObert

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Aug 05 - 10:25 AM

Social Security Lessons
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By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 15, 2005

Social Security turned 70 yesterday. And to almost everyone's surprise, the nation's most successful government program is still intact.

Just a few months ago the conventional wisdom was that President Bush would get his way on Social Security. Instead, Mr. Bush's privatization drive flopped so badly that the topic has almost disappeared from national discussion.

But I'd like to revisit Social Security for a moment, because it's important to remember what Mr. Bush tried to get away with.

Many pundits and editorial boards still give Mr. Bush credit for trying to "reform" Social Security. In fact, Mr. Bush came to bury Social Security, not to save it. Over time, the Bush plan would have transformed Social Security from a social insurance program into a mutual fund, with nothing except a name in common with the system F.D.R. created.

In addition to misrepresenting his goals, Mr. Bush repeatedly lied about the current system. Oh, I'm sorry - was that a rude thing to say? Still, the fact is that Mr. Bush repeatedly said things that were demonstrably false and that his staff must have known were false. The falsehoods ranged from his claim that Social Security is unfair to African-Americans to his claim that "waiting just one year adds $600 billion to the cost of fixing Social Security."

Meanwhile, the administration politicized the Social Security Administration and used taxpayer money to promote a partisan agenda. Social Security officials participated in what were in effect taxpayer- financed political rallies, from which skeptical members of the public were excluded.

I'm writing about this in the past tense, but some of it is still going on. Last week Jo Anne Barnhart, the commissioner of Social Security, published an op-ed article claiming that Social Security as we know it was designed for a society in which people didn't live long enough to collect a lot of benefits. "The number of older Americans living now," wrote Ms. Barnhart, "is greater than anyone could have imagined in 1935."

Now, it turns out that an article on the Social Security Administration's Web site, "Life Expectancy for Social Security," specifically rejects the idea the Social Security was originally "designed in such a way that few people would collect the benefits," and the related idea that the system faces problems from "a supposed dramatic increase in life expectancy in recent years."

And the current number of older Americans as a share of the population is just about what the founders of Social Security expected. The 1934 report of F.D.R.'s Commission on Economic Security, which laid the groundwork for the Social Security Act, projected that 12.7 percent of Americans would be 65 or older by the year 2000. The actual number was 12.4 percent.

Despite Ms. Barnhart's efforts, however, privatization seems to be dead for the time being. The Democratic leadership in Congress defied the punditocracy - which was very much in favor of privatization - by refusing to cave in, and the American people made it clear that they like Social Security the way it is.

But the campaign for privatization provided an object lesson in how the administration sells its policies: by misrepresenting its goals, lying about the facts and abusing its control of government agencies. These were the same tactics used to sell both tax cuts and the Iraq war.

...


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 05 - 10:51 PM

"The thing I hate fourth-worst about the Bush regime—after the way they're screwing up the country, dishonoring the flag, and making the world a more dangerous place—is all the ammunition they supply the tin-hat brigade," writes UCLA professor Mark A.R. Kleiman, who thinks the Abramoff scandal belongs in a spy novel. "How am I supposed to convince my students not to believe in elaborate wicked conspiracies when we've got an elaborate wicked conspiracy running the damned country?"

from Slate.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 05 - 01:36 PM

I am pleased to report that Maureen Dowd, the spicy red-headed NY Times columnist, is back on her station livening up the Old Gray Lady.

"W. can't get no satisfaction on Iraq.

There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a president who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed.
...
A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here?

Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.

And the Rolling Stones have taken a rare break from sex odes to record an antiwar song called "Sweet Neo Con," chiding Condi Rice and Mr. Bush. "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite," Mick Jagger sings.

The N.F.L. put out a press release on Monday announcing that it's teaming up with the Stones and ABC to promote "Monday Night Football." The flag-waving N.F.L. could still back out if there's pressure, but the mood seems to have shifted since Madonna chickened out of showing an antiwar music video in 2003. The White House used to be able to tamp down criticism by saying it hurt our troops, but more people are asking the White House to explain how it plans to stop our troops from getting hurt.

Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R., says she will camp out in the dusty heat near the ranch until she gets to tell Mr. Bush face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in a Sadr City ambush last year.

The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.

The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?

W.'s idea of consolation was to dispatch Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, to talk to Ms. Sheehan, underscoring the inhumane humanitarianism of his foreign policy. Mr. Hadley is just a suit, one of the hard-line Unsweet Neo Cons who helped hype America into this war.

It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.

Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.

Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.

But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute. "

Get it said, Maureen!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 05:02 PM

From the Lone Star Iconoclast:

...By Nathan Diebenow
Associate Editor

CRAWFORD — The mother of a U.S. soldier slain in Iraq was denied a face-to-face meeting with President Bush here Saturday after she walked through a ditch-like path in the August heat to the President's Prairie Chapel Ranch.
"I didn't come all this way from California to stand here in a ditch," said Cindy Sheehan, 48, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, attempting to continue her trek to the ranch.
Even though two of the President's aides later agreed to deliver her message to him, Sheehan said that she would remain in Crawford for the whole month, if need be, until she is granted a private audience with the commander-in-chief to ask him for what "noble cause" did her son die overseas.
"If he doesn't come out to talk to me in Crawford, I'll follow him to D.C., and I'll camp out on his lawn," she said, to a round of applause from her supporters. "I'll go to prison. I don't want to live in a country where people are treated this way."
Sheehan's actions, she said, were sparked by President Bush's comments like those made last Wednesday in Grapevine to about 1,800 members of the American Legislative Exchange Council: "Our men and women who've lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and in this war on terror have died in a noble cause and a selfless cause."
"We all know by now that that's not true, and I want to ask George Bush, 'Why did my son die? What was the noble cause that he died for?'" said Sheehan. "I don't want [President Bush] to use my son's name or my family name to justify any more killing or to exploit my son's name, my son's sacrifice, or my son's honor to justify more killing. As a mother, why would I want one more mother to go through what I'm going through, Iraqi or American?
"And I want to tell him that the only way to honor my son's sacrifice is to bring the troops home now."
Her son, Casey Sheehan, 24, of Vacaville, Calif., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on April 4, 2004, when his unit was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
Bush's comments Wednesday coincided with the deaths of 12 Marine reservists from Ohio who were killed in perhaps the deadliest roadside bombing of U.S. troops in Iraq. So far, the lives of about 1,821 Americans in uniform have been taken since the 2003 invasion. Pollsters indicate that Bush's approval ratings are declining in relation to the rise in U.S. casualties in Iraq.
Sheehan, joining anti-war activists at the Crawford Peace House, arrived with a busload of veterans from the Veterans for Peace convention which was held in Irving, near Dallas, since Thursday. The total group of activists there numbered over 50 and included members of Veteran's for Peace (VFP), Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), CodePink, and the Crawford Peace House.
Vietnam veteran Jim Waters, not affliated with any activist group, said that he drove overnight from Lubbock alone in support of Sheehan and the Gold Star Families for Peace because he is "very concerned" about the war in Iraq and wants to ask President Bush, "Why aren't his daughters there?"
"One of the principles of leadership is you don't ask people to do what you yourself don't have the courage to do, and [President Bush] is asking people to fight to their deaths when he himself and most of the architects of this war never served," said Waters, a retired Navy commander and former hospital administrator. "[President Bush] served, but he jumped over 10,000 people to get into the National Guard Champagne Unit, so he could avoid duty in Vietnam. I had to go to Vietnam, and now he's sending them to their deaths — over 1,800 so far.
"I'm sick and tired of what's happening to our country," he continued. "To me it's almost like the White House operation is a mob operation. These guys are scary, and they're dangerous, in my opinion."
The demonstrators gathered around one side of Sheehan as she spoke with the news media. A World War II veteran, Archie Goodwin from Naples, Fla., carrying a sign, stated away from the group that he is for peace, but "Bush isn't." His sign read, "Somebody lied."
Sheehan was accompanied on Saturday by her sister, Dede Miller, and Amy Ranham, another mother of a slain U.S. soldier. Among her fellow supporters present were Ann Wright, a former U.S. diplomat who resigned her post in March 2003 in protest of the invasion of Iraq; Camilo Mejia, a reservist in the Florida National Guard who became a consciousness objector upon returning from service in Iraq; and Persian Gulf War Veteran Dennis Kyne, a former battlefield medic who is outspoken on the effects of depleted uranium weapons.
Captain Kenneth Vanek of the McLennan County Sherriff's Department agreed to lead the caravan of anti-war demonstrators to the Bush Ranch. "As long as y'all work with us, we'll work with y'all," he said.
The situation, however, turned less friendly as the afternoon progressed.
At a checkpoint, the demonstrators, on orders from the peace officers, exited their vehicles about eight miles from the ranch and were told to walk in the direction of the ranch on the shoulder of the road, not the roadway itself, so as to not impede the traffic. The conditions of the shoulder made it increasingly difficult for the demonstrators to walk. Five-to-10-feet wide, the shoulder was sloped inward ditch-like to two-to-three feet in some places and lined with dry, uncut grass and damp dirt.
The deputies finally ordered the demonstrators to halt miles from the ranch because the group had not agreed to its side of the "bargain" by walking on the roadway. "The media is allowed on the road, so why aren't we?" asked one of the demonstrators, to which an officer of the Sheriff's Department replied, "Because they were following you."
Sheehan, making one last attempt to push forward, said, "In the name of 1,828 soldiers that should be alive, I'm going to see the president. He killed my son."
Holding signs that said, "No more blood for oil," "Support our troops, bring them home now," "Iraq is Arabic for Viet Nam," and "Frodo failed. Bush has the ring," the demonstrators then chanted, "W. killed her son. W. killed her son."
This first attempt to meet the President ended up futile. Members of the group, including Sheehan, exchanged a few heated words with the Sherriff's deputies, Secret Service agents, and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers who kept their composure through the afternoon. There were no arrests made during the demonstration.
Other political slogans and chants were heard, including one from Hadi Jawad of the Crawford Peace House who urged the news media keep reporting on the Downing Street memos. These documents are a series of classified, British reports made during a planning session between British and American officials over Iraq months before its invasion. The British officials note in the memos that the United States was "fixing" evidence around the administration's policy to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Sheehan, after the mainsteam media had left to file their reports, said, "This is the beginning of the end of the occupation of Iraq." A wild round of applause followed.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said in response to Sheehan's actions that President Bush also wants the troops to return home safely but their mission must be completed in their honor. Two aides to the President, national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin, later met with Sheehan to say that the president cares, but she, though appreciative, said in a message through The Iconoclast to the President, "George Bush, if you really care about me, why aren't you meeting with me?"
Sheehan, an opponent of the war in Iraq since its inception, took part in a meeting with other military families and Bush in June 2004 at Fort Lewis, near Seattle, Wash. This occured two months after her son was killed in Iraq. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, she said that during her first meeting with President Bush, she felt that the President seemed more jovial than sorrowful and expressed no interest in knowing the name of her son or seeing pictures of him.
Sheehan intends to continue to attempt to gain an audience with President Bush. "I'm filled with hope now, too, that we might be able to turn things around," she said, noting that additional support is on its way from throughout the country as she continues her efforts, which will include a candlelight vigil. Caravans from Louisiana and San Diego are on the way, to name a couple, she said.
Before her first attempt to speak to President Bush in Crawford, Sheehan met with two victims of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing, Dr. Satoru Konishi and ex-Marine Paul Ritthaler, and Ritthaler's wife, Betty. A press conference was held at the Peace House on the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 06:01 PM

In the Los Angeles Times an intersting assessment of Mister Bush's mind-set, or lack thereof.

An excerpt:

When asked about Palmeiro's positive steroid test, Bush — who knew Palmeiro when the president owned the Rangers — replied, "Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him. He's the kind of person that's going to stand up in front of the Klieg lights and say he didn't use steroids, and I believe him."

This statement perfectly crystallizes Bush's thinking. Facts don't matter to him. What matters is how he feels about the person in question. In 2001, for instance, Bush met with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, and the two hit it off. As Bush later told Peggy Noonan, Putin recounted to him a story involving a cross given to him by his mother.

"I said to him, 'You know, I found that story very interesting. You see, President Putin, I think you judge a person on something other than just politics. I think it's important for me and for you to look for the depth of a person's soul and character. I was touched by the fact your mother gave you the cross.' " Bush publicly testified of Putin, "I was able to get a sense of his soul."

Personally, I put less weight on the fact that Putin got a cross from his mother, and more on the fact that Putin has smothered Russian democracy by outlawing opposition parties, shut down any remotely skeptical media outlet and subjected his critics to political show trials. Yet this sort of evidence has had barely any effect on Bush. Two years later, he was still praising Putin's desire for "a country in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive."

Bush is even apt to apply this particular brand of illogic to his own character. In one of the 2000 presidential debates, Al Gore pointed out that Bush as governor of Texas opposed a measure to expand children's healthcare and instead used the money for a tax cut. The debate moderator then asked Bush, "Are those numbers correct? Are his charges correct?" To which Bush replied, "If he's trying to allege that I'm a hardhearted person and I don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong."

The style of Bush's reply is telling. Gore was trying to make a point about Bush's moral priorities by establishing a series of facts about Bush's behavior. Rather than deny having chosen tax cuts over children's healthcare, or explain his rationale for having done so, Bush changed the subject to more comfortable ground: judging people's hearts. He asked the audience to intuit, based on the way he carries himself, that he is a warmhearted person, and thus to reject out of hand any facts that might clash with this impression.

The point isn't just that Bush refuses to engage with facts he finds inconvenient. (Many fail that test.) It's that Bush rejects reason itself. Reason is a process by which we draw our broader conclusions from an accumulation of specific evidence. When the evidence changes ("Hey, this Putin guy seems to be squelching dissent"), our conclusions can also ("Perhaps he doesn't love democracy as much as he said he did!"). Bush, on the other hand, arrives at his beliefs through intuition. His supporters marvel at the unshakeable certainty of his convictions. Well, no wonder."

---

Just in case you thought it was just me! :)

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 08:16 PM

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A civil-liberties board ordered by the U.S. Congress last year has never met to discuss its job of protecting rights in the fight against terrorism, and critics say it is a toothless, underfunded shell with inadequate support from President Bush.

Lawmakers including some Republicans, civil-rights advocates, a member of the Sept. 11 Commission and a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board have expressed concerns.

Lanny Davis, the only prominent liberal among the five people Bush nominated after a six-month delay, said he had not received a call from anyone related to the board since it was formally announced in June. Davis said he could not comment on specifics because the members had not yet met.

All four other panel members declined to comment.

The inactivity comes at a time when Congress is nearing reauthorization of several provisions of the Patriot Act, a controversial law that gave the government new powers to go after suspected terrorists.

Asked why it was taking so long to set the board up, Connecticut Republican Rep. Christopher Shays charged, "It's not a priority for the administration."

The intelligence reform law of December 2004 called for the oversight board in response to a recommendation from the Sept. 11 Commission, which feared increased governmental powers needed to fight terrorism could erode civil liberties.

Top White House officials have said the board would address those concerns, and get the resources needed to do the job.

But almost eight months after its inception, the critics say the panel still only exists on paper, and lacks the money, power and presidential backing to ensure the entire government respects Americans' rights.

The Bush-appointed panel "is a very watered-down board without the kinds of powers which I believe are necessary to provide credibility and authority, such as independent subpoena power ... and a bipartisan process in selection," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Sept. 11 commissioner.

WATCHDOG

"We don't think the board serves as a credible watchdog," said Tim Edgar, national security policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

One frequent complaint concerns the board's budget. Bush requested $750,000, which Congress doubled to $1.5 million.

The Department of Homeland Security's privacy office, with a similar mission limited to that department, alone has a roughly $13 million budget, said Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.

"I don't think you can do it for a million and a half," Shays said.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Aug 05 - 12:31 AM

The NY Times on Bully-Boy Bolton's Bypass Appointment:

"Mr. Bolton was sworn into office shortly after the announcement and by Monday afternoon had arrived in New York, where he was booed on the sidewalk outside the United States Mission.

Secretary General Kofi Annan welcomed Mr. Bolton, but told reporters that the new ambassador should consult with others as the administration continued to press for changes at the United Nations.

"I think it is all right for one ambassador to come and push, but an ambassador always has to remember that there are 190 others who will have to be convinced - or a vast majority of them - for action to take place," Mr. Annan said.

Mr. Bolton begins the job as the administration is threatening to take Iran to the Security Council to seek punishment if Tehran moves forward with its nuclear program.

Mr. Bolton, the former under secretary of state for arms control, took a hard line against nuclear proliferation by nations including Iran and North Korea, but administration officials have said that in his new job he would carry out the views of Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice and not make his own policy.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, characterized Mr. Bush's move as "the latest abuse of power by the Bush White House," while another Democrat, Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey, said in a statement that "even while the president preaches democracy around the world, he bends the rules and circumvents the will of Congress" at home."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 11:03 PM

"Bush backs teaching intelligent design

By Ron Hutcheson
Inquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - President Bush waded into the debate over evolution and
intelligent design yesterday, saying schools should teach both theories
on the creation and complexity of life.

In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with a small group of
reporters, Bush essentially endorsed efforts by Christian conservatives
to give intelligent design equal standing with the theory of evolution
in the nation's schools.

Bush declined to state his personal views on intelligent design, the
belief that life-forms are so complex that their creation cannot be
explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory alone, but rather points to
intentional creation, presumably divine.

The theory of evolution, as articulated by British naturalist Charles
Darwin in 1859, is based on the idea that life organisms developed over
time through random mutations and factors in nature that favored certain
traits that helped species survive.

Scientists concede that evolution does not answer every question about
the creation of life, but most consider intelligent design an attempt to
inject religion into science courses.

Bush compared the current debate to earlier disputes over creationism, a
related view that adheres more closely to biblical explanations. As
governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both
creationism and evolution.

Yesterday, the President said he favored the same approach for
intelligent design, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

The Kansas Board of Education is considering changes to encourage the
teaching of intelligent design in Kansas schools, and Christian
conservatives are pushing for similar changes in other school districts
across the country.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools
of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to
be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.""

---

Now kids, in science class here we revere Galileo for determining the diameter of the earth by consulting the actual visual experience of the world, and measuring the shadows on the moon -- a classic example of the best scientific method for discovering new things, such as the roundness of the Earth.

At the same time, there are equally strongly held views that this is all a sham, and that any fool can see the earth is flat just by standing at one edge of a cornfield in Missouri and looking for himself. We are obliged by law to present you with both hypotheses. AFter all, they are just theories.

You must decide these things for yourself; that's the American way...."

Dear God, preserve us from such fools...


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 10:59 PM

From a more compassionate viewpoint toward Fr. Bush:

"We've got the hatemongers who literally hate this president, and that
is so wrong. . . . The people who hate George Bush hate him because he's
a follower of Jesus Christ, unashamedly says so and applies his faith in
his day-to-day operations." -- Rev. Jerry Falwell, on C-SPAN's
"Washington Journal"

---

Oh...wading into an unnecessary war, draining the Treasury of billions, exercising political favoritism independent of merit...no-one hates him for those things? Causing hundreds of unneeded deaths, undermining the American constitution, ruining our international repute -- these don't count? Imposing narrow-minded and short-sighted moralisms on American citizenry at every turn -- no-one hates him for that?

I am SO glad we have Jerry Falwell to clarify our thinking on these matters.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Blind DRunk in Blind River
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 07:03 PM

Man...you know my flippin' life from, like, A to Z don't you?

Don't bother, eh? I will start the flippin' thread myself.

- BDiBR

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 06:59 PM

Tell ya what, ya flipping hoser -- I'll start a thread for you personally called "Popular Views of Great White North Hoseheads", eh? Then we can put posts about how you scratch your ass in every bar in town, chase broken down skirt and live on back-bacon and unfiltered smokes and beer, eh? Make ya feel better? Eh? Eh? EH?


:D

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST,Blind DRunk in Blind River
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 06:43 PM

Okay. I got to wonderin' about this flippin' thread, eh? Its' really long. so what the flip is it all about?

Flipped if I know! I guess maybe its' politicall, eh?

Flippin' boring if ya ask me.

Why ain't there nothin' about beer in this thread? Or sex?

Well, I guess I am outta here.

I will check back in a month and see if it has got any better, okay?

- BDiBR

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 03:20 PM

What's to love, DR? The man is a despicable ignoramus and a despot.

He might be more suitable for the job of ruining HAiti.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: DougR
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 03:11 PM

Right, Amos, good old non-biased Garrison! He loves Bush, doesn't he? :>)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 05 - 12:48 AM

Ambassador Bolton
(NY Times)
Published: August 2, 2005
If there's a positive side to President Bush's appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, it's that as long as Mr. Bolton is in New York, he will not be wreaking diplomatic havoc anywhere else. Talks with North Korea, for instance, have been looking more productive since Mr. Bolton left the State Department, and it's hard not to think that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's generally positive performance in office is due, in part, to her canniness in dispatching Mr. Bolton out of Washington.


But the appointment is, of course, terrible news for the United Nations, whose diplomats have heard weeks of Senate testimony about Mr. Bolton's lack of respect for their institution and his deeply undiplomatic, bullying style of doing business. Senator George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican who became one of Mr. Bolton's strongest critics, said yesterday that he planned to send the new ambassador a book on how to be an effective manager. It couldn't hurt, but this may be the first time a world superpower has used its top United Nations post as a spot for the remedial training of a troublesome government employee.

Mr. Bush had been unable to get Mr. Bolton's nomination confirmed by the Senate, so he waited until Congress left town and used his constitutional power to make recess appointments. This is a perfectly legal tactic, though one that has seldom been used to fill this kind of position. A recess appointment is particularly dicey for a major diplomatic post, where a good nominee should carry an aura of personal gravitas and legitimacy.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 12:10 AM

From Bob Herbert at the NY Times:

Oil and Blood




By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 28, 2005
It is now generally understood that the U.S.-led war in Iraq has become a debacle. Nevertheless, Iraqis are supposed to have their constitution ratified and a permanent government elected by the end of the year. It's a logical escape hatch for George W. Bush. He could declare victory, as a senator once suggested to Lyndon Johnson in the early years of Vietnam, and bring the troops home as quickly as possible.


His mantra would be: There's a government in place. We won. We're out of there.

But don't count on it. The Bush administration has no plans to bring the troops home from this misguided war, which has taken a fearful toll in lives and injuries while at the same time weakening the military, damaging the international reputation of the United States, serving as a world-class recruiting tool for terrorist groups and blowing a hole the size of Baghdad in Washington's budget.

A wiser leader would begin to cut some of these losses. But the whole point of this war, it seems, was to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq to ensure American domination of the Middle East and its precious oil reserves, which have been described, the author Daniel Yergin tells us, as "the greatest single prize in all history."

You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and one of President Bush's favorites, the need to fight the terrorists "over there" so we won't have to fight them here at home.

All the rationales have to genuflect before "The Prize," which was the title of Mr. Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.

It's the oil, stupid. ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jul 05 - 12:09 AM

NEw York Times:
Published: July 28, 2005

The energy bill that has been six years in the making and is nearing the president's desk is not the unrelieved disaster some environmentalists make it out to be. But to say, as President Bush undoubtedly will, that it will swiftly move this country to a cleaner, more secure energy future is nonsense. The bill, approved by a House-Senate conference early Tuesday morning, does not take the bold steps necessary to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, and it also fails to address the looming problem of global warming.


These shortcomings are chiefly the fault of the White House and its retainers in the House. To be sure, the Senate showed no more courage than the House in its refusal to increase fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks, even though higher standards, by common consent, are the easiest, quickest and most technologically feasible way to reduce oil demand and cut foreign imports.

But the Senate did approve a renewable fuels provision requiring power plants to produce 10 percent of their electricity from nontraditional sources, like wind power, by 2010. It also approved a provision that would ask the president to reduce domestic oil consumption by one million barrels a day by whatever means he chose. The House conferees rejected both proposals.

Meanwhile, both houses conspired in some spectacular giveaways. One would ease environmental restrictions on oil and gas companies drilling on public lands. The other would shower billions in undeserved tax breaks on the same companies, even as they wallow in the windfall profits produced by $60-a-barrel oil. ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 08:37 PM

From a correspondent:

very interesting article in the Economist (subscription required,
but recently syndicated in a bunch of other papers, so may be
elsewhere on the web):

http://tinyurl.com/a73bt points to the economist story, which opens:

ON JULY 19th, IraqBodyCount, a group of academics who are attempting
to monitor the casualties of the conflict in that country, published
a report suggesting that almost 25,000 civilians have been killed in
it so far. In other words, 34 a day. But that is an average. on some
days the total is lower, and some higher -- occasionally much higher.

It is this variation around the mean that interests Dr. Neil Johnson
of the University of Oxford and Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway
College, London. They think it is possible to trace and model the
development of wars from the patterns of casualties they throw up.

The groundwork for this sort of study was laid by Lewis Fry
Richardson, a British physicist, with a paper on the mathematics of
war that was published in 1948....

The outcome was startling: rather than varying wildly or
chaotically, the probability of individual wars having particular
numbers of casualties followed a mathematical relationship known as a
power law....

Terrorist attacks within G7 countries could be distinguished from
those inside non-G7 countries by their different indices....

_______________

Meanwhile, there's a related story on Nature: http://www.nature.com/>
news/2005/050711/full/050711-5.html

Net, net: the war in Iraq is approaching the same pattern as the
long-running war in Colombia.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: DougR
Date: 22 Jul 05 - 07:55 PM

Ebbie: sorry to be so late in replying to your question of July 3. My wife have been tooling around in your home state and just returned. Incidentially, I saw the Wal-Mart store in Fairbanks and immediately thought of my Mudcat friends.

If Karl Rove OR GWB committed a crime, either should be punished to the full extent of the law. I don't believe it has been proven, however, that either have done so. Just the opinion of lots'a lefties.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jul 05 - 06:57 PM

From a correspondent with military background:

Utter nonsense. I know something about war - several of them matter of
fact, over 55 years worth, from up close and personal to the highest levels
of government during the Vietnam War after all the mistakes had been made.
The main reason this is dragging on is for the same reason the US gave up
after 10 years in the Vietnam War - both Secretaries of Defense - McNamara,
from the left, and Rumsfeld, from the right both tried to personally
micromanage their wars, and the preparation for them, as 'civilian control'
freaks, who neither listened to nor followed the advice they were given by
competant military professionals. McNamara and the civilian hot shots in
the basement of the White House imposed their pet 'escalation' theories on
the Vietnam War - to include picking individual targets for Air Force
bombing over North Vietnam, or, ala McNamara tried to use his pet 'cost
effectiveness' theories that worked at Ford to fight a classic Maoist three
stage War of National Liberation. He never understood the nature of that
War. So he sent B-52s to surpress political revolutionionaries. Any good
Special Forces Colonel - who understood how to fight politico- military
Revolutionary opponents could have done a better job.. And Rumsfeld utterly
ignored the military advice he was given before the invasion, about the
troop strength and combinations that would be needed, not just to knock off
Saddam Hussain's Conventional Paper Tiger troops, but far more importantly
what it would take to pacify, control and poltiically reconstruct the
country, after the conventional fighting was over and the regime overrun,
a nation of 25 million spread out larger than California. He refused to
let Colin Powell as Secretary of State - who knows something about war,
and insurgencies professionally - to take over the post combat
'reconstruction' phase of the war, as the State Department tradionally can
do, and better than military in the wake of conventional military
overthrow of local to national government. JUST as we did suceessfully in
Germany and Italy during the 'occupation' . Rumsfeld STILL does not, nor do
most of his neocon hot shots from the Right, understand the Iraq War or
what it will take to succeed at our national objectives, which are NOT
primarily military.

George Bush senior, who understood from his lowly Navy Pilot experience how
chains of command are supposed to operate and how to delegate, gave his
Military Commander, Schwartkopf, via his Chairman of the JCS, Powell their
political-mission orders in Desert Storm, and did NOT micromanage them and
didn't let Cheney do it either. He knew, like Lincoln did, how to pick
commanders, delegate, expect performance and replace commanders who
couldn't perform.

The problem is at the top, not in the field.

(Name witheld)

Subject: POTUS Position to be Out-sourced
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jul 05 - 10:12 AM

Outsourcing the President's job to India Washington D.C. - Associated Press,
8:27 a.m.

Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States
of America will be outsourced to overseas interests as of June 30th.

The move is being made to save not only a significant portion of the
President's $400K yearly salary, but also a record $521 billion in deficit
expenditures and related overhead.

"We believe this is a wise move financially. The cost savings should be
significant," stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-Wash.). Reynolds, wit
the aid of the Government Accountability Office, has studied outsourcing of
American jobs extensively. "We cannot expect to remain competitive on the
world stage with the current level of cash outlay," Reynolds noted.

Mr. Bush was informed by email this morning of his termination.

Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time. Sanji
Gurvinder Singh of Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India will be assuming the
office of President as of July 1. Mr. Singh was born in the United States
while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls, thus making him
eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a month
but with no health coverage or other benefits.

It is believed that Mr. Singh will be able to handle his job
responsibilities without support staff. Due to the time difference between
the US and India, he will be working primarily at night, when few offices of
the US Government will be open. "Working nights will allow me to keep my day
job at the American Express call center," stated Mr. Singh in an exclusive
interview. "I am excited about this position. I always hoped I would be
President someday."

A Congressional Spokesperson noted that while Mr. Singh may not be fully
aware of all the issues involved in the office of the President, this should
not be a problem. Mr. Singh will rely upon a script tree that will enable
him to respond effectively to most topics of concern. Using this tree, he
can address common concerns without having to understand the underlying
issues at all. "We know these scripting tools work," stated the
Spokesperson. "Mr. Bush has used them successfully for years."

Mr. Bush will receive health coverage, expenses, and salary until his final
day of employment. Following a two week waiting period, he will be eligible
for $240 USD a week unemployment for 13 weeks. Unfortunately, he will not be
eligible for Medicaid as his unemployment benefits will exceed the allowed
limit.

Mr. Bush has been provided the outplacement services of Manpower, Inc. to
help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition.

According to Manpower, Mr. Bush may have difficulties in securing a new
position due to limited practical work experience. One possibility is
re-enlistment in the Air National Guard. Should he choose this option, he
would likely be stationed in Iraq, a country he has visited. "I've been
there; I know about Iraq," stated Mr. Bush, who gained invaluable knowledge
of the country in a visit to the Baghdad Airport's terminal and gift shop.

Sources in Baghdad and Falluja say Mr. Bush would receive a warm reception
from local Iraqis. They have asked to be provided with details of his
arrival so that they might arrange an appropriate welcome.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jul 05 - 10:08 AM

"Reporters in the US have expressed concern about their duty to protect the anonymity of their sources. What is becoming evident, however, from the unfolding soap opera that the White House and newspapers like the WSJ are bringing to the world, is that the sources of government information that US reporters have available, like Karl Rove, are sources who are willing to use their public office to involve reporters in activities of political retribution.

The crime that the U.S. Congress and the American people have to understand is the fact that they were presented with a set of lies, including carefully crafted misrepresentations, to justify an illegal invasion of another country and the killing of many people. The period leading up to the invasion of Iraq by the US government, was a period when much of the US media, and reporters like Judith Miller, who is now in jail to protect her sources, created a fraudulent public pretext for the US government's steps to war.

What the WSJ doesn't mention, is that before the US government invaded Iraq, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had clearly disclosed the forged nature of documents the US used to claim that Iraq had sought uranium ore in Niger. The US government at the time said that they had just gotten the documents themselves in October 2002, yet they didn't give them to the IAEA until February 2003 ("Macbeth" and the Forged Documents of Niger).

How the US government could present forged documents to the IAEA as proof that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore from Niger, is a serious question. The lies and forgeries that the US government has been willing to present as its justification for an illegal war continue. Also the WSJ continues to applaud government officials for their lies and use of forgeries and in so doing helps them to cover up their abuse of public office. The US press is faced with a serious challenge. If it continues to protect as sources government officials who lie, it stands to lose any of its credibility that remains with people in the US and around the world. The obligation of the press is to expose the misdeeds of government, not to be the mouthpiece to broadcast, or to cover up these misdeeds.

A serious principle is at stake in the current investigation into the role played by the White House (not just by Rove) in leaking information about Joe Wilson's wife. The principle is: Will the press act as a force to stop the US government from presenting lies and misrepresentations as a pretext to justify illegal and harmful deeds and policies? Or will the press be complicit in spreading or covering up the illegal and misleading deeds of the US government?

Almost two hundred years ago, in an encyclopedia article about the "Freedom of the Press, James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, explained that without a press exposing the corruption and misrule in government, government officials will not be able to resist the temptation to be corrupt"

See http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/20/20525/1.html for balance of piece.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 05 - 11:38 PM

Paul Krugman (NY Times, 7-14-05) offers these thoughts:

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.


Forum: Paul Krugman's Columns
What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: dianavan
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 02:23 PM

Can Rove be tried for treason in time of war?


"Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, Author of "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity."

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

"I did my civic duty and held my government to account for statements it had made. The government acknowledged that the sixteen words about Iraq purchasing uranium from Niger did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union Address. And then the Administration went out to savage my family and myself.... Somebody close to the President of the United States decided that in order to defend Bush's political agenda, that individual or individuals would violate the national security of the country and expose my wife's name and her profession.

That was absolutely unexpected. That this government would take a national security asset off the table, working in an area that is of primordial importance to the national security of the United States – the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the hands of rogue states and non-state actors."

Ambassador Joe Wilson

Okay, for the umpteenth time, let's get this straight: In order to send a message to any Bush Cartel whistleblowers and truth tellers, Karl Rove or Scooter Libby (or both) authorized the outing of a CIA operative. But this wasn't just any CIA operative. This was a woman who specialized in tracking the illicit trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Well, the WMD-specializing outed CIA agent was Valerie Plame. Why was she outed and our national security threatened by the Bush Cartel? Because her husband, Former Ambassador Joe Wilson, had the temerity to reveal that the Bush Cartel mischaracterized a key piece of alleged (i.e., phony) evidence that Saddam Hussein was purchasing nuclear material from the nation of Niger (not to be confused with Nigeria).

So, America's national security has been jeopardized because a man who showed heroism in the diplomatic corps told the truth about the Bush Cartel and the Bush Cartel sought revenge."

I doubt if Rove acted independently. I suspect that he was given the O.K. from the gang of thugs now in the White House. I hope we are getting closer to the truth and that the U.S. will show the world that they will no longer be fooled into believing anything the Bush Administration has to say. Its time to impeach them and try them for treason. Who will have the courage?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 09:37 AM

An editorial by Bob Herbert of the NY Times, July 11 2005:

"Back in March 2004 President Bush had a great time displaying what he felt was a hilarious set of photos showing him searching the Oval Office for the weapons of mass destruction that hadn't been found in Iraq. It was a spoof he performed at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association.

The photos showed the president peering behind curtains and looking under furniture for the missing weapons. Mr. Bush offered mock captions for the photos, saying, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere" and "Nope, no weapons over there ... maybe under here?"

If there's something funny about Mr. Bush's misbegotten war, I've yet to see it. The president deliberately led Americans traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, into the false belief that there was a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and that a pre-emptive invasion would make the United States less vulnerable to terrorism.

Close to 600 Americans had already died in Iraq when Mr. Bush was cracking up the audience with his tasteless photos at the glittering Washington gathering. The toll of Americans has now passed 1,750. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died. Scores of thousands of men, women and children have been horribly wounded. And there is no end in sight.

Last week's terror bombings in London should be seen as a reminder not just that Mr. Bush's war was a hideous diversion of focus and resources from the essential battle against terror, but that it has actually increased the danger of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies.

The C.I.A. warned the administration in a classified report in May that Iraq - since the American invasion in 2003 - had become a training ground in which novice terrorists were schooled in assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other terror techniques. The report said Iraq could prove to be more effective than Afghanistan in the early days of Al Qaeda as a place to train terrorists who could then disperse to other parts of the world, including the United States.

Larry Johnson, a former C.I.A. analyst who served as deputy director of the State Department's counterterrorism office, said on National Public Radio last week: "You now in Iraq have a recruiting ground in which jihadists, people who previously were not willing to go out and embrace the vision of bin Laden and Al Qaeda, are now aligning themselves with elements that have declared allegiance to him. And in the course of that, they're learning how to build bombs. They're learning how to conduct military operations."

Has the president given any thought to leveling with the American people about how bad the situation has become? And is he even considering what for him would be the radical notion of soliciting the counsel of wise men and women who might give him a different perspective on war and terror than the Kool-Aid-drinking true believers who have brought us to this dreadful state of affairs? The true believers continue to argue that the proper strategy is to stay the current catastrophic course.

Americans are paying a fearful price for Mr. Bush's adventure in Iraq. In addition to the toll of dead and wounded, the war is costing about $5 billion a month. It has drained resources from critical needs here at home, including important antiterror initiatives that would improve the security of ports, transit systems and chemical plants.

...

Whatever one's views on the war, thoughtful Americans need to consider the damage it is doing to the United States, and the bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world. That anger is spreading like an unchecked fire in an incredibly vast field.

The immediate challenge to President Bush is to dispense with the destructive fantasies of the true believers in his administration and to begin to see America's current predicament clearly. New voices with new approaches and new ideas need to be heard. The hole we're in is deep enough. We need to stop digging. ...

---

As with many of these articles, this one seems harsh until you reckon the actual cost of Bush's profligacy in human lives.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 05:48 PM

An editorial in the Sunday NY Times by Nicholas Kristof, highlighting yet another piece of anti-constitutional moralistic Grundyism on the part of our Furless Liter:


Jack Newbold is a 59-year-old retired tugboat captain who is dying of bone cancer. It's one of the most painful cancers, and he doesn't want to put his wife and 17-year-old daughter through the trauma of caring for him as he loses control over his body.

So Mr. Newbold faces a wrenching choice in the coming weeks: should he fight the cancer until his last breath, or should he take a glass of a barbiturate solution prescribed by a doctor and put himself to sleep forever? He's leaning toward the latter.

"I've got less than six months to live," he said. "I don't want to linger and put my wife and family through this."

I don't know what I would do if I were Mr. Newbold, nor if I were his wife or daughter (they're both supporting him in any decision he makes). But I do believe that it should be their decision - not President Bush's.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush is fighting to overturn the Oregon Death With Dignity law, which gives Mr. Newbold the option of hastening his death. Oregon voters twice passed referendums approving the law, which has been used since 1998, and it has wide support in the state.

The Bush administration issued an order that any doctor who issued a prescription under the state law would be prosecuted under federal law. Oregon won an injunction against the order, John Ashcroft lost an appeal, and now the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the fall.

"I'm just grateful I live in the state of Oregon, where we have this option," Mr. Newbold said. "I'm just sorry the John Ashcrofts of the world want to dictate not only how you live, but also how you die. There's nothing more personal, other than childbirth, than passing on."

Mr. Newbold, a Vietnam veteran and former merchant seaman, is funny and blunt, with a flair for nautical language unsuitable for a family newspaper. He started with head and neck cancer. Now cancer is spreading to his bones, disabling him and forcing him to take morphine for pain.

"By God, I want to go out on my own terms," Mr. Newbold said. "I don't want someone dictating to me that I've got to lie down in some hospital bed and die in pain."

Mr. Newbold has started the process of obtaining the barbiturates; two doctors must confirm that the patient has less than six months to live, and the patient must make three requests over at least 15 days. Typically, the drug is secobarbital - the powder is removed from the capsules and mixed into water or applesauce - or pentobarbital, which comes as a liquid. Patients typically slip into a coma five minutes after taking the medication and die within two hours.

Like many patients, Mr. Newbold says that his biggest concern isn't pain so much as the loss of autonomy and dignity. That's partly why he wants the medication on hand - if he feels himself losing the self-control he has prized all his life, he can hasten the process.

"I may never use the medication," he said, "but the knowledge that you have the ability to end it gives you so much relief."

That's common - many patients who get the barbiturates do not in fact use them, but derive comfort from having the choice. Over all, 208 patients over seven years have used the law to hasten death, according to the Compassion in Dying Federation of Oregon, which helps patients work their way through the legal requirements.

When patients use the law, they typically set a date and gather family and friends around them. Those who have witnessed such a parting say it's not as morbid as it may sound.

"It's pretty weird knowing what day you're going to die, but we could plan for it," said Julie McMurchie, whose mother used the barbiturates about a week before she was expected to die naturally of lung cancer. "Two of my siblings lived out of state, and they were able to come, so we were all present. ... We were all there to hug and kiss her and tell her we loved her, and she had some poetry she wanted read to her, and it was all loving and peaceful.

"I can't imagine why anybody would begrudge us that opportunity to say goodbye, and her that opportunity to have peace."

The same applies to Jack Newbold and everyone in his position. Mr. Newbold faces an excruciating choice in the coming weeks, and he's got enough on his mind without the White House second-guessing him.

Back off, Mr. Bush.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 02:27 AM

The Psychosis Inherent in Religious Capitalism: Causation in "The Crime of the Century"
By Gerry Lower
May 23, 2005, 19:09

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May 24, 2005 -- "Are Bush supporters literally insane?" With that bold and awkward question, Timothy Noah began a discussion of "Conservatism as Pathology" (MSNBC/Slate, May 9, 2005), in which he essentially asks, 'Is there something inherently psychotic about the conservative mindset?' One can, of course, ask the same question about Bush opponents, "Is there something inherently psychotic about the liberal mindset?

Two Extremes - both Psychotic.

According to Merriam-Webster Online, the term "psy·cho·sis" refers to "a "fundamental mental derangement characterized by defective or lost contact with reality". As that is the case, the answer to both questions would be "yes," because conservatism and liberalism are complementary opposites. When on their own, they have nowhere to go but to their own extremes.

At their extremes, they both produce a blind rejection of empirical reality, of common sense logic and honest human truth. The result of this rejection is a collective neurosis at best and a collective psychosis at worst (Robert Sheer, Nationalism's Psychotic Side, The Nation, May 10, 2005).

At their extremes, the left has had occasion to pursue anarchy and "free" love, as the right now pursues tyranny and "preemptive" war, nothing resembling real freedom and democracy at either extreme (Legalism, Anarchism and Blessed Liberty, www.jeffersonseyes.com, 2003). Progressivism provides the dialectic synthesis of liberalism and conservatism in being more closely aligned with the transcendent values at the core of Jeffersonian democracy (Progressivism and the Two Americas, August 30, 2004.)

All of us make our occasional departures from reality and the self-concept we have assumed in order to survive that reality. We escape our current reality by taking consciousness-altering drugs, buying new Lincoln Navigators, taking "adventure" vacations and going on shopping sprees at the local mall (one of the most prevalent and pernicious addictions in America). Real problems emerge when we make our departures-from-reality into a new "reality," unrelated to empirical reality.

Jefferson felt that it was better to be "exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it." In this sense, religious capitalism has no Jeffersonian content at all. The right wing would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending no democracy than those attending too much of it (and any of it is too much of it, if it gets in the way of capitalism's notions of "progress").

Religious Capitalism

Religious capitalism thrives only at the extreme, where it works to control national values, policies and goals in the interest of maximizing its own authority and control, nothing else. In turn, it wants no controls placed over the corruption that is literally inherent in greed-driven capitalism. Rules and regulations are for the ruled, not for the makers of rules.

Under the Bush administration's religious capitalism, America has become the scene for "The Crime of the Century." This became quickly apparent with the recent emergence of a "secret Downing Street memo" which "proves that everything the Bush administration said about the Iraq invasion was a lie" (David Michael Green, Common Dreams, AxisofLogic, May 15, 2005). So damning was this document, it received essentially no mention in the mainstream American press, which seems more bent on preserving the crony capitalism upon which America has come to depend.
"Think about that for a second. Apart from 9/11, has there been a more important story in the last decade than that the president lied to the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, and then proceeded to plunge the country into an illegal war which has alienated the rest of the world, lit a fire under the war's victims and the Islamic world generally, turning them into enemy combatants, locked up virtually all American land forces in a war without end in sight, cost $300 billion and counting, taken over 1600 American lives on top of more than 15,000 gravely wounded, and killed perhaps 100,000 Iraqis?"

If the President of the U.S. overtly lies to the American people in order to pursue, in their names, a devastatingly immoral war in Iraq, if the President of the U.S. can't be trusted and the mainstream press lets it all go by, then what do we, as a people, have left? Bush World, in its entirety, is fabrication built upon fabrication, from credentials and character to competence and contribution. The entire edifice would not last a week without the complicity of an American press that can't do its job for fear of losing its job.

The right half of the American electorate and the mainstream press have had to make an incomprehensible retreat from reality and sanity in order to accommodate the Old Testament morality and ethics of the Bush administration. This retreat is not due to any innate individual shortcomings. It is more due to cultural shortcomings, with traditional religion teaching that individuals need not think for themselves but ought choose faith in an Old Testament world view that has nothing to do with the values of Jefferson's Christianity and Democracy.

...

---

Balance of this probably controversial piece can be found here.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jul 05 - 11:57 PM

From a correspondent:

I have done some internet research. If we declare that the war in
Iraq is 4 years old (which it isn't because it won't even have been 4
years since 9/11 until next September) then the war in declared
budgeted costs will be as of today, $989,725.03 million per day. But
it's more than that, because plenty of defense budget is used for
Iraq that isn't specially marked as "Iraq funds" AND we are still 2
months away from four years since 9/11, and the war didn't start
until after 9/11.

So anyway, we are well above $1 billion per day for the war.

Per day.

How many houses would that make, how much anti-HIV medicine would it
provide, how many internship-type jobs would it fund?

I hate Bush.

D.

---

Where would we stand if half that money had beens pent in an aggressive forwarding of energy independence?

What if we had found a way to harness the moon's tides and the sun's winds, and were able to disconnect from the oil wells of Arabia permanently?

Sometimes knowing the correct importance is worth more than all the PR and manipulation in Washington.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 08:38 PM

Democrats Challenge GOP on Ethics
New Ads Target Six Republicans
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 6, 2005; Page A04

Democrats took their first formal step yesterday toward trying to nationalize next year's midterm House elections around the issue of ethics, buying ads in the local papers of six Republican lawmakers calling on them to "start working for us" instead of special interests.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending $36,000 on the ads -- a virtually meaningless sum, by itself -- but calls it the beginning of a campaign to fuel an anti-incumbent fever like the one that swept its party out in 1994.

"There's a question about the conduct and the culture that goes beyond the individuals," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the committee's chairman. "The speaker's gavel is supposed to open the people's house, not the auction house."

Even White House officials have begun to fret about the large number of senior Republicans being tied to questionable travel and relationships with lobbyists. On Friday, federal agents raided the San Diego area home of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, one of the ad targets. The search followed news reports that he had sold a house to a defense contractor, who immediately put it back up for sale and took a huge loss.

Republicans contend that Democrats are making the mistake the GOP did in 1998, when the party made its main message about President Bill Clinton instead of a positive agenda. Republicans say Democrats face numerous ethical issues of their own. Rep. Jack Kingston (Ga.), vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, asserted that Democrats are "stepping into their own Venus' flytrap." ...


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 08:27 PM

Writing for The Nation, Eric Alterman offers these thoughts on the Bush Administration:

Cowboys and Eggheads

Eric Alterman

Liberal Democrats today are faced with an unhappy paradox. The most significant factor in John Kerry's defeat was that, according to exit polls, 79 percent of voters who said terrorism or national security determined their vote chose the chickenhawk over the war hero. Though they agreed with the Democrats on most issues--and agreed, by a 49 to 45 percent margin, according to election day exit polls, that the Iraq War had made us less, not more, secure--a majority of voters still felt safer with the idea of George W. Bush minding the store. Based on the evidence, it is almost a perfectly irrational reaction to reality. Everything the Bush Administration has done in the security realm has proved not merely wasteful and ineffective but counterproductive. Consider the following:

§?Osama bin Laden remains free, and Al Qaeda has been allowed to regroup.

§?Iraq, which was not a terrorist threat before Bush attacked it, now accounts for the killing and maiming of Americans daily.

§?North Korea, the world's most dangerously irrational regime, stands poised to test a nuclear bomb.

§?Iran, another regime motivated by fear and hatred of the United States, also stands poised to develop a nuclear weapon.

§?The most obvious terrorist targets in America--nuclear and chemical plants, water and food supplies and transportation networks--remain as vulnerable to terrorists as they were on September 10, 2001, endangering as many as 12 million people in a single attack.

§?Outside our borders, America is hated as never before, inspiring terrorist recruitment across the Islamic world.

All of these negative developments are the result of Bush Administration policies that required the reversal or rejection of Democratic alternatives. In some cases the Administration achieved its aims by deliberate deception, fooling more than a few supposedly tough-minded "liberal hawks" about not only its evidence but also its intentions--and in a few cases it did so with scare tactics designed to exploit the emotions aroused by the 9/11 attacks. In none of these instances, however, did the Administration win its argument with an honest assessment of the evidence or consideration of available alternatives.

(...)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: GUEST, Ebbie
Date: 04 Jul 05 - 02:59 PM

Good one, bb.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Jul 05 - 02:56 PM

not the angels, but justice and a fair application of the law of the land to all involved. Angels give forgiveness without punishment.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 07:43 PM

I didn't miss Doug's point, bb. And I'm not denying Karl Rove anything. As you know, I'm not making this up out of whole cloth; there are people who should know out there who say it was Karl Rove. I agree absolutely with both of you (if that's what Doug was urging) that whoever outed the CIA agent must be brought to trial.

My own point went a step further. I said, IF it was either Rove or Bush, what would be Doug's response to it? I'm glad to know that YOU are on the side of the angels on this one. I'm waiting for HIS response.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 06:01 PM

Ebbie,

You obviously missed DougR's point. You are denying Rove the rights that you would want for yourself- to be considered innocent UNTIL the evidence is produced to show that one is guilty. IF he commited the crime, he should be punished to the full extent of the law- BUT if he did not, the lynching going on here and in the press is not justified. Just because you do not approve of someone's politics is no reason to to deny their rights to a fair trail.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 06:00 PM

In a more enlightened age, DougR, Rove's offenses would have been actionable long since.

As for hanging, I guess sometimes dealing in death wholesale means sometimes you have to confront the retail package as well. Rove has a lot of innocent blood on his hands.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 05:52 PM

From the New York Daily News -- http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/
story/324790p-277605c.html

A liberal dose of facts, Rove
by Denis Hamill

When I first read Karl Rove's recent speech to the New York State
Conservative Party at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, the liberal in
me wanted to get him some therapy.

But then the Brooklyn in me wanted to throw him a fair one.

Then I figured I should show some restraint before commenting.

My problem is that I'm a liberal from Brooklyn. Which means I turn
the other cheek. And then kick you in the unmentionables.

Rove's problem is that he doesn't know jack about "liberals" in the
very city where he delivered his punk speech that dishonored the
fallen of Ground Zero 3 miles south. As did President Bush's lame
"stay the course" pep talk to the nation on Tuesday night, for
recycling the same debunked lies trying to connect 9/11 to Iraq.

In the last presidential election, 75% of New York City, where nearly
3,000 people were murdered on 9/11, voted for a "liberal" named John
Kerry. They did this not because they thought it would be therapeutic
for the terrorists but because they resented the lies coming out of
this administration that had given up the search for Osama Bin Laden
for a bait-and-switch war on Iraq.

New Yorkers knew Bin Laden was the monster responsible for that act
of barbarism in our city, where almost every one of us - liberal,
conservative and otherwise - knew someone who'd been killed.

And so on Election Day, we who had trudged in the dust of our dead,
who had lived with the bagpipes and the funerals, and who were sick
of the lies out of the White House, marched to the polls to vote for
a liberal named John Kerry, a decorated war hero.

Last week, Rove visited this city and stood in the Sheraton and said,
"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare
indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In
the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the
might and power of the United States military against the Taliban."

Total crap.

Every single liberal and conservative I met in post-9/11 New York
City from Bayside to Bay Ridge supported the invasion of Afghanistan.

So I challenge Karl Rove to wear his ignorant words on a sandwich
board and parade them from the Sheraton Hotel down to Ground Zero and
let him sample some wimpy, liberal New York. The only therapy he'd be
offered would be physical therapy.

Rove brayed, "It was a time to summon our national will and brandish
steel."

Right. And so here in New York City volunteers from every political,
ethnic and socioeconomic walk of life descended on Ground Zero to
brandish shovels, picks, acetylene torches and backhoes to dig for
the lost.

All over "liberal" New York citizens rushed to recruitment stations
and grown men and women were called up in the National Guard and
reserves.

And yet this rice cake in a suit has the audacity to stand at a
podium in this gutsy city and say, "I don't know about you, but
moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin
towers crumble to the ground."

No, what chicken hawk Rove, who avoided the draft during Vietnam, saw
was a Bush reelection campaign commercial.

And where did our fearless conservative leaders go on or after 9/11?

Let's see: Bush flew to Omaha! Cheney hid in a hole, like Saddam
Hussein. And Karl Rove cooked up a Bush campaign commercial visit to
Ground Zero three days after the attack, when the coast was clear.

A popular Republican named Arnold Schwarzenegger would label all that
as the actions of "girlie men."

I can tell you where Karl Rove didn't go: He didn't go to Ground Zero
to swing a steel pick. If he brandished a steel shovel at the
Pentagon, I missed it.

Warmongering Rove also didn't go to a recruitment station to grip the
steel stock of an M-16 before catching the next C-130 to Kabul. Or
later, Tikrit. Even though the war in Iraq is being fought by troops
the same age as Rove, who is 54. Which is the same age as a bus
driver from Brooklyn with six grandchildren I wrote about in this
space recently who spent the past year in Iraq as an Army reservist.

The only steel Karl Rove brandished since 9/11 has been King George's
bloody shilling.

So you can blow into town, the Pearl Harbor of the terror age, and
pop off about liberals being wimps, Mr. Rove. But to paraphrase
Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca," there are certain New York
neighborhoods I wouldn't advise you to invade.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 05:49 PM

"On second thought, if it's Karl Rove (or the big guy himself) you might!" DougR

And what would be your thoughts on that, Doug? "Outing" a covert CIA operative has been called treason; even when it is not called that, it still holds a penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and a hefty fine. If Karl Rove or "the big guy himself" outed her, what do you think should be the penalty?

Amos, there are some things that I know I know and some things that I don't know and some things I don't know that I don't know and some things that I don't know that I know and some things Halp!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: DougR
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 05:44 PM

Before you two grab your lynching ropes, you might want to wait until the evidence the prosecutor has is released to the public and oes incriminate Karl Rove. You wouldn't want to hang an innocent man would you?

On second thought, if it's Karl Rove (or the big guy himself) you might!

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 05:04 PM

They have been had, but their having been had had more to do with their having and thinking they had to have, to the point where they had to have being had and raised no complaint as long as their having been had had no effect on the having they had to have.

If you see what I mean.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
From: Ebbie
Date: 03 Jul 05 - 03:30 PM

I still have hopes that the benighted PEOPLE will wake up and start wondering out loud if they have been had.