Kerry: 1 Bush: 0
In the first presidential debate, John Kerry stayed on message and defined himself irrefutably as a leader with a plan, and as a man we can trust.
The president's lack of composure, his difficulty with mastering complex issues and his redundancy were as annoying as his nervous need to gulp water.
Kerry showed he is fast on his feet with extemporaneous thought and speech. Bush showed moderate recitation skills, but showed he cannot muster an original thought without Karl Rove telling him what to say.
A clear win for Kerry.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Addicted
Oh my.
Hard as I tried to avoid the trap, I have become addicted to The Apprentice.
The show was scooted over to Wednesday night this week, and I just watched some perfect poetic justice: Jennifer C., the snippy bitch with the bad Audrey Hepburn French twist, got booted for being a bad project manager for a restaurant with a horrid color scheme and bad art, that was too upscale for the 'hood it was in.
Hint: Vermilion and chartreuse, mixed with light cocoa beige are not colors that stimulate digestion. They stimulate vomiting, which may be a whole 'nother story with some of these chicks.
When two old ladies were seated and asked why bread was being served at an Asian/Fusion cuisine restaurant, Jennifer later referred to them as, "those grouchy old Jewish ladies."
They are in New York, for God's sake. To get all het-up over two old Jewish ladies kvetching at a New York restaurant would be like complaining about Texans asking where the jalapenos were at a barbecue dive in El Paso.
The boy's team worked together like happy elves, even overcoming a table of snippy faggots by flirting with them and giving one of them a free T-shirt. Even their token Mosaic woman Pamela, who was at first as brittle as a parakeet's cuttlebone, has gotten kinda loose and giggly on the guys' team.
At first I loved Maria because she is so hot. Now I want to sneak pebbles into her Manolo Blahniks and stick pins in the seams of her black St. John's knits. Pretty is as pretty does, and if she looked like she acts, she'd look more like Miss Jane Hathaway.
The worst part about this entire crew of male and female career whores is that I think the men's team is so much better than the women's team, and for a lesbian feminist, that's a bad, bad thing to have to admit.
Even Raj, who dresses like Don Ameche playing a gay guy from the 30's, managed to be an excellent, amiable project manager for the boy's restaurant project. They even managed to replicate for their restaurant walls some decent, quasi-abstract art, using only a house painting brush and some cheap acrylic paints.
In the boardroom, catty Jennifer selected for the chopping block not her friend Sandy, who was no good at her assignment, but her enemies Elizabeth and Stacy R., who had the temerity to raise an eyebrow at Jennifer's imperiously haughty management style.
Jennifer, you're fired. And Carolyn hates you.
Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.
Geh cocken offen yom, you big Jewish old lady hater.
Oh my.
Hard as I tried to avoid the trap, I have become addicted to The Apprentice.
The show was scooted over to Wednesday night this week, and I just watched some perfect poetic justice: Jennifer C., the snippy bitch with the bad Audrey Hepburn French twist, got booted for being a bad project manager for a restaurant with a horrid color scheme and bad art, that was too upscale for the 'hood it was in.
Hint: Vermilion and chartreuse, mixed with light cocoa beige are not colors that stimulate digestion. They stimulate vomiting, which may be a whole 'nother story with some of these chicks.
When two old ladies were seated and asked why bread was being served at an Asian/Fusion cuisine restaurant, Jennifer later referred to them as, "those grouchy old Jewish ladies."
They are in New York, for God's sake. To get all het-up over two old Jewish ladies kvetching at a New York restaurant would be like complaining about Texans asking where the jalapenos were at a barbecue dive in El Paso.
The boy's team worked together like happy elves, even overcoming a table of snippy faggots by flirting with them and giving one of them a free T-shirt. Even their token Mosaic woman Pamela, who was at first as brittle as a parakeet's cuttlebone, has gotten kinda loose and giggly on the guys' team.
At first I loved Maria because she is so hot. Now I want to sneak pebbles into her Manolo Blahniks and stick pins in the seams of her black St. John's knits. Pretty is as pretty does, and if she looked like she acts, she'd look more like Miss Jane Hathaway.
The worst part about this entire crew of male and female career whores is that I think the men's team is so much better than the women's team, and for a lesbian feminist, that's a bad, bad thing to have to admit.
Even Raj, who dresses like Don Ameche playing a gay guy from the 30's, managed to be an excellent, amiable project manager for the boy's restaurant project. They even managed to replicate for their restaurant walls some decent, quasi-abstract art, using only a house painting brush and some cheap acrylic paints.
In the boardroom, catty Jennifer selected for the chopping block not her friend Sandy, who was no good at her assignment, but her enemies Elizabeth and Stacy R., who had the temerity to raise an eyebrow at Jennifer's imperiously haughty management style.
Jennifer, you're fired. And Carolyn hates you.
Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.
Geh cocken offen yom, you big Jewish old lady hater.
14 year old loses election
Bush's Support Hexes Ohio High School Boy
President Bush's coattails evidently do not extend to Wheelersburg High School in southwestern Ohio. On Sept. 10, Bush visited the area for a rally and took a question from 14-year-old Dillon MacDonald. "I'm running for student president of my freshman class, and I was wondering if I could have your support," Dillon said to laughter from the crowd.
"Man, you're heading in the right direction," Bush replied. "I assure you, when I was 14, I couldn't have stood up in front of all these cameras. Yes, you can have my support." Bush promised he'd be "watching the [Wheelersburg] election
Alas, the endorsement proved insufficient: Days later, Dillon lost the class election to a girl in a three-person race. "It didn't quite put him over the hump," Principal Mark Knapp said of the president.
President Bush's coattails evidently do not extend to Wheelersburg High School in southwestern Ohio. On Sept. 10, Bush visited the area for a rally and took a question from 14-year-old Dillon MacDonald. "I'm running for student president of my freshman class, and I was wondering if I could have your support," Dillon said to laughter from the crowd.
"Man, you're heading in the right direction," Bush replied. "I assure you, when I was 14, I couldn't have stood up in front of all these cameras. Yes, you can have my support." Bush promised he'd be "watching the [Wheelersburg] election
Alas, the endorsement proved insufficient: Days later, Dillon lost the class election to a girl in a three-person race. "It didn't quite put him over the hump," Principal Mark Knapp said of the president.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
This is the Crawford, Texas newspaper editorial that endorses John Kerry
Kerry Will Restore American Dignity
2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement
Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:
• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
• Givhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.bold.gife away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.
These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.
The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.
Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.
Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.
President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.
The Social Security Trust Fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay Social Security while you are running a huge deficit? It’s impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. Social Security money is being used to escalate our deficit and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.
Privatization is problematic in that it would subject Social Security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the Stock Market. It would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the Ivan Boeskys and Ken Lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the Market and the Social Security Fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of American families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.
Kerry wants to keep Social Security, which each of us already owns. He says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. This would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the Bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever-changing demographics.
Our senior citizens depend upon Social Security. Bush’s answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as Americans have never experienced. Do we really want to risk the future of Social Security on Bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.
He let us down.
When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.
He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.
Rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of Iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what Bush called a more immediate menace, Saddam Hussein, in oil-rich Iraq. After all, Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.
The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Again, he let us down.
We presumed the President had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. Otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.
Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.
Now he argues unconvincingly that Iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. It is like arguing that America provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9/11.
Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.
We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a “wartime president.” America is in service 365 days a year. We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.
What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House intern’s dress. America’s reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.
Iraq is now a quagmire: no WMDs, no substantive link between Saddam and Osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. We are asked to go along on faith. But remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and “spin” will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.
Kerry has remained true to his vote granting the President the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate Saddam Hussein into allowing weapons inspections. He believes President Bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.
Kerry also voted against President Bush’s $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in Iraq, privileged Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of Americans.
Kerry’s four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraq’s multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.
The publishers of the Iconoclast differ with Bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans’ entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling “test” from Washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the Patriot Act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.
We are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by Bush appointees. Funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as Halliburton — companies with strong ties to oil and gas. Job training has been cut every year that Bush has resided at the White House.
Then there is his resolve to inadequately finance Homeland Security and to cut the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the Small Business Administration, and to under-fund veterans’ programs.
Likewise troubling is that President Bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 Commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations.
Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process — an enormous conflict of interest — plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of Export-Import Bank of America, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.
When examined based on all the facts, Kerry’s voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.
The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.
John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.
Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.
That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.
The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.
Kerry Will Restore American Dignity
2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement
Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:
• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
• Givhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.bold.gife away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.
These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.
The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.
Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.
Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding terrorism and Iraq.
President Bush has announced plans to change the Social Security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.
The Social Security Trust Fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay Social Security while you are running a huge deficit? It’s impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. Social Security money is being used to escalate our deficit and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.
Privatization is problematic in that it would subject Social Security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the Stock Market. It would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the Ivan Boeskys and Ken Lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the Market and the Social Security Fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of American families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.
Kerry wants to keep Social Security, which each of us already owns. He says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. This would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the Bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever-changing demographics.
Our senior citizens depend upon Social Security. Bush’s answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as Americans have never experienced. Do we really want to risk the future of Social Security on Bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.
He let us down.
When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.
He did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. He merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.
Rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of Iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after Osama bin Laden and the Saudi Arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what Bush called a more immediate menace, Saddam Hussein, in oil-rich Iraq. After all, Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.
The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Again, he let us down.
We presumed the President had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. Otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.
Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.
Now he argues unconvincingly that Iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. It is like arguing that America provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9/11.
Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.
We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a “wartime president.” America is in service 365 days a year. We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.
What has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of Iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a White House intern’s dress. America’s reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.
Iraq is now a quagmire: no WMDs, no substantive link between Saddam and Osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. We are asked to go along on faith. But remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and “spin” will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.
Kerry has remained true to his vote granting the President the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate Saddam Hussein into allowing weapons inspections. He believes President Bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.
Kerry also voted against President Bush’s $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in Iraq, privileged Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of Americans.
Kerry’s four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraq’s multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.
The publishers of the Iconoclast differ with Bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans’ entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling “test” from Washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the Patriot Act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.
We are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by Bush appointees. Funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as Halliburton — companies with strong ties to oil and gas. Job training has been cut every year that Bush has resided at the White House.
Then there is his resolve to inadequately finance Homeland Security and to cut the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the Small Business Administration, and to under-fund veterans’ programs.
Likewise troubling is that President Bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 Commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations.
Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process — an enormous conflict of interest — plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of Export-Import Bank of America, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.
When examined based on all the facts, Kerry’s voting record is enviable and echoes that of many Bush allies who are aghast at how the Bush administration has destroyed the American economy. Compared to Bush on economic issues, Kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for Americans first. He has what it takes to right our wronged economy.
The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.
John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.
Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.
That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.
The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA
They Aren't All Dumb Bastards in Crawford
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - The newspaper in President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry.
The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare.
"The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry."
It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country."
Bush spends many of his weekends and holidays at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.
The Iconoclast's publisher and editor-in-chief, W. Leon Smith, said the newspaper is sent to Bush's ranch each week. "But I don't know if he reads it," Smith said.
The Kerry campaign welcomed the endorsement in an email to reporters.
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - The newspaper in President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry.
The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare.
"The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry."
It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country."
Bush spends many of his weekends and holidays at his Crawford, Texas, ranch.
The Iconoclast's publisher and editor-in-chief, W. Leon Smith, said the newspaper is sent to Bush's ranch each week. "But I don't know if he reads it," Smith said.
The Kerry campaign welcomed the endorsement in an email to reporters.
F.B.I. Said to Lag on Translations of Terror Tapes
More than 120,000 hours of terrorism-related recordings have not been translated by the F.B.I., and computer problems may have erased some Al Qaeda recordings.
Gee, you'd think with the president's war on terrorism, the FBI on his watch would be a bit more conscientious.
Seems there were plenty more translators when Bush took office, but he fired all the ones who were gay.
When one thinks about it, it makes sense. Why risk national security by employing gay people just because they can translate terrorists' native languages?
George W. Bush: making the nation safer.
(from gay civil servants)
Gee, you'd think with the president's war on terrorism, the FBI on his watch would be a bit more conscientious.
Seems there were plenty more translators when Bush took office, but he fired all the ones who were gay.
When one thinks about it, it makes sense. Why risk national security by employing gay people just because they can translate terrorists' native languages?
George W. Bush: making the nation safer.
(from gay civil servants)
Monday, September 27, 2004
The Problem Liars Have
Bush and his fiendish band of warmongers are scampering around, trying to quell rumors that a vote for Bush will result in a return to the draft, which this time will include females and exclude college deferments.
Of course they don't want anyone to believe they'll need to start drafting people- they'd lose the election.
But with the war in Iraq undermanned, existing troops on stop orders that compel them to serve sickeningly extended tours of duty, and with Bush eyeing Iran with his familiar twitchy trigger finger, where the fuck do people think Bush plans to get more troops, from his "coalition"?
Come on people, most of the tiny nationettes in the coalition don't even have armies, fer chrissakes.
Vote for Bush and you better damn well believe there will be a draft.
And draft dodgers like Dick and Bush know too well the loopholes for avoiding the draft, so they'll know to close them.
You think Bush won't lie about his intentions?
Of course he will- he lied to get us into war, he lied about us being greeted as liberators, he lied about Saddam's ties to Al Qaida, he lied about his military record, he lied about wanting to go after Osama Bin Laden.
He's a liar- that's what he does!
I wish I was of draft age. They wouldn't have to ask- I'd tell.
Of course, Bush may suddenly have a change of heart and allow queers to be drafted.
At the rate he's going, he'll have to draft pretty near anyone who's ambulatory.
And if you think he won't initiate a draft within moments of his second term, you just haven't been paying attention to what a colossal liar he is.
Bush and his fiendish band of warmongers are scampering around, trying to quell rumors that a vote for Bush will result in a return to the draft, which this time will include females and exclude college deferments.
Of course they don't want anyone to believe they'll need to start drafting people- they'd lose the election.
But with the war in Iraq undermanned, existing troops on stop orders that compel them to serve sickeningly extended tours of duty, and with Bush eyeing Iran with his familiar twitchy trigger finger, where the fuck do people think Bush plans to get more troops, from his "coalition"?
Come on people, most of the tiny nationettes in the coalition don't even have armies, fer chrissakes.
Vote for Bush and you better damn well believe there will be a draft.
And draft dodgers like Dick and Bush know too well the loopholes for avoiding the draft, so they'll know to close them.
You think Bush won't lie about his intentions?
Of course he will- he lied to get us into war, he lied about us being greeted as liberators, he lied about Saddam's ties to Al Qaida, he lied about his military record, he lied about wanting to go after Osama Bin Laden.
He's a liar- that's what he does!
I wish I was of draft age. They wouldn't have to ask- I'd tell.
Of course, Bush may suddenly have a change of heart and allow queers to be drafted.
At the rate he's going, he'll have to draft pretty near anyone who's ambulatory.
And if you think he won't initiate a draft within moments of his second term, you just haven't been paying attention to what a colossal liar he is.
Saturday, September 25, 2004
The Bloggy Doldrums
Seems the little band of Bloggers I hang out with and I are suffering from pre-election Blog ennui.
It sort of feels like that lag time between feeling sick and seeing what the doctor is going to diagnose--knowing help might be on the way, but then again, maybe not.
I feel like I'm resting up between playoff games- knowing that in the last few weeks before the election, I owe it to myself and those I care for to Blog concisely and convincingly about why Bush needs to go.
Last night, I had dinner with a Ph.D. psychologist and her husband, a Presbyterian theologian.
Midway through dinner she said, "What are we going to do about Bush? If he gets reelected, we are in trouble."
In Texas, it's more or less a given that Bush will win the state's electoral college votes, but my friend said, "He doesn't have to win San Antonio."
She's right.
I told her I planned to rent Fahrenheit 9/11 and show it to neighbors who are undecided. I'm neighborly, but I have never had the neighbors over, nor have I socialized with them in their homes. This time, however, I think it's important enough to break my penchant for privacy, just so they can see what kind of man Bush really is.
Each day, my e-mail brings me many lists that detail the lies, the incompetence, the arrogance and the criminal behavior of Bush and his administration. The horrible news has gotten to be so widespread and varied, I am lately at a loss as to which to write about.
The Bush people had what seems to be a strategy so ballsy, it's a miracle it's worked as well as it has. They have managed to corrupt, embezzle, force-feed or otherwise lie to the American public about so many things, their collective wrongdoing are so massive, they have diluted the outrage.
• Environmentalists are so mad at Bush's regressive, pro-business, pollution causing policies-that's the only issue they see.
• Balanced budget, healthy economy minded people are so mad about the deficit, that's the only issue they see.
• People who resent the lies Bush told us to get us into war with Iraq are too angry to see past that.
• Human rights activists still think Abu Ghraib detainee torture defines the sadistic nature of the Defense Department, and that's the issue they focus on.
• The unemployed and underemployed seethe at corporations getting tax cuts for outsourcing our jobs, and that's the issue they focus on.
• Globally minded Americans hate that Bush has created isolationist policies that endanger worldwide peace. That's their primary issue of concern.
• Gays, lesbians and tolerant people resent that Bush has created a wedge of fear and loathing against their basic human rights.
• Educators and parents seethe over "no child left behind" because they know it's rubbish.
• The 45 million Americans without health insurance, and the millions of elderly people whose prescription costs have risen resent Bush for saying one thing and doing another.
• Outrageous gas prices and Bush's well-known footsie playing with the Saudis have outraged another large segment of the population. That's their focus.
• Anti terrorists still think finding Osama Bin Laden should have been a priority over knocking out the benign, weaponless Saddam Hussein- and they resent Bush's distracting our troops and resources on the unwinnable Iraqi war and the forced occupation and costly rebuilding of Iraq. They think that issue is Bush's greatest failure, and it alone should be sufficient to oust him.
• First amendment proponents still are furious at Bush for the way he's avoided the press, muzzled dissent and refused to be accountable. That's their main beef.
• People who value fair play are outraged at the filthy lies, the harping on insignificant side matters, the blame game and the outrageous sums of money spent that Bush's race for reelection has displayed.
With so many areas to dislike, it's enough for people like me who resent Bush for all of the above to maintain basic civility toward his supporters.
Writing scathing critiques about a few issues at a time only dilutes the overall outrage.
So, yes, I can see why many Bloggers are in the doldrums.
We are resting up for the Main Event.
Seems the little band of Bloggers I hang out with and I are suffering from pre-election Blog ennui.
It sort of feels like that lag time between feeling sick and seeing what the doctor is going to diagnose--knowing help might be on the way, but then again, maybe not.
I feel like I'm resting up between playoff games- knowing that in the last few weeks before the election, I owe it to myself and those I care for to Blog concisely and convincingly about why Bush needs to go.
Last night, I had dinner with a Ph.D. psychologist and her husband, a Presbyterian theologian.
Midway through dinner she said, "What are we going to do about Bush? If he gets reelected, we are in trouble."
In Texas, it's more or less a given that Bush will win the state's electoral college votes, but my friend said, "He doesn't have to win San Antonio."
She's right.
I told her I planned to rent Fahrenheit 9/11 and show it to neighbors who are undecided. I'm neighborly, but I have never had the neighbors over, nor have I socialized with them in their homes. This time, however, I think it's important enough to break my penchant for privacy, just so they can see what kind of man Bush really is.
Each day, my e-mail brings me many lists that detail the lies, the incompetence, the arrogance and the criminal behavior of Bush and his administration. The horrible news has gotten to be so widespread and varied, I am lately at a loss as to which to write about.
The Bush people had what seems to be a strategy so ballsy, it's a miracle it's worked as well as it has. They have managed to corrupt, embezzle, force-feed or otherwise lie to the American public about so many things, their collective wrongdoing are so massive, they have diluted the outrage.
• Environmentalists are so mad at Bush's regressive, pro-business, pollution causing policies-that's the only issue they see.
• Balanced budget, healthy economy minded people are so mad about the deficit, that's the only issue they see.
• People who resent the lies Bush told us to get us into war with Iraq are too angry to see past that.
• Human rights activists still think Abu Ghraib detainee torture defines the sadistic nature of the Defense Department, and that's the issue they focus on.
• The unemployed and underemployed seethe at corporations getting tax cuts for outsourcing our jobs, and that's the issue they focus on.
• Globally minded Americans hate that Bush has created isolationist policies that endanger worldwide peace. That's their primary issue of concern.
• Gays, lesbians and tolerant people resent that Bush has created a wedge of fear and loathing against their basic human rights.
• Educators and parents seethe over "no child left behind" because they know it's rubbish.
• The 45 million Americans without health insurance, and the millions of elderly people whose prescription costs have risen resent Bush for saying one thing and doing another.
• Outrageous gas prices and Bush's well-known footsie playing with the Saudis have outraged another large segment of the population. That's their focus.
• Anti terrorists still think finding Osama Bin Laden should have been a priority over knocking out the benign, weaponless Saddam Hussein- and they resent Bush's distracting our troops and resources on the unwinnable Iraqi war and the forced occupation and costly rebuilding of Iraq. They think that issue is Bush's greatest failure, and it alone should be sufficient to oust him.
• First amendment proponents still are furious at Bush for the way he's avoided the press, muzzled dissent and refused to be accountable. That's their main beef.
• People who value fair play are outraged at the filthy lies, the harping on insignificant side matters, the blame game and the outrageous sums of money spent that Bush's race for reelection has displayed.
With so many areas to dislike, it's enough for people like me who resent Bush for all of the above to maintain basic civility toward his supporters.
Writing scathing critiques about a few issues at a time only dilutes the overall outrage.
So, yes, I can see why many Bloggers are in the doldrums.
We are resting up for the Main Event.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Survivor Tonight!
It's been a mite hard getting a bead on the Lopevi and Yasur tribes this time around.
So far, all I know is the boys have some deadwood like Rory the kvetcher, and the girls have too many Bowheads, as old Scout calls them.
By the way, a local lesbian activist friend tells me we probably met Scout several years ago when she was keynote speaker at a Texas Lesbian Conference we attended in Dallas.
She seemed familiar, but I'll have to take my pal's word for it. I never was much into those crunchy granola dykes like Scout.
Anyway, I'll take a stab at guessing- the Yasur girls will win the reward challenge and the boys of Lopevi will get immunity.
Who'll get the boot?
Scout is old, gay and crusty so she's a target.
Eliza is annoying and wears the biggest bow.
Dolly herds sheep and that name alone makes one think she's a cloned sheep.
Twila works too hard and might annoy the Bowheads with all that noise.
I pick Eliza. It's too early to get rid of the hard workers.
It's been a mite hard getting a bead on the Lopevi and Yasur tribes this time around.
So far, all I know is the boys have some deadwood like Rory the kvetcher, and the girls have too many Bowheads, as old Scout calls them.
By the way, a local lesbian activist friend tells me we probably met Scout several years ago when she was keynote speaker at a Texas Lesbian Conference we attended in Dallas.
She seemed familiar, but I'll have to take my pal's word for it. I never was much into those crunchy granola dykes like Scout.
Anyway, I'll take a stab at guessing- the Yasur girls will win the reward challenge and the boys of Lopevi will get immunity.
Who'll get the boot?
Scout is old, gay and crusty so she's a target.
Eliza is annoying and wears the biggest bow.
Dolly herds sheep and that name alone makes one think she's a cloned sheep.
Twila works too hard and might annoy the Bowheads with all that noise.
I pick Eliza. It's too early to get rid of the hard workers.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Another American Beheaded?
You know folks, when the headlines say stuff like that, you gotta wonder why if Bush dragged us into this war, he hasn't fought it so decisively that beheading Americans would be an unthinkable maneuver for any enemy to take.
The idea that Americans have become so inured to the rising levels of atrocity Bush's war has inspired against our people is just outrageous.
Has anyone here ever heard of Americans being beheaded at any time, anywhere in the world?
Bush and his band of out of touch cabinet members have made the grotesque commonplace.
They've all become like Baghdad Bob, saying we are making progress, saying things are getting better.
They aren't.
If you have to go to war, you have to fight to win. Just saying we are kicking ass only works so far. By now, it's obvious the only asses getting kicked are ours.
If Bush's troops can't kick ass, they should get out and accept defeat before more people are beheaded, firebombed, shot or dragged through the streets on fire.
Bush failed to get a strong coalition to help us finance and fight this unwinnable mess. Most of the 40-something little countries he calls a coalition don't even have armies.
Bush's speech to the UN today was an embarrassment to our nation.
And so is he.
You know folks, when the headlines say stuff like that, you gotta wonder why if Bush dragged us into this war, he hasn't fought it so decisively that beheading Americans would be an unthinkable maneuver for any enemy to take.
The idea that Americans have become so inured to the rising levels of atrocity Bush's war has inspired against our people is just outrageous.
Has anyone here ever heard of Americans being beheaded at any time, anywhere in the world?
Bush and his band of out of touch cabinet members have made the grotesque commonplace.
They've all become like Baghdad Bob, saying we are making progress, saying things are getting better.
They aren't.
If you have to go to war, you have to fight to win. Just saying we are kicking ass only works so far. By now, it's obvious the only asses getting kicked are ours.
If Bush's troops can't kick ass, they should get out and accept defeat before more people are beheaded, firebombed, shot or dragged through the streets on fire.
Bush failed to get a strong coalition to help us finance and fight this unwinnable mess. Most of the 40-something little countries he calls a coalition don't even have armies.
Bush's speech to the UN today was an embarrassment to our nation.
And so is he.
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Annie Lennox and That Other Guy
Last night, Annie Lennox and Sting brought their Sacred Love Tour to San Antonio.
Some say happiness is the anticipation of the culmination of a goal.
My goal since the 80's has been to see Annie Lennox perform, but since I bought tickets back in April, they sort of sat forgotten, stuck to my refrigerator door.
When last night finally came, there she was, with two Jumbotrons flanking the stage to make her image three stories high. She was lean, pale and beautiful. Her hair was white and short.
I wish I could find a way to describe the way I felt finally seeing her, but words don't go where that pure, sweet voice took me.
I guess because her music has been so much a part of my life's soundtrack, at the start of each song that voice of hers triggered memories that filled my head and heart with joy and regret and lust and love and sadness and hope and...well, a lot more stuff than I am used to thinking about at a concert.
By the time Sting came on, I felt like I'd had a platter of desserts already and had little appetite left over for his very pleasant musical entree. I lasted through maybe four of his songs when I started getting restless.
Then Annie joined him on stage for a duet.
Seeing her appear on stage again was sort of like making love, drifting off to sleep and soon waking up to an extra, unanticipated orgasm.
By the end of that, all I wanted was a cigarette, then a long, deep sleep.
Last night, Annie Lennox and Sting brought their Sacred Love Tour to San Antonio.
Some say happiness is the anticipation of the culmination of a goal.
My goal since the 80's has been to see Annie Lennox perform, but since I bought tickets back in April, they sort of sat forgotten, stuck to my refrigerator door.
When last night finally came, there she was, with two Jumbotrons flanking the stage to make her image three stories high. She was lean, pale and beautiful. Her hair was white and short.
I wish I could find a way to describe the way I felt finally seeing her, but words don't go where that pure, sweet voice took me.
I guess because her music has been so much a part of my life's soundtrack, at the start of each song that voice of hers triggered memories that filled my head and heart with joy and regret and lust and love and sadness and hope and...well, a lot more stuff than I am used to thinking about at a concert.
By the time Sting came on, I felt like I'd had a platter of desserts already and had little appetite left over for his very pleasant musical entree. I lasted through maybe four of his songs when I started getting restless.
Then Annie joined him on stage for a duet.
Seeing her appear on stage again was sort of like making love, drifting off to sleep and soon waking up to an extra, unanticipated orgasm.
By the end of that, all I wanted was a cigarette, then a long, deep sleep.
Friday, September 17, 2004
From Salon.com
One more reason why Bush needs to go. Read this recollection from one of Bush's professors at Harvard. Bush was a smug dimwit without a social conscience back then and he's still that way today.
This helps to explain why Bush did nothing to help the less fortunate, the children or the elderly in America, except to strip existing programs and rename them something with a rosier name, but without substance.
The Dunce
His former Harvard Business School professor recalls George W. Bush not just as a terrible student but as spoiled, loutish and a pathological liar.
By Mary Jacoby
Sept. 16, 2004 For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.
"I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."
The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in Tsurumi's macroeconomic policies and international business class in the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974. Tsurumi was a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from January 1972 to August 1976; today, he is a professor of international business at Baruch College in New York.
Trading as usual on his father's connections, Bush entered Harvard in 1973 for a two-year program. He'd just come off what George H.W. Bush had once called his eldest son's "nomadic years" -- partying, drifting from job to job, working on political campaigns in Florida and Alabama and, most famously, apparently not showing up for duty in the Alabama National Guard.
Harvard Business School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor interacts aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each other sharply, offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students' in-class performances, "you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses and strengths in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other things that students reveal," he said.
One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., now the seventh-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. "I typed him as a conservative Republican with a conscience," Tsurumi said. "He never confused his own ideology with economics, and he didn't try to hide his ignorance of a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was what I call a principled conservative." (Though clearly a partisan one. On Wednesday, Cox called for a congressional investigation of the validity of documents that CBS News obtained for a story questioning Bush's attendance at Guard duty in Alabama.)
Bush, by contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi said. "He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.
In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'"
If Cox had been in the same class, Tsurumi said, "I could have asked him to challenge that and he would have demolished it. Not personally or emotionally, but intellectually."
Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically."
Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy."
Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy families, but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said. But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that had brought him to Harvard. "The other children of the rich and famous were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and standards of behavior," Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and spitting chewing tobacco into a cup.
"At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common name and I didn't know his background. And he was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class.
The Vietnam War was still roiling campuses and Harvard was no exception. Bush expressed strong support for the war but admitted to Tsurumi that he'd gotten a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard through his father's connections.
"I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking back to class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber jacket, and the draft was the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said, 'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not the only one trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the war."
Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a war in which others were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught, showed his famous smirk and huffed off."
Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his detractors allege. "He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion," he said.
In recent days, Tsurumi has told his story to various print and television outlets and appears in Kitty Kelley's exposé "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." He said other professors and students at the business school from that time share his recollections but are afraid to come forward, fearing ostracism or retribution. And why is Tsurumi speaking up now? Because with the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq and Osama bin Laden still on the loose -- not to mention a federal deficit ballooning out of control -- the stakes are too high to remain silent. "Obviously, I don't think he is the best person" to be running the country, he said. "I wanted to explain why."
One more reason why Bush needs to go. Read this recollection from one of Bush's professors at Harvard. Bush was a smug dimwit without a social conscience back then and he's still that way today.
This helps to explain why Bush did nothing to help the less fortunate, the children or the elderly in America, except to strip existing programs and rename them something with a rosier name, but without substance.
The Dunce
His former Harvard Business School professor recalls George W. Bush not just as a terrible student but as spoiled, loutish and a pathological liar.
By Mary Jacoby
Sept. 16, 2004 For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.
"I don't remember all the students in detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect -- the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."
The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in Tsurumi's macroeconomic policies and international business class in the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974. Tsurumi was a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from January 1972 to August 1976; today, he is a professor of international business at Baruch College in New York.
Trading as usual on his father's connections, Bush entered Harvard in 1973 for a two-year program. He'd just come off what George H.W. Bush had once called his eldest son's "nomadic years" -- partying, drifting from job to job, working on political campaigns in Florida and Alabama and, most famously, apparently not showing up for duty in the Alabama National Guard.
Harvard Business School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor interacts aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each other sharply, offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students' in-class performances, "you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses and strengths in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other things that students reveal," he said.
One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., now the seventh-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. "I typed him as a conservative Republican with a conscience," Tsurumi said. "He never confused his own ideology with economics, and he didn't try to hide his ignorance of a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was what I call a principled conservative." (Though clearly a partisan one. On Wednesday, Cox called for a congressional investigation of the validity of documents that CBS News obtained for a story questioning Bush's attendance at Guard duty in Alabama.)
Bush, by contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi said. "He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.
In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'"
If Cox had been in the same class, Tsurumi said, "I could have asked him to challenge that and he would have demolished it. Not personally or emotionally, but intellectually."
Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically."
Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy."
Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy families, but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said. But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that had brought him to Harvard. "The other children of the rich and famous were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and standards of behavior," Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and spitting chewing tobacco into a cup.
"At first, I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common name and I didn't know his background. And he was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10 percent of the class.
The Vietnam War was still roiling campuses and Harvard was no exception. Bush expressed strong support for the war but admitted to Tsurumi that he'd gotten a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard through his father's connections.
"I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking back to class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber jacket, and the draft was the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said, 'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not the only one trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the war."
Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a war in which others were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught, showed his famous smirk and huffed off."
Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his detractors allege. "He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion," he said.
In recent days, Tsurumi has told his story to various print and television outlets and appears in Kitty Kelley's exposé "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." He said other professors and students at the business school from that time share his recollections but are afraid to come forward, fearing ostracism or retribution. And why is Tsurumi speaking up now? Because with the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq and Osama bin Laden still on the loose -- not to mention a federal deficit ballooning out of control -- the stakes are too high to remain silent. "Obviously, I don't think he is the best person" to be running the country, he said. "I wanted to explain why."
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Survivor: Bring On the Lesbos!
TONIGHT!
Seems the lesbo underground is buzzing with news about this season of Survivor featuring not one, but two open lesbians.
One is Dr. Scout Cloud Lee, 59, a rancher, author, former college professor and motivational speaker from Oklahomo.
With a name like that, she sounds like the star of many a lesbian potluck/hootenanny, where we all gather around the goddess fire ring and sing 'Kumbaya' while we feast on lentil loaf and hibiscus tea. Sorry, do I sound politically incorrect? Ooops.
The other is Ami Cusack, 31, who works as a model and coffee maker (she calls it a barista, I call it working at Starbucks). She's from Colorado and once appeared in a Playboy photo spread modeling swimwear (yes, I do happen to be stroking my chin, pondering that bit of news).
These two are the first openly gay women on Survivor. One would hope they are not as obnoxious as Richard Hatch or the lesser queens who've been on the show, whose names I forget.
On season one in 2000, contestant Sonja Christopher was gay but that was not disclosed until well after the show. I didn't watch much of Survivor 1, so I can't remember her at all.
Anyway- watch the premier of Survivor tonight, at 7 p.m. central on CBS.
Then come back here and tell us your impressions.
TONIGHT!
Seems the lesbo underground is buzzing with news about this season of Survivor featuring not one, but two open lesbians.
One is Dr. Scout Cloud Lee, 59, a rancher, author, former college professor and motivational speaker from Oklahomo.
With a name like that, she sounds like the star of many a lesbian potluck/hootenanny, where we all gather around the goddess fire ring and sing 'Kumbaya' while we feast on lentil loaf and hibiscus tea. Sorry, do I sound politically incorrect? Ooops.
The other is Ami Cusack, 31, who works as a model and coffee maker (she calls it a barista, I call it working at Starbucks). She's from Colorado and once appeared in a Playboy photo spread modeling swimwear (yes, I do happen to be stroking my chin, pondering that bit of news).
These two are the first openly gay women on Survivor. One would hope they are not as obnoxious as Richard Hatch or the lesser queens who've been on the show, whose names I forget.
On season one in 2000, contestant Sonja Christopher was gay but that was not disclosed until well after the show. I didn't watch much of Survivor 1, so I can't remember her at all.
Anyway- watch the premier of Survivor tonight, at 7 p.m. central on CBS.
Then come back here and tell us your impressions.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Just In Case You Haven't Noticed...
The American public's interest in the Iraq war sort of waned after the Bush crowd "handed over power" to the Iraqi puppets Rumsfeld and Cheney picked out.
Just in case that includes you, please note that things have gotten much worse in Iraq, and more American troops are dying, faster than ever before. U.S. troops are losing ground, and resistance has grown to epic proportions.
Bush will have to initiate a draft in his next term (God forbid) and it's already pretty common knowledge that women will now be subject to the Selective Service's claws, as well as men.
And those college deferments people like Dick Cheney used to avoid Vietnam? History.
If the experts are correct and this war will take 10 years to get out of, little boys and girls that you know and love of age 8 and up will be one day be fighting it out with Iraqis and their pals who hate our guts because Bush chose to invade and occupy their country.
If you thought you'd sit out the vote and see what happens, please think again.
Let's get rid of this maniac and end the crooked Bush dynasty, once and for all.
The American public's interest in the Iraq war sort of waned after the Bush crowd "handed over power" to the Iraqi puppets Rumsfeld and Cheney picked out.
Just in case that includes you, please note that things have gotten much worse in Iraq, and more American troops are dying, faster than ever before. U.S. troops are losing ground, and resistance has grown to epic proportions.
Bush will have to initiate a draft in his next term (God forbid) and it's already pretty common knowledge that women will now be subject to the Selective Service's claws, as well as men.
And those college deferments people like Dick Cheney used to avoid Vietnam? History.
If the experts are correct and this war will take 10 years to get out of, little boys and girls that you know and love of age 8 and up will be one day be fighting it out with Iraqis and their pals who hate our guts because Bush chose to invade and occupy their country.
If you thought you'd sit out the vote and see what happens, please think again.
Let's get rid of this maniac and end the crooked Bush dynasty, once and for all.
No Subject
WTF?
To hear Bush's recent campaign speeches where he talks about everything that needs fixin' in America, you'd think he was the challenger instead of the incumbent.
For a dude who entered office with $5 trillion in the bank and no major military conflicts underway, he's managed to create a pile of messes that needs fixin,' all right.
For him to pretend that he's the guy who can fix things makes me wonder how he can walk with balls that gargantuan.
His mother must have shown him how.
To hear Bush's recent campaign speeches where he talks about everything that needs fixin' in America, you'd think he was the challenger instead of the incumbent.
For a dude who entered office with $5 trillion in the bank and no major military conflicts underway, he's managed to create a pile of messes that needs fixin,' all right.
For him to pretend that he's the guy who can fix things makes me wonder how he can walk with balls that gargantuan.
His mother must have shown him how.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Oh My God
SURVIVOR returns this Thursday night
Just an early heads up to remind you to cancel all plans for Thursday and get ready to relapse into this season's Survivor addiction.
Here's a little appetizer I found to tide you over. Bon appetit.
Jeff Probst's take on this season's Survivors
SURVIVOR returns this Thursday night
Just an early heads up to remind you to cancel all plans for Thursday and get ready to relapse into this season's Survivor addiction.
Here's a little appetizer I found to tide you over. Bon appetit.
Jeff Probst's take on this season's Survivors
I Suppose I Should Mention Kitty Kelley's New Book:
"The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty"
Certainly I've heard of Kitty Kelley, but I've never read any of her biographies because the people she has chosen to profile either didn't interest me, or I disliked them enough as it was without needing to learn lurid details to deepen my contempt.
From what I gather from the barrage of media coverage about Kelley's new release, the money shot of the book is Neil Bush's ex-wife Sharon's allegation that Dubya and his brother Marvin snorted some blow at Camp David, back when the daddy was president.
In fairness to Kelley, she's never been successfully sued for libel, and that's pretty telling, considering she's infamous for making outlandish claims in her books.
In fairness to the journalism profession, Kelley may be a writer, but a journalist she is not.
Having said that, I also believe Sharon Bush was plenty pissed-off enough at her Asian-whore screwing, savings-and-loan-scandal-making buffoon of an ex-husband Neil, to squeal on his equally smarmy brothers, and she probably did it before she had a chance to think about the consequences.
She allegedly told Kelley about the drug use with a witness in the room. The witness has come forward to verify Kelley's claims, but I can't recall his name because, come on, who really cares?
That Sharon Bush recanted was not surprising in the least. There's a reason not many insiders go up against the Bush clan, and it starts with a dollar sign and ends in a bunch of zeros, with a few dead rats stapled to the edges for decoration.
The damage control phone conversation probably went something like this:
Neil Bush: Sharon, what the fuck did you tell that woman?
Sharon Bush: Nothin,' I swear, I didn't tell her nothin'!
NB: Well, lissen sugardoodle, you're gonna go on CNN and Fox and all the rest of them and deny it, else your fuckin' alimony checks will get tied up in court for the next 40 years, capiche?
SB: Are you threatening me?
NB: Well, hell yeah, I am. I'm the gotdam brother of the freakin presdint, and if you fuck with my family I'll have some of Rummy's Abu Ghraib boys put a hurtin' on you, ya dumb bitch. Hell, I'll even shoot your prized palomino my own damn self.
SB: You better leave my horse alone, Neil!
NB: (whinnies like a horse) {click}(dial tone)
Okay.
All that aside, we Texans have known for decades that the Bush boys liked to party like rich, spoiled, white, frat boys armed with a whole stack of get out of jail free cards.
Maybe because they were.
See, in Texas if you are a senator or congressman's kid from either party, you get to run as hog wild as you want. It's a bi-partisan, Texas tradition, and that's all there is to it.
Bush has refused to get specific about his "acts of immaturity in his callow youth prior to age 40" (callow youth ends at 40??) so we can pretty much assume he smoked some weed and did some blow, just like pretty near everyone did back in the day.
So, Kelley's book mentioning Bush and his Camp David cocaine use isn't news, it's just one more source making one more claim about Bush and drug use that we've already known about forever.
Frankly, I don't care if he snorted half the GNP of Colombia up his nose at Camp David, off the naked ass of his daddy's VP Dan Quayle, for all I care.
What concerns me most is Bush's untreated alcoholism, because years of excessive alcohol abuse distorts the user's thinking, and that distortion requires psychological and/or psychiatric treatment to fix it. Google dry drunk and read all about it. It's a serious issue that really should be addressed, because it pertains the Bush's current lapses in judgment. But I digress.
Anyway, with both sides now scrounging into ancient manure piles and fighting this election battle in the past like a court full of snippy trailer trash, it's just more hubris to divert our attention from the pressing issues of today.
Swift Boat Veterans, meet Kitty Kelley.
Now, all y'all scram and let's get back to the REAL issues of today. And take your fuckin' IBM typewriter font balls with you, ya bunch of slimeballs.
"The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty"
Certainly I've heard of Kitty Kelley, but I've never read any of her biographies because the people she has chosen to profile either didn't interest me, or I disliked them enough as it was without needing to learn lurid details to deepen my contempt.
From what I gather from the barrage of media coverage about Kelley's new release, the money shot of the book is Neil Bush's ex-wife Sharon's allegation that Dubya and his brother Marvin snorted some blow at Camp David, back when the daddy was president.
In fairness to Kelley, she's never been successfully sued for libel, and that's pretty telling, considering she's infamous for making outlandish claims in her books.
In fairness to the journalism profession, Kelley may be a writer, but a journalist she is not.
Having said that, I also believe Sharon Bush was plenty pissed-off enough at her Asian-whore screwing, savings-and-loan-scandal-making buffoon of an ex-husband Neil, to squeal on his equally smarmy brothers, and she probably did it before she had a chance to think about the consequences.
She allegedly told Kelley about the drug use with a witness in the room. The witness has come forward to verify Kelley's claims, but I can't recall his name because, come on, who really cares?
That Sharon Bush recanted was not surprising in the least. There's a reason not many insiders go up against the Bush clan, and it starts with a dollar sign and ends in a bunch of zeros, with a few dead rats stapled to the edges for decoration.
The damage control phone conversation probably went something like this:
Neil Bush: Sharon, what the fuck did you tell that woman?
Sharon Bush: Nothin,' I swear, I didn't tell her nothin'!
NB: Well, lissen sugardoodle, you're gonna go on CNN and Fox and all the rest of them and deny it, else your fuckin' alimony checks will get tied up in court for the next 40 years, capiche?
SB: Are you threatening me?
NB: Well, hell yeah, I am. I'm the gotdam brother of the freakin presdint, and if you fuck with my family I'll have some of Rummy's Abu Ghraib boys put a hurtin' on you, ya dumb bitch. Hell, I'll even shoot your prized palomino my own damn self.
SB: You better leave my horse alone, Neil!
NB: (whinnies like a horse) {click}(dial tone)
Okay.
All that aside, we Texans have known for decades that the Bush boys liked to party like rich, spoiled, white, frat boys armed with a whole stack of get out of jail free cards.
Maybe because they were.
See, in Texas if you are a senator or congressman's kid from either party, you get to run as hog wild as you want. It's a bi-partisan, Texas tradition, and that's all there is to it.
Bush has refused to get specific about his "acts of immaturity in his callow youth prior to age 40" (callow youth ends at 40??) so we can pretty much assume he smoked some weed and did some blow, just like pretty near everyone did back in the day.
So, Kelley's book mentioning Bush and his Camp David cocaine use isn't news, it's just one more source making one more claim about Bush and drug use that we've already known about forever.
Frankly, I don't care if he snorted half the GNP of Colombia up his nose at Camp David, off the naked ass of his daddy's VP Dan Quayle, for all I care.
What concerns me most is Bush's untreated alcoholism, because years of excessive alcohol abuse distorts the user's thinking, and that distortion requires psychological and/or psychiatric treatment to fix it. Google dry drunk and read all about it. It's a serious issue that really should be addressed, because it pertains the Bush's current lapses in judgment. But I digress.
Anyway, with both sides now scrounging into ancient manure piles and fighting this election battle in the past like a court full of snippy trailer trash, it's just more hubris to divert our attention from the pressing issues of today.
Swift Boat Veterans, meet Kitty Kelley.
Now, all y'all scram and let's get back to the REAL issues of today. And take your fuckin' IBM typewriter font balls with you, ya bunch of slimeballs.
Monday, September 13, 2004
New Rules
Bill Maher has a great feature he does at the end of each episode of his excellent pundit comedy show on HBO, "Real Time."
It's called, "New Rules," and Maher mentions things that piss him off, then he makes a new rule about it.
I thought I'd do my version.
New Rule:
No more using American flags as background images for news programs or political events on either side. The flag has been used like a $4 crack whore to subliminally trick people into thinking whoever is standing in front of it is credible and honest, and the more I see it used, the less honest the people using it seem to be.
New Rule:
If federal civil servants have to submit to random piss tests to keep their jobs, that should apply to the White House civil servants as well. As a taxpayer, I want to see civil servant in chief George W. Bush's test results because I think he's on something.
New Rule:
From now on, it's against the law to call something by a nicer name than what it is.
From Fox News using, "Fair and Balanced" as a slogan, to calling a plan that allows more environmental pollution than ever "the clear skies initiative," I want no more deceptive labeling.
That includes bad movies, hastily thrown together to make a buck. The movie 'Gigly' comes to mind.
From now on, crappy movies like that must always be at least partially titled, "Anything for a Buck."
Examples: "Mel Gibson's Anything for a Buck Passions of the Christ."
"The Anything for a Buck Ladykillers," starring Tom Hanks.
New Rule:
If you are a public figure and belong to the opposite political party than people think you do, you must wear a little button or ribbon that identifies your true orientation. For example, Kelsey Grammer and Jessica Simpson are Republicans, so they should wear them. Country music star Toby Keith is a registered Democrat but he backs Bush, so he needs one, too.
New Rule:
Before any new taxes are levied, marijuana needs to be legalized, regulated and sold through government outlets. Instead of offering farm subsidies to farmers not to grow crops, let 'em grow pot. Pot is a multi billion dollar industry that needs to be taken from the criminals who traffic in it and handed over to the criminals who run the government.
New Rule:
Whirlygigs, the pinwheel-like spinning things people stick in their lawns for decoration are ugly and must be removed and discarded. People who refuse should be charged with a third degree misdemeanor.
New Rule:
Just because a stranger walks up to you to bum a cigarette or ask the time, that does not entitle him or her to hang around and try to chitchat. No more obligation to be polite, now it's okay to say scram without guilt.
New Rule:
If you cannot pronounce the word nuclear, you are no longer allowed to say it in public.
New Rule:
It is no longer appropriate under any social circumstances to ask anyone about their pubic hair grooming habits, or lack thereof. If one has a legitimate need to know, they will find out eventually without having to ask.
New Rule:
No more decaffeinated coffee. If you can't take the caffeine, you can't drink coffee anymore.
New Rule:
No more showing people your photographs unless they ask to see them first.
New Rule:
No more using cell phones in the grocery store to call home and ask what to buy. Make a list, it's cheaper than making a call and not as annoying to others.
Bill Maher has a great feature he does at the end of each episode of his excellent pundit comedy show on HBO, "Real Time."
It's called, "New Rules," and Maher mentions things that piss him off, then he makes a new rule about it.
I thought I'd do my version.
New Rule:
No more using American flags as background images for news programs or political events on either side. The flag has been used like a $4 crack whore to subliminally trick people into thinking whoever is standing in front of it is credible and honest, and the more I see it used, the less honest the people using it seem to be.
New Rule:
If federal civil servants have to submit to random piss tests to keep their jobs, that should apply to the White House civil servants as well. As a taxpayer, I want to see civil servant in chief George W. Bush's test results because I think he's on something.
New Rule:
From now on, it's against the law to call something by a nicer name than what it is.
From Fox News using, "Fair and Balanced" as a slogan, to calling a plan that allows more environmental pollution than ever "the clear skies initiative," I want no more deceptive labeling.
That includes bad movies, hastily thrown together to make a buck. The movie 'Gigly' comes to mind.
From now on, crappy movies like that must always be at least partially titled, "Anything for a Buck."
Examples: "Mel Gibson's Anything for a Buck Passions of the Christ."
"The Anything for a Buck Ladykillers," starring Tom Hanks.
New Rule:
If you are a public figure and belong to the opposite political party than people think you do, you must wear a little button or ribbon that identifies your true orientation. For example, Kelsey Grammer and Jessica Simpson are Republicans, so they should wear them. Country music star Toby Keith is a registered Democrat but he backs Bush, so he needs one, too.
New Rule:
Before any new taxes are levied, marijuana needs to be legalized, regulated and sold through government outlets. Instead of offering farm subsidies to farmers not to grow crops, let 'em grow pot. Pot is a multi billion dollar industry that needs to be taken from the criminals who traffic in it and handed over to the criminals who run the government.
New Rule:
Whirlygigs, the pinwheel-like spinning things people stick in their lawns for decoration are ugly and must be removed and discarded. People who refuse should be charged with a third degree misdemeanor.
New Rule:
Just because a stranger walks up to you to bum a cigarette or ask the time, that does not entitle him or her to hang around and try to chitchat. No more obligation to be polite, now it's okay to say scram without guilt.
New Rule:
If you cannot pronounce the word nuclear, you are no longer allowed to say it in public.
New Rule:
It is no longer appropriate under any social circumstances to ask anyone about their pubic hair grooming habits, or lack thereof. If one has a legitimate need to know, they will find out eventually without having to ask.
New Rule:
No more decaffeinated coffee. If you can't take the caffeine, you can't drink coffee anymore.
New Rule:
No more showing people your photographs unless they ask to see them first.
New Rule:
No more using cell phones in the grocery store to call home and ask what to buy. Make a list, it's cheaper than making a call and not as annoying to others.
Florida Election scam, put to music
Click for an uplifting reminder of the need to vote. To make sure your vote is counted remember to vote absentee, and leave a paper trail.
Click for an uplifting reminder of the need to vote. To make sure your vote is counted remember to vote absentee, and leave a paper trail.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Outfoxed
Went to see the documentary "Outfoxed" today.
It's an expose on the right-wing bias of Fox News, but the producers made their point by showing clip after endless clip of Fox News broadcasts, making it feel like the audience was exposed to an hour and a half of, well, watching Fox News.
Seeing 10 or more minutes of Bill O'Reilly excoriating "guests" who do not share his views was truly astounding.
He must have the balls of a stud field mouse to be telling people to shut up, and cutting their mikes when they don't. He threw a man off the set whose father had died at the World Trade Center. The guest said he thought Bush's policies added to the tension with terrorists and enflamed them, and O'Reilly went ballistic-calling him names, telling him to shut up and interrupting him every time he tried to speak.
When the man stopped in the greenroom for coffee after he was thrown off the O'Reilly set, two producers urged him to leave quickly, lest O'Reilly see him in the hall and attack him physically.
Huh? Can that possible be true?
In a free society, I accept that some free speech might offend me. It's the price we all pay to allow that freedom for everyone.
What I don't understand is how Fox News fans fail to object to the obvious bias they display, not to mention accepting the bombastic, loud, gratuitous rudeness of pundits like O'Reilly.
It's okay to watch news that agrees with one's point of view, but if that interferes with their ability to hear all the news- good and bad- in an accurate manner, then it's not news.
News is what happened, not what the left or right think happened.
I hope Fox News devotees ask themselves just one question.
If CNN and Fox News were both angry with you for something you said or did, which news outlet would you trust to tell both sides of the story in a manner that let the viewers hear the story, then decide for themselves?
Chances are, if you can tell whose side the newscaster is on based on his or her side comments or body language, you will not be getting the whole story.
Accepting news coverage that's obviously slanted to one side or another does no one any favors.
Americans on the left and right deserve to hear the news as plain and simple as possible, without excess partiality shown to either side of any argument.
If we want editorials or Blogs, we know where to find them.
Would I recommend seeing Outfoxed to others?
Only if they don't mind seeing an hour and a half of bad Fox News exemplars.
Went to see the documentary "Outfoxed" today.
It's an expose on the right-wing bias of Fox News, but the producers made their point by showing clip after endless clip of Fox News broadcasts, making it feel like the audience was exposed to an hour and a half of, well, watching Fox News.
Seeing 10 or more minutes of Bill O'Reilly excoriating "guests" who do not share his views was truly astounding.
He must have the balls of a stud field mouse to be telling people to shut up, and cutting their mikes when they don't. He threw a man off the set whose father had died at the World Trade Center. The guest said he thought Bush's policies added to the tension with terrorists and enflamed them, and O'Reilly went ballistic-calling him names, telling him to shut up and interrupting him every time he tried to speak.
When the man stopped in the greenroom for coffee after he was thrown off the O'Reilly set, two producers urged him to leave quickly, lest O'Reilly see him in the hall and attack him physically.
Huh? Can that possible be true?
In a free society, I accept that some free speech might offend me. It's the price we all pay to allow that freedom for everyone.
What I don't understand is how Fox News fans fail to object to the obvious bias they display, not to mention accepting the bombastic, loud, gratuitous rudeness of pundits like O'Reilly.
It's okay to watch news that agrees with one's point of view, but if that interferes with their ability to hear all the news- good and bad- in an accurate manner, then it's not news.
News is what happened, not what the left or right think happened.
I hope Fox News devotees ask themselves just one question.
If CNN and Fox News were both angry with you for something you said or did, which news outlet would you trust to tell both sides of the story in a manner that let the viewers hear the story, then decide for themselves?
Chances are, if you can tell whose side the newscaster is on based on his or her side comments or body language, you will not be getting the whole story.
Accepting news coverage that's obviously slanted to one side or another does no one any favors.
Americans on the left and right deserve to hear the news as plain and simple as possible, without excess partiality shown to either side of any argument.
If we want editorials or Blogs, we know where to find them.
Would I recommend seeing Outfoxed to others?
Only if they don't mind seeing an hour and a half of bad Fox News exemplars.
Saturday, September 11, 2004
September 11
On this sad anniversary, please note that not one terrorist associated with the destruction of the World Trade Towers in New York, the attack on the Pentagon or the plane crash in Pennsylvania has been brought to justice.
Osama Bin Laden is still at large.
The ban on assault weapons has been allowed to lapse, making it easier for terrorists who infiltrate our borders to obtain personal weapons of mass destruction.
Two hundred billion dollars has been diverted from the war on terror and spent on the war in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, whose country was found to have no weapons of mass destruction. The 9/11 Commision determined that Saddam had no ties to the terrorists who struck America three years ago today.
Are we any safer now than we were three years ago on this date?
We are not.
George W. Bush has made enemies of former allies.
He has continued to shield the Saudi government from scrutiny as to their role in producing more 9/11 terrorists than any other Middle Eastern country, and their continuing to foster the growth of new Al Qaida cells in their midst.
This is an anniversary, but it's not a happy one.
I pray the fourth anniversary of 9/11 will be marked by President Kerry, in a solemn and dignified way, with measurable dents put in terrorist activity, by his new administration.
On this sad anniversary, please note that not one terrorist associated with the destruction of the World Trade Towers in New York, the attack on the Pentagon or the plane crash in Pennsylvania has been brought to justice.
Osama Bin Laden is still at large.
The ban on assault weapons has been allowed to lapse, making it easier for terrorists who infiltrate our borders to obtain personal weapons of mass destruction.
Two hundred billion dollars has been diverted from the war on terror and spent on the war in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, whose country was found to have no weapons of mass destruction. The 9/11 Commision determined that Saddam had no ties to the terrorists who struck America three years ago today.
Are we any safer now than we were three years ago on this date?
We are not.
George W. Bush has made enemies of former allies.
He has continued to shield the Saudi government from scrutiny as to their role in producing more 9/11 terrorists than any other Middle Eastern country, and their continuing to foster the growth of new Al Qaida cells in their midst.
This is an anniversary, but it's not a happy one.
I pray the fourth anniversary of 9/11 will be marked by President Kerry, in a solemn and dignified way, with measurable dents put in terrorist activity, by his new administration.
Friday, September 10, 2004
Molly Ivins Nails it Again
Forget Bush
It's his supporting cast that really deserves the boot
AUSTIN, Texas -- This is the Tommy Corcoran column. Tommy the Cork, so dubbed by FDR, was a Washington wise man. His various biographers called him the ultimate insider, the super lawyer and the master fixer. He came to Washington in 1926 to clerk for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and became a fixture, an almost institutional source of wisdom about American politics, before his death in 1981.
The Cork had a theory about how to choose a president. He always said it didn't matter who was running, that it was unnecessary to pay any attention to them. What matters, he said, is the approximately 1,500 people the president brings to Washington with him, his appointments to the positions where people actually run things. The question to consider is which 1,500 people we get.
So here are a few suggestions:
At the EPA, you do not want people who think it's a good idea to allow more arsenic in the water. When someone, anyone proposes allowing more arsenic in the water, what you want is people at the EPA who promptly say: "No. Not a good idea."
There are some lawyers, and then there are other lawyers. You do not want lawyers at the Justice Department (or the White House or the Defense Department) who, when asked to prepare a legal brief defending torture, do so. You want lawyers at Justice (and the White House and the Defense Department) who say: "No. Torture is not a good idea. Trying to wiggle out from under our laws, international treaties and civilized norms is not a good idea."
You especially don't want lawyers who defend torture promoted to the federal bench. It is not a good idea to have the CIA using the same "interrogation technique" that was so favored by the Gestapo.
This is counterproductive as well as wrong.
You don't want folks in charge of the IRS who think it is more important to audit poor people than rich people. That is dumb.
You do not want people in charge of foreign policy who are fools enough to believe in Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted con man and, it turns out, probably a spy for Iran. Those people should be fired. Especially when some of them are now also being investigated for giving classified information to Israel.
Having your Department of Homeland Security turn out to be a public disgrace indicates that you have either not put the right people in charge or they are not getting enough support.
When "Hurricane Hits Florida Yet Again" becomes a standing headline right up there with "Canadian Trade Talks Continue," you may want to put people in charge of policy who recognize that global warming not only exists but threatens us all.
If the people a president puts in charge of foreign policy are all from the same small circle of rigid ideologues, what happens is that they end up listening only to themselves, and on that way lies disaster.
When the people who are running the Food and Drug Administration do so to benefit the big processors and the big drug companies, people get hurt, and some of them die.
When the people in charge of prosecuting terrorists in this country screw up case after case, those people should be replaced.
When the country endures a hideous terrorist attack, is it actually useful for the White House to oppose the commission assigned to find out how it happened? To first deny it adequate funding, then refuse to provide it with critical documents, then oppose an extension of its deadline, then refuse to allow the commission access to prisoners who played key roles in the attack, then try to stop Condoleezza Rice from testifying, then refuse to have the president testify under oath?
When the people in charge make a decision to start an unprovoked war because of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent ties to the terrorists who have attacked us, you may conclude that these people are lying, or dumb, or just not helpful.
When a new administration comes into office with a huge budget surplus and then blows it all on tax cuts that benefit the very rich, should it be retained? If an economic team leads the country to a record $422 billion deficit this year and $2.3 trillion in the next decade, do you really want a team in charge that announces it wants more tax cuts that will double the total deficit to $4.6 trillion by the end of the decade? Do these people have a sense of responsibility? If the economic team produces a net loss of 1.1 million jobs after four years, should its contract be renewed?
Forget Bush -- the people around him are a complete disaster. John Kerry will basically re-hire the Clinton team and presumably remain faithful to his wife. Of course, Clinton didn't get Osama bin Laden, either. But his people worked harder at it.
Forget Bush
It's his supporting cast that really deserves the boot
AUSTIN, Texas -- This is the Tommy Corcoran column. Tommy the Cork, so dubbed by FDR, was a Washington wise man. His various biographers called him the ultimate insider, the super lawyer and the master fixer. He came to Washington in 1926 to clerk for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and became a fixture, an almost institutional source of wisdom about American politics, before his death in 1981.
The Cork had a theory about how to choose a president. He always said it didn't matter who was running, that it was unnecessary to pay any attention to them. What matters, he said, is the approximately 1,500 people the president brings to Washington with him, his appointments to the positions where people actually run things. The question to consider is which 1,500 people we get.
So here are a few suggestions:
At the EPA, you do not want people who think it's a good idea to allow more arsenic in the water. When someone, anyone proposes allowing more arsenic in the water, what you want is people at the EPA who promptly say: "No. Not a good idea."
There are some lawyers, and then there are other lawyers. You do not want lawyers at the Justice Department (or the White House or the Defense Department) who, when asked to prepare a legal brief defending torture, do so. You want lawyers at Justice (and the White House and the Defense Department) who say: "No. Torture is not a good idea. Trying to wiggle out from under our laws, international treaties and civilized norms is not a good idea."
You especially don't want lawyers who defend torture promoted to the federal bench. It is not a good idea to have the CIA using the same "interrogation technique" that was so favored by the Gestapo.
This is counterproductive as well as wrong.
You don't want folks in charge of the IRS who think it is more important to audit poor people than rich people. That is dumb.
You do not want people in charge of foreign policy who are fools enough to believe in Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted con man and, it turns out, probably a spy for Iran. Those people should be fired. Especially when some of them are now also being investigated for giving classified information to Israel.
Having your Department of Homeland Security turn out to be a public disgrace indicates that you have either not put the right people in charge or they are not getting enough support.
When "Hurricane Hits Florida Yet Again" becomes a standing headline right up there with "Canadian Trade Talks Continue," you may want to put people in charge of policy who recognize that global warming not only exists but threatens us all.
If the people a president puts in charge of foreign policy are all from the same small circle of rigid ideologues, what happens is that they end up listening only to themselves, and on that way lies disaster.
When the people who are running the Food and Drug Administration do so to benefit the big processors and the big drug companies, people get hurt, and some of them die.
When the people in charge of prosecuting terrorists in this country screw up case after case, those people should be replaced.
When the country endures a hideous terrorist attack, is it actually useful for the White House to oppose the commission assigned to find out how it happened? To first deny it adequate funding, then refuse to provide it with critical documents, then oppose an extension of its deadline, then refuse to allow the commission access to prisoners who played key roles in the attack, then try to stop Condoleezza Rice from testifying, then refuse to have the president testify under oath?
When the people in charge make a decision to start an unprovoked war because of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent ties to the terrorists who have attacked us, you may conclude that these people are lying, or dumb, or just not helpful.
When a new administration comes into office with a huge budget surplus and then blows it all on tax cuts that benefit the very rich, should it be retained? If an economic team leads the country to a record $422 billion deficit this year and $2.3 trillion in the next decade, do you really want a team in charge that announces it wants more tax cuts that will double the total deficit to $4.6 trillion by the end of the decade? Do these people have a sense of responsibility? If the economic team produces a net loss of 1.1 million jobs after four years, should its contract be renewed?
Forget Bush -- the people around him are a complete disaster. John Kerry will basically re-hire the Clinton team and presumably remain faithful to his wife. Of course, Clinton didn't get Osama bin Laden, either. But his people worked harder at it.
File under: GET OVER IT
The Bush campaign has questioned CNN's allowing James Carville and Paul Begala to continue as commentators despite their role as informal advisers to the Kerry campaign.
"It seems highly irregular that CNN would tolerate two employees' openly working and advising and appearing on behalf of the John Kerry for President campaign," Steve Schmidt, a Bush spokesman, said Wednesday.
With Fox News on the Bush payroll for the last four years, Schmidt has some colossal balls even mentioning Carville and Begala being on CNN.
Speaking of Carville, yesterday I received in my snail mail a letter from him with the envelope marked, "They sent you the wrong photo."
Last month, the Kerry campaign had sent me an 8x10 photo of Kerry and Edwards.
In yesterday's letter was enclosed a 5x7 photo of Bush and Cheney, smiling smugly at each other. Carville said if I didn't want to see those snide, arrogant faces for four more years I should send in another contribution to Sen. Kerry's campaign.
I did.
If you don't want to see those smug bastards Dick and Bush for another four years, please send whatever you can to the Kerry campaign. We simply must get rid of these criminal draft dodgers and flim flam artists who conned their way into power back in 2000.
The Bush campaign has questioned CNN's allowing James Carville and Paul Begala to continue as commentators despite their role as informal advisers to the Kerry campaign.
"It seems highly irregular that CNN would tolerate two employees' openly working and advising and appearing on behalf of the John Kerry for President campaign," Steve Schmidt, a Bush spokesman, said Wednesday.
With Fox News on the Bush payroll for the last four years, Schmidt has some colossal balls even mentioning Carville and Begala being on CNN.
Speaking of Carville, yesterday I received in my snail mail a letter from him with the envelope marked, "They sent you the wrong photo."
Last month, the Kerry campaign had sent me an 8x10 photo of Kerry and Edwards.
In yesterday's letter was enclosed a 5x7 photo of Bush and Cheney, smiling smugly at each other. Carville said if I didn't want to see those snide, arrogant faces for four more years I should send in another contribution to Sen. Kerry's campaign.
I did.
If you don't want to see those smug bastards Dick and Bush for another four years, please send whatever you can to the Kerry campaign. We simply must get rid of these criminal draft dodgers and flim flam artists who conned their way into power back in 2000.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Wag the Dog Time!
Seems the Bush WhiteHouse has withheld Bush's AWOL documents the media requested as early as 2000, and violated the Freedom of Information Act. That, my friends is called a cover up, and that's against the law. Just ask the ghost of Dick Nixon.
Can you say Watergate?
Seems the Bush WhiteHouse has withheld Bush's AWOL documents the media requested as early as 2000, and violated the Freedom of Information Act. That, my friends is called a cover up, and that's against the law. Just ask the ghost of Dick Nixon.
Can you say Watergate?
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Carter: Putting the Traitor in his Place
The text of a letter former President Jimmie Carter sent to Zell Miller after Miller's vitriolic speech at the GOP convention.
You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family and me, elected you as lieutenant governor and as governor. It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. Senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust.
Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn disagreed strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and me, but they remained loyal to the party in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans.
Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.
Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as “one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend.")
I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacificist.
Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited.
The text of a letter former President Jimmie Carter sent to Zell Miller after Miller's vitriolic speech at the GOP convention.
You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family and me, elected you as lieutenant governor and as governor. It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. Senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust.
Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn disagreed strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and me, but they remained loyal to the party in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans.
Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.
Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as “one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend.")
I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacificist.
Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited.
Quote of the Week
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
- VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY
Yes, he is saying if we don't reelect Dick and the Bush we will be hit by terrorists again.
Must be because Dick and Bush are so respected by the terrorists.
It's easy to see how scared they are of Americans in Iraq, and how the Iraqis greeted our troops with flowers and sweets when they first invaded.
Uh huh.
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
- VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY
Yes, he is saying if we don't reelect Dick and the Bush we will be hit by terrorists again.
Must be because Dick and Bush are so respected by the terrorists.
It's easy to see how scared they are of Americans in Iraq, and how the Iraqis greeted our troops with flowers and sweets when they first invaded.
Uh huh.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Sick of Bush
I'm so sick of reading and hearing about Bush, I may have to take a brief break from Blogging about that asshole for a while. Here's some non-Bush stuff to chew on.
• The Smoking Gun.com has some amusing videos of Victoria Gotti visiting her gangster father in the Big House, back when he was alive. Gee, he was quite the guy if you like the violent, racist, ignorant type.
• I went to a lesbian wedding at the Gulf coast town of Surfside over the weekend. Well, I went to a reception, I should say. We missed the actual vows being exchanged because some redneck cop decided to stop a suspect driving in the opposite direction by ramming his squad car into his. The wreck happened on the one road we were on to the beach where the ceremony was. The road was closed down for 2.5 hours because of this small town Deputy Barney Fife, so we missed the ceremony by 3 hours. The cops were sassy when we asked how much longer they'd be, too.
• I went to use the pool at the hotel where we stayed, but a baby cottonmouth snake was hogging the pool all to himself. Even babies are venomous, so I let him have the pool, the little serpent bastard.
• I did some heavy yardwork today and had to redo the line on my Weed Eater approximately 75 times. Someone needs to reinvent those pieces of crap.
• I was so impressed by the thousands of gorgeous pine trees I saw in Southeast Texas, yesterday I bought an 8-foot Slash Pine here in San Antonio and planted it in my front yard. Hard labor on Labor Day? You betcha.
I'm so sick of reading and hearing about Bush, I may have to take a brief break from Blogging about that asshole for a while. Here's some non-Bush stuff to chew on.
• The Smoking Gun.com has some amusing videos of Victoria Gotti visiting her gangster father in the Big House, back when he was alive. Gee, he was quite the guy if you like the violent, racist, ignorant type.
• I went to a lesbian wedding at the Gulf coast town of Surfside over the weekend. Well, I went to a reception, I should say. We missed the actual vows being exchanged because some redneck cop decided to stop a suspect driving in the opposite direction by ramming his squad car into his. The wreck happened on the one road we were on to the beach where the ceremony was. The road was closed down for 2.5 hours because of this small town Deputy Barney Fife, so we missed the ceremony by 3 hours. The cops were sassy when we asked how much longer they'd be, too.
• I went to use the pool at the hotel where we stayed, but a baby cottonmouth snake was hogging the pool all to himself. Even babies are venomous, so I let him have the pool, the little serpent bastard.
• I did some heavy yardwork today and had to redo the line on my Weed Eater approximately 75 times. Someone needs to reinvent those pieces of crap.
• I was so impressed by the thousands of gorgeous pine trees I saw in Southeast Texas, yesterday I bought an 8-foot Slash Pine here in San Antonio and planted it in my front yard. Hard labor on Labor Day? You betcha.
From the Daily Misleader- a newsletter that outlines the myriad ways Bush and his goons have misled American taxpayers.
BUSH HAMPERED FIGHT AGAINST AL QAEDA
President Bush yesterday said that because of his leadership, "America and
the world are safer."[1] But almost three years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden
remains at large, while the U.S. government admits top al Qaeda leaders are
planning attacks on America from the Afghan-Pakistan border region.[2] And
now a new book confirms the President actually shifted key resources away
from the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Knight-Ridder reports that in his upcoming book, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL)
disclosed that General Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, four months
after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources were being
shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. Graham, who was chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, said the administration moved
things like the Predator drone aircraft out of Afghanistan even though it is
"crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders."[3]
Graham's account is consistent with reports from earlier this year. In March
2004, USA Today reported that the White House in 2002 shifted special forces
off of the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan and into preparations for an
Iraq invasion. The administration also took intelligence "specialists away
from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered."[4]
Sources:
1. "President's Remarks at a Victory 2004 Rally in Poplar Bluff, Missouri,"
WhiteHouse.gov, 9/06/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1178875&l=53536.
2. "Officials: Bin Laden guiding plots against U.S.," CNN.com, 7/08/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1178875&l=53537.
3. "9/11 hijackers tied to Saudi government, Graham says in book," Boston
Globe, 9/05/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1178875&l=53538.
4. "Shifts from bin Laden hunt evoke questions," USA Today, 3/28/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1178875&l=53539.
Visit www.Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion.
BUSH HAMPERED FIGHT AGAINST AL QAEDA
President Bush yesterday said that because of his leadership, "America and
the world are safer."[1] But almost three years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden
remains at large, while the U.S. government admits top al Qaeda leaders are
planning attacks on America from the Afghan-Pakistan border region.[2] And
now a new book confirms the President actually shifted key resources away
from the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Knight-Ridder reports that in his upcoming book, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL)
disclosed that General Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, four months
after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources were being
shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq. Graham, who was chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, said the administration moved
things like the Predator drone aircraft out of Afghanistan even though it is
"crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders."[3]
Graham's account is consistent with reports from earlier this year. In March
2004, USA Today reported that the White House in 2002 shifted special forces
off of the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan and into preparations for an
Iraq invasion. The administration also took intelligence "specialists away
from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered."[4]
Sources:
1. "President's Remarks at a Victory 2004 Rally in Poplar Bluff, Missouri,"
WhiteHouse.gov, 9/06/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1178875&l=53536.
2. "Officials: Bin Laden guiding plots against U.S.," CNN.com, 7/08/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1178875&l=53537.
3. "9/11 hijackers tied to Saudi government, Graham says in book," Boston
Globe, 9/05/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1178875&l=53538.
4. "Shifts from bin Laden hunt evoke questions," USA Today, 3/28/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1178875&l=53539.
Visit www.Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion.
Monday, September 06, 2004
George W. Bush's missing year
The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father. Did they see him do any National Guard service? "Good lord, no."
Excerpts from a recent Salon Magazine article:
Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison.
In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?
"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."
Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.
After more than three decades of silence, Allison spoke with Salon over several days before and during the Republican National Convention this week -- motivated, as she acknowledged, by a complex mixture of emotions. They include pride in her late husband's accomplishments, a desire to see him remembered, and concern about the apparent double standard in Bush surrogates attacking John Kerry's Vietnam War record while ignoring the president's irresponsible conduct during the war.
...Allison's recollections of the young George Bush in Alabama in 1972 are relevant as a contrast to the medals for valor and bravery that Kerry won in Vietnam in the same era.
Allison's account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence.
Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way."
Allison also confirmed previously published accounts that Bush often showed up in the Blount campaign offices around noon, boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before. (Bush has admitted that he was a heavy drinker in those years, but he has refused to say whether he also used drugs).
"After about a month I asked Jimmy what was Georgie's job, because I couldn't figure it out. I never saw him do anything.
C. Murphy Archibald... a Vietnam veteran who volunteered on the campaign from September 1972 until election night, corroborated Allison's recollections.
"But then no one understood why he brought this young guy from Texas along. It was like, 'Who was this guy who comes in late and leaves early? And why would Jimmy Allison, who was so impressive, bring him on?'"
Bush, who had a paid slot as Allison's deputy in a campaign staffed largely by volunteers, sat in a little office next to Allison's, said Archibald, a workers compensation lawyer in Charlotte, N.C. Indeed, when Bush was actually there, he did make phone calls to county chairmen. But he neglected his other duty: the mundane but important task of mailing out campaign materials to the county campaign chairs. Archibald took up the slack, at Allison's request. "Jimmy didn't say anything about George. He just said, 'These materials are not getting out. It's causing the candidate problems. Will you take it over?'"
...the Georgie that Allison knew was a young man whose parents did not allow him to live with the consequences of his own mistakes. His powerful father -- whom the son seemed to both idolize and resent -- was a lifeline for Bush out of predicaments.
After Bush graduated from Yale in 1968, his slot in the Texas Air National Guard allowed him to avoid active duty service in Vietnam. The former speaker of the Texas state House, Democrat Ben Barnes, now admits he pulled strings to get Bush his coveted guard slot, and says he's "ashamed" of the deed. "60 Minutes" will air an interview with Barnes next Wednesday, but George H.W. Bush denounced Barnes' claims in an interview aired on CBS.
"They keep saying that and it's a lie, a total lie. Nobody's come up with any evidence, and yet it's repeated all the time," the former president said, in what could just as well describe the playbook for the Swift Boat Veterans ads.
Yet, after receiving unusual permission to transfer to the Alabama Guard from Texas, Bush has produced no evidence he showed up for service for anything other than a dental exam. Later, Bush would trade on his father's connections to enter the oil business, and when his ventures failed, trade on more connections to find investors to bail him out. Linda Allison's story fills in the details about a missing chapter in the story of how George Bush Sr.'s friends helped his wastrel son.
The widow Allison remembers watching Bush (41) in 1964 at a campaign appearance at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, when she was 32 years old and he was running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. "He was so appealing to me. He said all the things that I believed in, and he wasn't like all the other Republicans running in Texas at that time, who were real right-wingers. He had a bigger vision of what the Republican Party could be. I volunteered for his campaign that day, and that's how I ended up being his Dallas County headquarters chairman." Over the years, Linda kept volunteering with the local Republican Party. "And they gave me bigger and bigger things to do. They appreciated me. And I felt like I belonged to something," she said.
But it was also this sense of being connected to a larger, more powerful force that seduced the Allisons -- a trap that many aides and friends of important politicians fall into. The dynamic allowed the Bushes -- Barbara especially, Allison said -- to manipulate the friends and supporters they needed to further their ambitions, a lesson she says could not have been lost on the young George. "They had a way of anointing you, then pushing you out," she said. "It was like a mind game. It was very subtle, very hard to describe. But when you were out, you wanted desperately to be let back in." It was how she and Jimmy felt when, in 1973, they experienced a strange and, to Allison, never fully explained rupture with the Bushes, which took place against the backdrop of boorish behavior by their son that persisted during the time he was nominally under the Allisons' care.
The break happened not long after a boozy election-night wake for Blount, who lost his Senate bid to the incumbent Democrat, John Sparkman. Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he'd yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he'd rented in Montgomery trashed -- the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. "He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people's possessions," Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents' home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go "mano a mano," as has often been reported.
Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. "He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn't get past," Allison recalled. "He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too."
More than a quarter century later, George W. Bush is running for reelection as a "war" president. At the Republican Convention, delegates pass out Purple Heart stickers mocking Kerry's Vietnam wounds as "a self-inflicted scratch," and George H.W. Bush, speaking on CNN, lauds the Swift Boat Veterans' claims against Kerry as "rather compelling." Karl Rove tells the Associated Press that Kerry's opposition to a war that Bush avoided had served to "tarnish the records and service of people who were defending our country and fighting communism." Barbara Bush tells USA Today: "I die over every untruth that I hear about George -- I mean, every one."
Linda Allison watches it all from her New York apartment. About George W. Bush's disputed sojourn in Alabama, she asks simply:
"Can we all be lying?"
The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father. Did they see him do any National Guard service? "Good lord, no."
Excerpts from a recent Salon Magazine article:
Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison.
In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?
"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."
Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.
After more than three decades of silence, Allison spoke with Salon over several days before and during the Republican National Convention this week -- motivated, as she acknowledged, by a complex mixture of emotions. They include pride in her late husband's accomplishments, a desire to see him remembered, and concern about the apparent double standard in Bush surrogates attacking John Kerry's Vietnam War record while ignoring the president's irresponsible conduct during the war.
...Allison's recollections of the young George Bush in Alabama in 1972 are relevant as a contrast to the medals for valor and bravery that Kerry won in Vietnam in the same era.
Allison's account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence.
Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way."
Allison also confirmed previously published accounts that Bush often showed up in the Blount campaign offices around noon, boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before. (Bush has admitted that he was a heavy drinker in those years, but he has refused to say whether he also used drugs).
"After about a month I asked Jimmy what was Georgie's job, because I couldn't figure it out. I never saw him do anything.
C. Murphy Archibald... a Vietnam veteran who volunteered on the campaign from September 1972 until election night, corroborated Allison's recollections.
"But then no one understood why he brought this young guy from Texas along. It was like, 'Who was this guy who comes in late and leaves early? And why would Jimmy Allison, who was so impressive, bring him on?'"
Bush, who had a paid slot as Allison's deputy in a campaign staffed largely by volunteers, sat in a little office next to Allison's, said Archibald, a workers compensation lawyer in Charlotte, N.C. Indeed, when Bush was actually there, he did make phone calls to county chairmen. But he neglected his other duty: the mundane but important task of mailing out campaign materials to the county campaign chairs. Archibald took up the slack, at Allison's request. "Jimmy didn't say anything about George. He just said, 'These materials are not getting out. It's causing the candidate problems. Will you take it over?'"
...the Georgie that Allison knew was a young man whose parents did not allow him to live with the consequences of his own mistakes. His powerful father -- whom the son seemed to both idolize and resent -- was a lifeline for Bush out of predicaments.
After Bush graduated from Yale in 1968, his slot in the Texas Air National Guard allowed him to avoid active duty service in Vietnam. The former speaker of the Texas state House, Democrat Ben Barnes, now admits he pulled strings to get Bush his coveted guard slot, and says he's "ashamed" of the deed. "60 Minutes" will air an interview with Barnes next Wednesday, but George H.W. Bush denounced Barnes' claims in an interview aired on CBS.
"They keep saying that and it's a lie, a total lie. Nobody's come up with any evidence, and yet it's repeated all the time," the former president said, in what could just as well describe the playbook for the Swift Boat Veterans ads.
Yet, after receiving unusual permission to transfer to the Alabama Guard from Texas, Bush has produced no evidence he showed up for service for anything other than a dental exam. Later, Bush would trade on his father's connections to enter the oil business, and when his ventures failed, trade on more connections to find investors to bail him out. Linda Allison's story fills in the details about a missing chapter in the story of how George Bush Sr.'s friends helped his wastrel son.
The widow Allison remembers watching Bush (41) in 1964 at a campaign appearance at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, when she was 32 years old and he was running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. "He was so appealing to me. He said all the things that I believed in, and he wasn't like all the other Republicans running in Texas at that time, who were real right-wingers. He had a bigger vision of what the Republican Party could be. I volunteered for his campaign that day, and that's how I ended up being his Dallas County headquarters chairman." Over the years, Linda kept volunteering with the local Republican Party. "And they gave me bigger and bigger things to do. They appreciated me. And I felt like I belonged to something," she said.
But it was also this sense of being connected to a larger, more powerful force that seduced the Allisons -- a trap that many aides and friends of important politicians fall into. The dynamic allowed the Bushes -- Barbara especially, Allison said -- to manipulate the friends and supporters they needed to further their ambitions, a lesson she says could not have been lost on the young George. "They had a way of anointing you, then pushing you out," she said. "It was like a mind game. It was very subtle, very hard to describe. But when you were out, you wanted desperately to be let back in." It was how she and Jimmy felt when, in 1973, they experienced a strange and, to Allison, never fully explained rupture with the Bushes, which took place against the backdrop of boorish behavior by their son that persisted during the time he was nominally under the Allisons' care.
The break happened not long after a boozy election-night wake for Blount, who lost his Senate bid to the incumbent Democrat, John Sparkman. Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he'd yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he'd rented in Montgomery trashed -- the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. "He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people's possessions," Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents' home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go "mano a mano," as has often been reported.
Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. "He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn't get past," Allison recalled. "He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too."
More than a quarter century later, George W. Bush is running for reelection as a "war" president. At the Republican Convention, delegates pass out Purple Heart stickers mocking Kerry's Vietnam wounds as "a self-inflicted scratch," and George H.W. Bush, speaking on CNN, lauds the Swift Boat Veterans' claims against Kerry as "rather compelling." Karl Rove tells the Associated Press that Kerry's opposition to a war that Bush avoided had served to "tarnish the records and service of people who were defending our country and fighting communism." Barbara Bush tells USA Today: "I die over every untruth that I hear about George -- I mean, every one."
Linda Allison watches it all from her New York apartment. About George W. Bush's disputed sojourn in Alabama, she asks simply:
"Can we all be lying?"
Political Hors d'oeuvre
• If Bush's goons couldn't keep CODEPINK and ActUp protesters from infiltrating his heavily guarded convention, we are supposed to believe he can keep the country safe?
• If Rumsfeld's Pentagon can't keep Israeli spies out, we should trust him to lead our nation's defense?
• Who among us would be shocked if the Bush crowd suddenly produced Osama Bin Laden next month, just in time for the election? Someone should tell the Bush campaign the election is not like sweeps week on network TV. Too much is at stake to be toying with U.S. voters.
• When Fahrenheit 9/11 comes on video and DVD, I plan to order some pizzas, get some beer and invite neighbors over to watch.
• Did you know Dick Cheney dropped out of college?
• Why didn't George Herbert Walker Bush address the RNC?
Pick you favorites and discuss...
• If Bush's goons couldn't keep CODEPINK and ActUp protesters from infiltrating his heavily guarded convention, we are supposed to believe he can keep the country safe?
• If Rumsfeld's Pentagon can't keep Israeli spies out, we should trust him to lead our nation's defense?
• Who among us would be shocked if the Bush crowd suddenly produced Osama Bin Laden next month, just in time for the election? Someone should tell the Bush campaign the election is not like sweeps week on network TV. Too much is at stake to be toying with U.S. voters.
• When Fahrenheit 9/11 comes on video and DVD, I plan to order some pizzas, get some beer and invite neighbors over to watch.
• Did you know Dick Cheney dropped out of college?
• Why didn't George Herbert Walker Bush address the RNC?
Pick you favorites and discuss...
Friday, September 03, 2004
Bush and The RNC: A Complete Laughingstock
Quick Quiz:
Who was the mastermind behind 9/11?
Osama Bin Laden
Whose name didn't come up even once during the Republican convention?
Osama Bin Laden.
That's right.
Considering all the Republicans could discuss this week (besides bashing Kerry and Edwards) was 9/11 and all the sad, sympathetic images they could wring from it, you'd think they'd mention the perpetrator.
But no, because they allowed their $200 billion war with Iraq to distract them from the search for the real perp.
And, make no mistake about it, with Madison Square Garden surrounded by the largest cadre of security, police and secret service ever assembled in history, a red-faced Bush had his speech disrupted, not once, but twice by infiltrating protesters.
Some national security, Bushie. You can't even keep yourself safe from those who loathe you.
In an historic move, Kerry and Edwards were so angered by the lies and omissions of the RNC, they held a joint press conference following the meandering Bush speech, before a crowd of more than 15,000 people assembled in the dark of night, outdoors in Springfield, Ohio.
Yes, thousands of Ohioans gathered around midnight and stayed for more than an hour to watch Kerry and Edwards take the gloves off.
Kerry:
"I have five words for America: This is your wake-up call."
He added:
"Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty," Kerry said.
"Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation.
"Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation.
"Letting 45 million Americans go without health care makes you unfit to lead this nation.
"Letting the Saudi royal family control our energy costs makes you unfit to lead this nation. "Handing out billions in government contracts without a bid to Halliburton while you're still on their payroll makes you unfit."
The gloves are off, all right.
Kerry and Edwards found the fire in their bellies last night, and the road for an imbecilic weakling like Bush and his sickly, criminal, old sidekick Cheney just got a whole lot craggier.
The GOP had their chance to define themselves this week.
Like they did for last four years, they failed in their mission.
Kerry and Edwards have thus far wasted courtesy and fair play on their despicable opponents.
But not anymore.
Bush and Cheney deserve nothing but contempt, and Kerry and Edwards gave them what they had coming to them.
The real campaign began in Springfield, Ohio last night.
No more years!
Quick Quiz:
Who was the mastermind behind 9/11?
Osama Bin Laden
Whose name didn't come up even once during the Republican convention?
Osama Bin Laden.
That's right.
Considering all the Republicans could discuss this week (besides bashing Kerry and Edwards) was 9/11 and all the sad, sympathetic images they could wring from it, you'd think they'd mention the perpetrator.
But no, because they allowed their $200 billion war with Iraq to distract them from the search for the real perp.
And, make no mistake about it, with Madison Square Garden surrounded by the largest cadre of security, police and secret service ever assembled in history, a red-faced Bush had his speech disrupted, not once, but twice by infiltrating protesters.
Some national security, Bushie. You can't even keep yourself safe from those who loathe you.
In an historic move, Kerry and Edwards were so angered by the lies and omissions of the RNC, they held a joint press conference following the meandering Bush speech, before a crowd of more than 15,000 people assembled in the dark of night, outdoors in Springfield, Ohio.
Yes, thousands of Ohioans gathered around midnight and stayed for more than an hour to watch Kerry and Edwards take the gloves off.
Kerry:
"I have five words for America: This is your wake-up call."
He added:
"Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty," Kerry said.
"Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation.
"Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation.
"Letting 45 million Americans go without health care makes you unfit to lead this nation.
"Letting the Saudi royal family control our energy costs makes you unfit to lead this nation. "Handing out billions in government contracts without a bid to Halliburton while you're still on their payroll makes you unfit."
The gloves are off, all right.
Kerry and Edwards found the fire in their bellies last night, and the road for an imbecilic weakling like Bush and his sickly, criminal, old sidekick Cheney just got a whole lot craggier.
The GOP had their chance to define themselves this week.
Like they did for last four years, they failed in their mission.
Kerry and Edwards have thus far wasted courtesy and fair play on their despicable opponents.
But not anymore.
Bush and Cheney deserve nothing but contempt, and Kerry and Edwards gave them what they had coming to them.
The real campaign began in Springfield, Ohio last night.
No more years!
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Another GOP Closet Door Kicked Open
Source: LA Times
By Richard Simon and Johanna Neuman, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — The allegation appeared on a website last month: A conservative Republican congressman, Edward L. Schrock of Virginia, was secretly gay. It was picked up by other sites — and on Monday, Schrock withdrew his bid for reelection, saying only that his campaign could no longer focus on his district's issues.
The Web posting was the latest move in an intensified campaign by gay activists to fight what they perceive as antigay legislation by "outing" lawmakers who they believe to be gay and who vote for the measures — including the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would amend the Constitution to say that only men and women can enter into a legal marriage.
The outing campaign is a new tactic in a battle between some gay activists who decry what they call the hypocrisy of closeted gays who support the amendment or work for lawmakers who back it, and those who assail the tactic as an invasion of privacy. It comes as Republicans have ratified a platform at their party convention in New York supporting President Bush's call for the amendment, which would effectively ban same-sex marriage.
The Gay, Lesbian & Allies Senate Staff Caucus criticized the outing campaign, calling it "counterproductive."
"We are troubled by this idea that staffers must agree with their bosses on every issue or they are somehow 'hypocrites' and should, consequently, be harassed," the group says on its website.
Steven Fisher, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest advocacy group for gay and lesbian issues, said his organization opposed using "sexual orientation as a weapon."
Christopher Barron, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group, said: "We disagree strongly with the outing campaign, but we also strongly disagree with President Bush's sponsorship of the antifamily Federal Marriage Amendment. It is all very unfortunate."
The debate over the outing campaign intensified after Schrock, who represents the conservative military cities of Norfolk and Hampton Roads, abruptly announced Monday that he would not seek reelection to a third term.
His announcement came after Michael Rogers, a gay-rights activist in Washington, posted on his website a recording of a phone call that he alleged was placed by Schrock to a gay dating service several years ago.
Schrock, 63, a retired Navy captain who is married, did not comment on Rogers' allegations. His office issued a written statement saying that his decision to withdraw from the race was spurred by unspecified allegations that have "called into question" his ability to serve in Congress. His office did not return a call Tuesday.
A House GOP leadership aide who spoke on condition that he not be identified said Tuesday that Schrock's "initial instinct was to fight this thing tooth and nail, but [he] wound up deciding that he didn't want to drag his family through it."
Rogers defended his actions, saying he was determined to expose officials who vote against gay rights while maintaining a secret gay life and to reveal the sexual orientation of closeted gay staffers who work for lawmakers who support antigay legislation.
"This is about exposing hypocrisy," he said in an interview.
Schrock is among 127 House sponsors of the amendment. The Senate blocked the measure in July; the House is expected to vote on it this fall.
Schrock also voted in July for a House-approved bill designed to let state courts, rather than federal courts, decide whether states should recognize out-of-state marriages between people of the same sex.
Rogers, 40, a fundraising consultant, said he started his website in July after Bush announced his support of the constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.
Rogers said an anonymous tipster sent him a recording of the call allegedly made by the congressman. Rogers said he called the lawmaker's office several times, but was hung up on.
In one of the postings on Rogers' Web log, a reader wrote: "Certainly I have mixed feelings on outing. But not when it comes to hypocrites who are actively working to perpetuate the hatred and discrimination we face."
Another posting says, "I do not understand a site such as yours that fights hate and bigotry with a very similar type of hate and attacks…. What have you accomplished by outing these men?"
John Aravosis, a Washington political consultant, runs http://www.DearMary.com , a website that encourages supporters to write Vice President Dick Cheney's openly lesbian daughter, Mary, entreating her to lobby her father against Bush administration policies.
Aravosis said the White House all but invited the outing tactic by endorsing the constitutional amendment.
"They declared war," he said. "We're not going to respond with a hug."
He said he had qualms about outing people — "and I still do, you're talking about someone's personal life, something that can cause them real pain." But he said Bush's endorsement of the Federal Marriage Act in February "changed everything. They dropped the legislative equivalent of a nuclear bomb."
A former staff lawyer to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Aravosis compared the campaign to the superpower nuclear showdown during the Cold War. "Mutual assured destruction worked once," he said. "Maybe it will again."
Saying the White House has used gay issues as a wedge to win support from its conservative base, Aravosis added, "If they want to call a truce, our phone lines are open."
Note: John also has an excellent Blog listed to the right, called America Blog.
Source: LA Times
By Richard Simon and Johanna Neuman, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — The allegation appeared on a website last month: A conservative Republican congressman, Edward L. Schrock of Virginia, was secretly gay. It was picked up by other sites — and on Monday, Schrock withdrew his bid for reelection, saying only that his campaign could no longer focus on his district's issues.
The Web posting was the latest move in an intensified campaign by gay activists to fight what they perceive as antigay legislation by "outing" lawmakers who they believe to be gay and who vote for the measures — including the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would amend the Constitution to say that only men and women can enter into a legal marriage.
The outing campaign is a new tactic in a battle between some gay activists who decry what they call the hypocrisy of closeted gays who support the amendment or work for lawmakers who back it, and those who assail the tactic as an invasion of privacy. It comes as Republicans have ratified a platform at their party convention in New York supporting President Bush's call for the amendment, which would effectively ban same-sex marriage.
The Gay, Lesbian & Allies Senate Staff Caucus criticized the outing campaign, calling it "counterproductive."
"We are troubled by this idea that staffers must agree with their bosses on every issue or they are somehow 'hypocrites' and should, consequently, be harassed," the group says on its website.
Steven Fisher, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest advocacy group for gay and lesbian issues, said his organization opposed using "sexual orientation as a weapon."
Christopher Barron, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group, said: "We disagree strongly with the outing campaign, but we also strongly disagree with President Bush's sponsorship of the antifamily Federal Marriage Amendment. It is all very unfortunate."
The debate over the outing campaign intensified after Schrock, who represents the conservative military cities of Norfolk and Hampton Roads, abruptly announced Monday that he would not seek reelection to a third term.
His announcement came after Michael Rogers, a gay-rights activist in Washington, posted on his website a recording of a phone call that he alleged was placed by Schrock to a gay dating service several years ago.
Schrock, 63, a retired Navy captain who is married, did not comment on Rogers' allegations. His office issued a written statement saying that his decision to withdraw from the race was spurred by unspecified allegations that have "called into question" his ability to serve in Congress. His office did not return a call Tuesday.
A House GOP leadership aide who spoke on condition that he not be identified said Tuesday that Schrock's "initial instinct was to fight this thing tooth and nail, but [he] wound up deciding that he didn't want to drag his family through it."
Rogers defended his actions, saying he was determined to expose officials who vote against gay rights while maintaining a secret gay life and to reveal the sexual orientation of closeted gay staffers who work for lawmakers who support antigay legislation.
"This is about exposing hypocrisy," he said in an interview.
Schrock is among 127 House sponsors of the amendment. The Senate blocked the measure in July; the House is expected to vote on it this fall.
Schrock also voted in July for a House-approved bill designed to let state courts, rather than federal courts, decide whether states should recognize out-of-state marriages between people of the same sex.
Rogers, 40, a fundraising consultant, said he started his website in July after Bush announced his support of the constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.
Rogers said an anonymous tipster sent him a recording of the call allegedly made by the congressman. Rogers said he called the lawmaker's office several times, but was hung up on.
In one of the postings on Rogers' Web log, a reader wrote: "Certainly I have mixed feelings on outing. But not when it comes to hypocrites who are actively working to perpetuate the hatred and discrimination we face."
Another posting says, "I do not understand a site such as yours that fights hate and bigotry with a very similar type of hate and attacks…. What have you accomplished by outing these men?"
John Aravosis, a Washington political consultant, runs http://www.DearMary.com , a website that encourages supporters to write Vice President Dick Cheney's openly lesbian daughter, Mary, entreating her to lobby her father against Bush administration policies.
Aravosis said the White House all but invited the outing tactic by endorsing the constitutional amendment.
"They declared war," he said. "We're not going to respond with a hug."
He said he had qualms about outing people — "and I still do, you're talking about someone's personal life, something that can cause them real pain." But he said Bush's endorsement of the Federal Marriage Act in February "changed everything. They dropped the legislative equivalent of a nuclear bomb."
A former staff lawyer to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Aravosis compared the campaign to the superpower nuclear showdown during the Cold War. "Mutual assured destruction worked once," he said. "Maybe it will again."
Saying the White House has used gay issues as a wedge to win support from its conservative base, Aravosis added, "If they want to call a truce, our phone lines are open."
Note: John also has an excellent Blog listed to the right, called America Blog.
A washingtonpost.com contest link from: picnic6@aol.com
The Washington Post is sponsoring a Best political Blog contest.
If you like what I write, I'd appreciate your vote. Thank you kindly.
To vote, go to Best Blogs Politics
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/marketing/blog/front.html?referrer=emaillink
If you like what I write, I'd appreciate your vote. Thank you kindly.
To vote, go to Best Blogs Politics
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/marketing/blog/front.html?referrer=emaillink
A Word or Two about the GOP Convention
I admit I limited my GOP convention exposure last night to reading transcripts and news reports, but from what I gather, it's better I skipped it.
Zell Miller: go join the Republicans, you phony, traitor, hayseed, old bastard. You never distinguished yourself as a Democrat, so it's clear to see you seek any kind of attention you can get, even negative attention. Your 15 minutes is up, loser.
Cheney, you draft dodging, college dropout, corporate criminal, self serving son of a bitch.
When your family came on stage with you after your hate speech, your daughter Mary and her lover Heather were nowhere to be seen. With you as a male role model, no wonder she prefers women.
The Republicans whined and bitched about the Democrats' convention being a Bush bashing event.
When their turn came, all they could do was bash Kerry.
They had nothing else to offer, besides standing on the graves of the 9/11 victims and using it for political gain.
We had Obama. They had ZigZag Zell.
Anyone who can still support these shameless, dishonest, hate mongering criminals at this point is, simply put, too ignorant to deserve anything better.
I admit I limited my GOP convention exposure last night to reading transcripts and news reports, but from what I gather, it's better I skipped it.
Zell Miller: go join the Republicans, you phony, traitor, hayseed, old bastard. You never distinguished yourself as a Democrat, so it's clear to see you seek any kind of attention you can get, even negative attention. Your 15 minutes is up, loser.
Cheney, you draft dodging, college dropout, corporate criminal, self serving son of a bitch.
When your family came on stage with you after your hate speech, your daughter Mary and her lover Heather were nowhere to be seen. With you as a male role model, no wonder she prefers women.
The Republicans whined and bitched about the Democrats' convention being a Bush bashing event.
When their turn came, all they could do was bash Kerry.
They had nothing else to offer, besides standing on the graves of the 9/11 victims and using it for political gain.
We had Obama. They had ZigZag Zell.
Anyone who can still support these shameless, dishonest, hate mongering criminals at this point is, simply put, too ignorant to deserve anything better.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Arnold Speaks!
Here's a transcript of Schwartzenneger's speech for those who missed it:
Here's a transcript of Schwartzenneger's speech for those who missed it:
Danke. Ein was für Gruß! Dieses ist wie das Gewinnen von von einem Oscar! ..., als ob ich wissen würde! Das Sprechen des Fungierens, einer meiner Filme wurde "True Lies." genannt; It's, was die Demokraten genannt haben sollten ihre Versammlung. My fellow Americans, dieser ist ein erstaunlicher Moment für mich. Denken, daß ein einmal hagerer Junge von Österreich bis zu gewordenem Regler von Kalifornien wachsen und Madison im quadratischen Garten stehen könnte, um im Namen des Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten zu sprechen, die ein immigrant's Traum ist. Es ist der amerikanische Traum. Ich war in Europa... geboren und I've reiste auf der ganzen Erde. Ich kann Ihnen erklären, daß es keinen Platz, kein Land gibt, mitfühlenderes großzügigeres Annehmen und, begrüßend als die Staaten von Amerika. Vor so lang, wie ich lebe, vergesse ich nie diesen Tag 21 Jahren, als ich meine Hand anhob und den Eid der Staatsbürgerschaft schwur. Können Sie, stolz ich war? Ich war so stolz, daß ich herum mit einer amerikanischen Markierungsfahne um meine Schultern den ganzen Tag ging. Heute abend möchte ich sprechen über warum I'm sogar stolzer, ein Amerikaner zu sein - warum I'm, das stolz ist, ein Republikaner zu sein und warum ich glaube, dieses Land in den guten Händen ist. Als ich ein Junge war, besetzten die Sowjets Teil von Österreich. Ich sah ihre Behälter in den Straßen. Ich sah Kommunismus mit meinen eigenen Augen. Ich erinnere mich die an Furcht, die wir hatten, als wir in den sowjetischen Sektor kreuzen mußten. Aufwachsend, wurden wir, "Don't Blick die Soldaten im Auge erklärt. Schauen Sie gerades ahead." Es war ein allgemeiner Glaube, daß sowjetische Soldaten einen Mann aus seinem eigenen Auto heraus nehmen und ihn zum Sowjet-Anschluß als Sklavenarbeit weg versenden konnten. Meine Familie didn't haben ein Auto - aber ein Tag, den wir in meinem uncle's Auto waren. Es war nahe Dunkelheit, während wir zu einem sowjetischen Prüfpunkt kamen. Ich war ein kleiner Junge, I wasn't eine Tätigkeit Heldrückseite dann, und ich erinnere mich, an wie erschrocken ich war, daß die Soldaten meinen Vater ziehen würden, oder mein Onkel aus dem Auto und dem I'd heraus ihn nie wieder sehen. Meine Familie und so viele andere lebten in der Furcht vor der sowjetischen Aufladung. Heute fürchtet sich die Welt nicht mehr, daß der Sowjet-Anschluß und sie wegen der Staaten von Amerika sind! Während ein Zicklein ich das sozialistische Land sah, daß Österreich nach den Sowjets nach links wurde. Ich liebe Österreich und ich liebe die österreichischen Leute - aber ich wußte immer, daß Amerika der Platz für mich war. In der Schule als der Lehrer über Amerika sprechen würde, würde ich über herkommen träumen. Ich würde Stunden lang die amerikanischen Filme aufpassend sitzen, die von meinen Heldern wie John Wayne transfixed sind. Alles über Amerika schien, also groß zu mir also öffnen Sie sich, so möglich. Ich kam schließlich hier 1968 an. Ich hatte leere Taschen, aber ich war von den Träumen voll. Die Präsidentenkampagne war im vollen Schwingen. Ich erinnere mich, das Nixon und Humphrey Präsidentenrennen auf Fernsehapparat aufzupassen. Ein Freund, der deutsches und Englisch sprach, übersetzt für mich. Ich hörte Humphrey Sachen sagend, die wie sozialismus klangen, der ist, was ich gerechtes links hatte. Aber dann hörte ich Nixon zu sprechen. Er sprach über Unternehmungsfreiheit, erhielt Regierung weg von Ihrem rückseitigen, senkte Steuern und verstärkte das Militär. Das Hören zu Nixon sprechen klang mehr wie ein Atem von Frischluft. Ich sagte zu meinem Freund, "What Beteiligtes bin he?" Mein Freund sagte, "He's ein Republican." Ich sagte, "Then mich bin ein Republican!" Und ein Republikaner gewesenes I've seitdem! Und vertrauen Sie mir, auf meine wife's Familie, that's keine kleine Ausführung! I'm stolz, dem Beteiligten von Abraham Lincoln, dem Beteiligten von Teddy Roosevelt, dem Beteiligten von Ronald Reagan und dem Beteiligten von George W. Bush zu gehören. Zu meinen Mitimmigranten, die heute abend hören, wünsche ich Sie können, Willkommen Sie in diesem Beteiligten sind. Wir Republikaner bewundern Ihren Ehrgeiz. Wir regen Ihre Träume an. Wir glauben an Ihre Zukunft. Eine Sache, die ich über Amerika erlernte, ist, daß, wenn Sie stark arbeiten und durch die Richtlinien spielen, dieses Land wirklich zu Ihnen geöffnet ist. Sie können alles erzielen. Alles habe ich meine Karriere mein Erfolg meine Familie, die ich nach Amerika verdanke. In diesem Land unterscheidet es doesn't jedes mögliches, in dem Sie geboren waren. Es doesn't unterscheidet jedes mögliches, das Ihre Eltern waren. Es doesn't unterscheidet jedes mögliches, wenn, wie ich, Sie couldn't sogar Englisch sprechen, bis Sie in Ihren Zwanziger Jahren waren. Amerika gab mir Gelegenheiten und meine einwandernden Träume kamen zutreffend. Ich wünsche die Leute die gleichen Wahrscheinlichkeiten, die ich, die gleichen Gelegenheiten erhalten. Und ich glaube, daß sie können. That's, warum ich an dieses Land, that's glaube, warum ich an dieses Beteiligte und that's glaube, warum ich an diesen Präsidenten glaube. Jetzt sind viele von Ihnen heraus dort heute abend "Republican" wie ich in Ihren Herzen und in Ihrem Glauben. Möglicherweise you're von Guatemala. Möglicherweise you're von den Philippinen. Möglicherweise Europa oder die Elfenbeinküste. Möglicherweise wohnen Sie in Ohio, in Pennsylvania oder in New-Mexico. Und möglicherweise gerade möglicherweiseSIND Sie don't mit diesem Beteiligten zu jedem einzelnen Punkt einverstanden. Ich sage zu Ihnen heute abend, das ich that's nicht nur O.K. glaube, that's what's, das über dieses Land groß ist. Hier können wir respektvoll anderer MeinungSEIN und noch gute Republikaner sind zu sein patriotische Stille und noch zu sein amerikanisch. Meine Mitimmigranten, my fellow Americans, wie wissen Sie, wenn Sie ein Republikaner sind? I'll erklären Ihnen wie. Wenn Sie glauben, daß Regierung zu den Leuten verantwortlich sein sollte, nicht die Leute zur Regierung... dann sind Sie ein Republikaner! Wenn Sie glauben, sollte eine Person als Einzelperson, nicht als Mitglied einer Interesse Gruppe behandelt werden... dann, das Sie ein Republikaner sind! Wenn Sie glauben, kann Ihre Familie Ihr Geld besser ausgeben, als die Regierung... dann Sie sind ein Republikaner! Wenn Sie glauben, daß unser pädagogisches System verantwortlich gehalten werden sollte für den Fortschritt unserer Kinder... dann, sind Sie ein Republikaner! Wenn Sie diesem Land glauben, nicht sind die Nationen, die beste Hoffnung der Demokratie in der Welt... dann, das Sie ein Republikaner sind! Und, Damen und Herren..., wenn Sie uns glauben, muß heftig und unnachgiebig sein und Terrorismus beenden... dann, das Sie ein Republikaner sind! Es gibt eine andere Weise, die Sie you're einem Republikaner erklären können. Sie haben Glauben in der Unternehmungsfreiheit, Glauben im Resourcefulness der amerikanischen Leute... und Glauben in der VEREINIGTE STAATEN Wirtschaft. Zu jenen Kritikern, die über unsere Wirtschaft so pessimistisch sind, sage ich: "Don't ist ökonomisches girlie men!" Die VEREINIGTE STAATEN Wirtschaft bleibt der Neid der Welt. Wir haben das höchste Wirtschaftswachstum von irgendwelchen der world's industrialisierten Hauptnationen. Von Don't erinnern sich Sie an den Pessimismus 20 Jahren vor, als das Kritiker besagte Japan und das Deutschland die VEREINIGTEN STAATEN überholte? Lächerlich! Jetzt sagen sie, daß Indien und China uns überholen. Don't glauben Sie ihm! Wir können einige Stösse schlagen - aber Amerika bewegt immer voran! That's, welche Amerikaner! Wir verschieben Wohlstand voran. Wir verschieben Freiheit voran. Wir verschieben Leute voran. Unter Präsidenten Bush und Vizepräsidenten Cheney, bewegt America's Wirtschaft voran trotz einer Rezession, die sie und trotz des Angriffs auf unserer Heimaten übernahmen. Jetzt sagt das andere Beteiligte, daß es zwei Amerika gibt. Don't glauben daß irgendein. I've besuchte unsere Truppen im Irak, Kuwait, Bosnien, Deutschland und auf der ganzen Erde. I've besuchte unsere Truppen in Kalifornien, in dem sie ausbilden, bevor sie übersee gehen. Und I've besichtigte unsere militärischen Krankenhäuser. Und ich kann Ihnen dieses erklären: Unsere jungen Männer und Frauen in der Uniform glauben nicht, daß es zwei Amerika gibt! Sie glauben, daß wir ein Amerika sind und sie für es kämpfen! Wir sind ein Amerika - und Präsident Bush verteidigt es mit seinem ganzem Herzen und Seele! That's, was ich die meisten über den Präsidenten bewundere. He's ein Mann von Ausdauer. He's ein Mann der inneren Stärke. Er ist ein Führer, den doesn't Erschrecken, doesn't Aufhebung, nicht unten unterstützt. My fellow Americans, machen keinen Fehler über, das ihn, ist Terrorismus heimtückischer als Kommunismus, weil er yearns, nicht gerade die Einzelperson zu zerstören, aber das gesamte internation
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