NationStates Jolt Archive

We do not accept criticism. If you don't agree with these articles, then you hate freedom and America. Also, try not to be so thin-skinned.

Dick Cheney is a COWARD.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's questioning of John Kerry's war record and his ability to protect America is "cowardly," Sen. Tom Harkin said Monday.

"It just outrages me that someone who got five deferments during Vietnam and said he had 'other priorities' at that time would say that," said the Iowa Democrat, a former Navy fighter pilot.

Harkin said he had seen clips of the vice president saying in Iowa last week that Kerry lacks a basic understanding of the war on terrorism.

He accused President Bush and his vice president of "resorting to dirty attacks on John Kerry's war record."

"They're running scared because John Kerry has a war record and they don't," said Harkin. "What he (Cheney) is doing and what he is saying is cowardly. The actions are cowardly."

Harkin, a 20-year veteran of the Senate, was a Navy flier from 1962-67, including stints at Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan and Guantanamo Bay. He served 1968-74 in the Reserves.

He said Cheney has little standing to question the war record of Kerry, who was repeatedly wounded and decorated while serving as a swift boat commander in Vietnam.

The issue first arose when Harkin joined with Des Moines police officials protesting the call-up of a police officer who already had completed his eight year military commitment.

Harkin said that it angered him to hear tough talk from Cheney.

"When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil," said Harkin.

"He'll be tough, but he'll be tough with someone else's kid's blood," said Harkin.

Harkin said he decided to speak out because Republicans have a history of attacking on the issue of patriotism, including questioning the patriotism of former Sen. Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm to a grenade in Vietnam.

Too often, those who are targeted simply ignore the charges, Harkin said.

"You can't let them do that again," said Harkin. "If you let these crazy attacks go unanswered, they take on a life of their own."

Republican National Committee spokesman David James dismissed the attack as shrill and negative.

What a pansy ass Cheney is. And no I am not editorializing, I am just stating fact.

We here at the SB newsroom do not make mistakes. We are NEVER wrong. This thread is your new bible.

Report Shows How Bush Is Squeezing Middle Class

President Bush is now barnstorming the country claiming his record shows that he cares about America's middle class. On everything from taxes to health care to workers wages, the President says he has fought for average Americans. But a new comprehensive report shows that in almost every key economic area, he has actually gone to bat for his wealthiest contributors, at everyone else's expense.

According to a cover story in this month's American Prospect, Bush has pushed policies that benefit the major special interests funding his campaign, while rejecting commonsense, bipartisan proposals that would help the middle class. On taxes, for instance, Bush has claimed, "If you're struggling to get into middle class and you feel like you're paying plenty of taxes, take a look at my agenda."1 Yet, as the Prospect report points out, Bush's tax policies have actually shifted more of the tax burden off of the wealthy, and onto the middle class.2 His policies have also raised federal fees on the middle class, and forced state and local governments to raise middle class taxes to deal with the record federal deficits.

On health care, Bush has said he is working "to help more American families get health insurance."3 Yet, as the Prospect report shows, the only major initiative Bush has offered is an industry-backed proposal that experts say could further raise health insurance premiums and deductibles for average Americans. Similarly, Bush has refused to support real legislation to lower the price of prescription drugs in America.

On wages, Bush has said he wants to help Americans earn better paychecks - but as the Prospect report shows, he has simultaneously refused to support a minimum wage increase while pushing to eliminate overtime pay protections for millions of workers.

Read the full American Prospect report online here:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=8344

Sources:
1. "President Emphasizes Minority Entrepreneurship at Urban League," The White House, 7/23/04.
2. "CBO Report: Bush Tax Cuts Tilted to Rich," Yahoo!News, 08/13/04.
3. "Remarks by the President at Traverse City, Michigan Rally," The White House, 07/23/04.

And you say Bush is good for America?

SB Breaking News of the Hypocricy of the Bush administration

Bush working to gut more environmental protections...

They've finally done it. For the past three and a half years, I've been
writing to you about the Bush administration's efforts to undermine the
Roadless Area Conservation Rule that protects 58.5 million acres of
America's wild forests. But last month, the Bush administration proposed
to repeal the roadless rule in its entirety - and allow timber, oil, and
mining interests to tear a spider web of roads through America's last
wild forests.

Please take a moment right now to submit an official comment to Forest
Service Chief Dale Bosworth and let the Bush administration know that
you oppose the wholesale destruction of America's last wild forests.
Then - even if you've never done so before - ask your family and friends
to help by forwarding this along; there is no more important time to
act.

To take action, click on this link or paste it into your web browser:
http://wildforests.com/wildforests.asp?id=11&id4=ES


Background

Last month, the Bush administration proposed to repeal protections for
58.5 million acres of America's pristine national forests. The Bush
administration proposal would allow many of President Bush's top campaign
contributors in the timber, mining and oil industries to log, mine, and
drill in pristine areas that provide 60 million Americans with clean
drinking water and provide habitat for over 1600 endangered species. Even
for an administration that has weakened so many environmental and
public health protections, this proposal is extreme.

The Bush administration proposal would repeal the Roadless Rule that
was enacted in January 2001 to protect 58.5 million acres of our last
wild forests from logging and road-building. The Roadless Rule ensures
that forests will continue to provide clean drinking water, habitat for
wildlife, and endless opportunities for recreation and solitude. It was
finalized after decades of scientific study, 600 public hearings, and
1.6 million comments in support of the rule. It is the most popular
conservation initiative in our nation's history; more than 2.5 million
Americans have submitted comment supporting the rule.

This support has reached into every sector of society. Even major wood
products consumers like Staples, K.B. Homes and Hayward Lumber think
logging America's last pristine forests makes so little sense that
they've written the Bush administration to urge protection of America's
roadless national forests. Now, it's only extremist elements of the timber,
oil and mining industries that support logging these areas – but it's
those elements that the Bush administration is listening to.

Fortunately, we now have the opportunity to stand up to these powerful
industries and send a clear message to the Bush administration that
Americans want to protect our last pristine forests. Please take a moment
right now to submit an official comment to Forest Service Chief Dale
Bosworth. Then - even if you've never done so before - ask your family
and friends to help by forwarding this along; there is no more important
time to act.

To take action, click on this link or paste it into your web browser:
http://wildforests.com/wildforests.asp?id=11&id4=ES

Sincerely,

Janet S. Domenitz
MASSPIRG Executive Director
JanetD@masspirg.org
http://www.MASSPIRG.org

Yeah thats what we need to do... gut the last of our forests for a non-renewable source of wood and paper while polluting them with drilling, when legalizing hemp would create a huge industry for America not only for oil but for paper and cloth and hundreds of other products. It's a shame that some peopel are so blind, that they refuse to look at healthy alternatives to destructive policies.

And now for some leisure reading at it's finest...


Cold Turkey
by Kurt Vonnegut

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

-------------------------

When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted.

Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.

I have to say that’s a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.

The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one.

But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who’ve said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:

Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning:

As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools or health insurance for all?

How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

-------------------------

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!

I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does “A.D.” signify? That commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious, they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. Then they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.

Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?

No problem. That’s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.

During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England, he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.

Mel Gibson’s next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records will again be broken.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

-------------------------

And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to say about the human record so far? He said, “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.”

The same can be said about this morning’s edition of the New York Times.

The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

So there’s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.

Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.

But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.

Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:

I often think it’s comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It’s practically a law of life that you have to be one or the other? If you aren’t one or the other, you might as well be a doughnut.

If some of you still haven’t decided, I’ll make it easy for you.

If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re a liberal.

If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you’re a conservative.

What could be simpler?

-------------------------

My government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.

One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.

Other drunks have seen pink elephants.

And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call “Native Americans.”

How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.

So let’s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he won’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.

That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.

Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.

About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.


mmm yeah, good stuff



I Love You, Madame Librarian
By Kurt Vonnegut

I, like probably most of you, have seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Its title is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. This temperature 451° Fahrenheit, is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year.

In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

With good reason.

In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O’Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen World War I. War is now a form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? “Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?

-k.v.

I heard about the whole "Cheney is a Coward" thing. And speaking of Vonnegut, I just finished Slaughterhouse-Five

Plus I have to admit, our VP is a real Dick! :p

These are all True SB--all Hail the awful Truth

I heard about the whole "Cheney is a Coward" thing. And speaking of Vonnegut, I just finished Slaughterhouse-Five

Plus I have to admit, our VP is a real Dick! :p
someone should give Cheney a microwave

Good stuff

Just a question: Where do you get all of these?

Good stuff

Just a question: Where do you get all of these?


Actually I got them from bulletins on myspace.com

I just wanted to keep this stuff all in one spot.

Other fake reporters welcome

I am so embarrassed that this man is our supposed leader. *hides head in shame*

Reprising a War With Words
From the Washington Post
Tuesday, August 17, 2004; Page A13

Earlier this month, President Bush was almost done with a speech to a group of minority journalists when he dropped a rather startling proposal.

"We actually misnamed the war on terror," he said. "It ought to be the Struggle Against Ideological Extremists Who Do Not Believe in Free Societies Who Happen to Use Terror as a Weapon to Try to Shake the Conscience of the Free World."

Or, if you prefer to abbreviate, SAIEWDNBIFSWHTUTAAWTTTSTCOTFW.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bushism has returned. The malapropisms that adorned Bush's 2000 campaign before going into remission during much of his presidency have reemerged to garnish his reelection bid.

In that same speech to the minority journalists this month, Bush offered this definition of policy toward Native Americans: "Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. I mean, you're a -- you're a -- you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities."

The day before, when signing a Pentagon spending bill, Bush delighted late-night comics when he said that our enemies "never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

While Democrats rushed to agree with that accidental Bush admission, they couldn't compete with the brief but forceful way he summed up his candidacy the previous day in Davenport, Iowa: "We stand for things."

As in 2000, the president seems to enjoy his linguistic miscues. Appearing last week with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bush said he and the Austrian-born California governor "share a lot in common" -- good wives, big biceps and "trouble with the English language."

The next day, he offered a curious wish for his audience in Oregon: "I hope you leave here and walk out and say, 'What did he say?' " The question was rhetorical, but it is possible a listener would at times be truly befuddled about Bush's meaning.

There was this discussion of Iran policy last week: "As you know, we don't have relationships with Iran," Bush said. "I mean, that's -- ever since the late '70s, we have no contacts with them, and we've totally sanctioned them. In other words, there's no sanctions -- you can't -- we're out of sanctions."

In that same session, Bush might have listeners worried about their civil liberties when he ran into plural trouble. "Let me put it to you bluntly," he ventured. "In a changing world, we want more people to have control over your own life."

As if rerunning the 2000 campaign, the national and international media are again examining Bush's syntax. "Tongue-Twisted Bush Is Bent on Self-Harm," announced the Independent newspaper of London. "Dubya's New Word Blunder" was an Australian newspaper's take. National Public Radio wondered if Bush's gaffes "might influence the coming election."

Jacob Weisberg, editor of the online publication Slate and author of four volumes of Bushisms, said his theory is that Bushisms subsided after Bush took office "because the opportunities for him to go off script became more limited."

Now, with Bush again campaigning, there are opportunities for verbal mishaps almost daily. At a campaign event in Florida last week, Bush could be heard joking about an attempted ax murder of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and his wife. "He wakes up one night and an ax-wielding group of men tried to hatchet him to death, or ax him to death. I guess, you don't hatchet somebody with an ax. And you don't ax them with a hatchet. He wakes up, the glint of the blade coming at him, and he gets cut badly, escapes. The guy hit his wife, who never recovered, really."

This year's standard for Bushisms was the Aug. 6 meeting of minority journalists, where Bush offered a range of creative phrases.

Taxes? "I cut the taxes on everybody. I didn't cut them. The Congress cut them. I asked them to cut them."

Discrimination? "I knew this was going to be an issue in our country, that there would be people that say, 'There goes a Muslim-looking person.' "

Immigration reform? "I have talked about it lately. I talked about it this winter."

War? "I wish I wasn't the war president. Who in the heck wants to be a war president? I don't."

Maybe that's why he calls it the Struggle Against Ideological Extremists Who Do Not Believe in Free Societies Who Happen to Use Terror as a Weapon to Try to Shake the Conscience of the Free World.

(From the Washington Post

Reprising a War With Words

By Dana Milbank

Tuesday, August 17, 2004; Page A13)

And you Reps want this man to be re-elected and actually believe he is doing what is right for national security?

Bush "Living In the Past" On Missile Defense


President Bush yesterday said that "those who oppose ballistic missile system[s] really don't understand the threats of the 21st century. They're living in the past." He then claimed, "We're going to do what's necessary to protect this country."1* But a look at the President's push for an unproven defense system aimed at preventing a Cold War-style attack while he underfunds counterterrorism/homeland security shows that he is the one whose policies are wholly outdated. It also shows that, in fact, he is not doing everything necessary to protect America.

The missile defense system that the President is pushing is designed to shoot down Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) - a weapon experts agree posed a far greater threat to America during the Cold War. By contrast, today the threat of 9/11-style terrorism is far greater than that of an ICBM. A missile defense system does nothing to address that kind of terrorism. Additionally, nonpartisan congressional auditors this year found that the missile defense system was wholly unproven. 2*

Despite these facts, the President is pushing to spend billions on the system, while cutting funding for more pressing national security programs. Specifically, he is pushing a massive nine percent cut to the Nunn-Lugar program 3* - the government's central effort to protect loose nuclear material and prevent that material from getting into the hands of terrorists on the international black market. He has also drastically undefunded basic homeland security programs, including grants to first responders. 4*

To illustrate just how out of touch the President has been on national security issues, consider the summer before 9/11: As the White House received warnings of an imminent terrorist (not ICBM) attack, the Bush administration threatened to veto an urgent request to shift $800 million from missile defense into critical counter-terrorism programs. 5*

Sources:
1. "President's Remarks in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania," The White House, 8/17/04.
2. "Missile defense called unproven. So far, testing is unrealistic, GAO finds," San Francisco Chronicle, 04/24/04.
3. "Fact Sheet: GOP Budget and Homeland Security," House Democrats.Gov, 03/25/04.
4. "The Bush Record: Homeland Insecurity," Democratic National Committee.
5. "WHAT WENT WRONG. The inside story of the missed signals and intelligence failures that raise a chilling question: did September 11 have to happen? ," The Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/02.

Thank you for your letters of encouragement. Yes I will take a long walk off a short pier. It's been quite hot in California lately and the AC in my house has not been working.

Here is some minor encouragement to help you thru the day:

Kerry has held the lead in the majority poll since August 10th.

August 17, 2004--If the Presidential Election were held today, Senator John Kerry would win 228 Electoral Votes, President George W. Bush would win 192 Electoral Votes. 118 Electoral Votes would be in the toss-up category.

This latest change is based upon our first Nevada poll of Election 2004. That survey found Bush ahead by a single point, clearly in the Toss-Up category. Earlier, it had been projected as "Leans Bush."

States for Bush:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming

States for Kerry:
California, Conneticut, Delaware, D.C., Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin

States in Toss-Up (Kerry and Bush have a lead of less than 5% over the other):
Arkinsas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia

Not sure about if all of these papers are true, but you sure are doing a great service for country, I salute you.

i seem to be developing a chrush on sumamba
i sure hope he's male or ill have to start a thread on " is it really gay if you have a cybercrush on someone of the same gender?"

Not sure about if all of these papers are true, but you sure are doing a great service for country, I salute you.

hehe, thanks neither am I, but I encourage everyone to read them and read the opposing side and then come to their own conclusions.

I seem to be developing a chrush on sumamba
i sure hope he's male or ill have to start a thread on " is it really gay if you have a cybercrush on someone of the same gender?"

*blush*

wow I am flattered! :)

I am male physically. lol

Although I think I have some feminine personality traits and don't enjoy the things most men I knew seem to enjoy like sports, beer, the size of a cars engine and talking about sex all day long.

Plus theres nothing wrong with being gay!!!!! :D

*blush*

wow I am flattered! :)

I am male physically. lol

Although I think I have some feminine personality traits and don't enjoy the things most men I knew seem to enjoy like sports, beer, the size of a cars engine and talking about sex all day long.

Plus theres nothing wrong with being gay!!!!! :D
nothing wrong with it, but it does require a mental adjustment

Yeah true that!

You gave me a great idea though (or maybe not so great lol): I could start a dating service on my news publication here.

:fluffle: <--- awwwww

Why did they decide to hold it in New York? Still trying to use 9/11 to get a sympathy vote or what?


NYC to GOP: DROP DEAD (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&e=19&u=/ucru/nyctogopdropdead)
By UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE/TED RALL

Tourists are pleasantly surprised when New Yorkers act as friendly and polite as the people back home in Mayberry. However, delegates to this month's Republican National Convention shouldn't expect to be treated to our standard out-of-towner treatment. The Republican delegates here to coronate George W. Bush are unwelcome members of a hostile invading army. Like the hapless saps whose blood they sent to be spilled into Middle Eastern sands, they will be given intentionally incorrect directions to nonexistent places. Objects will be thrown in their direction. Children will call them obscene names. They will not be greeted as liberators.

Well aware that it is barren soil for their party's anti-urban, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, overtly racist ideology, Republican leaders have wisely avoided New York City as a convention site for the past 150 years. Even as the rest of America turns red, we New Yorkers remain as liberal as the people's republic of San Francisco: fewer than 18 percent of the citizens of New York's five boroughs (which include relatively conservative places like Staten Island) cast ballots for Bush/Cheney in 2000. But White House strategist Karl Rove sees the continued exploitation of 9/11 for partisan political gain as Bush's key to victory in November. That means bringing the big bash three miles north of the hole where the Twin Towers used to stand, where most of the victims of 9/11 were burned, suffocated, impaled and pulverized.

Making hay of the dead is also the point of this confab's timing. The 2004 Necropublican National Convention is being held a full month later than normal, from August 30 to September 2. The original plan was to have Bush shuttle between Madison Square Garden and Ground Zero for photo ops to coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Bush's visits to the Trade Center site were quietly canceled a few months back after 9/11 survivors expressed revulsion at the idea. But it was too late to change the date.

Anti-Republican sentiment is rising to a fever pitch here as the dog days tick down to the dreaded affair. A poll cited by the local ABC affiliate shows 83 percent of New Yorkers don't want their city to host the RNC. And many of them are planning to do something about it.

Rejecting ex-mayor Ed Koch's call to "make nice" with the party that used the deaths of 2,801 New Yorkers--most of them Democrats--for everything from tax cuts for the rich to building concentration camps at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to invading Iraq to enrich Dick Cheney and his fellow Halliburton execs, some groups are encouraging liberal-minded New Yorkers to volunteer for the city's squad of official greeters. Creatively altered maps of streets and subways will be handed out to button-clad stupid white men. Other saboteurs wearing fake RNC T-shirts will direct them to parts of town where Bush's policies have hit hardest. Rumor has it that prostitutes suffering from sexually transmitted diseases will discourage the use of condoms with Republican customers.

Anywhere between 250,000 and 1,000,000 anti-Bush demonstrators are expected to hit the streets of Manhattan, but the city and protest organizers can't agree on where to put them. Activists say they'll direct marchers to Central Park, their preferred site; city officials are threatening mass arrests if they do. Adding to the already combustible Chicago '68 vibe is a possible wildcat strike by city cops and firefighters. And now, as if everyone concerned wasn't already tweaky, FBI agents are traveling around the United States, to harass members of leftist groups planning to protest the New York RNC.

Strikebreaking policemen and private security personnel may be able to keep the protesters away from the convention hall. But Republicans who venture outside the Garden deserve the abuse ordinary New Yorkers will likely inflict upon them.

True, the Administration eventually coughed up the $20 billion aid package Bush promised the city after 9/11. But that sum--equal to the cost of occupying Iraq for four months--barely made up for such disaster-related expenses as police overtime, debris removal and rebuilding damaged subway stations and tunnels. New York's economy hasn't even begun to recover. As the nation's official unemployment rate hovers at six percent, the city's runs around eight. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, opposes virtually every Bush Administration decision concerning New York City.

Even viler than Bush's urban neglect is his failure to avenge the World Trade Center victims as he pledged to do on 9/14, dusty firefighter helpfully posing under his arm on The Pile. After 9/11, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were in Pakistan. They and the Taliban received funding from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The 19 hijackers, organized by Egyptian Islamic Jihad, were Egyptian and Saudi. But Bush didn't attack Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. He went after Afghanistan and Iraq instead, nations that had nothing to do with 9/11 but offered business opportunities for GOP-connected oil concerns. Incredibly, he siphoned more money and arms to the Egyptians, Saudis and Pakistanis.

Not only did Bush let the terrorists get away, he raised their allowance.

If today's GOP retained a shred of the dignity and patriotism that it once possessed as the Party of Lincoln, it would have dumped Bush in favor of a candidate more interested in defending America than his wealthy contributors. Republicans are neofascists now, and that's why New Yorkers good and true will be yelling at them to go back home.

Remember... we hee in the SB news room welcome your praise.


Top Bush Strategist Praises Clinton (…Anything To Bash Kerry) (http://www.bushlies.com/blog/index.php?p=91)
Filed under: News— David Corn on 8/17/2004 at 1:47 pm
Can’t the Bushies get their story straight?

Recently Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, took a shot at Dick Cheney. Reacting to Cheney’s derisive criticism of John Kerry (for daring to say he would mount a more “sensitive” war on terrorism), Harkin remarked, “It just outrages me that someone who got five deferments during Vietnam and said he had ‘other priorities’ at that time would say that.” Harkin, a former Navy pilot, went on: “What he is doing and what he is saying is cowardly. The actions are cowardly.”

Of course, the GOPers didn’t fancy Harkin reminding folks that Cheney dodged the draft. In fact, the Bush campaign position now seems to be that draft-dodging is not at all inconsistent with being a fine leader. Last night on Hardball, Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist and pollster for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said, “I think it’s just outrageous that Tom Harkin, a surrogate for the Kerry campaign, would do it. Bill Clinton served the presidency with distinction without having served in Vietnam or in a war.”

I seem to recall, however, that Republicans back in 1992 (and even in 1996) did not have such a tolerable attitude toward candidates who had gamed the system to escape being sent to Vietnam. Moreover, is it now official Bush campaign dogma that Clinton “served the presidency with distinction"? That’s not what I remember Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, or Tom DeLay saying in the late 1990s? And come to think of it, I don’t believe that was how Bush and Cheney put it during the 2000 campaign. At the Republican convention, Bush said that during the Clinton years,

“We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence. Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report: Not ready for duty, sir. This administration had its moment. They had their chance. They have not led. We will….America’s armed forces need better equipment, better training, and better pay. We will give our military the means to keep the peace, and we will give it one thing more: a commander-in-chief who respects our men and women in uniform, and a commander-in-chief who earns their respect. “

Actually, weeks later, the Bush campaign had to acknowledge that–whoops–Bush had been wrong when he claimed two entire division were not ready for duty. But, heck, you get the gist. And Cheney was just as harsh. He declared:

“For eight years, Clinton and Gore have extended our military commitments while depleting our military power. Rarely has so much been demanded of our armed forces, and so little given to them in return. George W. Bush and I are going to change that, too. I have seen our military at its finest, with the best equipment, the best training, and the best leadership. I’m proud of them. I have had the responsibility for their well-being. And I can promise them now, help is on the way. Soon, our men and women in uniform will once again have a commander in chief they can respect, one who understands their mission and restores their morale.”

But now, when the subject is national security and military matters, Dowd says Clinton served with distinction. Was he not paying attention in Philadelphia? Or is he willing to say anything that sounds good to score a political point–even if that entails praising the anti-Christ of the right?

Everybody loves Alan :D

Let Alan Keyes Speak! (at the GOP Convention) (http://www.bushlies.com/blog/index.php?p=90)
Filed under: News— David Corn on 8/17/2004 at 12:07 pm

I should be digging up more material on Representative Porter Goss, but writing about Illinois senatorial candidate Alan Keyes (as I did yesterday) is far more fun. And let me ask why Keyes is not getting a primetime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Isn’t he the most prominent African-American candidate the party has? And he certainly is articulate. As profiles of him always note, he won some national debating contest when he was a kid. I think the country would be thrilled to see him orate. (Jesse Jackson, too, has called on the GOP to hand Keyes a speaking slot. But, I wonder, is Jackson just playing politics?)

What would Keyes talk about before this audience? Well, perhaps he could expand upon the call he made yesterday for descendants of African-American slaves to be exempted from federal income taxes. Pointing to the tax policy of the Roman empire, Keyes said, “When a city had been devastated, for a certain length of time–a generation or two–[the Romans] exempted the damaged city from taxation.” This ought to play well with GOP delegates. Some might call it pandering–a cheap stunt to swipe black support from state Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic contender for the Senate seat (and the likely winner). After all, in years past, Keyes has decried the notion of reparations for black Americans. Just two years ago, he noted “the truth of the Civil War is that the terrible price for American slavery has been paid, once for all” when Union soldiers sacrificed their lives to abolish slavery. He added, “The price for the sin of slavery has already been paid, in blood.” But that was then. Keyes has had a change of heart–just as he has had on the subject of carpetbagging. When Hillary Clinton engaged in the practice it was an abomination, an affront to democracy. When Keyes moves from Maryland to Illinois to run for the Senate, it is an act of political salvation. (See here.)

Speaking of salvation, after Keyes finishes explaining to the GOP convention-goers why African-Americans deserve to pay no taxes, he can then share with them–and the audience at home–his take on the horrific 9/11 attacks. In May, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, Keyes had this to say:

“Now, you think it’s a coincidence that on September 11th, 2001, we were struck by terrorists an evil that has at its heart the disregard of innocent human life? We who have for several decades killed not thousands but scores of millions of our own children, in disregard of the principle of innocent human life–I don’t think that’s a coincidence, I think that’s a warning. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, I think that’s a shot across the bow. I think that’s a way of Providence telling us: I love you all; I’d like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?”

That sounds strikingly familiar to the post-9/11 comments made by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who said God allowed 9/11 to happen because She/He/It was pissed off at feminists, the ACLU, and gay rights activists. Talk about exploiting a tragedy. Did God send Hurricane Charley to Florida as another warning? And what about that 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua that claimed, among others, the life of baseball great Roberto Clemente? (He died while flying relief supplies to victims.) Was God warning the people of Nicaragua? Or fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates? More recently, did God strike down Ronald Reagan as another shot across the bow? And why is God so god-darned cryptic? Why not just write in flames across the sky, “Criminalize Abortion Now!” That would convince me, and maybe even Gloria Steinem.

But please, Alan Keyes, please–rush the stage at the GOP convention and tell all that New York City was blasted by al Qaeda because of abortion. Given that you have tried to push your way into debate halls in the past when you have not been invited to speak, we know you are capable of doing this. And–if you have time before Arnold Schwarzenegger crushes you like a bug (and professes his support for abortion rights and gay rights)–cry out, “No taxes for black people!” That would bring some relief to the staged performances. And, more importantly, it would provide people with reasons to reconsider a Republican Party that has anointed Alan Keyes one of its leaders.

I'm suprised that Bush hasn't choked on the foot in his mouth yet.

Bush’s Latest Delusions (http://www.bushlies.com/blog/index.php?p=87)
Filed under: News— David Corn on 8/15/2004 at 7:01 pm
This may be a late hit. But, hey, it’s the weekend….

On Thursday night, George and Laura Bush allowed themselves to be interviewed by Larry King. Politicos viewed this as a sign that the Bush campaign was concerned its message was not clicking. At the start of the Q&A, King asked about the harsh tone in politics these days:

The other night we were talking concerning that. There seems to be a lack of civility in America, angry people, talk radio’s angry, people are angry, people hate you, hate other candidates. It eased for a week during the Reagan funeral. What do you make of this? What’s going on in America?

Bush dismissed the notion that a great many Americans were pissed off by his administration. He said:

There’s a chattering class of kind of, you know, professional politicians who get on the airwaves and they kind of feel like it’s their duty to stir things up. But the American people are–they’re focused on their families, and they’re focused on their work. And they’re interested in, you know, how government can help secure this country during these dangerous times. But I just don’t see it. When I travel the country, and I’ve been traveling a lot, there are thousands of people who come out and wave, and they are–you know, they respect the presidency. Sometimes they like the president, but I have this–I don’t have a sense that there’s a lot of anger.

Yep, millions flock to Fahrenheit 9/11, a majority tells pollsters they think the war was a mistake and Bush exaggerated the evidence to support his war, and the bookstores are overflowing with volumes harshly critical of Bush (including my own The Lies of George W. Bush), and Bush has no sense there’s much anger out there. Yep, it’s just a handful of chatterers and agitators who are bitching. And he knows this because thousands wave when he campaigns.

Bush has to get out more. Or at least read the newspapers. Or perhaps he can cancel a few of his campaign’s “Ask President Bush” events, where the audiences are screened to make sure that only the most diehard Bush loyalists are granted entry and allowed to pose queries. Instead, he could hold a true townhall meeting with a randomly selected audience. He might then realize that not everyone wants to wave cheerily at him or toss him praise-loaded softball questions. Let’s hope he is not so detached from reality that he actually believes that anger and divisiveness is only present among cable TV hotheads.

And…at another point in the interview, King asked the Bushes about stem cell research. Laura had recently made statements in public supporting h husband’s position. (Who knew she was an expert on biotechnology? Have rightwingers who resented Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the Clinton administration’s policymaking on health care objected to Laura taking a prominent role in the stem cell debate?) Laura told King:

I have been speaking out because there’s not a ban on stem cell research. And that seems to be the buzzword now that you would read in the press. And the fact is, the president is the one who–is the only person who’s authorized any research on embryonic stem cell, and several countries have a complete ban on embryonic stem cell research.

It’s a bit pathetic that George has to have his wife spin so badly for him. In August 2001, Bush said he would only allow federal funding of stem cell research that involved existing stem cell lines. His aim was to pander to religious conservatives who oppose stem cell research because it involves destroying a five-day-old blastocyst (or embryo). The Catholic Church and others consider this process to be the destruction of life (even though it only involves leftover embryos in fertility clinics that would otherwise be tossed into the garbage). Bush rationalized his decision by saying that in the case of the existing lines the (supposedly) morally ambiguous act of destroying the blastocyst had already occurred. But his decision meant that no federal funding could go to stem cell research using new stem cell lines. He claimed at the time that 60 stem cell lines existed and that these lines could be the basis for a robust research effort. But biotech experts immediately challenged him. The number of existing lines was about ten–not nearly enough to support an effective and extensive research effort. (Bush now says there are 22 lines available for U.S.-backed research. He told King this figure is an “ample number,” but most biotech experts say this amount is still insufficient for decent research.) Moreover, the existing lines were tainted with material from mouse cells. Stem cell lines created today are free of mouse cell materials and better in other ways. But federally-funded scientists are prohibited from working with these lines. That is a ban. And expert after expert have complained that Bush’s ban is severely impeding stem cell research in the United States.

“To say that we have banned embryonic stem cell research is simply not the truth,” George Bush told King. But it is the truth to say that Bush has banned federally-funded scientists from engaging in effective stem cell research using the best available lines. Bush refuses to acknowledge there is a cost for playing to the religious right.

So everything is fine with stem cell research and there is no widespread anger in America. Does Bush know he is shoveling fast and furious? Or–more frightening–is he adrift in a world of his own, untethered to what’s really going on?

Bush is a pig

They seek them here
They seek them there
Those libbies seek them everywhere
kept from the peasants
kept from the hordes
Those damned elusive bush records

*bows* thank you thank you

:p


Bush Tries to Hide Poverty Numbers

Anticipating the release of devastating new poverty and health care statistics, the Bush administration today took the extraordinary step today of trying to bury the numbers. Specifically, the Administration had its top political appointee at the Census Bureau release the numbers a month earlier than usual, during the August congressional recess when many reporters and Americans take their summer vacations. The rescheduling of the announcement also means that the bad numbers will not come out in September immediately after the Republican National Convention, when they have traditionally been released.

With the President's economic and health care agenda leaving millions behind, the Associated Press reports, "the statistics today show the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million."1

This is not the first time the White House and Republicans have gone to great lengths to hide damning information. As CBS News reported, President Bush released his military service records late on a Friday night on the eve of a three day weekend in order to make sure the story about his poor attendance was seen by as few people as possible.2

In Congress, GOP leaders regularly pass the most controversial bills in the middle of the night. Those included bills to slash veterans benefits and health/education funding, as well as spending $87 billion on war in Iraq and passing the President's Medicare bill.3

Sources:
1. "Ranks of Poverty, Uninsured Rose in 2003," The Guardian, 8/26/04.
2. "Bush's Records: All In The Timing," CBS News, 2/15/04.
3. "Under The Cover Of Darkness," TomPaine.com.