<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">yeah, me tooOriginally posted by toymank:
DA, I like the way you think! or well, coppy articles! [img]wink.gif[/img]
[img]eek.gif[/img]
DA, I like the way you think! or well, coppy articles! [img]wink.gif[/img]
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">yeah, me tooOriginally posted by toymank:
DA, I like the way you think! or well, coppy articles! [img]wink.gif[/img]
[img]eek.gif[/img]
a very interesting read.
thanks!
HahahaHAHAHaha...hacks.
yeah, I was going put "yer my kinda man!"
but realized what it sounded like, and just well, no
... Im not bonedust, after all! [img]eek.gif[/img] [img]wink.gif[/img]
...to do a little more politicking. Enjoy.
Molly Ivins: 'No more years'
Date: Wednesday, October 20 @ 09:59:58 EDT
Topic: Commander-In-Thief
Favorite moments from Bush's one-term presidency
By Molly Ivins, Working For Change
AUSTIN, Texas -- Four more years?
Seems like every group and its hamster has put out some kind of dossier on the last four years. Top Bush Lies. One Hundred Mistakes Bush could admit to. Best scandals. Biggest Bush flip-flops. Iraq. The economy. The environment.
Corporate pork and payoffs galore. Homeland insecurity. The deficit. On and on it goes.
But I like to remember the little things, those itty-bitty things that really made it special. Those touches of style. The je ne sais quoi of it all. Like choosing Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday to announce his administration would oppose affirmative action in the University of Michigan case, calling it "divisive," "unfair" and "unconstitutional." Classy timing. Of course, Bush (Andover, Yale, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Harvard Business, three failed oil companies rescued by Daddy's friends, set up by Daddy's friends in baseball and given a huge cut for a tiny investment) never experienced affirmative action in his life. Made it all on his own, pulled himself up by his bootstraps -- black people can do it, too.
Timing is kind of a Bush specialty. In February 2001, the day a major earthquake hit the Northwest, Bush killed a federal program designed to help communities deal with the effects of natural disasters. Of course, Florida in an election year -- different story.
Remember when he went to visit the rescued miners from Quecreek, Pa.?
It was a great photo op. Except the year before, Bush had cut the mine safety budget, halted regulatory improvements and reduced enforcement of safety standards. The Department of Labor stopped work on more than a dozen mine safety regulations from the Clinton years. But hey, Bush was really glad those nine guys made it out alive. And what a photo-op it was.
You probably don't remember the time he visited the Youth Opportunity Center, a job training site in Portland, Ore. Hailed it as a model, praised the center and its staff. A month later, he cut it out of the budget.
Here's one of my faves. In his big address of 2002, Bush said: "A good job should lead to security in retirement. I ask Congress to enact new safeguards for 401(k) and pension plans." The Bush plan allows companies to switch from traditional fixed-benefit plans to what's called cash-balance plans. It saves corporations millions a year -- in the case of large companies, as much as $100 million. Older workers can lose up to 50 percent of their pensions. The Bush rules not only permit the conversions, they also give cash-balance plans a tax advantage, as well as protection from age discrimination lawsuits. It's the perfect Bush plan: Corporations get to screw workers, and they get a tax break for it -- plus, nobody can sue.
Nobody paid any attention to this one except the beneficiaries, since it was during the Iraq war: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the one that laid the groundwork for Enron and is supposed to protect investors from abusive practices, passed three new rules in March 2003. According to The New York Times, the rules "reduce the quality of disclosure required in reports of past performance, increase the opportunity for advisers to put some clients' or their own interest ahead of others and curtail the already lax regulation on operators of hedge funds."
Hedge funds are derivatives on steroids, and the near collapse of one hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, nearly caused the financial equivalent of "the China syndrome." Alan Greenspan and Fed officials convinced bankers to join the LTCM rescue effort only when they pointed out that failure would result in "chaos" in financial markets and could damage economic growth worldwide. Less regulation, you bet.
Bait and switch is a constant Bush tactic. Right after 9-11, Bush went to Ground Zero and threw his arm around a firefighter and assured him and other rescue workers he was with them. It was the photo-op seen 'round the world and was endlessly memorialized at the Republican convention. Except in August 2002, Bush pocket-vetoed $150 million in emergency grants for first-responders. The New York firefighters never got their money.
My favorite mixed metaphor: "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom-shaped cloud."
Mission accomplished.
I have so many other favorite moments -- hilarious promises like $15 billion for AIDS in Africa. Those amusing judicial nominations, so bad even the spineless Democrats finally had to filibuster. All the precious photo-ops with the little children of color just before he squashed some other program to help them. The time they threatened Turkey, our oldest democratic ally in the Middle East, with a military coup so we could bring democracy to Iraq.
It's been a ball. But I've had enough.
...I mean, I knew he was a moron...I did not realize he was completely out of his fucking mind.
Pat Robertson: Bush told me there would be no casualties in Iraq
Date: Wednesday, October 20 @ 10:19:11 EDT
Topic: War & Terrorism
Robertson warned Bush of Iraq toll ? President's response: 'We're not going to have any'
From CNN
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, "We're not going to have any casualties."
Pat Robertson, an ardent Bush supporter, said he had that conversation with the president in Nashville, Tennessee, before the March 2003 invasion. He described Bush in the meeting as "the most self-assured man I've ever met in my life."
"You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looks like a contented Christian with four aces.' I mean he was just sitting there like, 'I'm on top of the world,' " Robertson said on the CNN show, "Paula Zahn Now."
"And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "
Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."
Robertson, the televangelist who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, said he wishes Bush would admit to mistakes made.
"I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy," Robertson said. "I warned him about casualties."
More than 1,100 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and another 8,000 troops have been wounded in the ongoing campaign, with the casualty toll significantly increasing in the last six months as the insurgency there has deepened.
Asked why Bush has refused to admit to mistakes on Iraq, Robertson said, "I don't know this politics game. You know, you can never say you were wrong because the opposition grabs onto it: 'See, he admitted he screwed up.' "
Even as Robertson criticized Bush for downplaying the potential dangers of the Iraq war, he heaped praise on Bush, saying he believes the president will win the election and that "the blessing of heaven is on Bush."
"Even if he stumbles and messes up -- and he's had his share of stumbles and gaffes -- I just think God's blessing is on him," Robertson said.
As for Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, Robertson said, "I don't think he's a leader. He's a ponderous debater, a good senator probably."
? 2004 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
Reprinted from CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/aol/story/2004/10/
19/cnn_ALLPOLITICS_robertson.bush.iraq.html
...and I would gladly gouge out my right eye for to read this little gem with my left.
Robert Scheer: 'The 9/11 secret in the CIA's back pocket'
Date: Wednesday, October 20 @ 10:10:46 EDT
Topic: War & Terrorism
The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials
By Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.
"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."
When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."
According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.
The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.
"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."
By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.
"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official.
"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."
None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.
The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.
And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.
In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.
The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don't have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."
The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
Reprinted from The Los Angeles times:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/...,0,50517.story
Last but not least, this article should be worth bookmarking and re-reading exactly two weeks from now...
Robert Kuttner: 'The art of stealing elections'
Date: Wednesday, October 20 @ 10:10:38 EDT
Topic: Election 2004
By Robert Kuttner, Boston Globe
THE REPUBLICANS are out to steal the 2004 election -- before, during, and after Election Day. Before Election Day, they are employing such dirty tricks as improper purges of voter rolls, use of dummy registration groups that tear up Democratic registrations, and the suppression of Democratic efforts to sign up voters, especially blacks and students.
On Election Day, Republicans will attempt to intimidate minority voters by having poll watchers threaten criminal prosecution if something is technically amiss with their ID, and they will again use technical mishaps to partisan advantage.
But the most serious assault on democracy itself is likely to come after Election Day.
Here is a flat prediction: If neither candidate wins decisively, the Bush campaign will contrive enough court challenges in enough states so that we won't know the winner election night.
The right stumbled on a gambit in 2000, which could become standard operating procedure in close elections: If the election ends up in the courts, all courts eventually lead to the Supreme Court, which, as we learned, can overrule state courts -- and pick the president.
This year is even more ripe for abuse, because the 2002 Help America Vote Act, a "reform" written substantially to Republican specifications, toughened ID requirements. It also gave voters a right to cast "provisional" ballots if their names are missing from the rolls. Good impulse, but someone, ultimately a court, must decide whether they should have been permitted to vote, and that's almost impossible to resolve on Election Day.
In addition, states are experimenting with a variety of new voting systems, to avoid a repeat of the technical glitches that made it easy for Republicans to steal Florida in 2000. And experiment is the right word; much of this technology isn't ready for prime time.
In our voting systems, we now have a witches' brew of 19th-century local amateurism married to 21st-century technology that is not yet reliable. The technical mess functions as an enabler of the assault on voting.
There was a time when Democrats were the party that occasionally stole elections. Lyndon Johnson very likely stole his 1948 victory in the Texas Democratic primary, which launched his Senate career. President Kennedy actually joked about the notorious vote rigging in Chicago, which quite possibly tipped Illinois to him in 1960. (He would have won the Electoral College very narrowly without Illinois.)
It was Richard Nixon, that scoundrel's scoundrel, who resisted the temptation to mount a court challenge to the Illinois result because he felt the country couldn't take it. Imagine longing for the days when we had Republican leadership as principled as Nixon's.
But the days of urban Democratic machines that voted dead people are long gone. The press has reported isolated abuses, such as a few Florida snowbirds trying to register in more than one state. But any fair comparison of election abuses this year will reveal that one party is expending energy to register as many supporters as possible and assure that that their votes will be counted, while the other one is registering its supporters but also systematically trying to keep the opposition's votes from being cast. There is simply no comparable Democratic program of ballot suppression.
Maybe we should invite election observers from Afghanistan and Iraq.
We may not know the winner until the Electoral College meets in December, and perhaps not even then if contested elections are still tied up in court. It's not even clear whether the ultimate arbiter would be the Supreme Court or the House of Representatives.
If the courts took away the people's right to choose the president, and George Bush in effect stole two elections in a row, this would surely produce a constitutional crisis and a crisis of legitimacy.
But what if they gave a constitutional crisis and nobody came? The most ominous outcome of all would be public passivity, echoing 2000. That would confirm that the theft of our democracy was real.
Call me partisan, but the best insurance against this horrific outcome would be a Kerry win big enough so that even Karl Rove would not dare to mount this maneuver. A razor-thin race virtually invites it. And if Bush wins handily, our democracy will have other problems.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
? Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
Reprinted from The Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/
oped/articles/2004/10/20/the_art_of_stealing_elections/
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D.A. out. Have a good one, kids.
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