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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (7631)	9/23/2003 6:59:38 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

IVINS: Bush-haters By Molly Ivins, AlterNet September 23, 2003 alternet.org AUSTIN, Texas - Among the more amusing cluckings from the right lately is their appalled discovery that quite a few Americans actually think George W. Bush is a terrible president. Robert Novak is quoted as saying in all his 44 years of covering politics, he has never seen anything like the detestation of Bush. Charles Krauthammer managed to write an entire essay on the topic of "Bush haters" in Time magazine, as though he had never before come across such a phenomenon. Oh, I stretch memory way back, so far back, all the way back to - our last president. Almost lost in the mists of time though it is, I not only remember eight years of relentless attacks from Clinton-haters, I also notice they haven't let up yet. Clinton-haters accused the man of murder, rape, drug-running, sexual harassment, financial chicanery and official misconduct, and his wife of even worse. For eight long years, this country was a zoo of Clinton-haters. Any idiot with a big mouth and a conspiracy theory could get a hearing on radio talk shows, "Christian" broadcasts and nutty Internet sites. People with transparent motives, people paid by tabloid magazines, people with known mental problems, ancient Clinton enemies with notoriously racist pasts - all were given hearings, credence and air time. Sliming Clinton was a sure road to fame and fortune on the right, and many an ambitious young right-wing hitman - like David Brock, who has since made full confession - took that golden opportunity. After all this time and all those millions of dollars wasted, no one has ever proved that the Clintons did a single thing wrong. Bill Clinton lied about a pathetic, squalid affair that was none of anyone else's business anyway, and for that they impeached the man and dragged this country through more than year of the most tawdry, ridiculous, unnecessary pain. "The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from," mused the ineffable Krauthammer. "Whence the anger? It begins of course with the 'stolen' election of 2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy." I'd say so myself, yes, it would. I was in Florida during that chilling post-election fight and am fully persuaded to this good day that Al Gore actually won Florida, not to mention getting 550,000-more votes than Bush overall. The night Gore conceded the race in one of the graceful and honorable speeches I have ever heard, I was in a ballroom full of Republican Party flacks who booed and jeered through every word of it. One thing I acknowledge about the right is that they're much better haters than liberals are. Your basic liberal is pretty much a strikeout on the hatred front. Maybe further out on the left you can hit some good righteous anger, but liberals, and I am one, are generally real wusses. To tell the truth, I'm kind of proud of us for holding the grudge this long. Normally, we'd remind ourselves that we have to be good sports, it's for the good of the country, we must unite behind the only president we've got, as Lyndon used to remind us. If there are still some of us out here sulking, "Yeah, but they stole that election," well good. I don't think we should forget that. But, onward. So George Dubya becomes president having run as a "compassionate conservative," and what do we get? Hell's own conservative and zilch for compassion. His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich. Then came 9-11, and we all rallied. Country under attack, most horrible thing, what can we do? Ready to give blood, get out of our cars and ride bicycles, whatever. Shop, said the president. And more tax cuts for the rich. By now, we're starting to notice Bush's bait-and-switch con. Make a deal with Ted Kennedy to improve education, and then fail to put any money into it. Promise $15 billion in new money to combat AIDS in Africa (wow), but it turns out to be a cheap con - no new money. Bush comes to praise a job-training effort, then cuts the money. Bush says AmeriCorps is great, then cuts the money. Gee, what could we possibly have against this guy? Then suddenly, in the greatest bait and switch of all time, Osama bin doesn't matter at all, and we have to go after Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9-11. But he does have horrible weapons of mass destruction. So we take out Saddam Hussein, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the Iraqis are not overjoyed to see us. By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to say, "Wha' the hey?" We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for one year, and no one knows how long we'll be there. And still poor Krauthammer is hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that George W. Bush is a poor excuse for a president. It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he's a bad president. Grown-ups can do that, you know - decide someone's policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night consumed with hatred. Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape because of his stupid economic policies. If that make me a Bush-hater, then sign me up.

To: Mephisto who wrote (7631)	9/27/2003 7:17:17 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

The Other Lies of George Bush Posted September 25, 2003 by DAVID CORN thenation.com EXCERPT: "This article was adapted from the new book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). George W. Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small, directly and by omission. His Iraq lies have loomed largest. In the run-up to the invasion, Bush based his case for war on a variety of unfounded claims that extended far beyond his controversial uranium-from-Niger assertion. He maintained that Saddam Hussein possessed "a massive stockpile" of unconventional weapons and was directly "dealing" with Al Qaeda--two suppositions unsupported then (or now) by the available evidence. He said the International Atomic Energy Agency had produced a report in 1998 noting that Iraq was six months from developing a nuclear weapon; no such report existed (and the IAEA had actually reported then that there was no indication Iraq had the ability to produce weapons-grade material). Bush asserted that Iraq was "harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner"; US intelligence officials told reporters this terrorist was operating ouside of Al Qaeda control. And two days before launching the war, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Yet former deputy CIA director Richard Kerr, who is conducting a review of the prewar intelligence, has said that intelligence was full of qualifiers and caveats, and based on circumstantial and inferential evidence. That is, it was not no-doubt stuff. And after the major fighting was done, Bush declared, "We found the weapons of mass destruction." But he could only point to two tractor-trailers that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded were mobile bioweapons labs. Other experts--including the DIA's own engineering experts--disagreed with this finding. But Bush's truth-defying crusade for war did not mark a shift for him. Throughout his campaign for the presidency and his years in the White House, Bush has mugged the truth in many other areas to advance his agenda. Lying has been one of the essential tools of his presidency. To call the forty-third President of the United States a prevaricator is not an exercise of opinion, not an inflammatory talk-radio device. Rather, it is backed up by an all-too-extensive record of self-serving falsifications. While politicians are often derided as liars, this charge should be particularly stinging for Bush. During the campaign of 2000, he pitched himself as a candidate who could "restore" honor and integrity to an Oval Office stained by the misdeeds and falsehoods of his predecessor. To brand Bush a liar is to negate what he and his supporters declared was his most basic and most important qualification for the job. His claims about the war in Iraq have led more of his foes and more pundits to accuse him of lying to the public. The list of his misrepresentations, though, is far longer than the lengthy list of dubious statements Bush employed--and keeps on employing--to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq. Here then is a partial--a quite partial--account of the other lies of George W. Bush. Tax Cuts Bush's crusade for tax cuts is the domestic policy matter that has spawned the most misrepresentations from his camp. On the 2000 campaign trail, he sold his success as a "tax-cutting person" by hailing cuts he passed in Texas while governor. But Bush did not tell the full story of his 1997 tax plan. His proposal called for cutting property taxes. But what he didn't mention is that it also included an attempt to boost the sales tax and to implement a new business tax. Nor did he note that his full package had not been accepted by the state legislature. Instead, the lawmakers passed a $1 billion reduction in property taxes. And these tax cuts turned out to be a sham. After they kicked in, school districts across the state boosted local tax rates to compensate for the loss of revenue. A 1999 Dallas Morning News analysis found that "many [taxpayers] are still paying as much as they did in 1997, or more." Republican Lieutenant Governor Rick Perry called the cuts "rather illusory."

To: Mephisto who wrote (7631)	10/2/2003 10:41:25 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Confidence In Bush Slipping cbsnews.com WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2003 EXCERPT: " (CBS) With the election now 13 months away, President Bush finds his ratings near the low-water mark of his presidency, reports CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts. His overall job approval hovers just above 50 percent - almost back to where he was before 9/11, and way down from his stratospheric ratings of 89 percent following the attacks on America."

To: Mephisto who wrote (7631)	10/4/2003 1:55:36 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Shaking the House of Cards The New York Times October 3, 2003 By BOB HERBERT No wonder the sky-high poll numbers for President Bush have collapsed. The fiasco in Iraq is only part of the story. The news on one substantive issue after another could hardly be worse. It's almost as if the president had a team in the White House that was feeding his credibility into a giant shredder. Despite the administration's relentlessly optimistic chatter about the economy, the Census Bureau reported that the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year, the second straight annual increase. During those two years, the number of poor Americans has grown by 3 million. Belt-tightening is also in order for the middle class. The median household income declined by 1.1 percent, a drop of about $500, to $42,400. It was the second straight year for a decline in that category as well. Per capita income decreased, too. It dropped by 1.8 percent, to $22,794 in 2002, the first decline in more than a decade. Boom times these ain't. On Monday we learned that there had been a steep increase last year - the largest in a decade - in the number of Americans without health insurance. The international outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas is reporting that job losses in the U.S. have resulted in a sharp decline in the number of dual-income families, particularly for those with children under 18. And so on. With the federal government piling up massive deficits and local governments struggling to provide the most basic of services (some areas are closing schools; others are releasing prisoners prematurely), Mr. Bush is asking the nation to go much further into debt in the service of some vague notion of a civic renaissance in Iraq. Even Republicans are beginning to ask what the heck is going on. Contributing to the growing sense of unease in some quarters and outrage in others is the blatant war profiteering in Iraq by politically connected firms like Bechtel and Halliburton - profiteering that is taking place with the scandalous encouragement and connivance of the Bush administration. A front-page article in The Times on Tuesday said: "A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects." Iraq is proving to be a bonanza for the Bush administration's corporate cronies even as it is threatening to become a sinkhole for the aspirations of ordinary Americans. The vicious release to news organizations of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer could serve as a case study of the character of this administration. The Bush II crowd is arrogant, venal, mean-spirited and contemptuous of law and custom. The problem it faces now is not just the criminal investigation into who outed Valerie Plame, but also the fact that the public understands this story only too well. Deliberately blowing the cover of an intelligence or law enforcement official for no good reason is considered by nearly all Americans, regardless of their political affiliations, to be a despicable act. According to an ABC-Washington Post poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans believe a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the leak. Now that so much has gone haywire - Iraq, the economy, America's standing in the world - the tough questions are finally being asked about President Bush and his administration. Perhaps foreign policy was not Mr. Bush's strength, after all. And even diehard Republicans have been forced to acknowledge that the president was surely wrong when he insisted that his mammoth tax cuts would be the engine of job creation. And nothing has ever come of Mr. Bush's promise to be the education president, or to change the tone of the discourse in Washington, or to deal humbly and respectfully with the rest of the world. Americans are increasingly asking what went wrong. How could so much have gone sour in such a short period of time? Was it incompetence? Bad faith? Loud warnings were ignored for the longest time. Now, finally, the truth is becoming more and more difficult to avoid. nytimes.com Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

To: Mephisto who wrote (7631)	10/12/2003 11:37:09 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Sometimes the truth sounds rude Sunday, October 12, 2003 seattlepi.nwsource.com By PAUL KRUGMAN SYNDICATED COLUMNIST It's the season of the angry liberal. Books like Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," Joe Conason's "Big Lies" and Molly Ivins' "Bushwhacked" have become best sellers. (Yes, I've got one out there, too.) But conservatives are distressed because those liberals are so angry and rude. OK, they admit, they themselves were a bit rude during the Clinton years -- that seven-year, $70 million investigation of a tiny money-losing land deal, all that fuss about the president's private life -- but they're sorry, and now it's time for everyone to be civil. Indeed, angry liberals can take some lessons in civility from today's right. Consider, for example, Fox News' genteel response to Christiane Amanpour, the CNN correspondent. Amanpour recently expressed some regret over CNN's prewar reporting: "Perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News." A Fox spokeswoman replied, "It's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than as a spokeswoman for al-Qaida." And liberal pundits who may be tempted to cast personal aspersions can take lessons in courtesy from such conservatives as Charles Krauthammer, who last December reminded TV viewers of his previous career as a psychiatrist, then said of Al Gore, "He could use a little help." What's really important, of course, is that political figures stick to the issues, like the Bush adviser who told The New York Times that the problem with Sen. John Kerry is that "he looks French." Some say that the right, having engaged in name-calling and smear tactics when Bill Clinton was president, now wants to change the rules so such behavior is no longer allowed. In fact, the right is still calling names and smearing; it wants to prohibit rude behavior only by liberals. But there's more going on than a simple attempt to impose a double standard. All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration's critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration's policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years. On the fiscal front, this administration has used deceptive accounting to ram through repeated long-run tax cuts in the face of mounting deficits. And it continues to push for more tax cuts, when even the most sober observers now talk starkly about the risk to our solvency. It's impolite to say that George W. Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible president in U.S. history, but it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. On the foreign policy front, this administration hyped the threat from Iraq, ignoring warnings from military professionals that a prolonged postwar occupation would tie down much of our Army and undermine our military readiness. (Joseph Galloway, co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young," says that "we have perhaps the finest Army in history," but that "Donald Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army.") It's impolite to say that Bush has damaged our national security with his military adventurism, but it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Still, some would say that criticism should focus only on Bush's policies, not on his person. But no administration in memory has made paeans to the president's character -- his "honor and integrity" -- so central to its political strategy. Nor has any previous administration been so determined to portray the president as a hero, going so far as to pose him in line with the heads on Mount Rushmore, or arrange that landing on the aircraft carrier. Surely, then, Bush's critics have the right to point out that the life story of the man inside the flight suit isn't particularly heroic -- that he has never taken a risk or made a sacrifice for the sake of his country, and that his business career is a story of murky deals and insider privilege. In the months after 9/11, a shocked nation wanted to believe the best of its leader, and Bush was treated with reverence. But he abused the trust placed in him, pushing a partisan agenda that has left the nation weakened and divided. Yes, I know that's a rude thing to say. But it's also the truth. Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times. Copyright 2003 New York Times News Service. E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com