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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (9595)	1/31/2004 11:58:18 AM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10965

AS, Be sure to watch Tim Russert's Sun show--Dean will be his guest. >>Bush can try to attack Kerry on personal issues like his wife's wealth all he wants, but that's not what voters care about and it will just make Bush look sexist and petty.<< GOP is extremely clever at getting info out there without being traced. So, Bush will just give "I know nothing" response to attacks on spouse. He had same reaction when mud-slinging phone calls were made against John McCain in South on Bush's behalf. It does not help that Laura Bush is GW's best asset. In fact, he doesn't deserve her. P.S. Kerry's "bring it on" is already wearing thin. ************************ >>Besides, it's Kerry getting the new union endorsements now.<< I was told that Kerry's brother works for the large telecommunication union that recently endorsed him. Is that correct?

To: American Spirit who wrote (9595)	1/31/2004 12:40:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

Givers and Takers nytimes.com By DANIEL H. PINK OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: January 30, 2004 WASHINGTON - Each of the Democratic candidates vying to replace George W. Bush has a serious electability problem. The problem has nothing to do with their biographies or temperaments — and everything to do with a significant, but unnoticed, structural divide in American presidential politics. Each year, the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group, crunches numbers from the Census Bureau to produce an intriguing figure: how much each state receives in federal spending for every dollar it pays in federal taxes. For example, according to the most recent data, for every dollar the average North Dakotan paid in federal taxes, he received $2.07 in federal benefits. But while someone in Fargo was doubling his money, his counterpart in neighboring Minnesota was being shortchanged. For every dollar Minnesotans sent to Washington, only 77 cents in federal spending flowed back to the state. Using the Tax Foundation's analysis, it's possible to group the 50 states into two categories: Givers and Takers. Giver states get back less than a dollar in spending for every dollar they contribute to federal coffers. Taker states pocket more than a dollar for every tax dollar they send to Washington. Thirty-three states are Takers; 16 are Givers. (One state, Indiana, has a perfect one-to-one ratio of taxes paid and spending received. As seat of the federal government, the District of Columbia has no choice but to be a Taker, and is therefore not comparable to the 50 states in this regard.) The Democrats' electability predicament comes into focus when you compare the map of Giver and Taker states with the well-worn electoral map of red (Republican) and blue (Democrat) states. You might expect that in the 2000 presidential election, Republicans, the party of low taxes and limited government, would have carried the Giver states — while Democrats, the party of wild spending and wooly bureaucracy, would have appealed to the Taker states. But it was the reverse. George W. Bush was the candidate of the Taker states. Al Gore was the candidate of the Giver states. Consider: 78 percent of Mr. Bush's electoral votes came from Taker states. 76 percent of Mr. Gore's electoral votes came from Giver states. Of the 33 Taker states, Mr. Bush carried 25. Of the 16 Giver states, Mr. Gore carried 12. Juxtaposing these maps provides a new perspective on the political landscape. (Interactive moment: Color in the blue and red states — then you'll get the full picture.) Republicans seem to have become the new welfare party — their constituents live off tax dollars paid by people who vote Democratic. Of course, not all federal spending is wasteful. But Republicans are having their pork and eating it too. Voters in red states like Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are some of the country's fiercest critics of government, yet they're also among the biggest recipients of federal largess. Meanwhile, Democratic voters in the coastal blue states — the ones who are often portrayed as shiftless moochers — are left to carry the load. For President Bush, this invisible income redistribution system is a boon. He can encourage his supporters to see themselves as Givers, yet reward them with federal spending in excess of their contribution — and send the bill to those who voted for his opponent. It's shrewd politics. And it puts the eventual Democratic presidential nominee in a bind, should he try to rally those who believe they aren't getting a fair shake from Washington. If the Democratic candidate won all 16 Giver states plus the District of Columbia in November, he'd collect only 254 electoral votes, short of the majority needed to capture the White House. The electoral votes of all the Taker states, by contrast, add up to 273 — two more than Mr. Bush won in 2000. Is there a way out for Democrats? Maybe not. With Republicans holding the purse strings, it's the Democrats who are being taken. _______________________ Daniel H. Pink, the author of "Free Agent Nation," was the chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1997.

To: American Spirit who wrote (9595)	1/31/2004 12:53:33 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10965

The Bushies are getting worried about Kerry...They should be concerned. It will be tough for Bush to run on his track record and win in an honest election... washingtonpost.com Kerry Keeps Overcoming By Richard Cohen Thursday, January 29, 2004 MANCHESTER, N.H. -- John Kerry surrounds himself with what he -- borrowing from Shakespeare -- calls his "band of brothers," veterans from Vietnam and other wars. That's understandable given how Americans feel about military service and the importance of physical courage. But what brought Kerry his initial fame was not his battlefield exploits. It was his decision to turn against the war in Vietnam and ask a congressional committee questions that had no answers: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?" That was April 1971, and Kerry was a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He was already a genuine war hero, having received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. The Vietnam vets had taken over the Mall in Washington -- an unforgettable sight for those of us who were there. Some of them were amputees, and one of them, missing an arm, took me up to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. We toured the wards together -- bed after bed of men missing limbs and other body parts. At one point I nearly fainted. The war in Vietnam is suggestive of the one in Iraq. It's not that either was a totally crackpot venture -- it made as much sense to stop the march of communism as it did to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. It's rather that both were triggered by false information. In Vietnam, it was the murky Gulf of Tonkin incident; in Iraq it was Hussein's nonexistent program to develop weapons of mass destruction, not to mention his apparently fictional links to al Qaeda. David Kay's recent statements have substantiated what long has been clear: When the war started, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Kerry voted for the war. Twice now I have asked him about that and whether he thought he was "betrayed" by the Bush administration. Both times he said yes. A couple of days ago, on his campaign bus, I asked him what he thought of Kay's statements and whether he thought the U.S. intelligence community -- particularly the CIA -- needed to account for findings that supported the Bush administration's insistence that Iraq represented an imminent threat to world peace. With a startling intensity, he said yes. Among other things, he feels that CIA Director George Tenet has to go. Contrast that with the business-as-usual pose of the Bush administration. Oh so grudgingly it has conceded that its primary reasons for rushing to war are evaporating under scrutiny. No WMD. No nuclear weapons program, in particular. No verifiable links to al Qaeda. Add it all up, and there was no reason to hurry to war. Sanctions and U.N. inspections were doing their job. Hussein not only could be contained, he was. On the way back from New Hampshire this week, I ran into James Carville, and I borrow from him something he said about Kerry: He has faced three of the fears that haunt almost every man. The first is how we would conduct ourselves in combat. The second is how we would handle cancer. (Kerry recently underwent surgery for prostate cancer.) And the third is whether we would face ridicule for sticking with a losing effort. Kerry, who was 20 points down just a month ago, persisted -- and now has won the first two Democratic contests. But I would add something else: moral courage, or indignation -- call it what you want. Kerry exhibited that as a leader of the Vietnam vets. To my mind, this was as important as his battlefield valor, including the rescue of an all-but-doomed colleague who had fallen out of Kerry's Swift boat. Turning on a war in which he had distinguished himself says something about Kerry, and suggests that one line of attack on him is off the mark. He may well personify the Washington establishment -- 19 years in the Senate testifies to that -- but he is capable of turning against it. John Kerry may yet revert to being the remote figure he once was. But in a life of privilege, he has overcome challenges that most men have chosen not even to face. He is not the most affable of men, but somewhere in his gaunt frame is a rod of steely determination that enabled him to come off the mat and win the first two Democratic contests. He is not, like John Edwards, a natural, but in the end he asks, as he did back in the Vietnam War era, the right questions. "How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?" Another couple of victories, and George W. Bush had better have an answer.