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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (182890)	2/17/2004 6:33:20 PM
From: d[-_-]b	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1577167

Al, re:I don't know that he has said that as explicitly as you have...remains to be seen. I caught wind of it from some AM talk show, wasn't listening - kids making too much noise. Anyway, have you read any of Bernard Lewis' works? Wondering if they're worth the time, seen several mixed reviews of "What went wrong".

To: Alighieri who wrote (182890)	2/18/2004 2:40:45 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1577167

<font color=brown> Can you believe how chickensht the Republicans are......voting for Edwards in WI in the hopes of dislodging Kerry. What's with these open primaries anyway? Only Dems should be allowed to vote...not Reps. and independents as well. My bro in law, a died in the wool GOP that he is, did the same damn thing in NH except he voted for Dean. I told my sister that in November she needs to put ecstasy in his pop so he never makes it to the polls! <g> <font color=black> *************************************************** GOP Turnout Heavy in Wis. Democratic Vote By JULIET WILLIAMS, AP MILWAUKEE (Feb. 17) - An unusually heavy Republican turnout and a late surge in support from independents helped John Edwards to a surprisingly close second-place finish behind John Kerry in Wisconsin's Democratic primary, an Associated Press exit poll found. In an open contest on a day with a nonpartisan primary for mayor in Milwaukee and a referendum on casino gambling in Madison, one in 10 Democratic primary voters described themselves as Republicans - and Edwards won as many of their votes as did Kerry and Howard Dean combined. The Republican turnout was the biggest of any Democratic primary so far this year. Three-quarters of Edwards voters said they'd decided to back him in the last week. More than half the Kerry supporters said they decided to do so a month or more ago. Within the past week, Edwards picked up two newspaper endorsements and got good reviews for a Sunday debate. Of independents who said they made up their minds within the last three days but not Tuesday, two-thirds voted for Edwards. Edwards' edge was a little smaller among voters who decided Tuesday. Nearly one in five voters said the most important candidate quality in their decision was that ''he has a positive message,'' and Edwards won about 60 percent of them. Jean Lohr, 40, and her husband Bill Lohr, 50, of Sun Prairie, were two of them. ''He's got a good heart. Kind of like Bill Clinton got us rocking,'' Bill Lohr said. Added Jean, ''Either one of them (Kerry or Edwards) is going to do a better job than Bush has been doing.'' The results were from a sampling of 2,238 voters conducted for the AP and television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. Results were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, higher for subgroups. Dean, who finished a distant third, suffered numerous defections, the exit poll found. One in four voters said they had planned to support Dean at some point during the campaign but wound up voting for someone else. The Dean defectors split evenly between Kerry and Edwards. ''(Dean) came across better in the last couple of days but I'm afraid he shot himself in the foot early on,'' said Barbara Chamberlain, 79, of Milwaukee, who voted for Edwards. Three in 10 voters described themselves as independent, and they favored Edwards over Kerry, but not as strongly as Republicans did. Still, Kerry won about half the votes of the six in 10 who called themselves Democrats. Edwards, Kerry and Dean campaigned heavily in Wisconsin leading up to the primary, focusing on job creation, health care and taxes at stops around the state. Four in 10 voters said the economy and jobs was the most important issue in their vote. That group favored Edwards over Kerry by more than 10 percentage points. About two in 10 picked health care and Medicare, and about as many cited the war in Iraq. Kerry won both of those groups easily. ''It's time to put the money back in our country and focus a little less on fixing the world's problems,'' said Chris Seramur, 42, of Milwaukee, who voted for Kerry because he thought the Massachusetts senator had the best chance of ousting President Bush. One-third said that in deciding how to vote, they were more focused on finding someone who can oust President Bush than backing a candidate who agrees with them on major issues - similar to results in exit polls in the earlier 2004 primaries. Of those who said an ability to beat Bush was the top candidate quality, seven in 10 voted for Kerry. Edwards, meanwhile, got half the votes of those saying they wanted a candidate who cares about people like them. A quarter of those surveyed said the most important candidate quality was that he stand up for what he believes; these voters divided their support among the top three candidates, with Kerry slightly behind Edwards and Dean. 02/17/04 22:44 EST Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

To: Alighieri who wrote (182890)	2/18/2004 3:00:53 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577167

<font color=brown> Oh, oh.....more dissension among the Bushies.....could it have been all that WA State liberalism getting to Snow's head? <g> <font color=black> ted ************************************************ Bush Officials Offer Cautions on White House Jobs Forecast By EDMUND L. ANDREWS Published: February 18, 2004 RICHLAND, Wash., Feb. 17 — Treasury Secretary John W. Snow distanced himself on Tuesday from the Bush administration's official prediction that the nation would add 2.6 million jobs by the end of this year. That prediction, which is far more optimistic than that of many private sector forecasters, was part of the annual economic report released last week by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and was immediately echoed by Mr. Bush himself. <font color=red>But on a tour through Washington and Oregon to promote the president's economic agenda, Mr. Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans both declined to endorse the White House prediction and cautioned that it was based on economic assumptions that have an inherent margin of error.<font color=black> "I think we are going to create a lot of jobs; how many I don't know," Mr. Snow said, adding that "macroeconomic models are based on a lot of assumptions" and are "not without a range of error." Unemployment and the nation's surprisingly sluggish pace of job creation has become a significant political weakness for Mr. Bush, who is on track to be the first president since Herbert Hoover to end his first term with fewer jobs than when he started. The nation has lost about 2.5 million jobs in the last three years, and job loss has been acute in the Pacific Northwest. Unemployment is 6.8 percent in Washington and 7.2 percent in Oregon, compared with 5.6 percent nationwide. The aerospace industry has laid off tens of thousands of workers, as have technology companies tied to the collapse of the stock market bubble and older manufacturers. Mr. Snow and other top administration officials are on a two-day tour through both states this week, traveling in a luxurious bus to promote the beneficial effects of Mr. Bush's tax-cutting plans and spread the word that the economy is humming once again. But while economic growth has been very strong for the last six months, the pace of job creation has been much slower than in previous economic recoveries. After losing about 2.8 million jobs since late 2001, the nation started to add jobs only last fall and has been adding them at the rate of about 100,000 a month. Most economists say the nation needs to add about 125,000 jobs a month just to keep up with increases in the number of workers, and that it needs to add more than 200,000 a month over a sustained period to significantly reduce the unemployment rate below its current 5.6 percent. To create 2.6 million jobs by the end of this year, the nation would have to add more than 230,000 positions each month from now until January. But many if not most economic forecasters expect a more modest upswing, largely because the nation's productivity has been climbing so rapidly that companies have been meeting higher demand without adding workers. Mr. Snow and Mr. Evans are traveling around the Northwest in a bus that has been used by touring performers like Bon Jovi and Styx. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and Hector V. Barreto, head of the Small Business Administration, are on the tour as well to promote the administration's job-training programs and assistance for new companies. The group announced new grants at a center in Spokane that acts as an incubator for high-technology start-ups, then held a roundtable meeting with women business owners in Richland. Mr. Snow and Mr. Evans said the economy was still recovering from the combined blows of a recession, the collapse of the stock market bubble, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they said the fundamentals of the economy all pointed to strong growth for the foreseeable future and faster job creation. Brushing aside complaints about the federal government's large budget deficit, which the White House predicts will surpass $500 billion this year, Mr. Snow renewed the administration's call for making President Bush's tax cuts permanent, a move that would cost about $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Still stinging from criticism by Democrats about comments by a top White House aide in support of "outsourcing," or shifting jobs to low-wage countries, Mr. Snow said those remarks had been "misinterpreted" and were not meant to condone the loss of American jobs. nytimes.com