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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (553152)	3/18/2004 10:09:38 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Pride and Prejudice March 18, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST By MAUREEN DOWD nytimes.com WASHINGTON House Republicans haven't suggested an embargo on olives and paella yet, but it's probably just pocos minutos away. By the time these guys are through, it will be unpatriotic to consume any ethnic food but fish and chips and kielbasa, washed down with a fine Bulgarian wine. Republicans like Dennis Hastert were ranting yesterday about the Spaniards. "Here's a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country," Mr. Hastert said, "and they chose to change their government to, in a sense, appease terrorists." The Republicans prefer to paint our old ally as craven rather than accept the Spanish people's judgment — which most had held since before the war — that the Iraq takeover had nothing to do with the war on terror. The Spanish were also angry at José María Aznar because they felt he had misled them about the bombings, trying to throw guilt on ETA and away from Al Qaeda. The Republicans certainly don't want anyone here to think about throwing somebody out of office because he was misleading about Al Qaeda. During a photo-op with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands on Tuesday, Mr. Bush did his "Beavis and Butthead" snigger as a Dutch reporter noted that most of his countrymen want to withdraw Dutch troops from Iraq because they think the conflict "has little to do with the war against terrorism, and may actually encourage terrorism." (Uh-oh, looks like no tulips on the Capitol grounds this spring.) "I would ask them," the president replied, "to think about the Iraqi citizens who don't want people to withdraw because they want to be free." Now that he hasn't found any weapons, Mr. Bush says the war was worth it so Iraqis could experience democracy. But when our allies engage in democracy, some Republicans mock them as lily-livered. The Republicans treat John Kerry as disdainfully as they do the European allies who have disappointed the White House, painting him as a French-looking dude who went to a Swiss boarding school, as an effete Brahmin who would rather cut intelligence and military spending than face down terrorists. The election is shaping up as a contest between Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Kerry is Pride. He has a tendency toward striped-trouser smugness that led him to stupidly boast that he was more popular with leaders abroad than President Bush — playing into the Republican strategy to depict him as one of those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Even when he puts on that barn jacket over his expensive suit to look less lockjaw — and says things like, "Who among us doesn't like Nascar?" — he can come across like Mr. Collins, Elizabeth Bennet's pretentious cousin in "Pride and Prejudice." Mr. Collins always prattles on about how lucky people would be to be rewarded by his patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, with "some portion of her notice" and to receive dollops of her "condescension." Speaking to Chicago union workers last week, Mr. Kerry happily informed them that on the ride over, his wife, Teresa, had said she could live in Chicago. What affability, as Mr. Collins would say, what condescension. Mr. Bush is Prejudice. Like Miss Bennet, who irrationally arranged the facts to fit her initial negative assessment of Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bush irrationally arranges the facts to fit his initial assessment that 9/11 justified blowing off the U.N. and some close allies to invade Iraq. The president and vice president seem incapable of admitting any error, especially that their experienced foreign policy team did not see through Saddam's tricks. As Hans Blix told a reporter, Saddam had put up a "Beware of Dog" sign, so he didn't bother with the dog. How can they recalibrate the game plan when they won't concede that they called the wrong game plan to start? When he challenged Mr. Kerry to put up or shut up on his claim of support from foreign leaders, Mr. Bush said, "If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you've got to back it up with facts." If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidency, you've got to back it up with facts, too. E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (553152)	3/18/2004 10:13:08 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Panel Vote Draws Battle Lines for Pay-as-You-Go Tax Cuts By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. March 18, 2004 nytimes.com WASHINGTON, March 17 — Setting up a potential showdown with the Senate, Republicans on the House Budget Committee rejected legislation on Wednesday that could have imperiled the extension of the tax cuts that are a centerpiece of President Bush's economic program. The committee, in a 24-to-18 party-line vote, turned down a Democratic amendment that would have blocked future tax cuts unless they were paid for with money from spending cuts or increases in other taxes. In a nod to conservative members of the panel concerned about what they call runaway spending, the committee voted to adopt new rules forcing lawmakers who want to increase spending for entitlement programs like Medicare to find other spending cuts of the same amount. It also voted to institute tough five-year caps on spending for discretionary programs, which essentially cover everything outside of Social Security and other entitlement programs. One outside liberal group, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the caps would lead to the lowest level of spending on domestic discretionary programs, as a percentage of the economy, since 1963. A handful of moderate Republicans signaled Wednesday that they might break with their party leaders on whether to make it tougher to enact tax cuts. But assuming the full House goes along with the committee, the vote on Wednesday sets up a clash with the Senate about the future of Mr. Bush's tax cuts. Last week, the Senate voted to require that any new tax cuts over the next five years win at least 60 votes in the 100-member chamber, unless the lost revenue could be made up elsewhere. With the support of four moderate Republicans, the vote effectively gave Democrats a veto over efforts to extend the tax cuts; many lawmakers say it is very unlikely with a $478 billion deficit and continued operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that money could be found to offset new tax reductions. Acknowledging that applying so-called pay-as-you-go rules to taxes would complicate efforts to make the tax cuts permanent, White House officials have been lobbying hard against the legislation. The House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, has signaled that House leaders intend to kill the provision when House and Senate budget writers meet to reconcile differences in their proposals. Republicans say it would be foolish to erect barriers to extending tax cuts that have spurred economic growth; Democrats say the cuts are the main reason the nation faces its largest-ever deficit in dollar terms. On Wednesday night, the committee approved and sent to the House a $2.4 trillion budget resolution. Despite the committee vote, some moderate House Republicans said in interviews that they might join with Democrats to support tighter restrictions on future tax cuts. "I would certainly lean to vote for it," said Representative Michael N. Castle, a Delaware Republican who is president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group of more than 60 moderate Republicans in the House and Senate. "I still need to be persuaded that the tax cuts should be made permanent." Representative Sherwood Boehlert, Republican of New York, said: "I like the concept. The deficit is emerging as the issue of the year, and we better get serious about addressing it." Another moderate Republican from New York, Representative Amo Houghton, said he would consider voting for the provision rejected in the committee on Wednesday. "Everything is on the table," Mr. Houghton said. "We ought to have some sort of boundaries." But the House Budget Committee chairman, Jim Nussle of Iowa, said that efforts to make tax cuts subject to pay-as-you-go rules would not succeed in the House. "It's really a nonstarter," he said. Mark Kirk, a Republican House member from Illinois, said a compromise could be struck in conference committee to subject tax cuts to pay-as-you-go rules but exempt those whose extensions are called for in this year's budget resolution. Those include tax cuts that expire this year but have bipartisan support: eliminating the so-called marriage penalty, expanding the 10 percent tax bracket and keeping the child tax credit at $1,000. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (553152)	3/18/2004 10:15:01 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 769670

U.S. Official Says Spanish Government 'Mishandled' Reports on Bombing By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOHNSTON March 18, 2004 WASHINGTON, March 17 — The Bush administration said Wednesday for the first time that the Spanish government had mishandled early information about the Madrid bombing when it played down evidence that Islamic extremists were behind the plot. The strongest public statement came from Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, who said in a television interview that the Spanish government initially "didn't get what information did exist out to the public." He suggested that the Spanish government had clung to the supposition that a Basque separatist group, ETA, was responsible and failed to tell the public about emerging evidence that Islamic extremists might have detonated the bombs that killed about 200 and injured hundreds of others Thursday. In separate interviews, he twice said Spain "mishandled" the matter, The Associated Press reported. As a result, he said, the governing party was ousted in elections Sunday. "I think the vote that propelled the Socialists into power in Spain, as I understand it, was a protest by the people against the handling of the terrorist event by the sitting government of Spain," Mr. Armitage told a Philadelphia radio station.... nytimes.com