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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (49872)	6/26/2004 9:09:38 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

re: Great film............. standing room only They filled two theaters at the local multiplex, at 2:30 in afternoon. It opened at ~800 screens, compared to over 2000 screeens for your typical theatrical release this week. Still #1 on Friday... we'll see how it does for the weekend. John

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (49872)	6/26/2004 10:45:49 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

Great if you like fiction...... By Michael Isikoff Investigative Correspondent Newsweek June 28 issue - Can Michael Moore be believed? It is a question more than a few moviegoers may be asking this week as his new documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," hits theaters. Like Moore's previous works, the movie is a melange of investigative journalism, partisan commentary and conspiracy theories. A run-down of some of Moore's most provocative allegations, and how they stack up against the record: Bush's initial response to the 9/11 attacks. Moore has unearthed video showing Bush attending a photo op in a second-grade classroom in Sarasota, Fla., when chief of staff Andrew Card whispers in his ear: "America is under attack." Card told a TV interviewer in 2002 that the president got up from the classroom "not that many seconds later." Moore's video depicts a seemingly shaken Bush continuing to sit in the classroom for seven agonizing minutes, even reading to the children from a book, "My Pet Goat." The movie suggests Bush reads from the book because he is uncertain about what to do. A report this week by the federal panel investigating 9/11 confirms Bush did remain in the classroom "for another five to seven minutes." It also offers Bush's account: "The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening," the report states. Saudi flights out of the United States. The movie claims that in the days after 9/11, when airspace was shut down, the White House approved special charter flights so that prominent Saudis—including members of the bin Laden family—could leave the country. Author Craig Unger appears, claiming that bin Laden family members were never interviewed by the FBI. Not true, according to a recent report from the 9/11 panel. The report confirms that six chartered airplanes flew 142 mostly Saudi nationals out of the country, including one carrying members of the bin Laden family. But the flights didn't begin until Sept. 14—after airspace reopened. Moreover, the report states the Saudi flights were screened by the FBI, and 22 of the 26 people on the bin Laden flight were interviewed. None had any links to terrorism. The Bush-bin Laden family connection. Moore's film suggests that Bush has close family ties to the bin Laden family—principally through Bush's father's relationship with the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm. The president's father, George H.W. Bush, was a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group's Asian affiliate until recently; members of the bin Laden family—who own one of Saudi Arabia's biggest construction firms—had invested $2 million in a Carlyle Group fund. Bush Sr. and the bin Ladens have since severed ties with the Carlyle Group, which in any case has a bipartisan roster of partners, including Bill Clinton's former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt. The movie quotes author Dan Briody claiming that the Carlyle Group "gained" from September 11 because it owned United Defense, a military contractor. Carlyle Group spokesman Chris Ullman notes that United Defense holds a special distinction among U.S. defense contractors that is not mentioned in Moore's movie: the firm's $11 billion Crusader artillery rocket system developed for the U.S. Army is one of the only weapons systems canceled by the Bush administration. msnbc.msn.com

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (49872)	6/27/2004 10:19:49 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

NY Times OP-ED COLUMNIST Are They Losing It? By MAUREEN DOWD Published: June 27, 2004 WASHINGTON One thing you've got to say for Dick Cheney: No one will ever again dismiss the vice presidency as a pitcher of warm spit. Mr. Major League Potty Mouth has shown that, with obsequiousness to the president and obtuseness to the facts, a vice president can run the world. Right into the ground. This week, it's not just Democrats who are questioning whether Vice is losing it. Now, even some in the White House are saying it's bizarre that he chose a class photo-op on the Senate floor to suggest that Senator Patrick Leahy do something that you won't even find described in Bill Clinton's "My Life." While Democratic lawmakers delayed final passage of a defense spending bill so they could mingle with Michael Moore, the once sweat-free Bushies were acting jangly. First Vice chewed out The Times for accurately reporting that the 9/11 commission said there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Then Paul Wolfowitz called the reporters risking their lives in Iraq craven rumormongers. Then came Mr. Cheney's F-word. (Not Fox, the other one.) Finally, President Bush got agitated when an Irish TV interviewer said most of the Irish found the world more dangerous now than before the Iraq invasion. "First of all, most of Europe supported the decision in Iraq," Mr. Bush declared. (It's all in how you define "Europe.") Even as Tom Daschle proposed bipartisan family retreats to heal the harsh mood, even as the Senate passed the "Defense of Decency Act," Mr. Cheney profanely laced into Mr. Leahy for criticizing Halliburton's getting no-bid contracts. "I felt better afterwards," he told Neil Cavuto during a no-bid interview with Fox News. Hey, if it feels good, Dick, do it. He said he had no regrets about his "little floor debate in the United States Senate." He didn't want to go along with Mr. Leahy's attitude that "everything's peaches and cream" when the Democrat had just been jawing about Halliburton war profiteering. Peaches and cream have never been on the Bush-Cheney menu, only brimstone and gall. By playing on the insecurities of an inexperienced leader, Mr. Cheney has managed to change W. from a sunny, open, bipartisan, uniter-not-a-divider, non-nation-builder into a crabby, secretive, partisan, divider-not-a-uniter, inept imperialist. Vice is bounding around the country, talking to his usual circumscribed audiences of conservatives, right-wing think tanks and Fox News anchors. No need to burrow in the bunker when you've turned America into one. As they used to say about the Soviet Union, the defensive Bush imperialists have to keep expanding because they're encircled. Mr. Cheney's gloomy, scary, contentious world view has fueled a more gloomy, scary, contentious world. After disastrously dividing the world into the strong (Bush hawks) and the weak (everyone else), Vice turned his coarseness into another macho, tough-guy moment against a Democrat considered a pill by many Republicans. "I think a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue," he preened. The conservatives defending Mr. Cheney are largely the same crowd that went off the deep end because of a glimpse of breast on the Super Bowl, demanding everything from fines to new regulations to protect red states from blue language. Mr. Cheney's foul outburst was not as bad as his foul reasoning. On Fox, he again belabored his obsession with "links" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Exhibiting WASP chutzpah, this time he used The Times to bolster his faux case. But the Thom Shanker story he cited said only that in the mid-1990's, Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda and that a request from Osama "to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered." Rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda? As a threat to U.S. security, that's right up there with Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." Mr. Cheney assured Fox's anxious viewers that he would stay on the ticket and in the White House until January '09. (No four letter words, dear Democrats.) Vice said of W., "he knows I'm there to serve him." Mr. Bush must have missed that classic "Twilight Zone" episode where the aliens arrive with a book entitled, "To Serve Man." It turns out to be a cookbook.