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Politics : Discuss the candidates honestly. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrLucky who wrote (1104)	6/30/2004 12:00:38 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 4965

No love for Cheney in the Bronx Report: Iraq worse off Edwards steals veepstakes spotlight Bronx cheer for Cheney The Washington Post's Harold Meyerson devoted his column today to our "feel-good veep," who justified his cussing out of Pat Leahy the other day by saying it made him feel better, and, Meyerson reminds us, rationalized the dividend tax cut, a boon for the rich, by saying it was his party's "due" after the midterm elections. "Considering that he's out of the public eye most of the time, it's remarkable that Cheney has become just as much of a polarizing figure as his boss," Meyerson wrote. "But then, Cheney is a master of high-impact public appearances." Cheney felt most of the impact of his appearance last night at Yankee Stadium, where he was booed by the fans when his mug appeared on the Jumbotron during the seventh-inning stretch. Maybe the crowd mistook him for a Red Sox fan. -- Geraldine Sealey [06:56 PDT, June 30, 2004] Iraq worse off, CPA wasted millions The General Accounting Office reports that in key areas like overall security, electricity and the judicial system, Iraq is worse off now that before the U.S. invasion last year, Knight-Ridder reports. "The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings: -In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces. -Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with another $10 billion about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations. -The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts. -The new Iraqi civil defense, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped. -The number of what the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority called significant insurgent attacks skyrocketed from 411 in February to 1,169 in May. The report was released on the same day that the CPA's inspector general issued three reports that highlighted serious management difficulties at the CPA. The reports found that the CPA wasted millions of dollars at a Hilton resort hotel in Kuwait because it didn't have guidelines for who could stay there, lost track of how many employees it had in Iraq and didn't track reconstruction projects funded by international donors to ensure they didn't duplicate U.S. projects." Conservatives apoplectic over Fahrenheit The Wall Street Journal (free link) looks at conservative anger over Michael Moore's new film, and says it's reaching "fever pitch -- but figuring out how to prevent the movie from becoming an even wider cultural phenomenon is dividing the political right." "Some activists want to confront the movie's controversial assertions or even stop theaters from showing it; others, including the White House, are keeping a low profile to avoid hyping the film and thus broadening its potential audience four months before Election Day." "The Bush administration has kept largely silent about Mr. Moore's film, which portrays the president as out-of-touch, accuses him of connections with the bin Laden family and questions whether he is beholden to Saudi interests. A Republican National Committee spokeswoman says the committee believes the movie won't affect voters' decisions come November and doesn't plan to dignify it with a response. The White House has declined to comment, saying it doesn't 'do movie reviews.'" "'The eagle doesn't talk to the fly,' says Keith Appell, a Republican consultant and the senior vice president of Creative Response Concepts, a public-relations firm based in Alexandria, Va."