Did Bush Screw New York City? - DPChallenge Forums

08/26/2004 09:40:03 AM · #1

A presidential potpourri of cuts, blunders, stonewalls, deceptions, and distractions
The 10 Ways Bush Screwed New York
by Wayne Barrett, special reporting by Daniel Magliocco
August 24th, 2004 10:25 AM

Here's a welcome from New York 9-11 Veterans for Truth, a big hello for Republicans from a city hit by a couple of swift jets 35 monthsâ��not 35 yearsâ��ago. It's matched by just as friendly an insistence that the convention focus on how Bush-Cheney responded to our riverbank assault, rather than on an ancient Mekong attack, where the first test of courage was being there. With the president scheduled to barely show up here all week, wouldn't it be respectful if the delegates and media actually got around town to see just what he's done to us since the bullhorn bravado of 2001? They could start with NYPD Blue, that All-American army deployed all over midtown. There are actually 5,879 fewer city cops than in 2000, partly due to the nearly 90 percent Bush cuts in Bill Clinton's COPS programs. Even with the post-9-11 invention of homeland security funding, NYC is getting $61 million less in federal public-safety subsidies than it did before our cops became America's front line. Bush's 2005 budget proposes even more cuts. Though most conventioneers would prefer to forget it, George W. Bush has slashed the troop strength that host committee hero Rudy Giuliani put on duty.

With the Bush administration also opposing legislation backed by Mayor Bloomberg that would've compensated the city for revenue lost due to 9-11, six firehouses were closed as well. That includes one on 125th Street in East Harlem, an engine company that might well have been summoned to Madison Square Garden in a multi-alarm fire. Of course, should anything catastrophic happen there during convention week, the firefighters whose brothers died on 9-11 will still be communicating on the same, reprogrammed, radios that cost lives three years ago, thanks to a president who refused to pony up the $120 million needed for new ones. Bush has also de-funded the SAFER program even after Congress passed itâ��blocking NYC from hiring more firefightersâ��and limited equipment purchases under the FIRE program to a puny cap of $750,000, putting NY's allocation on a par with Poland, Ohio's, with Montana getting $9 per capita for federal firefighter aid and NYC nine cents.

Delegates still mesmerized by that NY's Bravest luster might want stop at another East Harlem landmarkâ��Mount Sinai Hospitalâ��where thousands of Ground Zero rescue workers are still being screened for the lingering effects of their misplaced faith in postâ��9-11 health advisories emanating from Bush's White Houseâ��scripted EPA. Though the first Bush-Cheney commercial featured a flag-draped coffin carried through Ground Zero by firefighters, the administration actually fought the paltry $90 million allocation for Mount Sinai and firefighter screening programs, as if it still believed its own altered press releases about that historic toxic cloud.

Indeed, conventioneers taking a swing by GZ should be sure to visit Battery Park City or Independence Plaza and hear what the 20,000 residents of Lower Manhattan have to say about a White House that thought they or their buildings' owners should clean up the asbestos aftermath on their own. They could even drop in at EPA's NY office just a few blocks away at 290 Broadwayâ��which got a partial super-vacuuming from emergency government crews while the agency decided that virtually no one else who worked or lived downtown was entitled to one.

GOPers who arrive by train, of course, will be taking precisely the same risks passengers did before 9-11: no bag searches, no bridge, tunnel, or even significant station security boosts, with the proposed Bush budget blasting Amtrak and other mass-transit funding like a time bomb. If Tom DeLay had achieved his cruise ship dream-hotel for delegates, they might actually have seen cargo ships pulling into port virtually as insecure as preâ��9-11, with a lesser percent of containers inspected than speeders stopped on the Jersey Turnpike. In fact, delegates from Cheney's Wyoming, for example, will have reason to be jittery, leaving a state that gets $40 per capita in homeland security funding to visit a state that gets $10, especially since they will have entered a twilight zone on orange alert for the last 1,080 days or so.

When this attacked city was selected to host the convention way back in January 2003, Bush might have believed he'd come here as a hero, with bin Laden's head in tow, a new tower rising, $20 billion in thank-you's awaiting, and a landslide on the way, beginning in NY. Instead, along the same westside route where Bush was cheered lustily on September 14, 2001, protesters may gather by the hundreds of thousands, a revolution in receptions marking the ugly shift in national spirit that's infected Bush's years. A president who came then to our battlefield as a unifier is returning as a userâ��turning our city into a carnival rationale for his war and re-election.

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The Ten Worst Ways Bush Has Hurt Us

1 Will any convention speaker dare mention the name of Osama bin Laden? What ever happened to Bush's cowboy threat to "smoke 'em" out? Osama, Omar, and Ayman al-Zawhiri became instant and explicit "Wanted Dead or Alive" Bush targets after 9-11, but when the Pentagon came up with a card deck of the hunted, the faces were all Iraqi. The RNC is still replaying the president's bullhorned GZ promise that "the people who knocked down these buildings" would "hear all of us soon," and the president and wife are even now airing a commercial that vows to bring "an enemy to justice before they hurt us again." Who knew when Bush was strapping on that holster three years ago that High Noon would require a second term? Or is Jeb going to get 'em after 2008?

Can you imagine the Fox drumbeat if a Democratic president moved from the smoke-Osama-out soundbites we never see anymore to declaring, "I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with ya"? Why were key Special Operations forces and CIA operatives moved out of Afghanistan in 2002 to prepare for an Iraq invasion? Why weren't American forces guarding the Pakistani border when bin Laden reportedly escaped at Tora Bora? Why were 11,000 U.S. troops sent to fight the Afghan war and 140,000 to Iraq? Is there any way to square the Bush boast that he's eliminated two-thirds of Al Qaeda's leadership with the recent Tom Ridge high alert based on the seizure of four-year-old plans? Why did Bush and the GOP Senate defeat a Chris Dodd amendment that got 40 Democratic votes to permit the U.S. to cooperate with any future International Criminal Court prosecution of bin Laden?

NYers will not put our attackers on a political back burner. Bush promised regime change at Al Qaeda; he cannot use Saddam as his beard. If we believed that this administration laser-beamed American might on bin Laden and came up empty, we could accept it. We know that Bush instead exploited it to go after a target selected at the first meeting of his National Security Council, long before 9-11.

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2 Why was Bush so afraid of a 9-11 investigation? As recently as last week's interview with Larry King, Bush tried to tap-dance around his record of resistance to the 9-11 Commission. It was a lie, reliant, as always, on the assumption that no one under a klieg light would make an issue of it. Tom Daschle, who was Senate majority leader in 2002, says Dick Cheney called him and "expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the war on terrorism." Bush's revisionist press guru, Karen Hughes, tried to insist on a March Meet the Press that Bush only had "concerns" about a probe, adding, "I don't know that the president ever opposed the creation of it." The families know better. Monica Gabrielle, whose insurance broker husband died in the attack, said: "The White House is blocking everything." Photogenic presidential hugger John McCain knows better. He said Bush tried to "slow-walk and stonewall it."

Bush at first put Henry Kissinger in charge. His Federal Aviation Administration and Defense Department had to be subpoenaed to give up records. He insisted on "minders" accompanying any federal official interviewed by the commission. He would be interviewed only if Cheney was at his sideâ��and no oath or transcripts were taken, guaranteeing that his comments would barely be quoted in the eventual 567-page report. When he was finally forced by public pressure to allow Condi Rice to testify publicly, he won a concession that no other White House official would be questioned publicly or privately again. He opposed an extension of the commission's deadline. He deleted its funding altogether from one supplemental budget request and ultimately funded it at one-fourth the cost of Ken Starr's probe of a dress stain. His wholly owned cable network and NY tabloid derided it repeatedly.

And then, when the commission produced a report with bipartisan unanimity that factually decimated Bush's first nine months of terrorist indifference, but gave reporters too little conclusory language to write a lead, Bush glowingly welcomed the chair and vice-chair at the White House. A month later, after Donald Rumsfeld poured cold water on the key recommendations at a Senate hearing, it's clear Bush will move only if compelled.

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3 Was the Bush team awake in the nine months before the attack? The press, always seeking balance, has apparently decided that if Bill Clinton was out to lunch on Al Qaeda, then Dubya's vacationing vacillation is not news. But Clinton is not seeking four more years. With CIA director George Tenet telling the commission that "the system was blinking red," the White House appears in the report as glazed as it did the first seven minutes after the second plane hit.

"In sum," the commission concluded about the Bush response to what it said were "unprecedented" warnings, "the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction, and did not have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law enforcement was not marshaled to augment the FBI's efforts. The public was not warned. The terrorists exploited deep institutional failings within our government."

Incredibly, these words have received far less media than, for example, the recollections of Swift boat crewmen who never sailed under John Kerry's command. Yet, with five Republican commissioners voting, each word was so carefully parsed they shout with the collective voice of minimum truth. Prediction: No one in the national media will quote them through four nights of endless TV gab. Even though they are Republican conclusions, our talking heads would view citing them as the electronic equivalent of belching in an in-law's living room.

No one will mention the 40 bin Laden articles in Presidential Daily Briefings from January 20 to September 10, 2001; the first day of vacation's August 6 wake-up PDB headline of "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.," and the fishing trip that ensued; the failure to even convene a principals' meeting on terrorism until September 4, 2001; the president's uncertainty about whether he ever discussed the August 6 PDB with Justice officials; the acting FBI director's sworn recollection that AG Ashcroft told him he didn't want to hear about the Al Qaeda threats anymore; and the telling testimony of senior counterterrorism staff that they considered resigning during it all to "go public with their concerns."

New Yorkers cannot forget that the most infamous of the PDBs contained three incredible warnings: a WTC reprise of '93, hijackings, and Al Qaeda surveillance of buildings here. No counter-terrorism group or National Security Council meetings were "held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the U.S. as a result of this report," the commission said, while the longest presidential vacation in modern history dragged on.

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4 Iraq plus tax cuts adds up to a deficit that will force a second-term squeeze on social programs vital to NYC. Bush didn't cause the recession. He didn't cause 9-11. Any president would've had to take on the added costs of homeland security and Afghanistan, maybe even spent more on them. But $75 billion here and $87 billion there, and Iraq becomes a pretty big bill, with no end to installment payments in sight. Deficits of a half-trillion might, in a real world, slow the march to making $4 trillion in high-end tax cuts permanent, but a second Bush term will almost undoubtedly include even more cuts. He's already talking about converting us from an income- to consumption-tax system, with every form of investment income insulated from taxation.

There's only so much blood the White House can drain out of health and social programs, but that promises to be a focus of Term II. Shock & awe for Head Start. "You'll see huge cutbacks in these programs in the budget that's released in early 2005," predicts Brookings Institution economist Bell Sawhill. This anticipated calamity appears on this Voice list of current, as opposed to future, Bush assaults on the city because the fiscal madness of the last three years leads inexorably to it. With 75 percent of budget deterioration due to lower revenues, not higher spending, and the Bush Garden party exploding in celebration next week whenever tax cuts are mentioned, have no doubt that every federal dollar of social responsibility is up for grabs.

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5 Bush did OK on the $20 billion, but he's still shortchanging us on the edges of the minimal pledge he made to a city whose economy took an $80 billion hit. For example, when Florida collects hurricane aid, it will likely also get another 15 percent of whatever FEMA spends on emergency assistance for "hazard mitigation"â��funding that federal law requires to help a disaster-hit locality figure out ways to avoid such a crushing blow again. NY only got 5 percent. Even George Pataki, who's as likely to publicly criticize Bush as he is Libby, has complained about that one.

The White House explanation is that the city got all its emergency costs reimbursedâ��a higher percentage than usualâ��so it's receiving less mitigation aid. But Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who's been a tiger in the House on every dollar due New York, cites chapter and verse of other localities that have collected full emergency and mitigation funding. Fifteen percent mitigation would add $840 million to our coffers.

Bush is hardly the only one responsible for another missing $3 billion. Instead of demanding the $20 billion in hard cash the minute Bush agreed in the White House meeting with our senators, Giuliani, Pataki, and the senators decided they wanted billions of it in the form of tax incentives for downtown projects that have never materialized. It's a synchronized bipartisan mess that includes the White House. But this screwup, combined with Pataki's snail-like rebuilding pace on the site, has given Bush nothing to showcase here. He's planning no GZ extravaganza because it still looks like a moonscape.

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6 Senator Schumer says NY doesn't expect a share of Idaho's farm subsidies, so why does Idaho take a chunk of NY's security subsidies? It's a question no speaker at the GOP convention is likely to address even though a national Democrat like Hillary Clinton raised it from the DNC podium. Iowa is spending bioterrorism funding on corn feed. Maybe that state should, because with NY ranked 35th in anti-terrorism per capita funding and 50th in bioterrorism, it's all becoming pork anyway. When security dollars are allocated, the red states should be the ones that have shed or are likely to shed blood.

This is not just a Tom DeLay problem. The White House has been almost as deplorable as Congress. In fact, a 2004 Bloomberg report says that a key funding source, the Urban Area Security Initiative, which was originally targeted at the seven most vulnerable cities, is now dispersed among 80 cities and that the White House is preparing an October surprise. The president will name more cities eligible for this limited potâ��with NYC's total already sliced from $281 million to $47 million and Bloomberg saying there is "no public formula detailing the factors" Bush will use in making his pre-election grants. The mayor who brought the convention here says that he fought hard "to get money allocated for high-threat areas, but the funds are being diluted as cities are added."

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7 What could be worse than lying to GZ workers and residents about the air they were breathing? The original EPA draft of a September 13, 2001, press release, for example, said that the agency considered even the low levels of asbestos that surfaced in their GZ tests "hazardous in this situation." The final White House version of the release simply scratched out the phrase. And when a September 16 EPA draft warned of "higher levels of asbestos," the White House changed it to the hot-air hoax that "ambient air quality meets standards and is not a cause for public concern." The EPA chief of staff conceded in an interview with the agency's inspector general that the "desire to reopen Wall Street" factored into the releases, saying she did not feel the releases were her own.

NYC will live with the consequences of what the IG concluded were White House efforts to "add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" for years, if not decades, to come. Asbestos is a long-term and relentless killer. We have already learned that 2,500 firefighters alone have diminished lung capacity due to inhaling WTC debris. Six hundred have already retired with GZ disabilities or are seeking these costly pensions. Lower Manhattan residents are suing EPA because it left them to fend for themselves, dodging interior cleanup responsibilities until a year after the attack. Eighty percent of the homes have still never been tested or cleaned. Do you think that will be the Bush attitude in a post-hurricane swing state?

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8 Bush has left most New York children behind. Congressman Anthony Weiner has calculated that the administration has shortchanged the city by $2.5 billion through cuts in the five key education programs funded under the Bush schools initiative, No Child Left Behind. NCLB hasn't just hurt the pocketbook, it's also forced traumatic overcrowding by widening parental choice, damaging high-performing schools and emptying low-performing ones.

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9 Ten thousand NY families are in jeopardy of losing their housing subsidies and homes. Bush has proposed a $107 million cut in NY's Section 8 housing vouchers. If passed, it will be the first time this voucher program has ever been reduced. The administration is also trying to recapture $50 million in subsidies the city already got. Since Bush took office, the city's housing authority, which is home to one in every 12 NYers, has taken, according to Maloney, Weiner, and other House Democrats, a $175 million drop in federal funding.

As damaging as the school and housing cuts are, they are part of a fabric of fiscal warfare against the city. The attempt to reconstitute the highway and transit formula threatens to financially cripple our subway system (will any delegates ride it even once?). Workforce Investment Act funding for job training has fallen by 41 percent even as our employment figures have nosedived. Safety net programs for the uninsured, called the Healthy Community Access Program (HCAP), plummet from $120 million to $10 million in Bush's proposed budget. These cuts may well be a precursor of the decimation of these programs in a deficit-reducing Term 2.

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10 With NYC the No. 1 target of bio and nuclear terrorists, the go-it-alone Bush administration has torpedoed international treaties that would make us more secure. Earlier this month in Geneva, the U.S. reversed Clinton's support of a U.N. agreement banning the production and supply of highly enriched uranium essential to building nukes. Strongly supported by allies like Britain, the fissile material cut-off treaty, as it's called, would've reduced the chances of terror groups acquiring a nuclear capability. In 2001, Bush did the same to scuttle a biological-weapons convention, though 55 nations had signed on after seven years of negotiation. Elisa Harris, who oversaw proliferation issues for Clinton's NSC, said that the Bush administration was sending "a very dangerous message," acting on the neoconservative distrust of any binding restraints on America First policy.

mrorange002

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

08/26/2004 09:46:39 AM · #2

article | Posted September 25, 2003

The Other Lies of George Bush

by David Corn

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For information on David Corn's new book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception, see www.bushlies.com.
This article was adapted from the new book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).

George W. Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small, directly and by omission. His Iraq lies have loomed largest. In the run-up to the invasion, Bush based his case for war on a variety of unfounded claims that extended far beyond his controversial uranium-from-Niger assertion. He maintained that Saddam Hussein possessed "a massive stockpile" of unconventional weapons and was directly "dealing" with Al Qaeda--two suppositions unsupported then (or now) by the available evidence. He said the International Atomic Energy Agency had produced a report in 1998 noting that Iraq was six months from developing a nuclear weapon; no such report existed (and the IAEA had actually reported then that there was no indication Iraq had the ability to produce weapons-grade material). Bush asserted that Iraq was "harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner"; US intelligence officials told reporters this terrorist was operating ouside of Al Qaeda control. And two days before launching the war, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Yet former deputy CIA director Richard Kerr, who is conducting a review of the prewar intelligence, has said that intelligence was full of qualifiers and caveats, and based on circumstantial and inferential evidence. That is, it was not no-doubt stuff. And after the major fighting was done, Bush declared, "We found the weapons of mass destruction." But he could only point to two tractor-trailers that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded were mobile bioweapons labs. Other experts--including the DIA's own engineering experts--disagreed with this finding.

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But Bush's truth-defying crusade for war did not mark a shift for him. Throughout his campaign for the presidency and his years in the White House, Bush has mugged the truth in many other areas to advance his agenda. Lying has been one of the essential tools of his presidency. To call the forty-third President of the United States a prevaricator is not an exercise of opinion, not an inflammatory talk-radio device. Rather, it is backed up by an all-too-extensive record of self-serving falsifications. While politicians are often derided as liars, this charge should be particularly stinging for Bush. During the campaign of 2000, he pitched himself as a candidate who could "restore" honor and integrity to an Oval Office stained by the misdeeds and falsehoods of his predecessor. To brand Bush a liar is to negate what he and his supporters declared was his most basic and most important qualification for the job.

His claims about the war in Iraq have led more of his foes and more pundits to accuse him of lying to the public. The list of his misrepresentations, though, is far longer than the lengthy list of dubious statements Bush employed--and keeps on employing--to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq. Here then is a partial--a quite partial--account of the other lies of George W. Bush.

Tax Cuts

Bush's crusade for tax cuts is the domestic policy matter that has spawned the most misrepresentations from his camp. On the 2000 campaign trail, he sold his success as a "tax-cutting person" by hailing cuts he passed in Texas while governor. But Bush did not tell the full story of his 1997 tax plan. His proposal called for cutting property taxes. But what he didn't mention is that it also included an attempt to boost the sales tax and to implement a new business tax. Nor did he note that his full package had not been accepted by the state legislature. Instead, the lawmakers passed a $1 billion reduction in property taxes. And these tax cuts turned out to be a sham. After they kicked in, school districts across the state boosted local tax rates to compensate for the loss of revenue. A 1999 Dallas Morning News analysis found that "many [taxpayers] are still paying as much as they did in 1997, or more." Republican Lieutenant Governor Rick Perry called the cuts "rather illusory."

One of Bush's biggest tax-cut whoppers came when he stated, during the presidential campaign, "The vast majority of my [proposed] tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." That estimate was wildly at odds with analyses of where the money would really go. A report by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal outfit that specializes in distribution analysis, figured that 42.6 percent of Bush's $1.6 trillion tax package would end up in the pockets of the top 1 percent of earners. The lowest 60 percent would net 12.6 percent. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, ABC News and NBC News all reported that Bush's package produced the results CTJ calculated.

To deal with the criticism that his plan was a boon for millionaires, Bush devised an imaginary friend--a mythical single waitress who was supporting two children on an income of $22,000, and he talked about her often. He said he wanted to remove the tax-code barriers that kept this waitress from reaching the middle class, and he insisted that if his tax cuts were passed, "she will pay no income taxes at all." But when Time asked the accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche to analyze precisely how Bush's waitress-mom would be affected by his tax package, the firm reported that she would not see any benefit because she already had no income-tax liability.

As he sold his tax cuts from the White House, Bush maintained in 2001 that with his plan, "the greatest percentage of tax relief goes to the people at the bottom end of the ladder." This was trickery--technically true only because low-income earners pay so little income tax to begin with. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put it, "a two-parent family of four with income of $26,000 would indeed have its income taxes eliminated under the Bush plan, which is being portrayed as a 100 percent reduction in taxes." But here was the punch line: The family owed only $20 in income taxes under the existing law. Its overall tax bill (including payroll and excise taxes), though, was $2,500. So that twenty bucks represented less than 1 percent of its tax burden. Bush's "greatest percentage" line was meaningless in the real world, where people paid their bills with money, not percentages.

Bush also claimed his tax plan--by eliminating the estate tax, at a cost of $300 billion--would "keep family farms in the family." But, as the New York Times reported, farm-industry experts could not point to a single case of a family losing a farm because of estate taxes. Asked about this, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, "If you abolish the death tax, people won't have to hire all those planners to help them keep the land that's rightfully theirs." Caught in a $300 billion lie, the White House was now saying the reason to abolish the tax--a move that would be a blessing to the richest 2 percent of Americans--was to spare farmers the pain in the ass of estate planning. Bush's lies did not hinder him. They helped him win the first tax-cut fight--and, then, the tax-cut battle of 2003. When his second set of supersized tax cuts was assailed for being tilted toward the rich, he claimed, "Ninety-two million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money." The Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute found that, contrary to Bush's assertion, nearly 80 percent of tax filers would receive less than $1,083, and almost half would pocket less than $100. The truly average taxpayers--those in the middle of the income range--would receive $265. Bush was using the word "average" in a flimflam fashion. To concoct the misleading $1,083 figure, the Administration took the large dollar amounts high-income taxpayers would receive and added that to the modest, small or nonexistent reductions other taxpayers would get--and then used this total to calculate an average gain. His claim was akin to saying that if a street had nine households led by unemployed individuals but one with an earner making a million dollars, the average income of the families on the block would be $100,000. The radical Wall Street Journal reported, "Overall, the gains from the taxes are weighted toward upper-income taxpayers."

Spork99

OM System OM-1

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro

08/26/2004 10:14:05 AM · #3

I think Bush II screwed America as a whole.

08/26/2004 10:27:44 AM · #4

A more concise list would be who he's NOT screwing:
He's not screwing big business and multinationals and he's not screwing fundamentalist evangelical Christianity.

Message edited by author 2004-08-26 10:39:48.

mrorange002

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

08/26/2004 10:45:46 AM · #5

check this out!

08/26/2004 11:32:52 AM · #6

Hey! Stop hijacking my thread! :D :D

(A most interesting cartoon, BTW)

ANYWAYS, I wanted to start something here about NYC and Bush/ Republicans, because the upcoming convention looks to be a very unpopular affair in the Big Apple. Large rooftop protest signs are already displayed for arriving aircraft passengers to view, and boycotts, protests are being planned, etc.

New Yorkers are quite pissed off that Bush wants to use 9/11 as the back drop for another "War Preznit" photo op, so there may be some real problems coming up.

Members of the Bush campaign have already admitted that they will call any protesters "Democrats" regardless of their true political affiliations. It's going to be nasty.

Here is the New York Post on how Speaker Dennis Hastert's new book is fanning the flames of ill-will between Gotham and the GOP:

//www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/27477.htm

08/26/2004 11:58:18 AM · #7

Originally posted by ericlimon:

check this out!

Funny cartoon! I loved the emblems the characters were wearing: Enron and Chevon...lol. Hysterical.
Did Jeb Bush really declare martial law on Sept 7th, 2001? I didn't know that. Thanks.

mrorange002

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM

08/26/2004 12:03:06 PM · #8

if you liked that, you'll love this site: bushflash.com

jibjab.com you have to watch a short commercial first, sorry)

Message edited by author 2004-08-26 12:07:04.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

08/26/2004 12:42:44 PM · #9

Originally posted by gingerbaker:

Members of the Bush campaign have already admitted that they will call any protesters "Democrats" regardless of their true political affiliations. It's going to be nasty.

Well, 'if you aren't with us you're against us' so if you don't like it, you couldn't possibly be a Republican, now could you ?

08/26/2004 01:00:10 PM · #10

Ayeuh.

Although, to be fair.... they are going to be mostly correct!

While there will be some Repubicans protesting Bush - converts to Kerry now, and there might be some a fair number of Nader supporters ( who haven't already got their protest ya-yas out protesting the *Democratic* convention! :D ), it's prolly a safe bet most of the folks - likely thousands and thousands of folks - protesting will be Kerry voters, don't you think?

What is breattaking is the brazen attitude of the Bush minions who readily admit they will distribute their talking point distortions to the eager media outlets.

Let's just wait and see how Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC etc describe the protesters. It'll be interesting to note if there are any differences to their approach.

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0L USM

08/26/2004 01:10:24 PM · #11

Originally posted by gingerbaker:

I'm not sure I agree as many protesters do not believe in this two party election system and also don't believe there will be a terribly big difference between the two candidates in their policies. Many thousands protested the DNC and probably many of the same people will be out there for the RNC. The Democrats are equally in bed with the corporations and the rich. Many feel that a change is best, though, and that Kerry is less of a threat to The Constitution and to civil liberties.

MadMordegon

08/26/2004 01:59:24 PM · #12

One thing is for sure, it will be very interesting to see the difference in not only the actual RNC from the DNC, but the media coverage and how protesting will play a part.

LoudDog

Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT

08/26/2004 02:30:57 PM · #13

Anyone have anything good to say about Kerry, other then he is not Bush? How do Kerry's plans differ from what Bush has done? What will change if Kerry gets elected (other then the end of Bush bashing)?

So far I've heard Kerry isn't Bush
Kerry got 5 medals 30+ years ago
Kerry doesn't like the swift boat dudes
Kerry will magically create 10,000,000 new jobs (where? how?)
Kerry will add 40,000 new soldiers to the military, so I'm guessing he'll add more incentive to join the military.

08/26/2004 02:43:41 PM · #14

Originally posted by louddog:

***I agree with you Louddog...I'm not convinced that Kerry is all that different, but will vote for him because I feel he's less of a threat to The Constitution and civil liberties (although I could be wrong on that). On the other hand, Bush is even more of a threat to those issues I just listed above, but also because he pushes his neocon agenda which will lead to more terrorism against the US and possibly world war and nuclear war. I would certainly be voting for Nader if I didn't think it was so critical to get Bush out of office.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

08/26/2004 02:44:44 PM · #15

Originally posted by louddog:

I wouldn't mind hearing what either candidate would do, rather than about what they've done or not done in the last 30 years or so. It would be refreshing to hear about issues and not ad hominem attacks from either group. But that doesn't appear to be how politics work in the US - least not for the last 15 years or so that I've been paying attention.

Probably because its more about entertainment and ratings than issues and policy. The media seem to believe that nobody has an attention span longer tha

Alecia

Canon EOS-10D

08/26/2004 02:48:04 PM · #16

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

08/26/2004 03:15:05 PM · #17

Originally posted by louddog:

EddyG

Canon EOS-1D Mark II

08/26/2004 03:59:07 PM · #18

Originally posted by louddog:

What will change if Kerry gets elected (other then the end of Bush bashing)?

Your taxes will go up.

His campaign promises are currently estimated to have a cost of $2 trillion dollars. And that is only the stuff where an estimate is possible; there is a bunch of stuff he has promised that has an unknown cost.

If you don't believe Kerry will raise taxes, just look at his Senate record on tax-related issues, such as voting for a 50-cent increase per gallon in the gasoline tax, voting against Bush's tax cut, voting against alleviating the marriage penalty, voting for the largest tax increase in American history under Clinton, etc. Overall, he has voted over 350 times for higher taxes. And with $2T in campaign promises, funding will have to come from somewhere...

So while it is easy to make a bunch of "warm and fuzzy" sounding promises on a campaign web page, it is completely another thing to make those a reality.

Even if he could fund all those campaign promises without increasing my taxes, I would never vote for somebody who has published a book with a cover that disgraced the symbol of America and mocked the battle at Iwo Jima to be the President of the United States.

Message edited by author 2004-08-26 16:02:22.