Monthly Archives: July 2004

Dump Duhbya

Duhbya, Please Stick With Dick!

Picking Edwards Gives Kerry a Boost-Poll Reuters.com

The Kerry-Edwards ticket is leading Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney by a margin of six percentage points, 51 percent to 45 percent, the poll said.

The survey of 1,001 adults, to be published in the July 19 issue of the magazine, was taken July 8-9 and has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

It was the first Newsweek poll since Kerry chose the North Carolina lawmaker as his running mate on July 6. Kerry led Bush 46 percent to 45 percent in the magazine’s previous survey in mid-May.

But in a three-way race with independent candidates Ralph Nader and Peter Camejo, Kerry-Edwards edged Bush-Cheney by a slimmer margin, just 47 percent to 44 percent. Nader-Camejo drew support from 3 percent of those polled.

The poll comes amid speculation Cheney may be hurting Bush’s chances of winning re-election. Cheney has been a lighting rod for Democratic criticism because of his role in advocating for the invasion of Iraq and his previous ties with energy company Halliburton, which is being probed for overcharging for its services in Iraq.

Cheney has distanced himself from any claims that he has a financial stake in Halliburton, and Bush has strongly endorsed the vice president as his running mate.

However, the Newsweek poll said that if Bush replaced Cheney with Secretary of State Colin Powell, the ticket would defeat Kerry-Edwards by 53 percent to 44 percent.

Dump Duhbya

Dump Fox

News Hounds: We watch FOX so you don’t have to.

Meet the News Hounds
We’re eight middle-aged citizens who believe a viable democracy depends upon viable media. Read more in our manifesto.

OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism

Outfoxed examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, have been running a “race to the bottom” in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public’s right to know.

Dump Duhbya

Bush Slips in Rural Areas — Before Kerry Picked Edwards

NPR : Poll: Bush Rural Support Fades in Key States

Respondents in the Center for Rural Strategies poll give the president a nine-point lead over Democrat John Kerry in rural portions of the battleground states. Mr. Bush was favored by 51 percent of respondents, compared to 42 percent for Kerry. But the same people said they gave candidate Bush a margin twice as big against his Democratic rival four years ago — 55 percent said that they voted for Bush, 37 percent for Al Gore. (In the final election results from 2000, Bush won 55.5 percent of the vote in rural counties in the 17 states, while Gore captured 44.5 percent.)

Close to half of the respondents, 48 percent, say the nation is on the wrong track, while 43 percent say it’s heading in the right direction.

Election

Patriotic Discourse

Moore-wellian fables skew

truth by Alex Hughes, Daily Lobo Opinion

Another thing that really irks me is the constant banter stating what Moore is doing is

simply ”patriotic discourse.” Michael Moore is not a patriot. He is a traitor. …

[T]o be a patriot, one has to love

their country. Moore hates America and Americans with equal fervor. I think if it were up to him, he would have sent Osama a

basket of muffins with a nice little thank you card after the Sept. 11 attacks.

I applaud Alex Hughes for actually seeing

F/911. Most of the conservative commentary I have read indicates he’s rather unusual in that regard. That he would then calmly discuss

the movie’s flaws is also respectable. Still, he manages to earn his true credentials as a conservative by declaring Moore a traitor and

dictating what constitutes ‘acceptable’ patriotism (to him). Finally, he finishes trashing Moore by stating Moore is glad America was

attacked. Shameless, Alex. Were you afraid your cohort would reject you if you stayed rational? Or is it that calm conservatives don’t

make it into print — or office?

Hughes says of Moore, he ”doesn’t lie, per se, he just tells the version of the truth that

ignores things that are problematic to the advancement of his world view.” Sounds exactly like what Bush supporters say in defense of

Bush, who said, ”I’m a uniter, not a divider.”

I would call that a lie, per se, told to deceive in order to get something one

would not get if the truth were known. Of course, there is that other classic defense of Bush, ”it wasn’t a lie if he believed it at

the time” (all evidence to the contrary now). Maybe not, but then it is an indication of delusion. mjh

Republicans

get Moore than a challenge from filmmaker By Marisa Demarco

Republicans Review 9/11

Election

Class Warfare

Opinion > Guest Columnist: Dude, Where’s That Elite?”

href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/01/opinion/01EHRE.html”>Dude, Where’s That Elite? By BARBARA EHRENREICH, NYTimes

My point

is not to defend Moore, who — with a platoon of bodyguards and a legal team starring Mario Cuomo — hardly needs any muscle from me. I

just think it’s time to retire the “liberal elite” label, which, for the past 25 years, has been deployed to denounce anyone to the left

of Colin Powell. Thus, last winter, the ultra-elite right-wing Club for Growth dismissed followers of Howard Dean as a “tax-hiking,

government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing

freak show.” …

But the left I encounter on my treks across the nation is heavy on hotel housekeepers, community college students,

laid-off steelworkers and underpaid schoolteachers. …

But it would be redundant to speak of a “conservative elite” ….

So

liberals can take comfort from the fact that our most visible spokesman is, despite his considerable girth, an invulnerable target for

the customary assault weapon of the right. I meant to comment on his movie, too, but the lines at my local theater are still

prohibitively long.

photos

New Photos

I have just put some new photos on the Web. I hope you’ll have a look, enjoy them, and let me know what you think. These are just a few from hundreds taken over about a 6 week period, during which time Merri and I had visits from John Stewart and Steve O’Neill. We also traveled to Prescott, Arizona, and camped along the way over a few days (hot and dry, of course). I got to return to two fantastic National Monuments: Tuzigoot and Montezuma’s Castle (and Well).

We also took a trip just north of Chama, New Mexico and barely into Colorado, discovering some new places and returning to some familiar. That is a spectacular, mountainous area; it spit rain and snow on us once, and was cold at night (36°F). We got our wish to camp by streams every night (and paid for that in mosquito bites).

In June, we seemed to spend more time than usual seeing the sights inside Albuquerque. We went to the Biopark (Aquarium and Botanical Garden — plus Butterfly Pavilion — adjacent to the Zoo) a couple of times, including a concert. We went to the rebuilt Isotopes Park — shockingly expensive, though busy and beautiful.

All in all, it was a great, long vacation, even without our usual longer camping trip. mjh

See some of the pictures: Photos around Albuquerque.

ps: if you are interested, I’ve also written something about the evolution of the mechanism I use for presenting these pictures.