Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

Kerry 332 – Bush 195

USATODAY.com – White House to move to Texas for a while
By Laurence McQuillan, USA TODAY
08/03/2001

WASHINGTON — Six months after taking office, President Bush will begin a month-long vacation Saturday that is significantly longer than the average American’s annual getaway. If Bush returns as scheduled on Labor Day, he’ll tie the modern record for presidential absence from the White House, held by Richard Nixon at 30 days. Ronald Reagan took trips as long as 28 days. …

[S]ome Republican loyalists worry about critics who say Bush lets Vice President Cheney and other top officials do most of the work. They’re also concerned about the reaction of the average American, who gets 13 vacation days each year.

“It can foster other images,” says William Benoit, a professor of political communication at the University of Missouri-Columbia. “Maybe he’s lazy, maybe he’s not determined. It feeds into the impression that he’s not in charge.”

Bush, who is scheduled to return to Washington on Sept. 3, is taking his vacation while Congress is in recess. Cheney will be in Wyoming. …

President Bush’s father was criticized in 1990 for remaining on vacation in Kennebunkport while dealing with the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.

Bush has described playful plans for his days at the ranch, which was finished in the spring. Talking to members of the agricultural youth group FFA last week, Bush joked that he looked forward to “seeing the cows. Occasionally they talk to me — being the good listener that I am.”

But White House image-makers worry a lot, and Bush was a bit more serious a few days later when he spoke on videotape to the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree. He read from written remarks: “I’ll be going to my ranch in Crawford, where I’ll work and take a little time off. I think it is so important for a president to spend some time away from Washington, in the heartland of America.”

Some observers say Bush taking a month off could feed a perception fostered by critics that he is disengaged and does not work hard enough.

However, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll of 1,015 people taken in April found that many don’t take that view. Of those surveyed, 70% said Bush was working hard enough.

I wonder how many people NOW think he was working hard enough. mjh

SENATE VOTES NO ON ANTI-GAY AMENDMENT outcomebuffalo.com

”The rabid, reactionary religious right has rarely looked more ridiculous. They know they don’t have the votes to come even close to passing this amendment. But they have sufficient stranglehold on the White House and the Republican leadership in Congress to force the issue to a vote anyway, in a desperate effort to arouse their narrow-minded constituency and somehow gain an advantage in the elections this year.” — Senator Ted Kennedy (D, Mass.)

The Party of Lincoln has been hijacked by a small band of zealous thugs. mjh

Remember this when Bush accuses Kerry of not understanding the West. mjh

National parks need help DenverPost.com – EDITORIAL

America’s national parks groan from decades of neglect and deferred maintenance. On that point, the Bush administration and environmental groups agree. What they don’t agree on is whether the situation is worsening or improving.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton says the parks will get $4.9 billion by 2006 to help reduce the maintenance backlog.

The National Parks Conservation Association, a leading interest group on the issue, says the increase is smoke and mirrors. Most of the money isn’t new but was diverted from other projects, NPCA says. The real increase will be about $662 million and help just a handful of the country’s 388 parks, monuments, recreation areas and historic sites.

The NPCA’s analysis has become campaign fodder not only because of President Bush’s overall environmental record. When he ran for office and in his 2001 State of the Union address, Bush promised to fix what ails the national parks. Four years ago, the backlog was a little over $1 billion; today estimates range up to $6 billion. …

The Interior Department is trapped by the same fiscal vise gripping most federal domestic programs. Huge tax cuts and military operations in Iraq added billions to the deficit, and many programs took big hits – including adequate funding for national parks, forests, wildlife refuges and other public lands.

I didn’t write these; they came by email. However, I rearranged them more to my liking. mjh

Global warming and tobacco’s link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won’t have sex.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness, and you need our prayers for your recovery.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
Continue reading Things you have to believe to believe the Radical Right →

Support Our Troops, Dump Bush alibi . july 8 – 14, 2004

An Albuquerque Lieutenant Colonel returns from Iraq with a bitter message for the Bush administration
By Steven Robert Allen

From June 2003 through June 2004, he also served as part of the occupation force in Iraq.

For security purposes and due to the nature of his work, Garcia can’t use his real name in this article. Yet given the current mess in Iraq, this Albuquerque soldier’s thoughts on the Bush administration’s faulty justifications for the war and his own dramatic experiences in the country are of utmost interest. Garcia, of course, can’t claim to speak for the entire military. As a registered Republican, however, who voted for Bush in 2000, his take on the Iraq debacle is an eye-opener, to say the least.

“The bottom line is we didn’t need to do this,” Garcia says. “The war in Iraq diverted attention from al Qaeda, and it also handed Osama bin Laden a strategic victory. In other words, the Bush administration did exactly what al Qaeda wanted us to do. It’s created a huge recruiting opportunity for our enemies, and we’ve alienated the whole world in the process.”

I asked Garcia what he’d say to George W. Bush if he had the chance. “With respect, sir,” says Garcia, “you’ve lost my vote.” …

“There just wasn’t enough evidence that Iraq presented an imminent threat to our national interests,” he says.

To make matters worse, Garcia says, the war wasn’t conducted the way the military wanted it to be conducted. “The civilian leadership disregarded the advice of military planners. They have manuals about how to do this sort of occupation. The Department of Defense ignored them. Look what happened to Shinseki.”

Gen. Eric Shinseki, you might recall, was the Army Chief of Staff. Right before the invasion, he testified to a congressional committee that, due to Iraq’s size and cultural complexity, he believed the military required a force of several hundred thousand troops to adequately occupy the country. Shinseki was much more worried about the subsequent occupation of Iraq than the war itself.

A couple days later, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publicly rebuked the general before another congressional committee, calling Shinseki’s estimate “wildly off the mark.” Wolfowitz also said, “It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.”

Hard to imagine for Wolfowitz, maybe, but not for the military experts who had spent years researching the intricacies inherent in attempting to overthrow Saddam’s regime. As it turns out, it was Wolfowitz’ statements that were wildly off the mark. Garcia believes that the occupation of Iraq has become a catastrophic disaster not because the military didn’t plan appropriately, but because the Bush administration ignored the military’s plans from the beginning. The result, he said, has been a much greater loss of life, both American and Iraqi, than would otherwise have been the case.

According to Garcia, the current administration has combined extreme arrogance with a capacity for deluding itself that makes such disasters almost inevitable. “I don’t think the big shots in the Bush administration are malicious or conspiratorial or conscious liars,” he says. “Actually, I think they really believe the things they say, which to me is even scarier. These people don’t listen to other viewpoints, and they don’t seem to have the ability to use basic critical thinking skills to reach logical solutions to the problems we face in the war on terrorism. The neo-conservatives really scare the crap out of me. Their messianic view of global democracy is pure fantasy.” …

Like many experts, Garcia believes the Bush administration made a terrible mistake when it opted to disband Saddam’s army. “They should’ve just lopped off all the top generals and done some spot removals of the hardcore Baathists, but kept the military together. Iraq under Saddam was a highly militant society. Being in the army brought with it a huge amount of prestige. These young guys lost that prestige, and on top of that they brought all their guns home with them. It created a very bad situation.”

That’s just one example of what Garcia views as the Bush administration’s gross incompetence in conducting this war. “I’d love to be at West Point in 10 years for the class ’How Not to Conduct a War,'” he says, “I’m sure they’re talking about it right now, how badly the civilian leadership screwed up.” …

”[T]here still wasn’t a close enough connection between Iraq and al Qaeda to justify the war.

“I mean, we could invade Venezuela tomorrow and do the same sort of net good for the Venezuelan people that we’ve done in Iraq, but it would be strategically detrimental to us. If we really wanted to help the Iraqi people, if that was our goal, then we should’ve used NATO or the U.N. from the beginning. Going it alone has hurt us in a big way.”

Garcia considers himself to be a moderate, old-style Rockefeller Republican, but these days he feels like a minority in his party. Although he won’t change his party affiliation, he’s finished with the Bush administration.