Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

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Bush in NM (a battleground state)

New Mexico Politics with Joe Monahan

For the first time in three surveys, soon-to-be Dem Prez nominee John Kerry cracks the magic 50% mark in the interactive New Mexico Zogby poll. My insiders are tracking the numbers and report in that Kerry gets 50%, Bush garners 43% and Ralph Nader just 1% in the poll conducted June 14-20 and that sports a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4%.

”The bad news in this poll is how Bush is running with Democrats. He gets only 12%. He must bring that number up, or he is going to lose this state,” predicted one analyst who is studying the numbers.

Bush does get a solid 93% among NM Republican voters but this is a Democratic state and there simply are not enough R’s here for him to carry the day. ”Bush needs to get a quarter or more of the Democrats if he is gong to win in November. Another concern for him is his weakening support in this poll in smaller cities and rural areas. That’s the first time we have seen that,” commented my deep insider.

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Reagan Legacy

alibi . june 24 – 30, 2004

At his father’s burial service, Ronald Reagan Jr., said: ”Dad was … a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.” The statement clearly rebuked the current Bush administration’s faith-based governmental policies, and days later Salon scored an exclusive interview with the famous dog show host that has since made it difficult for Bush to wrap himself in the Reagan legacy.

”My father was a man — that’s the difference between him and Bush,” Reagan told Salon. ”To paraphrase Jack Palance, my father crapped bigger ones than George Bush.”

”The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he’s in now,” Reagan continued. ”Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the ’80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father’s — these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive and just plain corrupt. I don’t trust these people.”

It wasn’t the first time Ron Jr. skewered Dubya in the press. During the 2000 GOP convention he told the Washington Post: ”The big elephant sitting in the corner is that George W. Bush is simply unqualified for the job. What’s his accomplishment? That he’s no longer an obnoxious drunk?”

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How Much Poison Is Too Much Poison?

Toxic pollution rose 5 percent in 2002, reversing trend By JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press Writer

Toxic chemical releases into the environment rose 5 percent in 2002, marking only the second such increase reported by the Environmental Protection Agency in nearly two decades, and the first since 1997. …

The increase reversed a recent trend, and was a big turnaround from last year’s report by EPA that chemical releases in 2001 had declined 13 percent from a year earlier. …

Note that the EPA figures showing this huge increase do NOT include ”releases from metal mining … because of a recent court decision in an industry challenge.” So, it is actually worse than it seems. mjh

Even so, a study by two environmental groups said EPA was underreporting the air pollution portion of releases of chemicals and emissions by 330 million pounds a year. They cast the inventory as particularly soft on refineries and chemical plants, keeping as much as 16 percent of the nation’s air pollution ”off the books.” …

”Ironically, if environmentalists intend to push for an even greater regulatory burden on refineries, they may complicate the smooth introduction of newer, cleaner fuels,” [The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association] trade group said [mjh: ‘threatened,’ may be a better word]. …

Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the 2002 increase ”proves that the policies of the Bush administration have moved us backward, not forward, on the environment.”

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Remember, The War President Avoided Vietnam

Bush Campaign Distortions Keep National Guard Story Alive
By Joshua Micah Marshall

When the president filled out his enlistment papers, those forms included a checkbox asking whether he wanted to serve overseas or not. The president checked off the box labeled ”I Do Not” volunteer to serve overseas.

Just when you start to wonder why and how much President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service record should be an issue in the 2004 campaign, a light goes on over your head. Why? Because he and his surrogates and spokesmen simply won’t stop lying about it. …

The president’s and Kerry’s service records, ”compare very favorably,” said [the president’s campaign chairman and chief election spokesman, former Montana Gov. Marc] Racicot.

The president ”signed up for dangerous duty,” he said. ”He volunteered to go to Vietnam. He wasn’t selected to go but nonetheless served his country very well.”

You didn’t know the president volunteered to go to Vietnam? If this is news to you, it’s probably because it’s simply not true. …

When the president filled out his enlistment papers, those forms included a checkbox asking whether he wanted to serve overseas or not. The president checked off the box labeled ”I Do Not” volunteer to serve overseas.

In recent years, the president and his aides have had different explanations for how that checkmark got there. Some have speculated that some other, unknown person checked off that box without the president’s knowledge. Somewhat more plausibly, they’ve suggested that he was instructed to check off that box since obviously what he was really trying to do was sign up for service in Texas, not Vietnam.

However that check got there, the fact that the president filled out a form stating explicitly that he did not volunteer for service in Vietnam would seem to create at least a few credibility problems for Racicot when he claims the president did just the opposite.
—
Originally published in The Hill, a weekly covering congressional and White House affairs.

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: On Overview of Bush’s Alabama Controversy

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: Why Did Bush Stop Flying?