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?”

Cheney says: Go Fuck Yourself, America!

angry DickThe Australian: Cheney curses on Senate

floor [June 25, 2004]

After the photo shoot, Mr Cheney approached Leahy and protested the senator’s recent criticism of

Halliburton, the huge Defence Department contractor accused of profiteering in Iraq.

Senator Leahy had reminded Mr Cheney that he had

once called Senator Leahy a bad Catholic, to which Mr Cheney responded either “fuck you” or “fuck yourself.”

Foremost,

let me say I have no problem with the word ”fuck.” I use it often and like the sound of it. I do have a problem with fucking

hypocrits, like the Radical Right which is so high and mighty.

Notice the incident began with Cheney approaching Leahy to bully him

about Halliburton. When Leahy brought up that Cheney had called him a ”bad Catholic,” Cheney said one of these (how can there be

uncertainty on this?):

fuck you
fuck off
go fuck yourself

(see what happens when we have American Ayatollahs?).

This

has been the Bush/Cheney message all along. mjh

FCC Fines Dick Cheney $250,000 For Using The “F” Word In The Senate

Floor (TheDailyFarce.com)

In a press conference this morning, Michael Powell, FCC Chairman, announced that Vice President Dick

Cheney would be fined $250,000 for using the ‘f’ word in the Senate Floor.

The exchange occurred last Tuesday in the Senate, when

Senator Patrick Leahy said hello to Vice President Dick Cheney. They began discussing politics, religion and money, when Dick Cheney told

Senator Leahy to “fuck off” or “go fuck yourself”.

“This is a new low.” Stated Michael Powell, FCC Chairman, “Our kids can’t watch

the Super Bowl any more, and now, they can’t watch C-Span any longer either! What is this country turning into? I just don’t fucking

get it. God I have to fine myself now! Shit! Oh that’s another fine for me! Damn!”

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.”

The Writer’s Almanac (again)

I keep forgetting the Writer’s

Almanac, which surprises me because every time NewMexiKen reminds me to visit it, I find much to

enjoy and too many things I’d like to quote. Go see for yourself, but here are few from this week.mjh

”I wanted safety in blue

distance, illimitable, uninhabited. I wanted … the grandeur of free solitude.” and ”Beauty is excrescence, superabundance, random

ebullience, and sheer delightful waste to be enjoyed in its own right.” — naturalist and writer Donald Culross Peattie

My book is

an open life / …
Until something transcendent turns up
I plash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused
— Having Come This

Far by James Broughton

It is marvellous to wake up together
At the same minute; marvellous to hear
The rain begin suddenly all over

the roof
— It is Marvellous by Elizabeth Bishop

It rained all of some hundredths of an inch yesterday (12 drops at my

house), a technicality ‘ending‘ our 5th longest stretch without measurable rain. Better than nothing — truly so, no matter how

close to nothing it seems. mjh

See the poem, “The Vacuum,” by Howard Nemerov.

And let us all remember and

celebrate George Orwell (born Eric Blair) on his birthday, Friday, 6/25 (1903). mjh

”Every line of

serious work that I have written [since the Spanish Civil War] has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism.”

”The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns …

instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”

”If liberty means anything at all, it

means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

MPR’s The Writer’s Almanac

Amen, Jon

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

Our culture seems to be slowly moving toward a civil thuggery supported by

increasingly brutish legal and governmental bodies.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are part and

parcel to the militarization of our society. …

I am saddened to see our local governments being allowed to criminalize

accidental incidents to the extent that they are. Compassion, understanding and forgiveness are being replaced with blame, punishment

and criminalization. What a shame.

JON DAVIS
Albuquerque

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams