I added a gallery of photos of protest statements I’ve observed. Send me yours. mjh

Rooftop Revolt – By the People (link to page one for the full story behind this Revolt)

U.S. National Debt Clock

The estimated population of the United States is 293,816,528 so each citizen’s share of this debt is $24,428.18.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.98 billion per day since September 30, 2003!

FactCheck.org Bush Ad Is ”Troubling” Indeed

The President’s ad recycles bogus claims, then tells only part of the story about Kerry’s position on tax breaks for couples and children.

Summary

A Bush Cheney ’04 ad released April 1 repeats several misleading claims that FactCheck.org has de-bunked before. It also adds something new, saying Kerry repeatedly opposed tax breaks for married couples and families — breaks that Kerry has repeatedly and consistently said he would preserve. …

Overall, Bush’s ad strives to give the impression Kerry plans a massive tax increase on middle-income people, the exact opposite of what Kerry says he’d do.

FactCheck.org Treasury Tax Expert to Bush: Clinton’s Increase WASN’T The Biggest.
Study published by Bush’s Treasury Department contradicts Bush’s campaign.

Summary

In speeches and fundraising appeals the Bush campaign keeps making a distorted claim that Clinton ‘s 1993 tax increase — supported by Kerry — was ”the biggest in history.”

Republicans have been repeating this gross overstatement for more than a decade, but now there’s less justification for it than ever. The GOP claim is contradicted by a study published last year by the Office of Tax Analysis of Bush’s own Treasury Department. …

A tax increase in 1942 boosted federal revenues by 71%, for example, as the US geared up for war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Measured in inflation-adjusted 1992 dollars, Roosevelt’s wartime increase amounted to $73 billion a year, while Clinton’s increase averaged $35 billion a year (average for the first two years.)

The study said that inflation-adjusted ”constant dollars” is probably only the second -best measure of the size of a tax increase. ”The single best measure for most purposes is probably the revenue effect as a percentage of GDP.” That’s Gross Domestic Product, the way we gauge the size of the economy. Clinton’s tax increase isn’t the biggest by that ”best” measure, either. In the period since 1968, the study said, ”the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was the biggest increase.” That was the tax increase signed by Ronald Reagan, rescinding some of the effects of his huge tax cut passed the year before.

That 1982 tax increase only slightly exceeded Clinton’s in inflation-adjusted dollars ($37 billion a year vs.. $32 billion) but it was much bigger in relation to the size of the economy. The ’82 increase amounted to 4.6% of GDP (average for the first two years) while Clinton’s was 2.7%.

The Vietnam Analogy By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYTimes

Vietnam shook the nation’s confidence not just because we lost, but because our leaders didn’t tell us the truth. Last September Gen. Anthony Zinni spoke of ”Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies,” and asked his audience of military officers, ”Is it happening again?” Sure enough, the parallels are proliferating. Gulf of Tonkin attack, meet nonexistent W.M.D. and Al Qaeda links. ”Hearts and minds,” meet ”welcome us as liberators.” ”Light at the end of the tunnel,” meet ”turned the corner.” Vietnamization, meet the new Iraqi Army. … Remember the domino theory?

And there’s one more parallel: Nixonian politics is back.

What we remember now is Watergate. But equally serious were Nixon’s efforts to suppress dissent, like the ”Tell It to Hanoi” rallies, where critics of the Vietnam War were accused of undermining the soldiers and encouraging the enemy. On Tuesday George Bush did a meta-Nixon: he declared that anyone who draws analogies between Iraq and Vietnam undermines the soldiers and encourages the enemy.

The Gun Group: N.R.A. Opens an All-Out Drive for Bush and Its Views By JAMES DAO, NYTimes

When the National Rifle Association opens its annual meeting here on Friday, it will do more than celebrate hunting, weaponry and the Second Amendment. It will also kick off a vigorous campaign to whip up support among its nearly four million members for President Bush’s re-election.

Before tens of thousands of gun owners at the Pittsburgh Convention Center, the association’s leadership plans to label Mr. Bush’s likely Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as a liberal threat to gun ownership. It is a message they will repeat again and again until Election Day, using the Internet, mailings, television advertising and their formidable nationwide network of gun clubs.

”What you see in John Kerry,” Wayne LaPierre, the association’s executive vice president said in an interview this week, ”is a politician that spent his life voting against the Second Amendment. What I see is the same thing I saw in Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. It’s an elitist arrogance.”

[I’d call it ”elitist arrogance” to believe you know exactly what the founders (and Jesus) think. mjh]

It is no accident, N.R.A. officials said, that this year’s convention is being held in Pittsburgh. Two-thirds of the attendees are expected to come from within a 100-mile radius that spans three battleground states: Pennsylvania, which voted for Mr. Gore in 2000, and Ohio and West Virginia, which voted for Mr. Bush.

”These are states where the N.R.A. can make a difference,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Keystone Poll at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

At the convention, the association also plans to unveil plans for an N.R.A. news company that would produce programs for the Internet, radio and possibly television, Mr. LaPierre said. A daily Internet news talk show featuring a conservative host will begin broadcasting online on Friday. The association hopes to announce acquisition of a radio station within two months, he said. …

The president has said he would sign legislation renewing the 1994 law that bans 19 types of semiautomatic weapons. That almost certainly will not happen this year because of opposition to the legislation in the Republican-controlled House. Many conservatives consider the bill a deep infringement of their rights under the Second Amendment, which they contend gives individual Americans the right to own firearms.

”Gun owners who know the issues know that Bush is all talk,” said Angel Shamaya, executive director of KeepAndBearArms.com, which is encouraging gun owners to vote for anyone but Mr. Bush. ”He’s turned out to be a phony in so many ways, I’m embarrassed I voted for him in 2000.”

The Bush campaign has begun trying to mend fences with gun groups by meeting with members and appointing liaisons to the groups in almost every state. A 27,000 member Sportsmen for Bush group has reactivated. And the president met with leaders of the N.R.A. and an array of hunting and fishing groups at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., last week.

But the White House’s biggest move has been to dispatch Vice President Dick Cheney, a popular figure among gun owners, to the convention, where he will deliver the keynote speech on Saturday …

Clearly, the Bush administration values the rifle association’s help. At last year’s N.R.A. convention in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, told members, ”If it were not for your active involvement, it is safe to say that my brother would not have been elected president.” …

For its part, the rifle association will try to paint Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who says he has been a lifelong hunter, as a Kennedy-style liberal who supports strong gun restrictions — a “gun grabber,” in the group’s lingo. …

Mr. Kerry intend[s] to present himself as “a lifelong hunter and gun owner” who believes in protecting the Second Amendment but also supports “common sense” laws restricting military-style assault weapons and requiring gun-safety locks.

If you want to own a gun, you can have a gun. If you want to own 100 guns, you can have 100 guns. The awful liberals don’t really care. But, if you want an assault rifle, bazooka, grenade-launcher, flame-thrower, if your entire life revolves around lead and steel, if you believe you are free and it’s because you own a gun, you may need to have your head examined. mjh

Claim vs. Fact: Condoleezza Rice’s Opening Statement – Center for American Progress

CLAIM: ”We increased funding for counterterrorism activities across several agencies.”

FACT: Upon taking office, the 2002 Bush budget proposed to slash more than half a billion dollars out of funding for counterterrorism at the Justice Department. In preparing the 2003 budget, the New York Times reported that the Bush White House ”did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators” and ”proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants.” Newsweek noted the Administration ”vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism.” [Sources: 2001 vs. 2002 Budget Analysis; NY Times, 2/28/02; Newsweek, 5/27/02] …

CLAIM: “When threat reporting increased during the Spring and Summer of 2001, we moved the U.S. Government at all levels to a high state of alert and activity.”

FACT: Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush Administration “did not give terrorism top billing in their strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI.” Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001, said during the summer, terrorism had moved “farther to the back burner” and recounted how the Bush Administration’s top two Pentagon appointees, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, “shut down” a plan to weaken the Taliban. Similarly, Gen. Don Kerrick, who served in the Bush White House, sent a memo to the new Administration saying “We are going to be struck again” by al Qaeda, but he never heard back. He said terrorism was not “above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen.” [Sources: Washington Post, 3/22/04; LA Times, 3/30/04]

”Watch what we do, not what we say.” — John Mitchell, Dick Nixon’s Attorney General, another disgraced and incarcerated conservative