”Tracking the Bush Administration’s assault on the environment, our health, and our children’s quality of life.”
Land of the Free
Feds haul passenger off cruise ship in cuffs for marshmallow incident
BY CATHERINE WILSON
A teacher’s aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last
year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge Friday, wrongfully accused of
failing to pay the fine.
Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge she was rousted at 6:30 a.m. by federal
agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. [She spent nearly nine hours in detention.] She insisted that she had been required
to pay the $50 fine before she could leave Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human
food.
Customs agents meet all cruise ships arriving from foreign ports and run random checks of passenger lists, and a warrant
claiming Clarke had not paid the fine was found in the federal database.
This seems like an overreaction, to
terrorize someone over such an offense. I hope she sues John AssKraft. mjh
Kerry Wins (but don’t take it for granted)
This site predicts the Electoral Votes as Kerry 302 and Bush 232 (Kerry wins). Updated frequently. The last site below gave Kerry 286 in March (beating Bush with 252). So, in this very unscientific process, Kerry’s lead is increasing. mjh
Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004
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
We’re Here To Protect Who?
My favorite of THE WOOD’s environmental photos from Metaquerque. It’s a bit more whimsical than this Alibi cover. mjh
Counterpoint to Eulogies
Reagan, Race and Remembrance on
the Great Divide
by Tim Wise
This is the twisted psychosis of growing up privileged, as a member of the dominant group: a group
that must view their nation as fair and just, as a place struck off by the literal hand of God, as a place where ”average” guys
like Ronald Reagan can become ”great leaders.” As a place where an ”aw shucks” smile, and a profound lack of knowledge about
the details of public policy — or even the names of foreign leaders — is not only not cause for embarrassment, but yet another good
reason to vote for someone; where refusing to read up on important policy details prior to a key international meeting so one can watch
The Sound of Music on TV, is seen as endearing rather than cause for a recall.
This is why we get people like George W. Bush, for
those who haven’t figured it out yet. Oh sure, vote fraud and a pliant Supreme Court help, but were it not for the love affair white
Americans have with mediocrity posing as leadership, things never could have gotten this far.
It’s why a bona fide moron like
Tom Delay can brag about not having a passport (because, after all,
why would anyone want to travel abroad and leave ”Amur’ca,” even for a day) and not be seen as the epitome of a blithering
idiot, and why he could probably be elected again and again in thousands of white dominated congressional districts in this country,
and not merely in Texas.
Village Voice: Nation: Press Clips: Das Rongold by Richard Goldstein
Reagan’s funeral as a Wagnerian opera.
And every other
piece of news was pulled into the funeral’s magnetic orb. Ray Charles’s death was dealt with by working his rendition of ”God Bless
America” into the soundtrack. That was a deeply ironic flourish in an almost lily-white — and for that matter, masculine —
occasion. Women may have a place on the battlefield, but they can’t be trusted to carry the Great One’s coffin or handle the flag that
drapes it. Manly shoulders must bear him to his rest. (Mohammed Atta, who stipulated in his will that no women attend his funeral, would
have understood.)
of Former President Reagan
The Secret to Rehabilitation
William Bennett, America’s scold, still sells books and speaks
publicly after his gambling addiction was revealed. Lush, er, Rush Limbaugh bounced back quite quickly from his addiction to
prescription drugs — and his violation of federal law. Greg Payne has returned from alcoholism (and ‘assault’ with a can). What
makes these three models of redemption? Oh, yeah, they’re conservative. Is it too late for former Judge Brennan to join the
Republican Party?
The truth is, until conservatives took power, American’s believed crime was an aberration and one could pay
one’s debt and resume a normal life. Now, we have a larger percentage of citizens in prison than the old Soviet Union or China. Now, we
don’t punish, we torture. From Nixon to Reagan to Bush, we’ve grown meaner and more afraid, at home and abroad.
mjh