Campaigning on failures

I guess when you have nothing but failures to show for your four years in office you have to make the best of them. In this New York Times story from yesterday, the Bush administration is sending its minions out to campaign by touting programs that Bush tried to cutback or eliminate:

- Justice Department officials recently announced that they were awarding $47 million to scores of local law enforcement agencies for the hiring of police officers. Mr. Bush had just proposed cutting the budget for the program, known as Community Oriented Policing Services, by 87 percent, to $97 million next year, from $756 million.

- Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years.

- The administration also announced recently that it was providing $11.6 million to the states so they could buy defibrillators to save the lives of heart attack victims. But Mr. Bush had proposed cutting the budget for such devices by 82 percent, to $2 million from $10.9 million.

In each case, the additional spending that is being touted represents a failure by the Bush administration to curtail or end a program that it was opposed to. They were unable to accomplish these cutbacks even with total Republican domination of all branches of the federal government. That is what I would call incompetent. Bush can’t even even lead within his own party, much less so on the world stage.

That brings us to another recent news story where the U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure in Iraq.

This really should not be a surprise to anyone who has followed Bush’s career over the years. He almost always fails in his various ventures and then sits back and waits for his daddy’s wealthy friends to come and bail him out. I’m just not sure who is supposed to bail us out this time, other than the U.S. taxpayers, of course, who get stuck with another $25 billion for Bush’s Iraqi Quagmire.

"357 Channels and Nothing On"

It looks like I might still have a few programming options on next season’s television schedule - but not many.
The number of shows that I watch regularly has been slowly dwindling and the shift away from quality television programming to cheap, brainless “reality” shows means I will have that much more free time in the evenings.

With the series finales of “Friends” and “Frasier” now past and the finale of “Angel,” the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” spinoff, later tonight one might think the networks would be scrambling to come out with some worthy replacement shows. But on first glance at the new fall schedules being announced this week, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Other than the “Friends” spinoff “Joey,” while I will check out, the only new show on the schedule that even looks remotely interesting is “Lost” scheduled for Wednesdays on ABC. It is some kind of adventure series set on a deserted island and stars Matthew Fox of “Party of Five” fame as well as Dominic Monaghan who was a hobbit in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’m sure ABC will axe the series after airing only a handful of episodes since I have shown some interest in it now.

Other than that, there are no shows on ABC that interest me (except possibly the “Wonderful World of Disney” depending on what is showing). I haven’t watched anything on Fox since I got bogged down with the second season of “24” and the cancellation of “Angel” means I won’t be wasting my time tuning into the WB Network again.

I understand that UPN has decided to renew “Star Trek: Enterprise” for one more season so I will continue to faithfully tune them in once a week as a devoted Trekee.

NBC still has “ER” on Thursday nights and CBS has renewed “Judging Amy” and “Joan of Arcadia,” and that is about it. There are a few others shows that I would normally find worthy but for various reasons I have not found the time or the desire to watch them regularly. They include “The Simpsons,” “West Wing,” and “Alias.”
I also watch “60 Minutes” on occasion depending on the topic.

Finally, I have a friend who is such a devoted fan of “The Amazing Race” that he has applied to be on the show for its sixth season. So I will probably break down and watch an episode or two next season to see what it is all about.

Here is my tentative viewing schedule for next fall:

Monday: Nothing
Tuesday: “Judging Amy”
Wednesday: “Lost”
Thursday: “Joey,” “E.R.”
Friday: “Star Trek: Enterprise,” “Joan of Arcadia”
Saturday: “Amazing Race”
Sunday: Nothing

Not an isolated incident

From a report
by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC)

This is just chilling.....

“The agency said arrests allegedly tended to follow a pattern.

"Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," the report said.

"Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it said. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles."

I can understand that seeking out insurgents during the heat of battle can be a tense and hazardous duty and I would expect our soldiers to take every precaution to protect and defend themselves, but what is the purpose behind these gestapo tactics? What is that supposed to accomplish other than spread fear and resentment among the masses.
And when we are gathering our prisoners in this manner it is little wonder that -

“...some coalition military intelligence officers estimated that "between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.”

Yes, innocent civilians. Not insurgents, not terrorists, but the very people we are supposed to be liberating and introducing to democracy.

And the worst part about the ICRC report aside from how their warnings were ignored by the Bush administration was the answer they got back from military officials in response:

“The ICRC report said the agency was told that in general that the prisoner abuse in Iraq by U.S. military personnel is "part of the process" during interrogation.”

That’s right. Just part of the process.

Here is the process...

“The report cites abuses - some "tantamount to torture" - including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution."
"These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from person who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an 'intelligence value.'"”

So this was not just an isolated instance and court marshalling a few guards who had the misfortune and poor judgement to have their pictures taken during some of the abuses is not going to do anything to address the real problem.

“U.S. President George W. Bush said the mistreatment "was the wrongdoing of a few," but the Red Cross report backs up with detail the neutral agency's contention that the abuse was broad and part of a system, "not individual acts."”

More Bush lies. No surprise there.

Arrogance and Incompetence

Fareed Zakaria, international editor for Newsweek, sums up the “arrogance and incompetence” that has been the hallmark of President Bush’s administration:

“On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.
Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he takes full responsibility.”

Speaking of taking responsibility, Zakaria notes earlier in the article that it has little meaning at Bush Corp.

"I take full responsibility," said Donald Rumsfeld in his congressional testimony last week. But what does this mean? Secretary Rumsfeld hastened to add that he did not plan to resign and was not going to ask anyone else who might have been "responsible" to resign. As far as I can tell, taking responsibility these days means nothing more than saying the magic words "I take responsibility."

“After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn't even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after months of refusals because some of the victims' families pursued it aggressively and simply didn't give up. After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was even reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths.”

President-elect John Kerry

Pollster John Zogby predicts election victory for Kerry!! Woo Hoo!!

He gives four reasons summarized as follows:

1. Bush has bad re-election numbers for an incumbent president with the latest poll showing Kerry up 47 - 44 in a 2-way race.

2. There are few undecided voters at this point and most of those tend to break for the challenger against the incumbent.

3. The economy is still the top issue for voters next to Iraq and both situations have veered out of control for the president. The economy is improving too little, too late to make a difference to most voters and Iraq is a quagmire.

4. Historically, Sen. Kerry is a good closer and always performs well in the final weeks of a campaign.

The Abu Ghraib - Guantanamo link

I find it interesting that most of the details of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal were reported as early as Jan. 21, 2004 and yet there was no uproar until the mass distribution of the photos sparked by the 60 Minutes II television show.

Now we have fresh turmoil in Washington where fingers are being pointed and accusations are flying about who didn't tell whom about the brewing scandal. President Bush claims not to have known anything about it before the 60 Minutes show which raises a number of questions.

Is he really that poorly informed by his staff? Did they just not think it was a big deal?

Anthony Lewis in The New York Times today draws the obvious link between our refusal to honor the Geneva Convention accords with respect to the prisoners at Guantanamo and our leaders' seeming indifference to the mistreatment of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

More disturbing is the very real possibility that this issue was not taken seriously because it is all too common and par for the course in the netherworld that makes up our military intelligence gathering operations.

Disney censoring Michael Moore

Good news for Michael Moore, the Academy Award-winning documentary film maker, best-selling author and leftist rabble-rouser.

It looks like the clowns at Walt Disney Co. are trying to do the same thing for Moore’s latest film project that Bill O’Reilly and Fox News did for Al Franken’s book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.”

In the same way that the Fox News lawsuit created publicity and helped boost sales of Franken’s book, Disney’s efforts to prevent the distribution of Moore’s new anti-Bush documenatary "Fahrenheit 9/11" is sure to create buzz and drive up interest in the film.

I’m not a huge fan of Moore. I though he was an idiot for supporting Ralph Nader’s campaign during the 2000 elections. I liked his last film “Bowling for Columbine” for the most part, but I thought his interview with Charlton Heston at the end of the film went over the top. If Moore had simply done a straight-up interview with the celebrity icon turned gun nut it would have worked. But when he pulled out a photo of a girl killed by a gun accident and started hounding Heston with it I had to cringe. I came away feeling sympathy for Heston, and I don’t think that is the reaction that Moore had intended for the scene.

The problem with Moore is that while his in-your-face aggressive attitude is good for rallying the faithful, it does little to convert those on the outside and rather tends to drive them away. Still, it is not bad for the left to have a few folks like that around. The right has people like that coming out of their ears.
So while I don’t always agree with him, and I don’t like his style, I still want to see his new movie and Disney’s inept attempts at censorship only heightens that desire.

The battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people is over.

We lost.

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) -- Dhia al-Shweiri spent several stints in Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, twice under Saddam Hussein's rule and once under American. He prefers Saddam's torture to the humiliation of being stripped naked by his American guards, he said Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press.

When you have people like this comparing us unfavorably to Saddam, it's no wonder they aren't throwing rose petals at our feet.

And 11 more U.S. troops were killed this weekend. Almost one year to the day since President Bush did his little "Mission Accomplished" victory jig aboard that U.S. aircraft carrier. It looks like May isn't going to be much better than April.

Clinton, unlike Bush, had his priorities straight

From the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire (page A4):

“When the two spoke privately at inauguration time, Clinton put al Qaeda at the top of his list of national-security concerns, with Iraq behind the Mideast, North Korea and India and Pakistan, according to one outsider who recently heard Clinton’s account. It is confirmed by several former Clinton aides from the time.
Bush, by contrast, already had called for regime change in Iraq.”

That sounds about right. Too bad Bush insisted on being the anti-Clinton in all respects.

Wolfowitz underestimates U.S. troop deaths in Iraq

From the Associated Press:

“Asked how many American troops have died in Iraq, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz , the Pentagon's No. 2 civilian and an architect of the military campaign in Iraq, estimated Thursday the total was about 500 - more than 200 soldiers short.
Wolfowitz was asked about the toll at a hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee. "It's approximately 500, of which - I can get the exact numbers - approximately 350 are combat deaths," he responded.
"He misspoke," spokesman Charley Cooper said later. "That's all."
American deaths Thursday were at 722 - 521 of them from combat - since the start of military operations in Iraq last year, according to the Department of Defense.”

How pathetic! One of the chief chickenhawks responsible for this Iraqi quagmire and he can’t be bothered to keep straight the number of American soldiers who have been forced to pay the ultimate price for his and Bush’s folly!

First they try to prevent the media from publishing photos of the stream of coffins being shipped back from Iraq. Now they are trying to keep broadcasters from airing a special NightLine segment that will honor all of the fallen soldiers from the conflict.

Bush's manipulation and abuse of science threatens the well being of our nation

Scientific American magazine has a withering editorial assailing the Bush administration for its political manipulation of science. They make an apt comparison between the current ideology-driven administration and the Soviets of the 1930s:

“Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science.”

The Bush administration’s efforts to impose their fundamentalist ideology in place of sound science was well documented recently by the Union of Concerned Scientists in a report signed by 62 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations.

The report details instances where the administration “misrepresented the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with the discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.”

The Bush administration responded to the report by having John Marburger, George Bush's science adviser, issue a strongly worded defence of the president's science policy.

This past week, the Economist magazine took a look at the back and forth and found that while “some of Marburger’s responses look justified—for example, his denials that the Bush administration overruled scientific advisers in acting to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Some, however, have a whiff of spin about them.” And in other instances he is simply unconvincing such as with the accusations of committee-packing, the rebuttal merely states that the UCS report is wrong in all instances, without explaining why.

The Economist, which is based in England, tends to be a slightly moderate to conservative publication (they support the war in Iraq, for instance), so their perspective is refreshingly free of American political bias. So I halfway expected to read a wishy-washy “both sides are bad” type of summation of the issue, but instead they end thier piece with this rather frightening denunciation of the Bush administration:

“To the extent that it is aimed at environmental and bioethical questions, which have long divided America on party-political lines, this disagreement could be seen as business as usual. However, it is not limited to those fields. There is a widespread feeling among scientists that Mr Bush is ignoring scientific results and opinions he does not like in other areas, too. In August 2003 the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform made claims similar to those of the UCS report. But it also observed widespread scientific unease about the feasibility of the missile-defence systems proposed by the administration. This report has gone unanswered by Dr Marburger, as has a report made in July 2003 by the American Physical Society (APS), a professional organisation for physicists in America. The APS report concluded that boost-phase missile defence, one element of the system planned by the Bush administration, would be ineffective.

“These are serious accusations. Suppressing research into stem cells is causing that research to move abroad, which will damage America's biotechnology industry. But that will not be fatal to America's future, and opponents of stem-cell research might argue that it is a price worth paying for their beliefs. Monkeying with defence is a different matter. America's current military prowess has been achieved, in large part, because the country has listened to and lauded its physicists and engineers. Spending billions on technology that most of them believe will not work is, at the least, a dubious approach. Politicians can cheat nature no more effectively than scientists can.”

Kerry's medals

The recent news reports that has Republicans questioning the validity of John Kerry's combat medals made my jaw drop.
Could they really be that stupid?? Then I saw this offensively stupid letter to the editor in the local San Antonio daily :

Medals meaningless

I expect other former servicemen have reached the same conclusion as I: John Kerry's military awards in Vietnam are undeserved.
First, three Purple Hearts, with confusion among observers on whether Kerry was under enemy fire. Even Kerry's superior officer was dubious about the validity of his claim that his scratches were caused by enemy fire. No hospital time.
Next, a Bronze Star for hauling a man, who had fallen overboard, out of the water. A commendable action, but not particularly heroic and certainly not deserving a Bronze Star.
Finally, a Silver Star, one of the nation's highest military awards, for killing an enemy soldier. Apparently, naval officers forgot that killing the enemy is the primary objective of military personnel. If every soldier, sailor and Marine who killed an enemy were awarded this honor, the medal would be cheap indeed.
Remembering the battles that our young men have fought, where (unrewarded) exceptional valor was (and is) a common virtue, Kerry's adventures seem pale in comparison.

Charles D. Wood

This is really outrageous!! If you are going to question the validity of one of Kerry's medals they you are essentially questioning the validity of every medal earned by any and all of our service people. And this coming from an administration led by someone who blew off the last year and a half of his National Guard service and filled with chicken hawks like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who avoided military service for themselves. And the one guy with any military credibility - Colin Powell - is ignored and shunted aside during preparation for the Iraq invasion.


My father recieved the Silver Star for actions he took in Vietnam. When his squadron was cut off from their base in the middle of the Tet Offensive with no means of communication, he and another pilot ran out in the midst of sniper fire to push an abandoned jeep back into their compound so they could use its radio. By doing so they were able to call for reinforcements which kept the whole unit from being overrun.

I'm obviously very proud of what my father did in Vietnam and the idea that somebody would question whether he really deserves his medal really makes my blood boil. If this is the tactic that Republicans want to take in this campaign they will lose very badly.

As I've said before, the difference between Kerry's military service and Bush's military service can be summed up by the simple observation that while Kerry's superiors were pinning medals on his chest for valor in combat, Bush's superiors in the National Guard were scratching their heads wondering where the hell he was half the time.

Too close to home

My brother-in-law’s Louisiana National Guard Unit is being called up for duty in Iraq. He leaves on May 9 for three months of training at Fort Hood followed by one month of testing somewhere else before beginning a 12-plus month tour overseas.
Needless to say I am not happy about the situation, although I am very proud of by brother-in-law for his service. He and I don’t see eye-to-eye on politics, but that has never been an issue between us. I’m sure that other than being separated from his family, he doesn’t have a problem with the deployment and is very supportive of the whole operation.
But it will still be a hardship on both him and my sister as he is forced to leave her at home with their four young children - my three nieces and one nephew. My prayers are with them.

I have already come to the conclusion that we need to start pulling out of Iraq. We have scoured the country for WMDs and found nothing. We captured Saddam Hussein, killed his two sons and scattered the remnants of his government. So now it is time to declare victory and go home. Pass the baton to the United Nations and let the Iraqis have the government that they choose rather than one we want to force on them. Unfortunately, that government will probably be closer to the religious oligarchy they have in Iran than to anything we would prefer, but Bush should have thought about that before plunging us into this mess. (Or he should have at least listened to someone with half a brain who actually does think once in awhile.)

The Knoblauch mystery is solved!

The NY Times finally answers the mystery of what happened to Chuck Knoblauch?
Knoblauch dropped off the radar when his contract was not picked up by the Kansas City Royals. But now the former New York Yankee is happily retired from baseball and living in Houston.
Well, I’m happy for him. He had a great career that was unfortunately cut just a bit short by his throwing problem which happened to coincide with the deteriorating health of his father.
I think it would be great if Knoblauch could be lured out of retirement to join his old teammates with the Houston Astros this season.
It is pretty obvious that the Yankees are missing him now that they have traded away Alfonso Soriano and are left with a gaping hole at second base.

Too bad Bush didn't listen to Colin Powell

Back when Bush tapped Colin Powell to be Secretary of State, everyone thought it was a brilliant move. Unfortunately, we now know it was just a political calculation and that Bush never had any intention of actually listening to Powell or heeding his advice on foreign policy matters.

The new Bob Woodward book notes that Powell warned Bush about the war's cost to no avail.

"You're sure?" Powell is quoted as asking Bush in the Oval Office on January 13, 2003, as the president told him he had made the decision to go forward. "You understand the consequences," he is said to have stated in a half-question. "You know you're going to be owning this place?"

Yeah, we certainly own it now and the Bush administration is finally starting to have buyer's remorse. Now suddenly, after months of denigrating the United Nations as being inconsequential, Bush is going back to the U.N. with hat in hand begging them to bail us out of this Iraqi quagmire.

This is yet another fine example of a classic Bush flip-flop, but the subservient media is oddly portraying it as Bush and Blair "staying the course."

Things in Iraq have gone from bad to worse these past two weeks and we would be lucky if the U.N. does agree to come in and pull our bacon out of the fire.

Mood music

My friend Robert at Beginner's Mind asks about music that people use to change their moods.

I guess when I listen to music it doesn't put me in a mood so much as it transports me back to a time and a place when I first heard it. Music can be very nostalgic. I have certain music that I associate with my childhood. Some that dates to junior high school. Some that takes me back to high school days and some that is from college.

Whenever I hear Elvis Presley's "That's Alright, Mama" I'm back in elementary school - Elvis having been one of the first albums I ever got. If I hear the Kingston Trio singing "Tom Dooley" or Herb Alpert and the Tiajuana Brass playing "Tiajuana Taxi" I am transported back to my childhood listening to my father's recorded music from Vietnam on his reel-to-reel player.

The Bee Gee's "Tragedy" and "Play that Funky Music" by Wild Cherry transports me back to junior high days in Victoria riding the bus to school and listening to the local rock radio station each day. Same goes for "Barracuda" by Heart and "Rich Girl" by Hall & Oates.

But to alter my mood, I suppose one song that always makes me happy to listen to is "When Jimmy Falls in Love" by Vance Gilbert. Or the soundtrack to Walt Disney's Dumbo - particulary "Pink Elephants on Parade." I also love a particular version of "If I knew you were coming I would have baked a cake" sung as a duet by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on Crosby's radio show.

Of course, you can't always make yourself happy just by listening to music. Sometimes when you are really down or heartbroke the old adage "misery loves company" applies and you want to know that you are not alone. That is when Hank Williams Sr. is most effective. The guy knew something about misery and could put it in a song so that it was both catchy and sincere.

Time to look for the exits in Iraq

I agree with Sen. Byrd. It's time to Follow the Exit Signs in Iraq and get our troops out of there.

"The United States should get out of the business of running Iraq.
Additional military force from the United States, which is now widely viewed as an international bully by those in the region, will not ease the transition to a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. A new approach is urgently needed. We should work with the community of nations. It is time to turn full authority over to the United Nations."

It is very clear now, one year into this operation, that the Bush administration did not have the foggiest clue as to what they were getting us into.

As Maureen Dowd noted in the NY Times the other day:

"Every single thing the administration calculated would happen in Iraq has turned out the opposite. The W.M.D. that supposedly threatened us did not exist. The dangerous dictator was deluded and writing romance novels. The terrorism that would be thwarted has mushroomed in Iraq and is feeding Arab radicalism.
Mr. Rumsfeld thought invading Iraq would exorcise America's Vietnam syndrome, its squeamishness about using force. Instead, it has raised the specter of another Vietnam, where our courageous troops don't understand the culture, can't recognize the enemy and don't have an exit strategy. And the administration spins the war every day.
Rummy also thought he could show off his transformation of the military, using a leaner force. Now even some Republicans say he is putting our troops at risk by stubbornly refusing to admit he was wrong.
Dick Cheney thought fear was better than weak-kneed diplomacy, that if America whacked one Arab foe, all the others would cower. Wrong. The Iraq invasion has multiplied and emboldened our enemies.
Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld thought America should flex its hyperpower muscles, castrating the U.N. and blowing off multilateral arrangements. Now the administration may have to crawl back for help.
The hawks thought they could establish a democracy that would produce a domino effect in the Arab world. Wrong. The dominoes are falling in a scarier direction.
The president thought he could improve on the ending to his father's gulf war. Wrong again."

We supposedly went to Iraq to find WMDs which we now know did not exist (at least not in this decade) and to depose a brutal dictator. Well, Saddam Hussein has been captured and his evil sons are dead. So let's declare victory and go home.

U.S. battles China, Iran for top executioner title

TalkLeft has a post linking to an Amnesty International study on the death penalty.

The U.S. is among the top three executioners in the world along with China and Iran. When you throw in No. 4 Vietnam, they account for 84 percent of all the executions in the world.

The U.S. continues to be increasingly isolated in its support of this backward and barbaric practice as Amnesty International's figures showed that 77 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes by the end of 2003....

The study also shows that since 1973, 113 prisoners have been released from death row in the U.S. after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.

I would like to think that if Mel Gibson's graphic film "The Passion of the Christ" inspires one thing it might be a revulsion for state-sponsored executions of which Christ was a victim.

Celebrity endorsements

During past presidential elections I’ve had a habit of keeping track of celebrity endorsements. This year I plan to keep a running list on my blog which I will update as new information becomes available. My rule for listing celebrity endorsements is that I have to see a reliable news source listing their support for the current campaign year in some shape or fashion - they attended a fund raiser, gave cash, signed a petition, peformed at a support function, or simply said “I support so-and-so.” If they supported a different candidate in the primary, I do not assume that they have transferred their support to the winner until I see some confirmation.

So without further ado, here is the list as it stands to date:

George W. Bush:
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Bruce Willis
Tom Selleck

John Kerry:
Meg Ryan
Leonardo DiCaprio
Jennifer Aniston
Kevin Costner
Barbara Streisand
James Taylor
Larry David
Carole King
Dennis Hopper
Kathleen Turner
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds
Moby
Aaron Sorkin
Quincy Jones
Penny Marshall
Bette Midler
Jerry Seinfeld
Uma Thurman
Stephen Stills
Chevy Chase
Kevin Bacon
Paul Newman
Kate Hudson
Russell Crowe
Harvey Weinstein
Jennifer Garner
Robert DeNiro
Michael J. Fox
Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul & Mary)

Aunt Pearl turns 90!

My Great-Aunt Pearl turned 90 over the weekend. Here is a picture of her at her party. I'd say she doesn't look a day over 75. Seriously, though, I think she looks terrific and I hope she makes it to 100-plus. I don't want to be the only family member who is going to live to be 100.

My mom attended the celebration along with my Uncle Kenneth and Aunt Sarah. You can see my mom in this picture facing the camera with my Uncle Kenneth to her right.

And here is a picture of the surviving sisters: Aunt Pearl, Aunt Iris and Aunt Vesta. Their sister Erna Mae, my father's mother, passed away in about 1986, I think.

Kudos to whichever family member posted all of these pictures online!

Late night watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I've lately become a big fan of the cult TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I know that I am a little late to the party since the series ended its 7-year run last year.
I got hooked on Buffy lately because I wind up staying up two to three hours every night with my seven month old son. I've found that I can rock him back to sleep while sitting on the living room couch and watching the TV with the sound muted. Fortunately, now that I have Tivo (or at least the cable equivalent) I can record shows to watch at these odd hours. One night when I had nothing else to watch, I stumbled upon a Buffy episode on the FX network which just happened to be showing two episodes a night beginning with the first season. Since the shows are close captioned I can watch them without sound with no problem.
I'm up to about the third season now and I have to say it is one of the best written and most enjoyable TV shows I've ever seen. It's right up there with Star Trek among my all-time favorites. I also like the spin-off series Angel too. The best comparison I can make is that it is like a cross between Beverly Hills 90210 and the X-Files. But it is even better than that.
Unfortunately, my wife is usually getting some badly needed sleep while I'm watching the show and putting Nathan to sleep, so she is not a fan of the series like I am. That means she probably would not consider spending $200 or more dollars buying all the episodes on DVD to be a good investment at this point. So I will just have to continue watching them in random order at odd hours of the night.

Is Blogging just the tip of the iceberg?

I’ve often worried that blogging is just a fad that will eventually go out of fashion. If Blogger were to shut down in a year or so I would lose all of my archived blog entries (not that that would be a great loss) and the Internet would become a lot less interesting.

But there are apparently some folks out there who see the trend going the otherway. Jason Calacanis at Weblogs Inc. thinks blogging will catch on the same way e-mail did and soon everyone will have one.

“It’s becoming clear to me that blogs are not simply journals or editorial. They are, in fact, the new email address. They will be the most important piece of data on anyone’s business card. Want to email me and don’t know my email address? Visit my blog — which you will find by Googling me — and fill in my contact form. Try finding someone’s email address using Google — good luck.
Everyone will have a blog in ten years or less and I mean everyone. The way everyone has an email address today and so few people had email in 1994, the same will happen to your blog address. Why? Blogs are simple, as flexible as the Internet itself and they are rich. You can’t fit the same depth of information on a vcard.
Now, I’m sure some people said this about homepages back in 1994. However, back then people were not as tech savvy as they are now, and certainly only a fraction of them were online. In the past ten years online publishing technology has become easier, more powerful and more ambitious. Like many things, the second or third time is a charm.
Blogs are hyped, but the truth is they will ultimately surpass and transcend the current hype — the same way the Internet did.
As much as it may seem they are overexposed, blogs are underrated.”

So are we bloggers on the cutting edge of something big? Or are we part of a fad that will soon be overtaken by the next big thing - whatever that may be?

Doubts about new "Alamo" movie

I hope that the new “Alamo” movie is good, but I have my doubts. I’ve always loved Texas history and as a resident of San Antonio I would love to see the movie become a big hit. However, I’m afraid it will be hampered by a serious case of the “might have beens” thanks to the arrogance, incompetence and stupidity of Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

The film was supposed to have been helmed by Ron Howard fresh off of his Academy Award win for “A Beautiful Mind.” Howard had reportedly spent a year working on the project and had lined up Russell Crowe and Ethan Hawke to take prominent parts in the movie. There were even reports that Sean Penn was considering accepting the role of Jim Bowie.

But then Eisner stepped in and vetoed the project reportedly because he was afraid it might get an R rating for violence. So Howard dropped out and when he left so did Crowe, Hawke, Penn and anyone else of significance who might have thought about coming aboard.

So Disney brought in rookie director John Lee Hancock whose most prominent film to date was the feel-good Disney baseball flick “The Rookie” that starred Dennis Quaid. Not surprisingly, Quaid was also brought on to replace Russell Crowe in the role of Gen. Sam Houston. Unfortunately for Quaid, the latest reports say the Sam Houston role was trimmed back significantly to cut the length of the movie down from 3 hours to about 2 hours and 15 minutes. The only other actor of note to sign up was Billy Bob Thornton in the role of Davy Crockett.

Quite frankly, I’m dreading finding out how they handle the Crockett character in the film. If they give credence to that bogus story about Crockett being captured and executed by Santa Anna, well that would pretty much end it for me right there.
But I’ll wait and see what happens. Maybe Hancock will surprise everyone the way Peter Jackson did and come out with an extraordiary film. Or maybe I’ll just go down to Wal-Mart and pick up the old John Wayne version instead.

Daschle sums up the latest Bush outrages

I swiped this from Eschaton because it was too good to pass up.

Excerpt from statement by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle:

“When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill stepped forward to criticize the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, he was immediately ridiculed by the people around the President and his credibility was attacked. Even worse, the Administration launched a government investigation to see if Secretary O'Neill improperly disclosed classified documents. He was, of course, exonerated, but the message was clear. If you speak freely, there will be consequences.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson also learned that lesson. Ambassador Wilson, who by all accounts served bravely under President Bush in the early 1990s, felt a responsibility to speak out on President Bush's false State of the Union statement on Niger and uranium. When he did, the people around the President quickly retaliated. Within weeks of debunking the President's claim, Ambassador Wilson's wife was the target of a despicable act.
Her identity as a deep-cover CIA agent was revealed to Bob Novak, a syndicated columnist, and was printed in newspapers around the country. That was the first time in our history, I believe, that the identity and safety of a CIA agent was disclosed for purely political purposes. It was an unconscionable and intolerable act.

Around the same time Bush Administration officials were endangering Ambassador Wilson's wife, they appear to have been threatening another federal employee for trying to do his job. In recent weeks Richard Foster, an actuary for the Department of Health and Human Services, has revealed that he was told he would be fired if he told Congress and the American people the real costs of last year?s Medicare bill.
Mr. Foster, in an e-mail he wrote on June 26 of last year, said the whole episode had been "pretty nightmarish." He wrote: "I'm no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policymakers for political purposes."
Think about those words. He would lose his job if he did his job. If he provided the information the Congress and the American people deserved and were entitled to, he would lose his job. When did this become the standard for our government? When did we become a government of intimidation?

And now, in today's newspapers, we see the latest example of how the people around the President react when faced with facts they want to avoid.
The White House's former lead counter-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, is under fierce attack for questioning the White House?s record on combating terrorism. Mr. Clarke has served in four White Houses, beginning with Ronald Reagan's Administration, and earned an impeccable record for his work.
Now the White House seeks to destroy his reputation. The people around the President aren't answering his allegations; instead, they are trying to use the same tactics they used with Paul O'Neill. They are trying to ridicule Mr. Clarke and destroy his credibility, and create any diversion possible to focus attention away from his serious allegations.

The purpose of government isn't to make the President look good. It isn't to produce propaganda or misleading information. It is, instead, to do its best for the American people and to be accountable to the American people.
The people around the President don't seem to believe that. They have crossed a line -- perhaps several lines -- that no government ought to cross.
We shouldn't fire or demean people for telling the truth. We shouldn't reveal the names of law enforcement officials for political gain. And we shouldn't try to destroy people who are out to make country safer.
I think the people around the President have crossed into dangerous territory. We are seeing abuses of power that cannot be tolerated.
The President needs to put a stop to it, right now. We need to get to the truth, and the President needs to help us do that.”

I would just add that every one of these abuses by the Bush administration is far worse and more detrimental to civil society than any of the pseudo-scandals that Ken Starr and his right-wing cabal spent $70 million of taxpayers’ money investigating in the 1990s.

Loyalty and betrayal after school

I never got into fights much when I was a kid. This was probably a good thing since I was and still am thin as a rail. But one time when I was about 7 or 8 my friend Dickie was supposed to fight some kid after school and he asked me to come along. I didn’t know what the fight was about or who the other kid was, but I agreed to tag along to back up my friend. What resulted was one of my first lessons in loyalty and betrayal.

I happened to mention to another kid that day named Ronnie that there was going to be a fight after school and he agreed to come along as well. I don’t remember how many kids showed up in the end but it was something like a half dozen on each side. It was a rather bizarre experience. Sort of like being on a team in a sport where you don’t really know what the rules are or what you are supposed to do. When the actual fight started it was just Dickie and the other kid wrestling on the ground with everyone else just standing around shouting encouragements.

Before the fight actually got underway, however, I found out just how fickle my friend Ronnie’s loyalties turned out to be. As the other group of kids was walking up, Ronnie noticed that the group included a big black kid named Derrick who I’m guessing must have known a bit of judo or something. Derrick proceeded to demonstrate this skill by flipping several kids onto the ground, including me.

When Ronnie saw Derrick, he suddenly stopped and announced “They have Derrick on their side! I’m on their side!” Then he turned around and shoved me. I remember being surprised at first and then shoving him back. Afterwards he kind of slipped away to the back of the group and didn’t participate in any more fighting. Thus ended our brief friendship.

I’ve always wondered whether Ronnie went away ashamed of his actions that day. I kind of hope that he did and that he learned a valuable lesson himself. But I’ve seen that same kind of behavior over the years. People want to be on the winning side regardless of which side it is. It takes a certain amount of integrity to stick it out on the side that you know is destined to lose. This doesn’t mean that you should never change sides. It is also a mark of integrity to change sides if you determine that the side you are on is in the wrong. But that decision should be based on facts, evidence, logic and values, not on the desire to win.

Bush's Iraqi qWagmire

One year after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and the country is still in turmoil.
Most of Bush's promises about the war have turned out to be as reliable as his prescriptions for fixing the economy.
In fact, a new congressional study has documented more than 230 misleading statements , if not outright lies, told by Bush and his top advisors during the run-up to the invasion.

The cost of the war in both dollars and lives has far exceeded what the Bush administration said it would be.

"The invasion and occupation of Iraq, his administration predicted, would come at little financial cost and would materially improve the lives of Iraqis. Americans would be greeted as liberators, Bush officials predicted, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein would spread peace and democracy throughout the Middle East.

Things have not worked out that way, for the most part. There is evidence that the economic lives of Iraqis are improving, thanks to an infusion of U.S. and foreign capital. But the administration badly underestimated the financial cost of the occupation and seriously overstated the ease of pacifying Iraq and the warmth of the reception Iraqis would give the U.S. invaders. And while peace and democracy may yet spread through the region, some early signs are that the U.S. action has had the opposite effect."


If anything, Iraq is a more dangerous place today than it was during Saddam's brutal regime. The AP today reports that suicide bombings in Iraq have claimed more than 660 lives. That is more than all the suicide bombing deaths in Israel since 2000. Suicide bombings used to be unheard of in Iraq, but ever since the invasion it has become common place.

There is not much nice that can be said about Saddam Hussein, but the main reason why western leaders before Bush were willing to tolerate him was because he was a secular counter to the religious fundamentalism that is spreading across the middle east.

George Bush - Crooked Liar!!

OK, so that might be a bit provacative. But how else do you respond to this type of nonsense - "Bush Exaggerates Kerry's Position on Intelligence Budget (washingtonpost.com)"

"President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would "gut the intelligence services," and one that had no co-sponsors because it was "deeply irresponsible."

In terms of accuracy, the parry by the president is about half right. Bush is correct that Kerry on Sept. 29, 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget. But Bush appears to be wrong when he said the proposed Kerry cut -- about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years -- would have "gutted" intelligence. In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office -- the same program Kerry said he was targeting."

I think the Washington Post was being kind to use the term "exaggerates" rather than saying what it really was - a blatant lie. The $1.5 billion over five years ($300 million annually) that Kerry proposed cutting was the surplus amount left unspent that year in the intelligence budget. So all that Kerry was proposing to do was to give that unspent money back to the taxpayers - something that Republicans are typically in favor of. It would hardly have "gut the intelligence services," as Bush well knows.

But this blatant lie about Kerry trying to "gut the intelligence services" is currently being spread all across the country by our president as he attempts to divert attention from his own domestic and foreign policy failures.

But that kind of dirty pool campaigning, while despicable, is not even the worst thing that came out about the Bush administration this past week. There was also this story about how the Bush administration lied to members of its own party and threatened to fire the government's top expert on Medicare if he didn't keep quiet about how the administration's prescription drug plan would cost $100 billion more than what they were telling everybody it would cost.

"When the House of Representatives passed the controversial benefit by five votes last November, the White House was embracing an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But for months the administration's own analysts in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had concluded repeatedly that the drug benefit could cost upward of $100 billion more than that.
Withholding the higher cost projections was important because the White House was facing a revolt from 13 conservative House Republicans who'd vowed to vote against the Medicare drug bill if it cost more than $400 billion."

The Bush folks knew they didn't have the votes to pass their version of the Medicare drug bill, so they simply lied about it. They LIED about it!

And they want John Kerry to apologize for what? Stating the obvious??

Bush admin treated view of Iraq WMDs "like a religion"

Buried inside Saturday's NY Times is the following story - U.S., Certain That Iraq Had Illicit Arms, Reportedly Ignored Contrary Reports which sums up much of what I find most egregious about the Bush administration.

"In the two years before the war in Iraq, American intelligence agencies reviewed but ultimately dismissed reports from Iraqi scientists, defectors and other informants who said Saddam Hussein's government did not possess illicit weapons, according to government officials.

"The reports, which ran contrary to the conclusions of the intelligence agencies and the Bush administration, were not acknowledged publicly by top government officials before the invasion last March. In public statements, the agencies and the administration cited only reports from informants who supported the view that Iraq possessed so-called weapons of mass destruction, which the administration cited as a main justification for going to war.

"...government officials said they knew of several occasions from 2001 to 2003 when Iraqi scientists, defectors and others had told American intelligence officers, their foreign partners or other intelligence agents that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons.

"The officials said they believed that intelligence agencies had dismissed the reports because they did not conform to a view, held widely within the administration and among intelligence analysts, that Iraq was hiding an illicit arsenal.

"It appears that the human intelligence wasn't deemed interesting or useful if it was exculpatory of Iraq," said one senior government official with detailed knowledge of the prewar intelligence.

"A second senior government official, who confirmed that account, said the view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons had been "treated like a religion" within American intelligence agencies, with alternative views never given serious attention.

The view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons had been "treated like a religion." That says a lot right there. That pretty much sums up what is wrong with this administration. Bush is essentially a religious fundamentalist. A right-wing Christian hard-liner who refuses to accept or even consider evidence that is contrary to the preconceived conclusions dictated by his narrow and rigid ideology.

This is why we are bogged down in Iraq hunting for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction while 500-plus U.S. troops lie dead and many thousands more are seriously injured.

This is why we have an "economic recovery" that isn't producing enough jobs to even keep up with normal growth. Bush's only answer for the loss of jobs is to cut taxes for the rich even though doing so twice in three years has failed to turn the employment situation around.

This is why we now have record deficits when we started the Bush era with record surpluses. Bush adheres to the supply side nonsense that cutting taxes will produce more revenue for the government even though it failed to work for Reagan and hasn't worked for him.

You cannot reason with somebody who starts out with a preconceived notion and then demands that everything must fit into that scheme or be discarded. We might as well just disband our intelligence agencies right now since it does not matter what evidence they dig up - the only items that will be believed will be the ones that Bush wants to believe and nothing else.

The NYT article goes on to note that while intelligence reports stating that Iraq had no WMDs were being discarded (and hidden from the public) the administration was basing its arguments for the war on the testimony of an Iraqi defector who had been determined to be a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"In the past month, some senior intelligence officials have acknowledged that some information from human sources on Iraq was mishandled, including reports based on interviews in early 2002 with an Iraqi defector who later that year was labeled a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"The information the defector provided was nevertheless included in the administration's statements, including the October 2002 intelligence assessment and Mr. Powell's speech."

It didn't matter that the man was a liar and a con artist. The only thing that mattered was that he was saying what the administration wanted to hear.

I'm sorry, but foreign policy should not be treated like a religion and the power of the presidency should not be wielded by someone who refuses to consider evidence "contrary to the conclusions" they start out with.

Oscar Shocker!

Everyone who was supposed to win..... won!!! I don’t think this has ever happened before in the history of the Oscars! No upsets! No surprises! No dark horse victories!
The one thing everyone is always sure about around Oscar time is that at least one of the presumed victors will be upset by someone who comes out of left field at the last minute. This year that could have been Johnny Depp who surprised everyone by winning the Screen Actors Guild award for best actor just a few weeks ago. Or it could have been Keisha Castle-Hughes, the cute little 13-year-old from Whale Rider for best actress. Or it could have been Shohreh Aghdashloo swiping a sure thing away from Renee Zellwegger in the best supporting actress category. It could have been any number of films coming from behind to overtake front-runner Lord of the Rings in its nearly a dozen categories. Some people thought Rings might fold just like Howard Dean in the Iowa caucuses.

But none of that happened and that may have been the biggest surprise of all.
The Lord of the Rings romped to a record 11 victories (tied with Ben-Hur and Titanic) leaving very little Oscar gold to be split between the other contenders.
Master and Commander picked up two Oscars in the only two technical categories where Rings wasn’t nominated. Mystic River won two acting awards. Lost in Translation got a single Oscar for original screenplay and Seabiscuit was shut out. Finding Nemo, of course, won for animated feature. The only other films to garner a trophy were Cold Mountain and Monster in the other two acting categories.

TV Pundits are declaring this year’s Oscar ceremony as “boring” due to the lack of controversy and scandal. No left-wing political rants! No sudden flash of nudity! No fistfights or brawls! What is the world coming to??
Frankly, I quite enjoyed the show. I thought Billy Crystal was funny and none of the tributes - Bob Hope, Katherine Hepburn, Blake Edwards, Gregory Peck - were too drawn out. The musical performances where also good.
It’s no surprise that I am thrilled with the results. I still think that Rings should have gotten at least one acting nomination - they won the ensemble acting award at the SAGs - but I can’t complain about an 11-Oscar sweep. This was obviously pay-back from the Academy for having passed over LOTR the first two go arounds.

As for predicting the Oscars this year, I did surprisingly well. I entered at least two online contests and predicted a LOTR sweep and all of the acting noms. I went 21 for 24 missing only the cinematography, animated short and documentary short categories. Still don’t know if I won anything.

Thank you, Alan Greenspan!

I was glad to see Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan calling for cuts in Social Security benefits yesterday. I think that any time that Republicans are forced to talk about cutting Social Security during an election year is a good thing.

It is, of course, an outrage that the Republicans now want to pay for their tax cuts for the rich by taking benefits away from the elderly. Normally they would not be willing to talk about it in the open, especially right before an election. But now Greenspan has kicked the issue out into the open and has thereby done a great favor for the rest of us.

Social Security is currently collected out of the first $87,000 of every person's salary. That means that the vast majority of us who earn less than $87,000 per year have 100 percent of our income taxed for the purposes of Social Security. Meanwhile, folks like Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush and Ken Lay who make considerably more than $87,000 per year have only a fraction of their incomes going toward Social Security. So how is it fair that they should use the Social Security surplus to cover for Bush's fiscal irresponsibility?

Kerry vs. Edwards on the Issues

The New York Times has a summarazation of where Kerry and Edwards stand on the “issues.”

I have to admit that I have not read either candidate’s position papers. But looking at the Times’ summary they don’t appear to be too far apart on most things. Here is a rundown:

Kerry vs. Edwards

Issue: Abortion

Both support abortion rights, however Edwards for whatever reason did not vote on the controversial effort to ban the “partial birth abortion” procedure, while Kerry opposed the ban. Kerry has also said he will not appoint abortion opponents to the Supreme Court while Edwards has apparently not taken a position on this.

Being from Massachusetts, I’m sure that Kerry has to be more specific about his pro-choice views while Edwards coming from a southern conservative state would probably rather just say he is pro-choice and leave it at that. I don’t see this as a defining issue between the two.

Issue: Death Penalty

Edwards supports it; Kerry does not. However, Kerry now hedges and says he would make an exception in cases of terrorism, whatever that means.

This is still not a defining issue. I’m personally opposed to the death penalty, but it would not be a major factor in how I cast my vote.

Issue: The Economy

Edwards is proposing to give companies that make products in the U.S. a 10 percent tax cut while punishing companies that send jobs overseas by scaling back their tax breaks. This sounds like a promising plan, but I have no idea how it would work in practice. What about companies that have plants in the U.S. and overseas?
Edwards also proposes a $5,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. Not sure if that would really make a difference in homeownership rates. It might just encourage folks to buy more expensive homes and/or get more upgrades.

Kerry wants to send $50 billion to the states “to create jobs.” I’d have to see some more specifics on that one. He also wants to give out manufacturing tax credits (how many do we already have?) and “crack down on trade violations” (how much do we spend on enforcement now?). Finally, he is promising to cut the deficit in half in five years. I find this promise to at least be more credible than George W.’s

Issue: Education

Edwards wants to give every student a free year of tuition at the public university or community college of their choice provided that they agree to do 10 hours of community service every week.
Frankly, I think this sounds like a logistical nightmare. Who is going to coordinate all these community service projects for all these thousands of students across the country? Who is going to make sure they don’t pull a George W. Bush and just not show up for their community service each week? And how much is it going to cost to make up for eliminating 1/4th of the tuition revenues at every public college?
Edwards is also proposing to increase teacher pay and breakup large high schools, which are local and state issues.

Kerry is proposing tax credits on first $4,000 of tuition for every year of college. As well as a $3.2 billion community service plan for high school students that would let them qualify for equivalent tuition at their four-year public colleges. I would have the same questions and reservations about his proposals.

Issue: Gay Marriage

Both say they are opposed to same-sex marriage, but support domestic partner benefits.
Bush is obviously trying to make this into a bigger issue for the campaign. I would like to see the Democratic candidate stand up to him on this one from a civil rights perspective, but that may be too much to hope.

Issue: Health Care

Edwards wants to provide government-subsidized health insurance for all Americans younger than 21 and cover half of nation’s uninsured at a cost of $590 billion over 10 years. Also proposes expanding the nursing work force by 100,000 (not sure how you do that) and wants to restrict drug company advertising.

Kerry wants to expand the insurance system used by federal employees to cover all private citizens; he would cover 61 percent of the uninsured at a cost of $890 billion over 10 years.

It’s amazing to me that George Bush has managed to run up such a huge deficit so quickly without providing health coverage for any of the nation’s uninsured. At least Edwards and Kerry aren’t pushing the elderly to invest all their Social Security savings in the stock market.

Issue: Iraq

Both voted to authorize the use of force and both voted against the administration’s $87 billion funding package.

Contrary to Republican claims, these votes are not necessarily contradictory. First, authorizing the use of force does not mean they approve the way the president decided to use that power (cherry-pick intelligence reports, ignore the U.N. weapons inspectors, thumb his nose at our allies), and secondly, opposing the dishonest way Bush sought to fund the war doesn’t mean the only other option was to provide no funding for our troops.

Issue: Taxes

Both would eliminate Bush’s tax cuts for people making more than $200,000. Edwards would increase capital gains rates for those making more than $300,000 while providing tax cuts for new parents, new home owners, and the working poor.
Kerry would support middle-class tax cuts for college, child care and health care.

These are standard Democratic positions that were proposed as alternatives to Bush’s budget-busting tax cuts for the last several years.

Issue: Trade

Finally another issue where they can disagree. Edwards wasn’t in the Senate when NAFTA was up for a vote but he says he would have opposed it. Kerry supports NAFTA. Both want to see environmental and labor standards added to trade agreements. Both voted in favor of having China join the WTO as a full trading partner.

Conclusion:

There’s really not a lot of substantive differences between these two guys which is why everyone focuses on things like image and style. I agree that Edwards comes across as the more charismatic and dynamic speaker, but Kerry has the greater stature and more experience.

The problem with Edwards is that he is inexperienced on the world stage. I can remember Kerry during the Iran-Contra investigations 20 years ago. Edwards hasn’t even finished his first term in the Senate. Even Bush finished his first term as governor and got himself re-elected before running for president. And the other problem with Edwards, unfortunately, is his lack of military experience. He has even less military experience than Bush, who at least had four “active” years in the National Guard.

So I will be casting my vote for Kerry in the March 9 primaries here in Texas.

Kerry 55% - Bush 43%

Yikes! Those are landslide numbers in the new CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll.

You know, it’s not too late for the Republicans to start a Dump Bush/Draft McCain movement!

Top 10 Bush AWOL excuses

Reposted from ETALKINGHEAD

Top 10 responses by Bush apologists to the AWOL charge:

1. Bush got an honorable discharge so that proves he did everything he was required to do and nothing else matters. (But why did he blow off his flight physical in ‘72?) LaLaLaLaLaLaLa!!! I’m not listening anymore! LaLaLaLaLaLaLaLa!!!

2. No one ever formally charged him with being AWOL so you can’t say that he was AWOL.

3. A couple of Bush’s buddies remember him saying he was leaving to go to guard drill during the Alabama senate campaign. That’s good enough for us.

4. Brig. Gen. William Turnipseed, who commanded the Alabama guard unit, says that although he never saw Bush or knew of any Texan in his unit in 1972, he wasn’t physically present on base the whole time so he could have just missed him.

5. A torn document that the Bush campaign dug up in 2000 proves that Bush really only missed 7 months of guard drill and then made up for it in a burst of drills right before getting his discharge 8 months early so he could go back to MBA school.

6. This all happened a long time ago and shouldn’t count anymore. The only thing that matters is that we got Saddam.

7. Bush had been trained to fly a plane that was being phased out by the military so he wasn’t going to go to Vietnam anyway.

8. Flying airplanes is dangerous even if you’re not getting shot at.

9. Clinton got away with it, why can’t Bush?

10. Oh yeah!? Well, at least he didn’t protest against the war with Jane Fonda!

Bush's business record redux

I agree with Josh Marshall’s sentiments
today:

“Given the president's record as a businessman, and since he's now run the country hopelessly into debt, isn't it about time he sells the country off to some rich friends who will swallow the loss so he can move on to greener pastures?”


Yep. And those rich friends unfortunately are our children and grandchildren who will be stuck with Bush’s tab this time.

Bush and that AWOL thing

No matter how they try to spin it, Bush's National Guard Service
looks pretty suspect today. I don't care whether you call it AWOL or not, but the fact that Bush didn't feel it necessary to show up for drills for 6 months (best case scenario), a year (most likely scenario), or 18 months (worst case scenario) is pretty pathetic. The fact that he failed to show up to take his flight physical and was thus grounded for the final portion of his guard duty is an outrage in and of itself. What was he doing wasting the military's time and money learning how to fly if he wasn't going to be serious about it?


I think Bush has a lot of explaining to do about what went on during that final year and a half of his guard service and the infamous Torn Document just isn't cutting it.

Bush's busted budget

When President Bush took office three years ago, the Congessional Budget Office (CBO) was estimating the country would accumulate a surplus of $5 trillion by 2011. Today, the CBO is predicting a budget deficit of $4.3 trillion by 2011. That is a difference of $9.3 trillion - a remarkable testament to President Bush's fiscal leadership. (Thanks to Center for American Progress for the figures.)

Bush's latest budget has a $521 billion deficit. And that is only if we pull all of our troops out of Iraq by the end of September because Bush provides no funding in his budget beyond that point.

Bush makes the laughable claim that we can half the deficit by 2009 by curtailing non-defense and non-homeland security spending. But that only makes up about 18 percent of the total budget pie. And these programs include health research, education, housing, law enforcement, the State Department, environmental restoration and veterans programs. Is that where Bush plans to make all of his cuts?

The real problem of course is Bush's massive tax give away to the rich. By making these irresponsible tax cuts permanent, Bush would ensure that the federal government will be completely bankrupt after he leaves office - something the radical right would no doubt like to see happen.

Possibly the funniest thing in the Bush budget is his decision to give a paltry $18 million increase to the National Endowment for the Arts, something that has greatly upset some of his far-right supporters here in the blogosphere.

Owen Courreges digs up some of the NEA's greatest hits to express his outrage. It's funny how conservatives' obsession with these images has given them a hundred times more exposure than all of the other non-offenisve art sponsored by the NEA combined.

Owen at Boots and
Sabers feels compelled to restate why he is still a devout Bush acolyte in spite of Bush's "abysmal failure" at shrinking the size of government.

And then there is Joe Kelley at The Sake Of Argument who has gone so far as to say that he will not cast another vote for this RINO (Republican in name only) president in response to the NEA funding increase.

I certainly hope this is a trend that will keep growing.

Pixar might regret dumping Disney

It's clear enough that the Pixar/Disney breakup is especially bad news for Disney, which hasn't seen any of its own animated films hit big since "The Lion King."

Pixar has been dominating the animation field lately with blockbuster hits such as Toy Story I & II, Monster's Inc. and Finding Nemo. So it would seem that Disney would be the big loser in this deal. But I can't help but think that Pixar might be shooting itself in the foot as well. As good as the Pixar movies have been, who is to say that their mega-box office success wasn't spurred on by the wholesome Disney glow that surrounded each release? Without the Disney stamp of approval, would the films have performed as well as they did? It is clear that quality is not a guarantee of success at the box office.

Without Disney, I'm afraid Pixar will find its films faring about as well as "Ice Age" or "Antz," which is to say not badly, but far from the huge moneymakers that they have been.

Maybe if we are lucky, the Disney board will can Michael Eisner and then lure Pixar back into the fold before it is too late.

I joined a group blog

I've been invited to join a group blog called eTALKINGHEAD which features political commentary, analysis and opinion. There are about a dozen contributors so far and I'm one of just two Democrats in the bunch.
I'm not sure why or how I came to be picked to join the group, but I was flattered by the offer and am enjoying the challenge of trying to balance out a mostly conservative site. Each blogger was invited to select a book from Amazon.com to feature on the site so I chose Molly Ivin's latest work "Bushwhacked" which I have an autographed copy of.

Academy Award reactions

I was hoping Lord of the Rings would score 14 nominations, but I’m happy with 11 provided that they carry through and win most of them. Still, I am bitterly disappointed that Rings did not receive any acting nods, not even a supporting role for Sean Astin as had been predicted. But Rings wasn’t the only Best Picture nominee to go without acting nominations this time. In fact, both Master and Commander and Seabiscuit are in the same boat.
I thought that Russell Crowe being passed over in the Best Actor category was a bigger surprise than Nicole Kidman being left out of the Best Actress category. But I was delighted to see both Johnny Depp and Bill Murray make the cut. I know this is supposed to be Sean Penn’s year for his role in Mystic River, but I would love to see Depp walk away with the trophy.
Considering the all around snubbing that Cold Mountain received I’m surprised that Jude Law still got the Best Actor nod instead of Crowe, although I would have put Viggo Mortensen in that slot for his portrayal of Aragorn.
I’m happy with all of the Best Picture nominees this time, especially Rings and Seabiscuit. And I’m actually looking forward to seeing the ones I’ve missed - Master and Commander, Mystic River and Lost in Translation.

WMDs - "I don't think they existed"

"I don't think they existed. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties.” – David Kay

So Bush’s chief weapons inspector for Iraq has finally confirmed what Hans Blix and the United Nations had been saying before the war even began. There were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when we invaded and there had probably not been since shortly after the end of the first Gulf War in 1991. And there were no programs underway in the 90’s to produce such weapons.
So there was no imminent threat. The sanctions and the U.N. inspections were working and the French and the Germans and the Russians were right all along.
And as for those 500-plus U.S. troops who died (and continue to die everyday) supposedly defending the world from this threat, well, never mind. We’ve wasted billions of dollars and hundreds of lives chasing after a toothless dictator, a regional thug who posed no threat to other nations while we’ve allowed Al Quaeda to regroup and plot their next attack.

Even Colin Powell is finally conceding that there probably weren’t any WMDs, although he continues to make lame arguments for why we had to go in and invade:

"We had questions that needed to be answered. What was it?" he asked. "One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing? What we demanded of Iraq was that they account for all of this and they prove the negative of our hypothesis."

Prove the negative of our hypothesis? How are they supposed to do that? I do believe that Iraq said repeatedly before the war that they had no WMDs. How do you prove that you don’t have something? You show them nothing?

I wish that our “So Called Liberal Media” here in the U.S. would hold Bush Co. accountable for these lies the same way the British press is doing to Tony Blair.

Remembering Captain Kangaroo

In honor of Bob Keeshan, aka. Captain Kangaroo, who passed away today I am reprinting below a column that I wrote nearly 10 years ago for the Kerrville Daily Times.


A wake for Capt. Kangaroo
By Mike W. Thomas

Kerrville Daily Times, Sept. 7, 1995

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the “Captain Kangaroo Show” which used to air weekday mornings on CBS from 1955 through 1984. Captain Kangaroo was right up there in importance with Sesame Street and Mister Roger’s Neighborhood of the television programs that I grew up watching.
Oddly enough, CBS is making no plans to mark the occasion with any type of 40th anniversary special. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the circumstances behind the Captain’s departure from network television 11 years ago. Bob Keeshan, who delighted generations of children for 29 years as Captain Kangaroo, did not choose to retire in 1984; he was unceremoniously given the boot and his show was canceled by unsrcupulous and greedy network executives at CBS. It seems that the market for Mr. Green Jeans action figures did not appear to be very lucrative.
So why did the CBS executives suddenly turn greedy in 1984 after tolerating Keeshan’s program for so long? It wasn’t the television industry that changed then, it was the government. Up until 1982, the Federal Communications Commission required the three major networks to set aside so many hours a week for quality children’s programming. It did not matter if a gossipy morning chat show or a sleazy tabloid program might pull in more advertizing revenues - the FCC set down the rules and that was it.
But in 1981, President Ronald Reagan entered the picture with his misguided philosophy that all regulation of business is bad regardless of its intent or purpose. By 1982, he had managed to appoint a majority of his ideological cohorts to the FCC and they began changing the rules including the ones setting aside blocks of time for children’s programming. Mark Fowler, Reagan’s appointee to head the FCC, said television should be treated like any other business and not like a public resource. “Television is just another appliance,” he said. “It’s a toaster with pictures.”
Soon thereafter, the networks began unloading their educational children’s programming as fast as they could dump it. As related in Tom Engelhardt’s essay “The Shortcake Strategy,” the networks wasted no time in taking advantage of the new direction offered by Reagan’s FCC.
“In 1982, CBS fired 20 people doing alternative programming for children, dropped the children’s news show ‘30 Minutes,’ and began phasing out the low-rated ‘Captain Kangaroo.’ ABC cut ‘Animals, Animals, Animals’ and ‘Kids Are People Too,’ its low-rated Emmy-award-winning weekend shows, while NBC pulled the plug on ‘Project Peacock,’ its prime time children’s specials.”
Reagan’s FCC also did away with the rule limiting the number of minutes of commercial advertising the networks could air during children’s programs. This effectively opened the way for the 30-minute animated cartoon toy commercials that the networks have passed off as children’s television ever since - Smurfs, Care Bears, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, ad nauseum.
If you check the weekday morning time slots today where “Captain Kangaroo” once aired, you will now find such quality programming as Geraldo Rivera, Montel Williams and Jerry Springer. It’s ironic indeed that the deterioration of television programming to the trash we have today can be traced back to the policies set forth by the so-called “family values” conservatives of the 1980s.
Since then the prospects for quality children’s programming have continued to decline. The current batch of yahoos now running the U.S. Congress have set their sights on eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has become one of the last refuges for good programming in the vast wasteland of our public airwaves. You can be assured that without PBS, Mister Rogers and Sesame Street would have shared the same fate as Captain Kangaroo long ago.
Our public airwaves are a national resource that should have a modicum amount of regulation to insure some benefit to society as a whole; something more than just a means for media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner to make millions in profits. Instead, we are about to deregulate the industry even further.
An anniversary special for Captain Kangaroo? Don’t kid yourself. These days a wake would be more appropriate.


Needless to say, things have not changed much since I wrote this.

Borrow and spend

Bush Budget Pledge Falls Flat

That's the headline on Page A4 in the Wall Street Journal today (Jan. 22). The article talks about Bush's State of the Union pledge to hold spending increases to less than 4 percent next year. First it notes that Bush made essentially the same plege the year before and failed to live up to it. In fact, the 2003 budget increased by a whopping 15 percent making it the largest single year increase in more than three decades.

"During Mr. Bush's first three years in office, annual appropriations will have grown about 32 percent, to about $874 billion from about $664 billion..."

Back when Reagan was cutting taxes and spending money like a drunken sailor they tried to blame the exploding deficits on the Democratic-controlled House. They can't do that today, of course, since the Republicans have been in charge now for nearly 10 years.

The truth is that Republicans don't really care about the deficit. They load up spending bills with even more pork than the Democrats used to with the difference that they accompany it with big tax cuts. The Democrats used the tax and spend formula to promote their programs while Republicans prefer to borrow and spend. Republicans are anti-government as a rule so now that they are in charge they are trying to milk it for all it is worth while running it into the ground. And once the free ride is over they will just wash their hands of it and walk away. They got theirs and everyone else will just be out of luck.
I don't believe the crockodile tears being shed by some conservatives over the budget problems. If they are so concerned about it why aren't they running somebody against Bush who can balance the budget?
And grow the economy? Someone like Bill Clinton....

Howard Dean: Decoy candidate

The truth about the Democratic presidential race can now be revealed. Howard Dean was a decoy from the start meant to distract Republican opposition researchers from spending their time attacking the real nominee - Sen. John Kerry.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The plan worked brilliantly!

What did Bush pick? The Dixie Chicks?

I’m definitely closer to John Kerry and John Edwards when it comes to music.

“An Associated Press canvass of the candidates on what album they'd most like to pop into their CD players turns up gospel, opera, hip-hop, country and rock.
The rock fans are Wesley Clark, who likes Journey's "Greatest Hits"; Sen. John Edwards, "The Essential Bruce Springsteen"; and Sen. John Kerry, the Beatles' "Abbey Road."
Howard Dean singled out the music of Grammy-winning hip-hop singer Wyclef Jean. Rep. Dennis Kucinich chose country's Willie Nelson (who has endorsed him), and Al Sharpton favored gospel's Yolanda Adams. Sen. Joe Lieberman's favorite album is "Sueno," by classical Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.”

Link via Atrios

State of the Union

As best as I could make out there were two key messages in Bush’s State of the Union Address last night:
1. The world is a better place because we captured Saddam Hussein.
(Never mind that Hussein was just a regional thug with no WMDs and no connection to 9-11)
2. The economy is improved because we cut taxes.
(Never mind the budget busting deficits that are now threatening to drag down the world economy, not just the U.S. And never mind that the so-called recovery has failed to produce enough jobs to keep up with normal growth, much less replace the millions of jobs that have been lost.)

Beyond that it was a rather bland and listless speech. Oh, there were a few other things he threw out like protecting the “sanctity of marriage” by making sure that gays and lesbians are shut out, and denouncing the use of steroids by professional athletes. But most everything else was pretty much unmemorable. He didn’t even bother to talk about his plan to send a manned mission to Mars while cutting NASA’s budget at the same time.

Maybe what Bush needed was a little more passion. He probably could have used some of that "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" left over from Howard Dean’s Iowa concession speech.

Update:

Someone put together a song using Howard Dean’s Iowa speech.

Link via Atrios

Guess I'm an expert

WOW!! Good job! You know as much about Middle Earth
as I do!! Finally, someone who knows Middle
Earth! Most people think they know everything
there is to know about Middle earth just by
watching the movies! HAH!! well keep up the
good work! ( I wouldn't be surprised if you are
learning elvish!! ) RATE MY QUIZ!!


*~* The TOUGHEST Lord Of The Rings Quiz *~* [with pictures!]
brought to you by Quizilla

Well that was a surprise finish

The Democratic race is suddenly interesting again.
When it was just starting out I figured I would be a John Kerry supporter. He seemed like the best candidate with Al Gore out of the running and he has a strong military background to counter Bush on foreign policy and national security.
But as recently as last week I still believed that Kerry's campaign was over and had all but conceded the race to Howard Dean (with an outside hope that Wesley Clark might come on strong in the stretch.)
Now things are entirely different with Kerry bouncing back from a near-death experience to take the lead and John Edwards earning a second look at Dean's expense. I'm still mad at Edwards for giving up his senate seat for what will almost certainly be a Republican pickup, but if he actually wins the race then more power to him.
It's too bad that Gephardt fell so far short of expectations. I wish he would have stayed in the House and continued to fight for a Democratic majority. I think he did the most honorable thing by withdrawing so quickly when things did not go as planned. Now I will be curious to see who he will endorse, if anyone.
I predict the next candidate to drop out will be Joe Lieberman. For what it's worth.

Hot air and little else make up Bush space proposal

Bush's Mission to Mars proposal on first glance is exciting. But on closer examination it is revealed as little more than election year posturing with no serious effort by the administration to follow up on Bush's rhetoric.
Bush Co. is proposing a whopping 5 percent increase in NASA's budget to finance its proposal or about $1 billion over five years. This is worse than a joke, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. A typical space shuttle flight costs $500,000, so we get the equivalent of two extra space shuttle launches over five years (saying nothing about the cost of building another space shuttle to replace the one that just blew up.)
Bush Co. has tried to spin this initiative as being comparable to what Kennedy did in 1961 when he launched the Apollo project. But Kennedy went much further than just flapping his jaw to back up his proposals. NASA's budget was doubled the very next year and then doubled again the year after that.
Bush Jr.'s proposal is more like the one his father made in 1989 on the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. The first President Bush called for lunar colonies and a Mars expedition as well, but like his son he did nothing else to make it happen and the proposal went nowhere.
The Apollo missions cost about $150 billion in 2003 dollars which just shows how far off Bush's proposal is from reality.
If anything, Bush has made our prospects of going back to the moon or sending a manned mission to Mars much worse by bankrupting the government with his fiscally irresponsible trillion dollar tax cuts.

Television losing its grip

I just want to say how much I appreciate the major television networks and their efforts to help ween me from my nightly television viewing habits. By continuing to cancel shows that I watch regularly and failing to produce any new shows that are worth my time they are making it much easier for me to spend my evenings doing more productive things.

Just this past week they announced this is the last season for Frasier. And earlier they announced that there will be no more Friends. That frees up a whole hour right there. Unfortunately, I did get hooked recently by the new series Joan of Arcadia, so it’s pretty much a wash right now. But I’m fully expecting the networks will opt not to renew Joan of Arcadia next season since my decision to watch a show typically seals its doom in that respect.

Right now my weekly television viewing habits are pretty sparse. Here are the shows that I watch on a regular basis:
Monday: None
Tuesday: Frasier; Judging Amy
Wednesday: Star Trek: Enterprise
Thursday: Friends; ER
Friday: Joan of Arcadia
Saturday: None
Sunday: None

My wife and I just started watching Friends for the first time this season. I’m sure that was the final nail in the show’s coffin. But at least we have six years worth of re-runs that we have never seen.
I’m worried about Enterprise. The ratings have gone down and the show has become increasingly desperate to draw more viewers which usually only speeds its descent into oblivion.
ER is still going strong even with an almost entirely new cast. I was preturbed, however, when they decided to kill off my favorite character this season - Dr. Ray Romano, the arrogant and saracastic jerk with the heart of gold. Last season they decided to torture his character by chopping his arm off with a helicopter propeller and this season they wrapped it up by having a helicopter drop out of the sky to squash him like a bug.
Over at Judging Amy, the main character is continuing to torture every man who has the audacity to fall for her. This season she abandoned her latest beau at the alter - literally. And the show’s writers are continuing that Hollywood tradition of breaking up every marriage and keeping all the characters unhappily single. I suppose that locking a character into a loving relationship is a hardship on the poor writers who then cannot fall back on their bag of cliches for new plot developments.

Inattention to Deficits Disorder

The American Prospect recently said President Bush is suffering from a new malady called IDD - Inattention to Deficits Disorder.

Bush is going to request $1 billion over 5 years "to fund the start of a new American campaign in space intended to put a permanent base on the moon and land astronauts on Mars."
I think that is great. The only problem is that it is going to take a lot more money than that to accomplish those feats (hundreds of billions by some estimates) and Bush has put the nation in a position where it cannot afford to do these things. If this space campaign is to ever come to fruition, it is going to be up to some future administration to make it happen.

In the meantime, Bush is proposing to spend even more money ($1.5 billion) on a conservative campaign to "promote marriage" among low-income couples.

The International Monetary Fund has recently scolded the U.S. for its troubling debt warning that "the U.S. profligacy and its voracious appetite for credit will drive up interest rates around the world and threatens the global economic recovery."

"An economic slowdown and President George W. Bush's huge tax cuts conspired to swing the U.S. federal budget from a surplus of 2.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2000 to a deficit of about 4 percent in 2003. Add the states' own budget shortfalls and the country's trade deficit, the IMF report notes, and the United States faces an "unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country."

The Bush administration's $1.7 trillion in tax cuts are without a doubt the most fiscally irresponsible action by a U.S. president in our nation's history.