The 100

Here is my list of 100 people who have most influenced me or made a difference to me in some way during the course of my life (excluding friends and family).

In alphabetical order

Hank Aaron
Richard Adams
Mortimer Adler
Woody Allen
Louis Armstrong
Isaac Asimov
Stephen F. Austin
J.S. Bach
The Beatles
Ludwig van Beethoven
Bix Beiderbecke
Johnny Bench
Duncan Black (Atrios)
Sidney Blumenthal
James Bowie
Berkeley Breathed
George Burns
Ken Burns
Lewis Carroll
Jimmy Carter
Johnny Cash
Noam Chomsky
Jesus Christ
Roger Clemens
Bill Clinton
Davy Crockett
Bing Crosby
Charles Dickens
Walt Disney
Bob Dylan
Clint Eastwood
Albert Einstein
Duke Ellington
Harlan Ellison
Julius Erving
Harrison Ford
Al Franken
Benjamin Franklin
John Kenneth Galbraith
Mohatma Gandhi
Henry B. Gonzalez
Benny Goodman
Al Gore
Billy Graham
Cary Grant
Gary Gygax
Jim Henson
Katharine Hepburn
Alfred Hitchcock
Buddy Holly
Bob Hope
Sam Houston
Molly Ivins
Jesse Jackson
Thomas Jefferson
Bob Keeshan
John F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Edward M. Kennedy
John Kerry
Martin Luther King Jr.
Michael Kinsley
Paul Krugman
Hans Kung
Dalai Lama
C. S. Lewis
Abraham Lincoln
George Lucas
Nelson Mandela
Thurgood Marshall
Steve Martin
Groucho Marx
Amadeus Mozart
Paul Newman
George Orwell
Thomas Paine
Edgar Allan Poe
Elvis Presley
Ann Richards
Gene Roddenberry
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Pete Rose
Nolan Ryan
Carl Sagan
Charles M. Schulz
William Shakespeare
Steven Spielberg
Bruce Springsteen
Roger Staubach
Jimmy Stewart
Sting
Oliver Stone
J.R.R. Tolkien
Garry Trudeau
Harry S. Truman
Mark Twain
George Washington
John Wayne
Robin Williams
Dalhart Windberg

Bush campaign chair concedes Kerry won debates

I guess when you have the chairman of the President’s election campaign conceding that John Kerry gained ground in the three debates the spin game as to who won is pretty much over.

Sen. John Kerry gained ground in the race for the White House in the trio of campaign debates, a top official in President Bush's campaign conceded Thursday...

All of the snap polls had Kerry in front on the third debate...

CNN/USA Today/Gallup: Kerry wins 53%-39%.
CBS News poll of uncommitted voters: Kerry wins 39%-25%
ABC News: Kerry wins 42%-41%, even though their audience leaned heavily Republican.
Democracy Corps: Kerry wins 41%-36%.

So the clear consensus is that John Kerry swept all three debates. Meanwhile the tidal wave of bad news for President Bush just keeps coming...

Blasts Kill Five in Baghdad's Green Zone

Trade Deficit Soars, Jobless Claims Up

AP: Report Finds Lavish Spending at TSA

Just imagine if that last one had happened during a Democratic administration! Imagine the outcry from conservatives.

Heroes of my youth

While cleaning out some old files recently I came across a list of people (I’ve always loved making lists) I had put together around the time when I was a freshman in college. I recall at the time I was listing people who I admired or who had influenced my thinking in some way. I wasn’t considering family or friends for my list, just famous people and historical figures. The list was an odd mix of childhood heros and current-day influences from history, entertainment, music, sports and literature. Here is the list in the order it was written:

Mohandas Gandhi
Martin Luther King Jr.
C.S. Lewis
Hans Kung (Catholic theologian)
Paul the Apostle
The Beatles
Bob Dylan
Johnny Bench
Pete Rose
Roger Staubach
Ludwig Von Beethoven
Amadeus Mozart
J.S. Bach
John Wayne
Elvis Presley
J.R.R. Tolkien
Abraham Lincoln
Thomas Jefferson
Davy Crockett
James Bowie
Sam Houston
George Patton
Bruce Springsteen
Don Williams (country singer)
Ronald Reagan
John F. Kennedy
Steve Martin
Humphry Bogart
Dustin Hoffman
Charlton Heston
Gary Gygax (creator of Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game)
Henry Thoreau
Willie Mays
Hank Williams
Harrison Ford
Franklin D. Roosevelt
George Washington
Charles Schultz
Berke Breathed
Alfred Hitchcock
Woody Allen
Edgar Allen Poe
Donald Sutherland
Bobby Jones (Philadelphia 76ers)
Julius “Dr. J” Erving
Moses Malone
Lawrence Sullivan Ross
Cary Grant
Buddy Holly
Kingston Trio
Sting
Walt Disney
Robin Williams
Yul Brynner
Orson Welles
Gene Kelly
Bob Hope
Richard Pryor
Benjamin Franklin
William Shakespeare
Eddie Murphy
Bill Cosby
Mr. T

At some later point (in a different ink color) I made the following additions:

Jesus Christ
Charles Dickens
Mark Twain
William Barrett Travis
Clint Eastwood
Kirk Douglas
Jimmy Stewart
Richard Adams (author of “Watership Down”)
Jackie Sherrill (Texas A&M football coach)
William F. Buckley
Stephen Spielberg
Billy Graham
George Lucas
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Charles Bronson
Paul Newman
William Shatner
Leonard Nimoy
Tom Petty
Sylvester Stallone
Robert E. Howard (author of Conan the Barbarian)
Stevie Nicks
Lucille Ball
Katherine Hepburn
Fritz Lieber (sci-fi/fantasy author)
John Belushi
Dan Akroyd
Prince
Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey)
Chip Young (Blondie)
Cathy Guisewitz (Cathy)
John Adams
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
St. Augustine
Francis Bacon
Winston Churchill
John Denver
Hershel Walker (Cowboys runningback)
Kevin Murray (Aggie quarterback early ‘80s)
Abigail Van Buren
Ann Landers
Mike Scott (Houston Astros pitcher)
Benny Hill
Paul Simon
Billy Joel
Lewis Carroll
Douglas Adams (author of “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”)
Hank Aaron
Mel Brooks
Monty Python
Robert DeNiro
Al Pacino

In a future post I will put together a list of the 100 people I would include on a similar list today.

Bush’s Howard Dean moment

The tide has definitely shifted against President Bush and I don’t see it going back his way before election day. The news reports continue to be all bad here on the day of the third debate: Stocks plummet as oil prices continue to climb; five more U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.

Bush will try to turn the focus on John Kerry by calling him a liberal who will raise taxes, but with an 0-2 record in the debates so far it is not likely that Bush is going to make up any ground in a forum that looks mainly at domestic issues which are not his strong point.
Paul Krugman has already fact-checked in advance most of the points that Bush is likely to raise during the debate.

The turnaround in fortunes for Kerry as evidenced by the polls that show him making up as much as 14 points since the first debate are reminiscent of his rapid ascent during the primary campaign after Howard Dean flamed out in Iowa. For Dean it was his post-Iowa “Yeaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!” speech that proved his undoing. For Bush, I believe it was his overall performance in the first debate, that will be remembered years from now as the point when his bubble burst. Since then the independent voters in all of the polls have been favoring Kerry.

I’m not ready to declare the race over at this point, but I’m not sure what it will take to turn things around for Bush. His was a failed presidency that did not accomplish the things it set out to do. There is no way they can put a positive spin on something like that with the daily rat-a-tat-tat of headlines such as the ones above.

Christopher Reeve and stem cell research

Christopher Reeve’s sudden death was very upsetting for many people including myself who admired his courage in dealing with his paralysis. Some people might have just faded from view and become symbols of pity. But Reeve’s star began to shine brighter after his accident and through sheer force of will he used his celebrity and his circumstances to become a cultural icon and a powerful voice for people with disabilities.

The timing of Reeve’s death has brought the issue of stem cell research back to the forefront of the political debate. Many on the right are critical of Reeves for his advocacy of embryonic stem cell research in the belief that this somehow promotes and encourages the killing of unborn children. But this view is based on an extreme religious axiom that I and many other religious people reject. I don’t presume to know what God’s intentions are for each egg and sperm that meet but I do know that we are provided with hundreds of thousands of eggs and countless millions of sperm with which to constantly replenish the human population.

Fertility clinics create thousands of human embryos every year as a matter of course that go unused and are ultimately thrown out. It seems a tragic waste to not take advantage of these stem cells to advance medical science in a way that could benefit thousands of people suffering from everything from spinal paralysis to Parkinson’s disease.
Michael Kinsley makes the point that people who oppose embryonic stem cell research should by the same logic also be opposed to fertility clinics...

If stem-cell research is morally questionable, the procedures used in fertility clinics are worse. You cannot logically outlaw the one and praise the other.

Yet, as Kinsley points out, Bush praised fertility clinics in the same speech in which he banned stem cell research.

President Bush’s decision to ban federal funding for stem cell research is a serious impediment to the hopes of finding cures for these and many other ailments. The argument that privately-funded research can still go forward ignores the fact that most labs today rely on some degree of federal funding through NIH grants and other means. If a lab decides to pursue stem-cell research today it risks losing or being blocked from recieving any other federal funding even for unrelated work because of the complications and possibility of mixing funds.

Dan Cook's America

Recent polls have shown that something like 66 percent of Republicans believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11. That would explain why Bush still has a base of support in spite of all that has gone wrong during his administration.

Obviously Dan Cook, the former sports columnist for the Express-News, falls into that category. This Sunday, Cook wrote an op-ed for the paper in which he lamented the fact that the country is not unified in its support for President Bush's foreign policy in Iraq. He recalls how when he was a child the country fell in behind FDR after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and supported his decision to take the country into WWII.

What Mr. Cook forgets or fails to see is that the country did fall in behind President Bush after 9-11 and supported his decision to go after al Qaeda and their state sponsors in Afghanistan. It was only after Bush decided to divert our military resources to go on an extended snipe hunt in Iraq that significant numbers of people started to turn against the president.

Imagine if FDR had pulled something like that during WWII. Rather than going after the Japanese and their Axis allies in Europe, what if he had suddenly decided to divert U.S. troops and launch a massive invasion of Mexico. Don't you think people might have questioned the wisdom of such a move, especially in the midst of a war? And what if then FDR's excuses for invading Mexico turned out to be all wrong? Would the American people have remained unified behind him?

What do you think, Dan? Is the U.S. really that different today?

Anemic job growth

The new job numbers are out just in time for the second presidential debate tonight and boy are they lousy.
Economists were predicting 150,000 net jobs, which is a poor figure to begin with, but the actual number came in 50,000 short of that. Wall Street reacted to the news by taking a dive.

"I wouldn't want to be in President Bush's shoes," Ken Mayland of ClearView Economics told the Associated Press. "He had better prepare himself for an onslaught . . . The reality is that a 96,000 increase in a work force of a 131 million base is an anemic rise, and is in no way a satisfactory increase."

The Bush administration was naturally full of excuses - hurricanes, high oil prices, etc. - and of course lots of Orwellian doublespeak which has been a regular feature of this administration. Here is Labor Secretary Elaine Chao spinning the new figures: “(They) show the strength and resilience of our economy and that the labor market continues to improve,” she said.

Four years into his administration and we are nearly a million jobs short of where we started which is unprecedented since the time of Herbert Hoover. But look for Bush tonight to tout all these low-paying service jobs that have been ladled out over the past year in place of high-paying manufacturing jobs as evidence that his tax cuts are working.

Newspaper endorsements

From Editor & Publisher here is a running total of presidential newspaper endorsements including circulation figures:


JOHN KERRY
Detroit Free Press (G): 354,581
The Seattle Times (B): 237,303
The Philadelphia Daily News: 139,983
Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) (G): 109,592
The Day (London, Conn.) (B): 39,553

Total Daily Circ: 881,012

GEORGE W. BUSH
Las Vegas Review-Journal (B): 170,061
Mobile (Ala.) Register (B): 100,244
The Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain: 52,208
Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News (B): 51,105
The Sun (Lowell, Mass.) (B): 50,369
The Courier (Findlay, Ohio) (B): 22,319

Total Daily Circ: 446,306

Update: Bush picked up two more papers today giving him 6 endorsements to Kerry's 5, but he still lags in circulation totals. E& P is also noting how the papers endorsed in 2000 with a (B) for Bush and (G) for Gore, so the big news here is the switch by the Seattle Times.

Bush just can't catch a break

Everyday the news gets worse and worse for President Bush.

Take today, for example. First we have news that the U.S. chief weapon’s inspector in Iraq (the one who took over for David Kay, who took over for Hans Blix and the U.N. group) is issuing his final report that not only says there were no stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq when we invaded, but “Saddam Hussein did not vigorously pursue a program to develop weapons of mass destruction after international inspectors left Baghdad in 1998.” No WMDs and no WMD programs. As the
The Associated Press points out, this seriously undercuts the Bush administration’s latest rationale for invading Iraq.

Then we have news that Iran has produced "a few tons" of the gas needed to enrich uranium, confirming that the country has defied international demands and taken a necessary step toward producing nuclear fuel - or nuclear weapons.

Talk about Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time!

Then there was this lovely economic news just a few days ago as a precursor to the job figures that will be released on Friday.

The number of job cuts planned by U.S. employers jumped in September to the highest level in eight months while hiring announcements fell sharply, a job search firm said Tuesday.

Combine this news with this Open Letter to President that was just released by a group of 163 college business and economics professors taking Bush to task for his failed economic policies.

As professors of economics and business, we are concerned that U.S. economic policy has taken a dangerous turn under your stewardship.  Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since you took office in January 2001.  Real GDP growth during your term is the lowest of any presidential term in recent memory.  Total non-farm employment has contracted and the unemployment rate has increased.  Bankruptcies are up sharply, as is our dependence on foreign capital to finance an exploding current account deficit.  All three major stock indexes are lower now than at the time of your inauguration.  The percentage of Americans in poverty has increased, real median income has declined, and income inequality has grown. 

The rest of the letter doesn’t get much more encouraging but go and read the whole thing. It is very informative.

So the only surprising thing at this point in the election is that Bush is not 20 points down in the polls. I chalk this up to the massive amount of corporate money they have amassed and spent during the campaign, the tidal wave of right-wing distortions flowing through our so-called-liberal-media, and the vicious and unfounded attacks on John Kerry by groups such as the Swift Boat Liars for Bush.

But lies and distortions can only do so much to obscure reality and unfortunately for President Bush he just can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to the truth of what is really going on.

Checking up on Cheney

From last night's VP debate:

CHENEY: Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they're trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know the charges are false. They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.

I hope that everyone will do as Vice President Cheney requested and check out www.factcheck.com. Go ahead.

Oops. I think he meant, factcheck.org. Oh, well.

Cheney: Hussein not worth additional U.S. casualties

Here's Dick Cheney’s whopping double backward flip-flop with a triple twist on the Iraq War.

This is what Dick Cheney had to say about the prospects of invading Iraq and overthrowing Hussein in a speech in August 1992. (via Tapped)

"I would guess if we had gone into Iraq I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.

And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.

And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq..."


Now the thing to remember here is that immediately before the Gulf War is when Hussein was at his peak of power. His military might was drastically cut by the war and the sanctions that followed. Also, most of the atrocities that are associated with Hussein took place during this period as well. The use of “weapons of mass destruction” against his own people. The mass graves. All of this took place before and immediately after the Gulf War.
So the case for overthrowing Hussein was never stronger than it was then, but Cheney was opposed because it wasn’t worth the additional U.S. casualties.

So what changed? Republicans will tell you it was 9/11. But Hussein had nothing to do with it and Al Qaeda was not active in Iraq before the war. So what could have possibly led Cheney to do such an incredible flip-flop if not political expediency?

I hope John Edwards uses this in the debate!

Mushroom clouds and aluminum tubes

"I knew that there was a dispute," she said. "I actually didn't really know the nature of the dispute."

That is how Condoleezza Rice sums up the process by which she determined that Iraq was using aluminum tubes it was acquiring to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. So Rice, Bush’s National Security Advisor, knew there was a dispute among intelligence officials on the matter, but didn’t bother to find out what it was all about.

Instead, Rice went on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002 and warned that we had to invade Iraq or risk a nuclear holocaust:

"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

But now, as this exhaustive New York Times story details, it was clear long before the start of the Iraq war that those aluminum tubes were intended for use for small artillery rockets, not nuclear centrifuges.

The dispute that Rice refers to involved one junior-level CIA analyst on one side, and all the government’s foremost nuclear experts on the other side.
And yet, the Bush administration championed the shaky and ultimately incorrect analysis of the one junior CIA analyst over all the other expert opinions because it fit neatly with their predetermined conclusions. The case against the tubes for nukes theory was devastating long before the Bush administration latched onto it to lead our country to war. Just read the NYTimes story. The only question that remains is whether the Bush officials were grossly ignorant or grossly deceptive.

As I have noted here before, the Bush administration’s blind adherence to ideology over science is one of the chief reasons why it is imperative that they not be granted four more years to mislead this nation down the wrong path.

Two can play at that game

I was both flummoxed and appalled when I saw this ridiculous story circulating on the Internet via the Drudge Report.
It just shows how desperate the right-wing is to excuse Bush’s pathetic debate performance that they would show pictures of Kerry taking a pen out of his pocket and claim he is getting a “cheat sheet.” I’m sorry, but Kerry is not the one who needs a cheat sheet in these debates.

Now today, I see the liberal bloggers are striking back raising questions
about whether or not Bush was using an earpiece to have his answers fed to him during the debate. Their suspicion centers on a point in the debate where Bush suddenly barked out “Let me finish” when no one was interrupting him.
Digby notes that such a statement is an intimidation tactic that Bush commonly uses to restrain the press. I had noticed it in the interview I did with Bush in 1994 so it is obviously nothing new. But it was strange to hear him say it in the middle of the debate when he still had plenty of time left and no one was trying to cut him off.

Now I think the earpiece thing is kind of a stretch, although I wouldn’t put anything past Karl Rove. But you have to think that if he actually did have help during the debate, it wasn’t very good. Did the person feeding Bush his lines stammer and stutter and repeat themselves as much as Bush did?

Unchallenged assertions

Bush has been back on the campaign trail after getting his clock cleaned in the first round of debates. A new Newsweek poll – the first post-debate poll released – now has Kerry up 49 to 46 after having Bush ahead by 13 points after the Republican convention.

Republican talk radio yakkers have their new marching orders now and are claiming that Bush actually won on substance if not on style, which is simply ridiculous. One local Rush Limbaugh clone was on the other day saying that Bush sounded so much better the day after on the campaign stump than he did during the debates. Well, of course he does. That’s because he doesn’t have someone standing next to him who will counter and knock down each of his flimsy, unsupported arguments. That’s why Rush Limbaugh can sound so authoritative. Because he never has to answer to anyone for his lies and distortions and he never has to defend his statements. If you had Rush Limbaugh on at the same time with Al Franken you would see a much more reserved and deflated blowhard because he couldn’t get away with spouting off so many unchallenged assertions.

A good example is this canard about Kerry voting against funding for the troops. The Bush campaign repeats this charge over and over simply because Kerry voted against the fiscally-irresponsible Republican-version of the funding bill. What they neglect to say is that there was a Democratic version that would have paid for the war by temporarily removing Bush’s tax cuts for those making more than $400,000 per year. This measure failed after Bush threatened to veto it. So you could make the exact same charge against Bush that they are making against Kerry. He threatened to veto funding for our troops after sending them into harms way!

Seriously, what would have happened if Kerry’s no vote on the Republican-backed funding bill had prevailed? Would it have meant that our troops would have gotten no funding? Of course not! The issue was never about whether to fund the troops or even about how much to send. It was about how to pay for it. The Republican plan simply charges the whole thing on the government credit card so that our children and grandchildren will end up paying for it rather than us.

Another example was in a speech today in Columbus, Ohio, where Bush was talking about his plans to privatize Social Security. Bush said "(Kerry)'s decided to put his faith in the wisdom of the government. I will always put my faith in the wisdom of the American people."

Well, that certainly sounds good. Too bad it is complete nonsense. Last I checked, we were still a government of the people, by the people and for the people. What Bush is really saying is that he puts his faith into private corporations which don’t want to be accountable to the government or the American people.

Taking Social Security out of the control of government and handing it over to private entities is essentially taking the control away from the American people. It is a monumentally stupid idea, especially in light of all of the recent corporate scandals and bankruptcies.
Bush should not be allowed to pretend that he is some kind of down home populist while pushing an agenda that is so diametrically opposed to those same ideals.

Round 1: Advantage Kerry

You know the debate went badly for Bush when even his most ardent supporters are unwilling to make the claim that he won.
I guess the fallback position when you know your candidate lost is to claim that it was a tie. That is the argument that Beldar and Owen at Boots & Sabers gamely try to make.
Daily Kos also has a long list of conservative bloggers who admit that their guy pretty much blew it.

The insta-polls all support what should have been obvious to anybody watching the debate last night. Kerry won the debate hands down and not because he turned in a spectacular performance. He did as well as I would have expected for someone with his background and experience. It was the awful performance by Bush that clearly made the difference.

Bush looked like a malfunctioning automaton at Disneyworld, repeating the same stock phrases over and over again.
I mean, what can you make of a statement like this...

“In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard.
It's-and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work.
We're making progress. It is hard work.
You know my hardest, the hardest part of the job is to know that I committed the troops in harm's way...”

As one snarky blogger noted in response: "Thinking and speaking is hard work Jim, very hard work, hard, hard, hard work."

Bush kept harping on Kerry’s statement that Iraq is the “wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I thought Kerry answered the charge well the first of the 15 times Bush said it, but what I really wanted to hear Kerry say - and he was obviously too polite to do so - was ask what message it sends to our troops to have their commander-in-chief stand up and taunt the enemy by telling them to “Bring it on!” That was perhaps the most irresponsible and regrettable statement ever made by a U.S. president.

I thought one of Kerry’s best lines was when he said that his message for the troops is that “Help is on the way.” Bush’s arrogance and his diplomatic incompetence has placed 90 percent of the burden of reforming post-war Iraq on the U.S. Kerry is our best hope for changing that imbalance.

The media pundits are all claiming that there was no major gaffe during the debate and thus no knockout punch, which I assume is defined today as Lloyd Bentsen decimating Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debates. But my impression is that Bush’s weak performance was the equivalent of one big long gaffe. To have a sitting president who can’t seem to think on his feet and must constantly refer back to campaign slogans and catch phrases is at best embarrasing and at worst is scary.

The best review I have seen of the debate so far is from Tom Shales of the Washington Post.

John Kerry came off as more presidential than the president last night as the two candidates met for their first face-to-face debate, televised live on all the networks from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. President Bush did not appear to have a firm grasp on the major issues being discussed, opting instead for the repetition of sloganlike remarks and repeated attacks on his Democratic challenger.

An interview with George W. Bush - circa 1994

The following is an interview I conducted with George W. Bush on April 7, 1994 when I was a reporter for the Kerrville Daily Times and he was running for governor the first time against Ann Richards. I recorded the interview and transcribed it in entirety shortly afterwards. Excerpts from the interview ran in the next day's paper.
I never got to interview Ann Richards as there wasn't much point in her campaigning in solidly Republican Kerrville which boasted the highest percentage of Republican voters in the state.
There is nothing scandalous or inflammatory in the interview. If you don't like Bush or if you disagree with his politics you can probably find something he says that will irritate you. But overall it is a good example of his standard campaign spiel from that period.

I am posting this now mostly for its historical significance but also because the debates are focusing a lot of attention on Bush's speaking style. Some have even questioned whether his frequent misstatements and fumbling over big words is a relatively recent phenomena or if it is just getting more attention now that he is in the White House.
My impression was that Bush was a very good politician even then. He was very personable and had a folksy, good-old-boy style that made him easy to like. He was also very confident and very focused on getting his message out, as you can see from the interview.

My questions and comments are in bold while Bush's are in regular type.


Kerrville Daily Times
April 7, 1994

What qualifications or experience do you have to serve as governor?

I am a business person, I run a fairly significant business, a sports business - Texas Rangers baseball team - which is a business, it's got over $70 million of revenue. I started and founded several energy companies based in Midland, Texas in the past.
Understand that I am a capitalist and my beliefs in capitalism stem from actual experience, having met a payroll. I know what it means to set realistic goals and hold people accountable for achieving these goals.
I have just ended up seeing to it that the greatest baseball park ever is built in Texas, a public-private partnership between Arlington and the Texas Rangers. That was done because of a vision, a sense of daring and an ability to attract good people. A lot of credit goes to a lot of people other than me, but they were put in place by the partnership which I run.
I'm a dad. I’ve got 12-year-old twin daughters. Every community I have lived in I have contributed to my community. I ran the United Way fund raising drive, I’ve spearheaded church fundraising drives, I've been involved in the governance of different private non-profit organizations that help make people’s lives better.
And you say what is the relevance of that? The relevance is that I realize that governments can't provide love. Love has to come from grassroots organizations, the wellspring of good and decent honorable people willing to volunteer to help make others’ lives better.
I also have a philosophy - a set of core beliefs that are essential if one is to be a good governor. I’m a capitalist. I know that governments don’t create jobs. Small business people and entrepreneurs are the backbone of job creation in Texas, so all government policy has got to understand that. I believe in the marketplace. I believe in individual accountability and individual responsibility and all public policy has got to understand that. I believe in open and honest government. That is why, for example, I have taken the current governor and people in Austin to task on the lottery. Everybody thought the lottery was going to go strictly for public education and it didn't. All government has got to be open and honest.

I guess this kind of leads into my second question...

I'm not through yet. Family is very important. And finally results, we ought to have a results oriented government. Have you achieved your results, have you done what you said you would do not only at the political level but at the bureaucratic level. Now you can ask your second question.

Since most people know you as the son of the former president...

No, most people know me as the owner of the Texas Rangers, but go ahead.

Okay, but as far as your political views, people are more familiar with his views than with yours, so how then would you distinguish yourself and how are your views similar to or different from his?

I don’t care about distinguishing my views from him. I care about distinguishing my views from Ann Richards. She is the liberal in the race and I am the conservative in the race. People will get to know me over the course of this, that is what this is about, me talking to you and me standing in front of 165 Kerrville residents at nine in the morning and then fixing to go meet with all kinds of education officials. Part of a campaign is for people to get to know what I am about. I don’t care and people shouldn’t care about the differences between me and my dad, they should care about the differences between me and Gov. Ann Richards.
Let me point out some of those differences for you: I'm for welfare reform, she's not. She hasn't said a word about it in four years. I'm for rewriting the family code so that we have a tough juvenile justice code. She hasn't done anything. I'm against the Ruiz decision which runs our federal prison system, that allows the federal government to run our prisons. I'm against that settlement, she's for it. I'm for total local control of schools. She is for granting TEA (Texas Education Agency) waivers to school districts which means there are no local controls, it's top-down controls. I was against “Robin Hood,” she was for “Robin Hood.”

On education, is one of your proposals to abolish the TEA?

No, it is less control for the TEA. I never said to abolish TEA. There are some functions for TEA. The TEA should be around to certify teachers, to distribute federal monies and to administer a measuring system. What I have said is that the TEA’s ability to regulate districts ought to be diminished. People ought to be allowed to design the programs that best suit the local needs so I have developed what is called “home rule education districts.” A voluntary program and in a nutshell it allows a district to become free from state control, so long as one doesn’t escape funding. Obviously, it doesn’t escape the federal laws on segregation and matters such as that. And finally, the district must show improvement towards a standard of excellence. We define what their goals are, and the district must show improvement toward those goals. So there is a measurement function. You can't just exist out there without the state understanding that you are achieving the results we expect, which is excellence.

If you are elected, how will you go about implementing your goals, especially if the Legislature remains Democratic?

Texas, in my opinion, has not been led in four years. There has been no agenda set by the governor, she hasn’t even submitted a budget. In my opinion, step one is for the governor to lead, particularly one that just won election. People will say why did you win, George? How could you have beaten someone who was supposedly unbeatable? By the way, I am going to win. And the answer is, I'm a conservative person and so is Texas. And so one shouldn't view the legislature based on Republican or Democrat. One should view it from the philosophical perspective - conservative versus liberal. Mine will be a conservative agenda which got me elected in the first place and which most members of the Senate and House will subscribe to.
Now there are ways to utilize party as well to effect change, one is the veto. I think I will have a veto proof House. In other words, I think there will be more than 50 members of the House that will be willing to support a Governor Bush agenda. And secondly is in the senate I will have over a third of the senate members allows for there to be some leverage on how bills work their way through the senate.

One of the concerns in the Kerr community is quality of drinking water and protecting the Guadalupe River. So what views do you have on environmental issues?

I am absolutely a clean water person, but I do believe it is best controlled by local citizenry. Here is my biggest concern, that the environmental pendulum will swing so far to the left that property rights will be violated and industry will be shut down. But I share the goals of clean water. Take for example the endangered species act - great concept - the problem is when it is extended all across the board to every kind of little critter, mankind suffers. So the pendulum in my opinion has a tendency to swing too far to the left on environmental issues and I want it to be a balanced approach where both man, nature and industry can coexist. But I am a clean water guy.
Is there a specific instance that has recently caused people alarm over their water?

There are issues here that come up constantly, one example is the UGRA (Upper Guadalupe River Authority) wants to put in various management plans such as now they want to put in a moratorium on building in the watershed.

I think those issues should be decided locally.

Should a body like UGRA be the entity that would have ultimate authority or could a local group override their decision?

There are some common, obviously if something up the river effects Kerr County, that is where the authority should come in when it crosses jurisdictional boundaries. It depends on the issue. There are some issues that should remain local. Take the Edwards Aquifer issue for example, nothing wrong with getting the ball started at the state level. It should not be run by the federal government. The state ought to put and it has put in place the mechanism for local entities to decide their future and their fate. Take for example the Ogallala Aquifer, the South Plains Cooperative manages the Ogallala Aquifer, that is a cooperative across county lines, so in some instances it makes sense to have a larger regulatory authority - generally locally driven to help Kerr county and surrounding counties to achieve common goals. But my point is it should not be driven, and the tendency in environmental matters is that the federal government runs it. And that is wrong in my opinion.

In your business activities now is most of your time with the Texas Rangers or are you still on the boards of Harken Energy Co.?

No, I'm not on Harken.

You are not on that, or affiliated with them at all?

No. Tom Brown, I'm on its board, an oil and gas company. But being on the board of directors of a company takes very little time. I mean its quarterly meeting so that is four days out of a year. So to answer your question, I am spending most of my time campaigning but if it weren’t campaigning it would be the Texas Rangers as my sole, my main employer, where I spend my time on the job.

What should be done about the supercollider?

Bill Clinton failed. He has got a majority in the Senate and a majority in the House and they run the White House and they failed. What I will ask in this campaign as it progresses is - Governor, how come you didn’t get your president, your buddy, to get it passed for Texas and the country?

But what would you propose doing once you are governor?

I would propose having it pass in the first place. Now that I’m in I will at least collect the money that the state is owed, $600 million.

Through a suit against the federal government?

Absolutely, whatever it takes to get the money back. We are owed the money and I would be curious to see, but this is a federally run project. The best the state can do now that it has failed is to begin filling it in. I think it was a bad mistake.

Juvenile justice has been an issue here. We have a private company - Recor - that recently sealed a contract to build a facility in Kerr County. Do you have thoughts on private...

Yes, absolutely. I'm for competition and if they can do it better that the state can then you bet. I'm assuming the officials here in Kerr County decided that they could do it better than the state or the county could do it. So I think it's great, I applaud it.
But Kerr County residents have got to understand that nothing has been done from the state perspective on juvenile justice for four years, actually for a long time. We live with an antiquated juvenile justice code in which the word ‘punishment’ does never appear.
The whole concept is let us try to rehabilitate rather than punish, and I believe so much of criminal behavior is a result of people not having risk clarified in their mind. The risk must outweigh the rewards of committing a crime. And that is clearly not the case with our children today.
So I propose a plan that is exhaustive in thought put together by a whole bunch people that are very much involved in juvenile justice which essentially says we are going to hold you accountable for what you do, young person. If you choose crime we are going to bust you for it, because we want it clear in people's minds that criminal behavior is not acceptable in society. There is a difference between the governor and me.


Following our formal interview, Bush and I had the following exchange which I also recorded.

I want to thank you for your interest. I appreciate it. How long have you been here?

About 8 months.

Great, where'd you come from?

Oh, I grew up in South Texas and went to school at A&M and then went up to Connecticut for about three years.

Really, what were you doing there?


My wife was working for Bristol-Myers. She is a chemist.

Fabulous! What city did you live in?

Branford, right next to New Haven

Yeah, I went to Yale.

Yeah, I knew that.

So I’m kind of familiar with Branford. New Haven is a little bit of a disaster zone. It’s not a very pleasant place, is it?

I enjoyed it while we were there. It was a lot of fun.

Would you like to raise your children there?

Well, I know a lot of people that do.

I don’t mean in Branford. I meant in New Haven, so...

Oh

Yale is locked up. Yale is under siege it looks like. When I went there it was a wonderful pastoral kind of setting in the early '70s. No locks on the gates. It looks like its a war zone now.

Thanks, good to meet you. Come over to the George Bush Library at A&M sometime.

Do presidents ever lie?

My small cadre of readers have called me to task for the previous post in which I accuse President Bush of telling a lie.
I guess it depends on what the definition of a lie is. If the president says:

"We'll make sure the children's health care program for low-income families
is expanded and families take advantage of that."

Like he did the other day in a speech at the Midwest Livestock and Expo Center in
Springfield, Ohio, is it a lie if the children's healthcare program contracts rather than expands as a result of his policies?

If the president says:

"We will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government's health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need."

As he did in his convention speech, is it a lie when the state officials, budget analysts and children's advocates discover that there actually is no new money set aside for the children's health insurance program?

If the president says he is going to give children's health programs $1 billion with one hand, but takes away $1 billion with the other hand, is he lying or is he just being disingenuous?

Maybe president's are like the Vulcans in Star Trek - incapable of telling a lie, but they can always exaggerate. Maybe Bush was just exaggerating how much he was planning to give the CHIP program by about a billion or so.

This study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities spells out the whole history of the CHIP program and explains how and why the $1 billion surplus came into being and how if the Congress does not pass legislation (that Bush opposes) by Sept. 30 it is going to go away for good.The original $40 billion over 10 years will suddenly turn into $38.8 billion over 10 years. And, as the study details, even the full $40 billion isn't going to be enough as medical costs continue to spiral out of control.

Leaving lots of children behind

President Bush lied. Again. That's about the only thing that can be concluded from this story.

In his convention address in New York, President Bush announced a new $1 billion initiative to enroll "millions of poor children" in two popular government health programs. But next week, the Bush administration plans to return $1.1 billion in unspent children's health funds to the U.S. Treasury, making his convention promise a financial wash at best.

The loss of $1.1 billion in federal money means six states participating in the State Children's Health Insurance Program face budget shortfalls in 2005; it is enough money to provide health coverage for 750,000 uninsured youngsters nationwide...

I guess they have to pay for those tax cuts somehow.

The Bush economy keeps chugging right along

Remember, it's the economy, stupid!

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The index of leading U.S. economic indicators fell for a third consecutive month in August, suggesting slower economic growth ahead amid rising crude oil prices, a private group said...

Crude oil prices reached a record in August and job growth slowed from earlier this year, restraining incomes, consumer confidence and the appetite to spend...

Wage increases over the past year have failed to keep up with inflation. Average hourly wages for production and non-supervisory workers, which account for about 80 percent of the workforce, were up 2.3 percent for the 12 months ended in August, according to figures from the Labor Department. Consumer prices rose 2.7 percent over the same period...

The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose to 350,000 last week, the Labor Department said in a separate report, linking most of the increase to Hurricanes Charley and Frances.

How much evidence do we need that Bush doesn't have a clue about how to fix the economy? He does know how to get oil prices up, however.

High oil prices played a part in the second-quarter soft patch and continue to be a factor in the economy...

Crude oil prices averaged $44.88 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, compared with $30.99 a year earlier...
Oil prices could top $60 a barrel by the summer of 2005, said Wachovia Corp. economist Jason Schenker in a report issued yesterday.

Partisan hurricanes?

Partisan hurricanes?
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

This is pretty funny.

The hurricanes that struck Florida this year have all conveniently avoided counties that went for Gore in 2000.

I think Pat Robertson should be worried.

Offensive liberal caricatures

Prickly City 9-23-04
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

So what is a liberal anyway? There are all of these caricatures and stereotypes of liberals constantly being bantered about in editorial cartoons, letters to the editor, talk radio, etc.
Often times it is the aging Hippie with his hair pulled back in a ponytail, usually wearing round glasses and dressed in either tie dyes or an outdated suit jacket (in the case of academic types). But these images are beginning to be a bit old as the Boomer generation nears retirement.
I guess the thing that offends me the most is the implication that a person with liberal political beliefs also has bad values in their personal life.
An example is this recent Prickly City comic strip - the newest right-wing political comic picked up by the San Antonio Express-News (Comic balance is currently 4-1 with Prickly City, Mallard Fillmore, Nacho Guarche and B.C. on the right and just Doonesbury on the left.)
The strip features a little girl and a young coyote who constantly make right-wing observations and take pot-shots at Democrats and liberals. The strip from Sept. 21 was particularly offensive. It has a grotesque man carrying a bottle of booze and smoking a cigarette making a pass at the little girl and revealing that he is a sexual offender. He then shouts out an anti-Bush profanity, barfs on everything and then passes out. The "punchline" is that he represents the typical Hollywood liberal.
The fact that the author tries to equate drunkeness, slovenliness, smoking, sexual perversion and profanity with liberalism is both outrageous and highly offensive. Whenever I think of a Hollywood liberal I imagine someone like Paul Newman (who actually lives in Connecticut) who launched the Newman's Own food line and gives all the profits away to charity. When I lived and worked in Connecticut many years ago I got to see firsthand the beneficial results of Newman's philanthropy.
But still this gross caricature persists in the minds of many conservatives. No wonder they find it so easy to despise liberals.
But the only problem is that I don't fit that description (and neither do most liberals I know). While I have some very strong liberal political beliefs, I am probably more conservative in most of my personal habits than most conservatives I meet.

I don't smoke.
I don't drink alcohol.
I have never taken drugs.
I don't use profanity.
I don't gamble.
I've been happily married for 14 years.
I go to church regularly (Methodist).
I wear my hair relatively short and dress in slacks and a tie when I go to work.
I drive a Ford F150 pickup truck.

So what is it about me that makes me a liberal? Is it the fact that I don't openly condemn people who don't mirror my personal habits? Is it because I am too forgiving of other people's faults? Or is it because I want the government to tax all my conservative friends into the poor house and give all their money away to welfare cheats and roustabouts? (Just kidding!)

More on this later...

A correction

Mark Harden notes in the comments on the last post that in light of the CBS admission that they cannot authenticate the memos they used for their 60 Minutes story last week I now have a statement on this blog that is no longer supported by the evidence at hand.

"...this blog still has a post online, without correction or update, which states that President Bush disobeyed a direct order while serving in the National Guard. That little tidbit of slime has only one source: the forged memos which even CBS now admits are fraudulent."

Mark is correct, in part. I still believe that Bush demonstratably disobeyed an order to partake in a flight physical in 1972, but I can no longer say for certain that he disobeyed a "direct order" to that effect. The fact is that it was a "requirement" of the National Guard at the time that all pilots submit to a flight physical every year. That is what is called a general order.

When I was in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M it was a requirement that I be up each morning by 6:30 and out on the quadrangle with my outfit for morning formation before marching to breakfast. I suppose Cadet George W. Bush probably would have lounged around in bed all morning until some upper classman came and gave him a "direct order" to get up, but the rest of us required no such special encouragement (nor did we want it).

Since Bush failed to take a flight physical in '72 we have to assume that at minimum he disobeyed a general order. There is no evidence that he had special permission to skip the physical requirement. It is still possible that he also disobeyed a direct order, but we do not have documented proof as such. Ruth Knox, Col. Killian's secretary, says she remembers typing up memos that said as much, but since they have apparently been "cleansed" from Bush's files there is no way to verify it.

I stand corrected.

Who is the bigger dupe: Dan Rather or George W. Bush?

Bush apologists are now demanding a retraction and an apology from CBS News and Dan Rather over the apparently forged National Guard documents. CBS was apparently duped into running a story on 60 Minutes II that was based on the bogus memos.

Well, get in line folks. I’m still waiting on a retraction and an apology from the Bush administration for taking us to war based on phony information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The chief U.S. weapons inspector has now formally concluded that Iraq Had No WMDs.

So which of these two instances of people being duped by bogus information is more deserving of our attention? If Dan Rather is forced to step down to atone for the mistakes at CBS, why isn’t Bush stepping down for misleading us into a war that didn’t need to happen when it did?

While the Bush-appointed head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, is finally admitting that Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction - the major reason for our headlong rush to war more than a year ago - he still insists that Hussein “left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive.”

Uh huh, sure. And Saddam also had big plans of becoming a best-selling novelist.

“Saddam Hussein spent the final weeks before the war writing a novel predicting that he would lead an underground resistance movement to victory over the Americans, rather than planning the defence of his regime...”

Maybe during the first Gulf War Saddam might have been a threat, but it is clear now that at the start of this war he was just a delusional old man who was rapidly losing control of his country.

"He lost touch with reality," said Saad Hadi, a journalist who was involved in the production of Saddam's novels. "He thought he was a god who could do anything, including writing novels."

So Bush was duped into taking us into an ill advised war against a toothless old dictator who had “lost touch with reality” at the cost of more than 1,000 U.S. lives and more than $200 billion in tax dollars. And right-wingers are demanding that Dan Rather step down to salvage CBS’s credibility. What about our nation’s credibility?
 

Bush's bankrupt tax policy

My conservative sparring partner, Mark Harden, in the comments for the previous post links to an op-ed piece in the Detroit News written by Donald (I’m not a stalker) Luskin, that purports to “debunk” the notion that Bush’s tax cuts favor the rich.

Luskin, an investment banker who writes for National Review Online, argues that a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office, which produced headlines such as “Reports contend Bush tax cuts benefit rich” and “Tax Burden Shifts to the Middle,” actually shows that the overall federal income tax burden has been shifted toward the wealthy and away from lower-income earners.

Now the problem with Luskin’s piece and particularly with the way that Mark uses it to try and counter Robert’s statement -“while there have been tax cuts for the wealthy” - is that Robert is talking about all of Bush’s tax cuts as a whole and Luskin is referring strictly to income taxes alone. In fact, Luskin even admits in his piece that when you include Bush’s 2002 tax cuts which allowed for greater deductibility of capital expenses for corporations it skews the numbers very sharply in favor of the wealthy.

“Naturally, the highest-income earning taxpayers will get the bulk of this,” Luskin admits. But he then tries to excuse this by arguing that “all taxpayers enjoy the many benefits of a stronger economy...” Yeah, right. More trickle down B.S.

The problem with Bush slashing federal income taxes, besides running up the deficit, is the way it shifts the tax burden on to other more regressive forms of taxation. As federal revenues dry up, there is less available to pass on to state and local governments in the form of federal grants. That forces state and local governments to jack up property taxes and sales taxes and fees and other hidden forms of taxation. State-run schools jack up tuitions, poor kids are cut from federal health programs which drives up health costs at the state-run emergency clinics. And it goes on and on.

Here is an excellent web site that details many of the problems with Bush’s tax policy. And while we are swapping op-ed pieces back and forth, here is one from The Seattle Times that I will quote extensively:

“Bush's performance is the worst for job creation in the first two years of an economic recovery and second from last in gross domestic product (GDP) growth, as compared with the eight earlier postwar recoveries from recession.

No president in the past 60 years, save George Herbert Walker Bush, has failed so miserably in his economic performance. But to see how bad President Bush's economic policies have been, we must work through the numbers. It's worth the effort.

Consider the percentage change in jobs from the bottom of each of the postwar recessions to 28 months into the recovery. Before the early 1990s, job increases averaged over 7 percent; the elder Bush gained only 2 percent; and the current recovery, as of March 2004 (the report's cutoff date), had produced no job growth.

Later information shows an increase of 1.5 million jobs in the past 10 months. It is still a tepid performance after an unprecedented postwar record of no job gains for the first two years into the recovery.

The Bush record also pales compared with Bill Clinton's average of 236,000 additional jobs per month, or 2.3 million in 10 months. Clinton's average gain per month is 50 percent greater than the average of Bush's gains in the past 10 months.

Finally, Stephen Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley, has pointed out that over four-fifths of total job growth in the past year has been in low-end occupations.”

Did you catch that? Four-fifths of the jobs that Bush is touting right now as proof that his tax cuts have helped the economy “turn the corner” are in low-end occupations. Terrific.

“In assessing Bush's performance, deleterious consequences clearly resulting from the three tax cuts also need to be taken into account. Most important was the swing from a budget surplus in 2000 of $236 billion, or 2.4 percent of GDP, to a Congressional Budget Office-projected deficit of $477 billion, or 4.2 percent of GDP, in 2004.

As Shapiro and Friedman underscored: "The swing of 6.6 percentage points of GDP is the sharpest deterioration in the nation's fiscal balance since World War II."

Despite Bush's efforts to blame the size of the deficit on the economic downturn and increased defense and homeland security spending, the authors wrote that his three tax cuts "account for more than half of the 2004 deficit."

Without the three tax cuts, the deficit in 2014 is projected to be under $100 billion. In contrast, the projection 10 years out is a whopping $675 billion with the Bush tax reductions, they said.”

In other words, while 9/11 was certainly a blow to the economy, we would likely have turned things around a lot quicker without Bush’s tax cuts dragging us down.

“Bush's three tax cuts add up to the worst major income-tax legislation in American history and are the major policy factor in the least successful economic performance of the postwar years.

Nor is the poor performance a mystery. The Bush administration has refused to abandon an economic theory that did not pan out. The largest three-year tax cut in the nation's history produced record yearly budget deficits, but failed to generate lots of good jobs or high economic growth.

The bottom line is that Bush refuses to accept the hard facts showing the failed policy performance and instead relies with blind stubbornness on a bankrupt economic theory that threatens to bankrupt the nation.”

I’ve said before that Bush is an ideologue. He governs by blind faith. Faith in failed ideas that have resulted in a failed presidency.

The “Bush Bash” lessons

My friend Michael Gaffney says a pox on both houses for all of the negative mudslinging in the presidential campaign. I can’t blame him for turning away in disgust. This election has gone downhill rather rapidly and I’ve been just as guilty as anyone of following it down that path.

But I would just say that the fault lies less with the politicians and more with the electorate which has allowed itself to be swayed by negative campaigns over the years. The voters (those that bother to vote) have a habit of awarding election victories to whoever manages to slam their opponent the hardest. It doesn’t pay anymore to sit back and take the high road while your opponent trashes your character - just ask Michael Dukakis.

George W. Bush learned that lesson a long time ago when he made his unsuccessful bid for a congressional seat from Lubbock in 1978. He got slammed by his opponent after one of his supporters ran an ad in the Texas Tech newspaper touting a “Bush Bash” fundraiser featuring “Free Beer-Music”.
I wrote about the incident several years ago when I was a reporter for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal...

“...Bush would run into one more stumbling block before crossing the finish line in November. The infamous ''Bush Bash'' ad that appeared in the University Daily, Tech's student newspaper, on Sept. 18, 1978, became prime fodder for a last-minute counterattack by Hance's campaign. The ad invited students to attend a ''Bush Bash'' that evening with ''free beer-music'' at the home of former Lubbock Mayor Jim Granberry.

Just as the race was winding down, George Thompson, one of Hance's law partners, penned a letter to 4,000 Church of Christ and First Baptist Church members that called into question Bush's moral character for using alcohol to garner the support of Tech students.

The letter extolled Hance as a person of high moral character and then went on to state ''Kent's opponent, young Mr. Bush, apparently is using tactics to secure votes which do not indicate the same high character. Mr. Bush has used some of his vast sums of money in an attempt, evidently, to persuade young college students to vote for and support him by offering free alcohol to them.''

Bush called the letter questioning his morals ''unfair'' and said he did not know about the ad in the student newspaper before it was published.

Today, Hance said he does not believe the ''Bush Bash'' was a factor in his election victory. He said his polling at the time did not show any significant change before and after the issue went public.

''I really think that Mahon's endorsement of me was a bigger help than the one-day story on the beer bash.''

But Bush supporters from that period remember the issue as being much more damaging.

''I wouldn't say it killed it for him, but it didn't help him any,'' Stinnett said. ''I think it hurt him with those particular church groups.''

''My sense is that it was overstated,'' Weiss said. ''But it didn't help things. The letter to The A-J about how improper it was really hurt.''

Today, Bush and his surrogates are quick to attack on the “character” issue and all of its implications. And Democrats, not willing to be the good guys who finish last, are ready to respond in kind. So we get campaigns that focus on “character” issues like the Swift Boat allegations and the National Guard follies. To be fair, the “official” campaigns don’t focus on these things, but their surrogates do and so does the national media.

Now I tend to be very pragmatic about these kinds of things. If this is the way you have to win elections these days then that’s what you have to do until someone can come up with a way to make it better. We can tut-tut about it all day long, but this is the reality we are faced with.

Bush: A disciplinary problem for the National Guard

The latest documents to suddenly surface about George W. Bush’s National Guard service make it clear that Bush did not quit flying jets in 1972 at the behest of or with the support of his commanding officers, as the administration has implied. Rather he was “suspended” after flatly refusing
to carry out a direct order to undertake a medical examination.

“President Bush failed to carry out a direct order from his superior in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1972 to undertake a medical examination that was necessary for him to remain a qualified pilot, according to documents made public yesterday.”

Furthermore, the documents show that Bush’s commanding officer was under some type of political pressure to “sugar coat” Bush’s evaluation during the time that he was skipping drills and blowing off direct orders.

“In another "memo to file," dated Aug. 18, 1973, (Lt. Col. Jerry) Killian complained that he was under pressure from his superior, Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, to "sugar coat" Bush's officer evaluations.”

We still don’t know why Bush was so intent on avoiding a medical examination back then.

All of this comes on the heels of a Boston Globe story that reveals that Bush failed to meet his committments to the National Guard.

“...Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service -- first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School -- Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty. He didn't meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show.”

Kevin Drum of Political Animal is right when he notes the ‘night and day’ differences between this story and the Swift Boat controversy:

“This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy. Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but the documentary evidence in the two cases is like night and day. In the Swift Boat case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying. Conversely, in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true.”

As I have said before, the difference between Bush and Kerry is that while Kerry’s superior officers were recommending him for medals (even though some are now denigrating those same medals for political purposes), Bush’s superior officers were wondering where the hell he was half the time.

Kerry was an asset to the military. Bush was a disciplinary problem.

Republican incompetence

Republicans control every branch of the federal government. They control the White House and the Executive Branch, they control both the House and Senate in the Legislative Branch and they have seven of the nine seats on the Supreme Court appointed by Republicans.

And yet they are so incompetent when it comes to running the government that they have allowed unfinished bills to pile up in Congress with no prayer of passage before the year is out. This is causing some major headaches for some small business owners as illustrated in a story in the Sept. 7 Wall Street Journal, page A4. The story tells about a CEO of a shoe company in Wisconsin who has seen his import duties more than double to 19 percent this summer as Congressional leaders have dithered with tax changes needed to comply with international trade rules.

The story goes on to show the huge backlog of legislation facing lawmakers:

“As lawmakers return from their national conventions, the pile of unfinished bills - and warnings from frustrated voters - is mounting. No budget has been approved for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, and only one of 13 annual appropriation bills has been enacted (Defense). Amid high oil prices, energy legislation is stalled, and an entire construction season has passed without action on highway funding.”

Of course, the Republicans are trying to blame this on Democrats, but the WSJ story is quick to dismiss this nonsense as just “a calculated strategy to motivate conservative voters...”

“The majority (Republicans) has become so unyielding at times that it seems more devoted to tagging Democrats with the obstructionist label than to getting legislation passed. Bills have been abandoned rather than let Democrats have the votes on amendments they demand, such as on minimum-wage increases or rules protecting workers’ rights to overtime.”

Republicans feuding and turf battles are the real culprit. That and the general incompetence of Republicans in government.

“The complaints about Democrats ignore the fact that internal Republican differences also cause delays...
The Highway Bill, for example, is hung up in a dispute between Republican Senators and the White House over its cost. In the energy debate, oil-state Republicans, led by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, are in a dispute with Northeastern Republican Senators such as Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.”

These are the same Republicans who have squandered the record surpluses left by the Clinton administration and left us with a record $422 billion deficit.

So what do Republican leaders plan to do during the final months of the year with all this critical work still left undone? Well let’s see.... Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist wants to vote on a Constitutional amendment to ban flag burning for the umpteenth time, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is pushing to bring up a vote on a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Bush's missing National Guard records

The AP has a story explaining
how there should have been at least five documents produced by the National Guard when Bush blew off his flight physical in 1972:

“Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.
For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.
No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.”
How convenient for President Bush that these documents either can’t be found or were never produced. Kevin Drum has looked at this issue
in depth and has interviewed a former National Guardsman who claims Bush’s military service records were “cleansed” before he ran for governor of Texas.

Of the five missing documents, this is the one I think is the most important:
--Records of a required investigation into why Bush lost flight status. When Bush skipped his 1972 physical, regulations required his Texas commanders to "direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination," according to the Air Force manual at the time. An investigative report was supposed to be forwarded "with the command recommendation" to Air Force officials "for final determination."
Bush's spokesmen have said he skipped the exam because he knew he would be doing desk duty in Alabama. But Bush was required to take the physical by the end of July 1972, more than a month before he won final approval to train in Alabama.
I would like to know how common it was back then for Guardsmen to blow off their physicals and what happened in any of those other cases. It would seem like a great way to avoid service in Vietnam – Join the National Guard and then blow off you required medical exam so that you are grounded and would not be able to join your unit should they be activated for duty. The only question is how Bush was able to accomplish this without leaving any type of paper trail.

Feeling down

I watched Bush's speech last night (some of it anyway) and today I was sick. A coincidence? Perhaps.
Actually my wife and son got sick earlier in the week so I was just the last one on the merry-go-round. Even my cat got sick this time.
My computer also got nailed by a bunch of spyware junk that made pop-up ads blossom out of control to the point where you couldn't do anything.
My friend Robert helped me find some free shareware program - AdAware SE - that fixed the problem.

The Scowl

Zell Miller
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Wow! That had to be the angriest, most hatefull vindictive speech ever given in prime time. The scowl never left Miller's face.

What a contrast when compared to the keynote speech at the Democratic convention given by Barak Obama.

Here is Howard Kurtz talking about the speech in the Washington Post:

â??The former keynoter at the '92 Democratic convention totally overshadowed the vice president of the United States. He looked really hostile -- even if you turned the sound off -- as he eviscerated Kerry. No flicker of a smile ever crossed his lips.â??

He then goes on to list the reaction from some other folks:

"I've never heard such an angry speech," said Bill Schneider of CNN, even angrier, he said, than Pat Buchanan's "culture war" address in '92.â??

"I don't think I've ever seen anything as angry and ugly as Miller's speech," said Joe Klein.

The Wall Street Journal's John Harwood said Miller "looked like a spouse at a divorce proceeding who says, 'Oh yeah, she's a child molester too.' "

And here is conservative blogger Andrew Sullivanâ??s take:

"Miller's address will, I think, go down as a critical moment in this campaign, and maybe in the history of the Republican party. I kept thinking of the contrast with the Democrats' keynote speaker, Barack Obama, a post-racial, smiling, expansive young American, speaking about national unity and uplift.
"Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats.
"Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric. As an immigrant to this country and as someone who has been to many Southern states and enjoyed astonishing hospitality and warmth and sophistication, I long dismissed some of the Northern stereotypes about the South. But Miller did his best to revive them. The man's speech was not merely crude; it added whole universes to the word crude. . . .
"Last night was therefore a revealing night for me. I watched a Democrat convince me that I could never be a Republican. If they wheel out lying, angry bigots like this as their keynote, I'll take Obama. Any day."

William Saletan at Slate dissects both Zell Millerâ??s screed and Cheneyâ??s more subdued but equally negative speech.

Oh, and here is what Zell had to say about John Kerry three years ago still posted on his web site.

Yes, Zell Miller lied and lied and lied. He accused Kerry of trying to disarm our military and leave them with nothing but "spitballs." But the weapons systems that Kerry opposed were also opposed in the House by then Congressman Dick Cheney. And other no votes that he referenced were not against funding the military but against bloated Republican bills that went further than what military commanders were requesting to provide pork for bigtime defense contractors.

I have to agree with Atrios. It was a big mistake to put this angry, bitter, hypocrite up there as the GOP's keynoter. They obviously have nothing positive to say. Fear and Loathing are the themes of this convention.

Booing Michael Moore

I had to laugh when I read this graph in the middle of a Washington Post story about the disruption that Michael Moore’s presence at the GOP convention caused.

“A delegate from Missouri called Moore a 'disgrace,' a few seconds after asking for his autograph.”

Yep, that autograph might be worth something someday. Those Republican delegates have their priorities straight.

I’m not sure that having the entire convention ‘boo’ Michael Moore for several minutes in the middle of John McCain’s speech was the kind of moderate, positive image that the Party was hoping to portray. Oh well, the truth comes out in the end. And of course all Moore could do was sit there and smile imagining the extra $$$ this kind of attention would generate for his film that is still in the theaters.

Moore was there at the behest of USA Today to write a guest column. They had previously asked Ann Coulter to do the same during the Democratic convention but ended up canning her and hiring someone else because her column was so bad.

Bad News Republicans

The Republicans come to town and the Yankees suffer their worst loss in the history of the franchise. 22-0 against Cleveland. Ouch!!

Compare and Contrast

Via Atrios

During the 1988 presidential campaign, there was a brief controversy concerning George Bush Sr.’s service during World War II.

Bush Sr., who was a Navy pilot, had said his airplane was in flames when it plunged to the ocean on Sept. 2, 1944, according to the New York Times. In his autobiography, Mr. Bush wrote that his Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber began burning after it was hit in an attack on a Japanese radio installation and that he ejected after radioing his gunner and radioman to jump.
But Chester Mierzejewski of Cheshire, Conn., a turret gunner on another plane in Mr. Bush's squadron, said that the plane was not engulfed in flames, as the Vice President has recounted, and that Mr. Bush might have saved the lives of two other men on the plane had he tried a water landing.

But the Democrats did not give Mierzejewski hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce television ads and books to spread his story across the media. There was no WWII Tailgunners for Truth set up by big Democratic donors to smear Bush. Instead, here was Gov. Dukakis’ reaction in the same NYTimes story:

"Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, questioned about a World War II gunner's challenge to Vice President Bush's account of being shot down over the Pacific, said, ''I don't think that kind of thing has any place in the campaign.''
The Democratic Presidential nominee said the challenge to Mr. Bush's war record was ''unfair'' and ''unfortunate.''
Mr. Bush ''served this country,'' Mr. Dukakis said. ''He served it well and with tremendous courage, and you don't fly 58 missions without enormous courage and tremendous patriotism.''

Yep, Dukakis was a class act.

Now, fast forward to today and listen to Bush Sr. commenting on the Swift Boat Veterans smear against John Kerry:

Pressed about advertisements by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Mr. Bush called "rather compelling" the claims of some veterans who have attacked Mr. Kerry's service, and he noted that others had accused these veterans of lying. "I have great confidence in Bob Dole," he added. "I don't think he'd be out there just smearing."

So what is the lesson here? Are Democrats doomed to electoral failure because they are too decent to embrace the dirty games that Republicans like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove specialize in? This is really sad.

Another celebrity endorsement update

Just in time for the opening night of the Republican National Convention, here is my updated list of celebrity endorsements for the 2004 presidential campaign. It seems I haven’t been giving Bush full credit for all of his celebrity fans as I have found quite a few that have cropped up just recently. Some, however, are rather obscure singers as noted in this Slate piece.
I can’t vouch for the fact that all of these folks are definitely supporting said candidate, but their names have popped up lately in election coverage attached to one side or the other and some are scheduled to perform at this week’s convention.

For Bush-Cheney:

Angie Harmon
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Ben Crenshaw
Bo Derek
Britney Spears
Brooks & Dunn
Bruce Willis
Charlie Daniels Band
Charlton Heston
Chuck Norris
Daize Shayne
Dana Glover
Daniel Rodriguez
Daryl Worley
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Miller
Donnie McClurkin
Freddie Prinze Jr.
Fuzzy Zoeller
Jason Priestly
Jessica Simpson
John Rhys-Davies
Johnny Ramone
Jonny Lang
Kelsey Grammer
Kid Rock
Lance Armstrong
Lara Flynn Boyle
Larry Gatlin
Leeann Womack
Lynyrd Skynryd
Michael W. Smith
Randy Travis
Ricky Martin
Ricky Schroeder
Ricky Skaggs
Rip Torn
Robert Davi
Robert Duvall
Ron Silver
Sara Evans
Shannen Doherty
Stephen Baldwin
Steven Tyler
Ted Nugent
Third Day
Toby Keith
Tom Selleck
Tony Sirico
Travis Tritt
Vincent Gallo
Wayne Newton


For Kerry-Edwards

Aaron Sorkin
Al Franken
Alan Cumming
Alec Baldwin
Alfre Woodard
Angela Bassett
Angelica Huston
Ani DiFranco
Annette Bening
Avril Lavigne
Barbara Streisand
Barry Manilow
Beastie Boys
Ben Affleck
Ben Stiller
Bette Midler
Billy Crystal
Blink 182
Bob Dylan
Bob Odenkirk
Bonnie Raitt
Bono
Brad Pitt
Bruce Springsteen
Cameron Diaz
Carole King
Charlize Theron
Cher
Chevy Chase
Chloe Sevigny
Chris Cooper
Chris Rock
Chris Tucker
Christian Slater
Christina Applegate
Christopher Reeve
Coldplay
Courtney Cox
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Danny DeVito
Danny Glover
Dave Grohl
Dave Mathews Band
David Alan Grier
David Spade
Dixie Chicks
Drew Barrymore
Dustin Hoffman
Ed Asner
Ed Begley Jr.
Ed Harris
Edward Norton
Elton John
Elvis Costello
Eminem
Emmylou Harris
Eric Idle
Esai Morales
George Carlin
George Clooney
Glenn Close
Goldie Hawn
Gwyneth Paltrow
Halle Berry
Harrison Ford
Harvey Weinstein
Ian Holm
Jack Black
Jack Nicholson
Jackson Browne
James Brolin
James Gandolfini
James Garner
James Taylor
Jamie Foxx
Jamie Lee Curtis
Janeane Garafalo
Janet Jackson
Jann Wenner
Jason Alexander
Jeff Goldblum
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Garner
Jennifer Lopez
Jerry Seinfeld
Jessica Lange
Jewel
Jimmy Buffett
Joan Allen
Joan Osborne
John Cleese
John Cusack
John Fogerty
John Leguizamo
John Mellencamp
John Sayles
John Travolta
John Williams
Johnny Depp
Jon Bon Jovi
Josh Hartnett
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Julia Roberts
Jurassic Five
Kate Hudson
Kathleen Turner
Keb Mo
Kenau Reeves
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds
Kevin Bacon
Kevin Costner
Kevin Spacey
Kirsten Dunst
Lance Bass
Larry David
Laura Dern
Lenny Kravitz
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leslie Ann Warren
Linda Ronstadt
Lisa Loeb
Liz Phair
Lou Reed
Madonna
Margaret Cho
Mark Wahlberg
Martin Sheen
Mary J. Blige
Mary Steenburgen
Matt Damon
Matthew Broderick
Maya Angelou
Meg Ryan
Melanie Griffith
Melissa Etheridge
Mia Farrow
Michael Douglas
Michael Eisner
Michael J. Fox
Michael Jackson
Michael Keaton
Mike Farrell
Moby
Morgan Fairchild
Natalie Portman
Neil Diamond
Neil Young
Nicolas Cage
Nicole Kidman
Oliver Stone
Ozzie Osborne
P. Diddy
Paul Newman
Paul Simon
Pearl Jam
Penny Marshall
Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul & Mary)
Public Enemy
Quincy Jones
REM
Renee Zellwegger
Rhea Perlman
Richard Belzer
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Gere
Richard Pryor
Rob Lowe
Rob Reiner
Robert Altman
Robert DeNiro
Robert Redford
Robin Williams
Russell Crowe
Sally Field
Salma Hayek
Sarah Jessica Parker
Scarlett Johansson
Sean Penn
Sharon Stone
Sheryl Crowe
Spike Lee
Stephen Stills
Steve Buscemi
Steve Earle
Steve Harvey
Steve Martin
Steven Spielberg
Stevie Wonder
Sting
Susan Sarandon
Ted Danson
Terry Gilliam
The Eagles
Tim Robbins
Tobey Maguire
Tom Cruise
Tom Hanks
Tom Petty
Tommy Lee Jones
Tony Bennett
Uma Thurman
Viggo Mortensen
Warren Beatty
Weird Al Yankovic
Wesley Snipes
Whoopi Goldberg
Will Ferrell
William Baldwin
William H. Macy
Willie Nelson
Woody Allen
Woody Harrelson
Wyclef Jean

Let me check with Rover, and I'll get back to you...

Has Bush finally seen the light on global warming? We’re not sure.

The New York Times
and The Washington Post are both reporting that the Bush administration has shifted its position on global warming.

From the Times: “In a striking shift in the way the Bush administration has portrayed the science of climate change, a new report to Congress focuses on federal research indicating that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades.”

From the Post: “A Bush administration report suggests that evidence of global warming has begun to affect animal and plant populations in visible ways, and that rising temperatures in North America are due in part to human activity.”

President Bush, of course, was typically clueless when asked to explain the discrepancy between this latest report and his administration’s past positions. Here is an excerpt from a NYTimes interview with Bush the other day:

Ms. Bumiller: Mr. President, why did your administration change its position on what causes global warming?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think we did.

Ms. Bumiller: According to —

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think so, Elisabeth.

Ms. Bumiller: You said that it's almost certainly carbon monoxide — which you hadn't said in the past, carbon dioxide.

THE PRESIDENT: I think that was my position during the campaign, if I'm not mistaken.

Ms. Bumiller: It changed —

MR. McCLELLAN: You're talking about the National Academy of Science report?

Ms. Bumiller: Yes, yes.

MR. McCLELLAN: We've always talked about how that would - we'd be guided by their science on the issue, and that's why the President has done a lot in terms of climate change, advancing the science of climate change, and also doing more research —

THE PRESIDENT: Let me get back with you on that, because I think you might — I don't know why you said what you just said.

Ms. Bumiller: Well, we had a story in the paper this morning saying that you issued a report saying —

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, okay, well, that's got to be true.

Press Flack Scott McClellan tried to jump in and bail Bush out with a bunch of mumbo gumbo, but it was too late.