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.