A piece of the Alamo

While we were in Chicago we had a friendly native point out an interesting feature about the Tribune Tower where the Chicago Tribune offices are located. All around the outside of the building they have collected bits of stone, brick and earth that was picked up at various famous places around the world.
There were pieces of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India, Notre Dame cathedral in France, and so forth.
Well, after a little searching we finally found the most important artifact in their collection:

Final word on the Swift Boat smear campaign

The New York Times has what should be the final word
on the slimy Swift Boat Liars for Bush story.

This comes just a day after the Washington Post exposed one of Kerry’s chief critics as a liar. Larry Thurlow, who commanded another swift boat during the incident when Kerry earned his Bronze Star, is contradicted by the military records that document his own Bronze Star that was earned on the same day. Thurlow has tried to claim that there was no enemy fire during the incident when Kerry fished James Rassmann out of the water, contradicting both Kerry and Rassmann and every other member of Kerry’s swift boat crew. Now, we find that the military records for Thurlow’s own Bronze Star make reference to enemy fire directed at all the swift boats at that time.
In response, Thurlow now makes the laughable suggestion that Kerry was responsible for writing up his commendation. How sad that this guy, who is by all rights a legitimate war hero, would stoop to defaming his own commendations in an effort to score political points against Kerry. Sad and pathetic.

But back to the NY Times piece. They start by showing the deep connections between the Swift Boat Vets group and the Bush campaign:

“Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a trustee of the foundation for Mr. Bush's father's presidential library. A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet when he and Mr. Bush's father faced off in the 1988 presidential election.”

Then they show how the leaders of the group have contradicted themselves over the years, some as recently as just a year ago:

“In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brinkley, provided by Mr. Brinkley to The New York Times, Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the group, allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said, "I am not going to say anything negative about him." He added, "He's a good man."

In a profile of the candidate that ran in The Boston Globe in June 2003, Mr. Hoffmann approvingly recalled the actions that led to Mr. Kerry's Silver Star: "It took guts, and I admire that."

George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage." At that same event, Adrian L. Lonsdale, another Vietnam veteran now speaking out against Mr. Kerry, supported him with a statement about the "bravado and courage of the young officers that ran the Swift boats."

"Senator Kerry was no exception," Mr. Lonsdale told the reporters and cameras assembled at the Charlestown Navy Yard. "He was among the finest of those Swift boat drivers."

Those comments echoed the official record. In an evaluation of Mr. Kerry in 1969, Mr. Elliott, who was one of his commanders, ranked him as "not exceeded" in 11 categories, including moral courage, judgment and decisiveness, and "one of the top few" - the second-highest distinction - in the remaining five. In written comments, he called Mr. Kerry "unsurpassed," "beyond reproach" and "the acknowledged leader in his peer group."

It sounds like the Kerry campaign could make a pretty good comercial of their own using these guys’ statements and the official record. Talk about flip-flopping!

The story goes on to relate how the Swift Boat group, with the backing of big Republican campaign donors, hired a private investigator to try and dig up dirt on Kerry’s war record. And he apparently accomplished this by misleading the people he interviewed and then misrepresenting what they said:

“Patrick Runyon, who served on a mission with Mr. Kerry, said he initially thought the caller was from a pro-Kerry group, and happily gave a statement about the night Mr. Kerry won his first Purple Heart. The investigator said he would send it to him by e-mail for his signature. Mr. Runyon said the edited version was stripped of all references to enemy combat, making it look like just another night in the Mekong Delta.

"It made it sound like I didn't believe we got any returned fire," he said. "He made it sound like it was a normal operation. It was the scariest night of my life."

The story goes on to poke further holes in the Swift Boat Vet’s allegations and by the end it is clear that their real gripe with Kerry is that he chose to protest the war after leaving Vietnam.

It is unfortunate that the group didn’t stick with that criticism instead of resorting to making false and malicious smears against Kerry’s military service. By casting aspersions on Kerry, they are also calling into question the credibility of every member of the military who served in Vietnam and received commendations. If we supposedly cannot trust the documentation for Kerry’s wartime medals (or for Thurlow’s) then can we trust any of them? I believe that we can and I find the charges being leveled by the Swift Boat Vets group to be scurrilous and denigrating to all military veterans. A truly despicable enterprise and one that George W. Bush should have denounced long ago if he had a shred of decency.

Republican congressman outs himself

U.S. Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., is coming out of the closet.
No, not that kind of closet. The closet where they stuffed all of the Republicans who didn’t agree with President Bush’s pre-emtive invasion of Iraq.

Here is what Bereuter told his constituents the other day:

”I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action," Bereuter wrote in a letter to constituents in the final days of his congressional career.
That's especially true in view of the fact that the attack was initiated "without a broad and engaged international coalition," he said.
"Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified."
As a result of the war, he said, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened.”

Wow, John Kerry couldn’t have said it better.

Bereuter is not just any old congressman either. He is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Of course, Bereuter is only saying all this on the last day of his Congressional career before he steps down to take a job in the private sector, perhaps to clear his conscience or something.

A jazzy new blog

My friend Robert Shearer has invited me to join him as co-author of a new weblog that will focus on classical music and jazz.
The new blog is called Theme and Variations and it will serve as an outlet where Robert and I can earnestly explore, espouse and express our enthusiasm for these great forms of music.
So I would entreat you to drop by and check it out on occasion as we embark on this exciting endeavor to eloquently elucidate our enjoyment of everything from Bach to Benny Goodman. OK, enough already.

The Bean

I finally figured out how to upload pictures to my personal web page provided by my ISP so now I can post them on my blog.
This is a picture of the new sculpture at Millennium Park in Chicago that I thought was so neat. They call it the Bean.






Wow, this is cool!

Mixed music

I got this idea from Rox
Populi who added me to her blogroll recently for reasons unknown to me.

I don't have an iPod or any other kind of MP3 player, but I do have iTunes
on my Mac at work and I have loaded up quite a few songs over time. It is
not by any means a comprehensive representation of my collection and right
now it has a lot of Bing Crosby and Bob Dylan. (My computer crashed a while
back and I lost all of the Beatles and Rolling Stones that I had put on it).
But for now here is what I came up with when I generated a random set of 12
songs:

"Life Could Not Better Be" - Danny Kaye
"Dust In the Wind" - Kansas
"Answer Me, My Love" - Bing Crosby
"Home on the Range" - Bing Crosby
"Ma-Ma-Ma Belle" - Electric Light Orchestra
"My Back Pages" - Bob Dylan
"Swinging On a Star" - Bing Crosby
"A Fine Romance" - Bing Crosby and Dixie Lee
"The Last Roundup" - Bing Crosby
"You're Getting To Be a Habit With Me" - Bing Crosby
"Dead Man Blues" - Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers
"Sam's Song" - Bing and Gary Crosby

I thought that was a lot of Bing Crosby, so I did it one more time and came
up with this list:

"Smoke on the Water" - Deep Purple
"Jump" - Van Halen
"Crying in the Chapel" - Elvis Presley
"I Got the Sun in the Morning" - Bing Crosby
"Hotter Than Hell" - KISS
"Are Your Lonesome Tonight" - Elvis Presley
"Oh, Lady Be Good" - Ella Fitzgerald
"The Spaniard That Blighted My Life" - Bing Crosby and Al Jolson
"Poundcake" - Van Halen
"The Jones Boys" - Bing Crosby
"Bobby Jean" - Bruce Springsteen
"Be Careful, It's My Heart" - Bing Crosby

Shifting the tax burden

Here is a news story obviously written by some liberal reporter at the Washington Post...

Tax Burden Shifts to the Middle

“Since 2001, President Bush's tax cuts have shifted federal tax payments from the richest Americans to a wide swath of middle-class families, the Congressional Budget Office has found, a conclusion likely to roil the presidential election campaign.

The CBO study, due to be released today, found that the wealthiest 20 percent, whose incomes averaged $182,700 in 2001, saw their share of federal taxes drop from 64.4 percent of total tax payments in 2001 to 63.5 percent this year. The top 1 percent, earning $1.1 million, saw their share fall to 20.1 percent of the total, from 22.2 percent.

Over that same period, taxpayers with incomes from around $51,500 to around $75,600 saw their share of federal tax payments increase. Households earning around $75,600 saw their tax burden jump the most, from 18.7 percent of all taxes to 19.5 percent.”

It is nice to know that my share of the tax burden has gone up at the same time that the country has accumulated a record budget deficit and our troops are tied down in a bloody and expensive war in the Middle East with no end in sight.
Four more years of George Bush gets scarier and scarier all the time.

Journalists and Pro Wrestlers

Ken Rodriguez, a sports writer who took over the metro column at the Express-News when Rick Casey left, today slanders all journalists by comparing them to pro wrestlers. Rodriguez claims that the media is finally revealing that it has a leftist bias and compares it to wrestlers admitting that their matches are fake and scripted.

That is quite a slap in the face from a fellow journalist who really should know better. I’ve been a journalist now for 14 years and I obviously have liberal political beliefs, but that does not mean that I am incapable of being professional in my work and writing news stories that are free of bias and opinion. I have worked in some very conservative communities for most of my career - Kerrville, Lubbock - and have never once been accused of being biased in my reporting. But obviously Rodriguez doesn’t believe this is possible. Maybe as a sports writer he is incapable of writing about a game between two teams without making it clear to the reader which of the two teams he favors. But most good reporters are capable of doing just that.

To make his case, Rodriguez points to the New York Times’ as one example. Well, yes, the NYT should be viewed as a “liberal” paper in the same way that the Wall Street Journal is viewed as a “conservative” paper. But that pertains mainly to the editorial pages and should not (and in most cases does not) make a difference for the straight news reporting which is excellent for both papers.

He also points us to a study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that showed that most journalists are more liberal than their readers. But the study does not say that the work performed by these reporters is biased. To the contrary, most liberal journalists go out of their way to avoid even the slightest hint of liberal bias (and will even add a helping of conservative bias) to avoid the scolding they would recieve from right-wing “watchdog” groups that constantly attack the media for being too liberal.

But the most interesting thing about Rodriguez’ column is who he taps to support his claim not just that reporters tend to be liberal, but that their output is biased and untrustworthy (like the phony pro wrestlers) - He looks to the conservative editorial page at the Dallas Morning News, conservative Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson and Charles Krauthammer, another conservative Washington Post columnist.

An OK film and a great film

Finally got around to seeing "Matrix Revolutions" (the third one) last week. I bought it on DVD a while back (used from Hollywood Video where I get most of my movies these days).
It wasn't as bad as I had feared, but I can see why it was such a disappointment after the first two films. Some of my biggest gripes would spoil the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it, so I will just say that when it was all over you wondered what the point of all that fighting was. How many times do we need to watch Neo and Agent Smith slam into one another at super speed?

More recently we just finished watching "Master and Commander" and that was a very good film. Definitely deserving of the Best Picture nomination that it received. Russell Crowe continues to impress with just about every film he does. Although I still think his best role was in "LA Confidential."

By the way, both films had actors who were in "Lord of the Rings." Hugo Weaving plays Agent Smith in Matrix and is also Elrond in the Rings trilogy. Billy Boyd, who played Pippin in LOTR, was one of the sailors in "Master and Commander."

The authority to wage war

I like Adam Felber's take on this charge that Kerry is supposedly flip-flopping by defending his vote to give Bush the authorization needed to wage war in Iraq.

"Let's imagine that I have a son, a little nine year-old boy. Let's name him Thaddeus, too, because there's no harm in giving imaginary kids humiliating-but-undeniably-cute names.

So one summer afternoon, little Thad comes scampering into the house, trailed by the unmistakable sound of an ice cream truck's melody. "Dad," says Thad, "Can I get some some ice cream?"

"Why, of course, Thad," I say, remembering my youth and wanting only the best for young Thaddeus. He charges outside, yelling, "Ice cream! Ice cream!" I smile fondly at his retreating form...

Outside, young Thaddeus grabs a baseball bat, a sturdy Louisville Slugger, runs to the ice cream truck, and assaults the ice cream man. He beats him bloody, renders him unconscious, and ties him up in the back of the truck. Thad takes the ice cream truck for a 2 hour, reckless joyride, knocking over road-signs, terrorizing the neighborhood, squashing Mrs. Abram's dog, and traumatizing several local children for life. Thad finally runs the truck over a cliff, jumping out just in time before it plummets 200 feet onto a rocky beach, sending the ice cream man and all his tempting confections to a fiery doom.

Twenty minutes later, Thaddeus comes home, munching happily on a Chocolate Swirl-Kone with sprinkles. Immediately, I lay into him, lecturing him sternly, grounding him, and venting my extreme disapproval. Thad looks at me squarely and protests, "But Dad, you said I could get ice cream."

I'm nonplussed. He's got a point. Am I a flip-flopper?"

By saying that he still would have voted to give Bush the authority to wage war even knowing what we know today, Kerry is paying Bush an undeserved compliment. He is not saying that he would have supported going to war. Just that he still believes the president should have that as an option if he deems it necessary. Kerry was willing to give Bush that authority, but Bush misused it.

I said at the time that Bush was actually aiding the U.N. inspectors by threatening force against Saddam. Unfortunately, Bush had an itchy trigger finger and failed to play to diplomacy game the way his father did. Now we are paying the price.

That's all I have to say about that...

OK, I've read about all I can stomach of this sniping about Kerry's war record.
I think it is sad that Kerry tells his story, has it backed up by all the formal military documentation that was signed by his superior officers, and it is corraborated by all the veterans who served with him on his boat and were closest to the action, and yet his political detractors still claim that he is lying.
They question the severity of his wounds that led to two of his Purple Hearts (I take it that they begrudgingly grant that he earned his second Purple Heart). But Kerry could have lost both legs and an arm like Max Cleland did and that still would not have stopped them from denigrating his service to his country.

They say that his first wound was just a scratch, but I would think that having a piece of shrapnel lodged in your arm would sting just a bit more than that. They also have someone coming forward claiming that he was the one who treated the wound even though his name is not on the medical records. That individual, Dr. Letson, says it was his assistant who signed the paperwork. But that does not make sense to have one person treat the wound and another person sign the paperwork. I don't believe him.

They claim that Kerry does not deserve either his Silver Star or his Bronze Star. In the case of the Silver Star they claim that Kerry chased down a wounded Viet Cong and shot him in the back to earn the commendation. Yet the documents make no reference to Kerry shooting anyone and instead cite his heroism in charging his boat directly at a group of Viet Cong that had ambushed them. Kerry did jump off the boat and shoot a Viet Cong who was carrying a rocket launcher and thus could have killed every man on his boat.

In questioning the Bronze Star incident they claim that there was no enemy fire when Kerry retrieved Jim Rassman who had fallen over board after the boat was struck by a mine. But that charge is in stark contrast to what Rassman says. He says he was ducking under water to dodge bullets until Kerry came to fish him out. Kerry's critics would have us believe someone who was several hundred yards away who 30-plus years later now claims that there was no enemy firing at Rassman.

I've read a lot of nitpicking on right-wing web sites that quite frankly disgust me at this point. These people have no right to be questioning these awards 30 years later when all they have is the foggy recollections of people who were not anywhere near the action as it occurred and now have a political agenda that they are serving.

They whine that Kerry hasn't released all of his military records when there are reams of paperwork available on his website at www.johnkerry.com. It is an impressively complete collection. I wish I had that much documentation on my father's service in Vietnam but I quite frankly don't know where the paperwork is or if it still exists, if it ever did. We have seen how much trouble Bush has had pulling together all of his National Guard paperwork.

And then there is this nonsense about Kerry lying about going into Cambodia around Christmas of 1968. It is well documented today that we had troops and intelligence people going into Cambodia back then even though it was not admitted at the time. It would make no sense for Kerry to make up a story like that and the fact that there is no official record of such action is not proof that it did not happen.

When Kerry came back from Vietnam he joined a group of veterans who were lobbying against the war. This is the main reason that most of the Swift Boat Vets for Bush are participating in this smear campaign. I suppose they think that if you feel that a war that is slaughtering thousands of your fellow soldiers is wrong and bad policy the best thing to do is to keep your mouth shut. I admire Kerry for standing up for what he believed was right in the face of such lock-step opposition. Kerry was a moderating influence on the protest group and eventually quit when they became too radical. The worst that can be said about Kerry is that he gave voice to some allegations of wartime atrocities that painted with too broad a brush. Kerry has admitted that he would have voiced these things differently if he had it to do over. I can forgive him for that. Others obviously can't.

The final word is that Kerry volunteered to go to Vietnam while George Bush used family connections to secure a spot in the Texas National Guard. There is evidence that Bush failed to show up for at least five months of his service in 1972 and did not take his flight physical that year which resulted in his being grounded - thus wasting all of the military training that had gone into teaching him to fly. But Bush supporters are willing to forgive him for that, which is fine.
We should look at what these two individuals will do for our country during the next four years and not obsess so much with what they did in the distant past.

Truth or Smear

This website has one of the best point-by-point rundowns of all the allegations raised by the Swift Boat Vets for Bush.

FactCheck.org is another good place to go for a thorough examination of the charges and countercharges.

I've just started reading through it all and will post more when I have time.

Ideology over science

The Bush administration has "reassigned" the senior career official in the Endangered Species Office at the Interior Department, according to The New York Times .

Gary Frazer had produced serveral scientific findings that angered his political superiors in the Fish and Wildlife Service. Ideology over science is a major theme of the Bush team. So Frazer is out.

Remember when President Clinton fired the director of the White House Travel Office? Remember the huge fuss that Republicans and the media made over that? The Frazer story was buried on page A10 today. Wow. Some liberal media we have.

Swift Boat Liars for Bush

The new ad by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is the most disgusting and despicable political attack I think I have ever seen.
The men in the ad claim to have served in Vietnam with Kerry and then question his veracity, his honor, his leadership and just about everything else. As it turns out, none of these veterans who claim to have such intimate knowledge of Kerry's service in Vietnam were actually on his boat or under his command at any time. The ones who actually did serve side by side with Kerry have all vouched for his heroism and are supporting his campaign for the presidency.

Atrios and Kos have done a lot of the heavy lifting already to expose the ads as false and malicious.
Sen. John McCain has also come out in Kerry's defense.

And it is especially galling that Republicans feel they can make points by attacking Kerry's service in Vietnam when their own guy not only avoided going to Vietnam by using family connections to secure a cushy slot in the Texas National Guard, but he didn't even bother to show up for a five-month period in 1972.

What makes me the most angry about all of this, however, is that if these people can get away with smearing Kerry by calling into question whether he truly deserved or earned his medals, then they could do the same to anyone who fought for their country and received a commendation. As I've noted before, my father was a Vietnam veteran who recieved a Silver Star for valor the same as Kerry. Everytime I hear these shameless Republican drones attack Kerry, the same way they attacked Max Cleland and John McCain, I imagine them doing the same thing to my father and it makes my blood boil.

Kerry has released all of his military records and they show glowing testaments from his commanding officers and his medals and commendations are all documented. If that is not good enough then nothing ever will be for these people.
If these veterans want to say that they don't agree with Kerry's political philosophy or his economic and foreign policies then that is fine. But saying that Kerry did not serve honorably in Vietnam and alleging that he did not deserve his medals is the lowest and slimiest political stunt I have ever seen.

"The Boss" says Vote for Kerry!

Bruce Springsteen is leading an all-star contingent of rock and rollers to stump for John Kerry this fall. The lineup is pretty impressive:

Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen and the E Street Band
REM
John Mellencamp
Dave Matthews Band
Pearl Jam
Bonnie Raitt
Jackson Browne
The Dixie Chicks
John Fogerty
James Taylor

Springsteen even wrote an The New York Times > Opinion > op-ed in the NY Times today...

“Like many others, in the aftermath of 9/11, I felt the country's unity. I don't remember anything quite like it. I supported the decision to enter Afghanistan and I hoped that the seriousness of the times would bring forth strength, humility and wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited. We ran record deficits, while simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like afterschool programs. We granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract with one another and render mute the promise of "one nation indivisible."”

Go Bruuuuuuuuuce!!!!

Attack, attack, attack

A letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune last week pointed out a basic flaw in two Republican lines of attack against John Kerry:

Republicans charge that Kerry is the most ardent liberal member of the the Senate. They also charge him with being an indecisive flip-flopper on every issue. How can he be both?

Obviously he can’t be both and in fact neither allegation is true. The flip-flop canard is ridiculous on its face. Any politician can be accused of flip-flopping and there are far more examples of Bush flip-flops than Kerry.
But it is not surprising that a Party that values conformity and adherence to a strict ideology would find fault in someone who is willing to reflect on past decisions and perhaps change their mind.

Another more recent line of attack against Kerry is the charge that he has few legislative accomplishments during his 20 years in the Senate. But this is a highly hypocritical charge coming from Republicans who claim to be in favor of smaller and more limited government. Would they like Kerry better if he had a long list of pork-barrell projects that he sponsored during his legislative career?
It is also galling coming from Bush and Cheney as noted by Atrios:

In 11 years in the House, Cheney sponsored just 2 pieces of legislation that became law.

Here is Congressman John Spratt (D-SC) quoted in a Kerry press release:

“Dick Cheney served in the Congress for 11 years. I served with him for most of these years. In that time, he only passed two bills. One was to build a flood plain on the Colorado River and the other was a bill to help a constituent. What’s even more telling about Dick Cheney’s record in the House is not what he supported but what he opposed – things like Headstart and funding for seniors. It seems pretty dishonest for Bush and Cheney to be attacking John Kerry - who passed 57 bills in the Senate – for his legislative accomplishments.”

Look at the numbers

Michael Kinsley Does the Math in his latest Washington Post column and finds that Democratic presidents have a much better record than Republicans in nearly every category since 1960.

”It turns out that Democratic presidents have a much better record than Republicans. They win a head-to-head comparison in almost every category. Real growth averaged 4.09 percent in Democratic years, 2.75 percent in Republican years. Unemployment was 6.44 percent on average under Republican presidents and 5.33 percent under Democrats. The federal government spent more under Republicans than Democrats (20.87 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 19.58 percent), and that remains true even if you exclude defense (13.76 for the Democrats; 14.97 for the Republicans).

What else? Inflation was lower under Democratic presidents (3.81 percent on average, compared with 4.85 percent). And annual deficits took more than twice as much of GDP under Republicans as under Democrats (2.74 percent versus 1.21 percent). Republicans won by a nose on government revenue (i.e., taxes), taking 18.12 percent of GDP compared with 18.39 percent. That, of course, is why they lost on the size of the deficit. Personal income per capita was also a bit higher in Republican years ($16,061) than in Democratic ones ($15,565). But that is because more of the Republican years came later, when the country was more prosperous already.”

Kinsley even anticipates Republican complaints that they were born again under Ronald Reagan and should be looked at from that point forward. But even reworking the numbers starting in 1981 changes only one result...

“The Democrats pull ahead of the Republicans on per capita personal income.”

Turning the corner to where?

You almost have to feel sorry for the Bush campaign.
Here they go and launch their new campaign theme that states "We've turned the corner and we're not turning back" and on the same day the Commerce Department reports that the economy is sputtering once again.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy slowed dramatically in the spring to an annual growth rate of 3 percent, as consumers, worried about higher gasoline prices, cut back their spending to the weakest pace in three years, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

It does us no good to "turn a corner" when we've been going the wrong direction all along.
The Bush team really has nothing positive to work with so expect lots more negative attacks from that side.

Record deficit - again

Here is the big news that the Bush administration sat on until today so that the Democrats couldn’t use it to criticize the president during their convention:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House projected Friday that this year's deficit will hit a record $445 billion, further fueling a campaign-season dispute over President Bush's handling of the economy.
The figure easily surpassed last year's $375 billion, making it the largest-ever in dollar terms.

Kerry is going to have such a mess to clean up when he moves into the White House next year.

Sandy Berger: smeared then cleared

Remember those news reports right before the Democratic convention that said former Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger was being investigated for stealing classified documents relating to the 9/11 investigation from the National Archive? They quoted annonymous sources charging that Berger had snuck the documents out hidden in his pants and socks? It made great fodder for lots of editorial cartoons and conservative commentators.

Well, nevermind.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the 9/11 Commission on which he serves. At worst, Berger admits that he inadvertently took some photocopies of some material that was later returned. He denies stuffing the documents in his pants.


“Officials looking into the removal of classified documents from the National Archives by former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger say no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
...
The conclusion by archives officials and others would seem to lay to rest the issue of whether any information was permanently destroyed or withheld from the commission.

Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said officials there "are confident that there aren't any original documents missing in relation to this case." She said in most cases, Mr. Berger was given photocopies to review, and that in any event officials have accounted for all originals to which he had access.”

Just another non-story that was blown all out of proportion by our so-called-liberal media and conveniently served the purposes of the Bush administration.

Update
The right-wing web site Newsmax.com has put out a story headlined Archives Denies Report That Berger Is in the Clear.

But if you read the story you see that the headline and lead paragraph are misleading. The spokeswoman for the Archive is not denying or disputing the WSJ story. She is only reaffirming a “no comment” statement that she probably gave to the WSJ as well.
Apparently the WSJ has better sources for their story and they did not let a “no comment” from the Archive’s PR flack prevent them from finding out what is really going on like NewsMax has done.
But NewsMax is not a real newsgathering organization. It is a propaganda tool and should be viewed as such. Unfortunately, many conservatives rely on websites like NewsMax and DrudgeReport to get all their information and so they stay constantly misinformed and do silly things like voting for Bush.