"What you are refusing to acknowledge, a half trillion dollar current trade deficit. We are importing capital. We are squandering our wealth on a short-term basis, corporate America and U.S. multinationals are shipping jobs for only one reason, not for greater productivity, not for efficiencies, those are purely code words for cheaper labor costs and you know it and you won't admit it."
There's a lot here. Lou's loaded for bear and not backing off.
Every president has characteristic strengths and weaknesses. For better or worse, by the end of his term of office, Bill Clinton's reputation as a truth-teller was in tatters. But that was never his strong suit with voters anyway. The measure of his enduring strength with voters is best gauged in a question pollsters usually frame as 'does candidate X care about/understand the problems that affect people like you.'
Clinton always did very well on that question. It's the politics of empathy -- a topic which, when it comes to Clinton, one could literally write a whole book.
People never warmed to President Bush as a literary critic or a raconteur. And he's usually done okay, but not great, on the 'care about/understand' question. His strong suit has always been honesty and trustworthiness -- that and the closely related quality of 'leadership'. If he loses that, politically speaking, he's finished.
No one enjoys being lied to, particularly the hundreds of families who have lost loved ones to the dishonesty of this administration. Slowly but surely they're waking up to the falseness of the "patriotic" rush to war that has benefited no one but Bechtel, Halliburton and other corporate pals of the White House.
The Halloween presidency may have tricked itself out of a second term.
Recalls Memphian [Bob] Mintz, now 63: “I remember that I heard someone was coming to drill with us from Texas. And it was implied that it was somebody with political influence. I was a young bachelor then. I was looking for somebody to prowl around with.” But, says Mintz, that “somebody” -- better known to the world now as the president of the United States -- never showed up at Dannelly in 1972. Nor in 1973, nor at any time that Mintz, a FedEx pilot now and an Eastern Airlines pilot then, when he was a reserve first lieutenant at Dannelly, can remember.
[...]
“There’s no way we wouldn’t have noticed a strange rooster in the henhouse, especially since we were looking for him,” insists Mintz, who has pored over documents relating to the matter now making their way around the Internet. One of these is a piece of correspondence addressed to the 187th’s commanding officer, then Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, concerning Bush’s redeployment.
Mintz remembers a good deal of base scuttlebutt at the time about the letter, which clearly identifies Bush as the transferring party. “It couldn’t be anybody else. No one ever did that again, as far as I know.” In any case, he is certain that nobody else in that time frame, 1972-73, requested such a transfer into Dannelly.
Mintz, who at one time was a registered Republican and in recent years has cast votes in presidential elections for independent Ross Perot and Democrat Al Gore, confesses to “a negative reaction” to what he sees as out-and-out dissembling on President Bush’s part. “You don’t do that as an officer, you don’t do that as a pilot, you don’t do it as an important person, and you don’t do it as a citizen. This guy’s got a lot of nerve.”
Though some accounts reckon the total personnel component of the 187th as consisting of several hundred, the actual flying squadron – that to which Bush was reassigned – number only “25 to 30 pilots,” Mintz said. “There’s no doubt. I would have heard of him, seen him, whatever.” Even if Bush, who was trained on a slightly different aircraft than the F4 Phantom jets flown by the squadron, opted not to fly with the unit, he would have had to encounter the rest of the flying personnel at some point, in non-flying formations or drills. “And if he did any flying at all, on whatever kind of craft, that would have involved a great number of supportive personnel. It takes a lot of people to get a plane into the air. But nobody I can think of remembers him."
[...]
“I never saw hide nor hair of Mr. Bush,” confirms [Paul] Bishop, who now lives in Goldsboro, N.C., is a veteran of Gulf War I and, as a Kalitta pilot, has himself flown frequent supply missions into Iraq and to military facilities at Kuwait. He voted for Bush in 2000 and believes that the Iraq war has served some useful purposes – citing, as the White House does, disarmament actions since pursued by Libyan president Moammar Khadaffi – but he is disgruntled both about aspects of the war and about what he sees as Bush’s lack of truthfulness about his military record.
“I think a commander-in-chief who sends his men off to war ought to be a veteran who has seen the sting of battle,” Bishop says. “In Iraq: we have a bunch of great soldiers, but they are not policemen. I don’t think he [the president] was well advised; right now it’s costing us an American life a day. I’m not a peacenik, but what really bothers me is that of the 500 or so that we’ve lost almost 80 of them were reservists. We’ve got an over-extended Guard and reserve.”
So who has shown the ultimate disrespect for the Guard and Reserves? The Democrats for bringing the issue up, or Bush for sending 80 reservists to their deaths — without managing to find a single weapon of mass destruction?
Two former Halliburton Co. employees are accusing the Houston firm of routinely overcharging American taxpayers for work performed under a military contract, two Democratic lawmakers say.
Halliburton, which as a government contractor is supposed to keep a lid on costs, selected embroidered towels when ordinary ones would have cost a third as much and leased cars, trucks SUVS and vans for up $7,500 a month, the would-be whistleblowers said.
Indeed, the motto at Halliburton was "Don't worry about price. It's cost plus," one of the ex-workers told lawmakers.
That's a reference to a type of government contract in which a company like Halliburton would be reimbursed for the cost of providing a service, plus receive an additional percentage as profit.
One of the former employees, a field buyer named Henry Bunting, stationed in Kuwait, is scheduled to testify Friday before a panel of Senate Democrats.
These latest allegations were made public today by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., both frequent Halliburton critics, in a letter to William Reed, director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency.
If the former employees' "accounts are accurate, the company is systematically overcharging the taxpayer on hundreds of routine requisitions every day. While the dollar amounts involved in any single procurement may be small, the cumulative cost to the taxpayer could be enormous," the lawmakers wrote.
Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, builds bases, cooks food, washes clothes, delivers mail and provides other basic services for U.S. troops under a 10-year contract with the Pentagon valued at $3.6 billion.
Embroidered towels? $7,500 a month cars and SUVs?
Who do Pentagon contractors think they are — Tyco?
Neil Bush's involvement in raising money for an HISD charitable foundation to help buy his company's educational software raises serious legal and ethical concerns, experts say.
The head of a national watchdog group described it as "self-dealing" and characterized the agreement as pushing "the border of legality."
[...]
Bush's Austin-based company, Ignite, agreed last summer to provide its eighth-grade U.S. history software to 23 HISD schools at half price this academic year, on the condition that the HISD Foundation, a philanthropic group, would come up with the remainder of the funds. The schools, which have been using the curriculum since August, each paid Ignite $5,000.
Some observers question the role that Bush and his company played in raising the additional money through the philanthropic organization because Bush and other Ignite executives contacted major donors, asking them to make tax-exempt, charitable contributions earmarked for the for-profit business.
[...]
LIST OF DONORS Donations made to the HISD Foundation for purchasing educational software from Neil Bush's company came from: • The Friedkin Companies, Inc. $25,000 • Landry's Restaurant Foundation $25,000* • Wells Fargo Foundation $25,000 • Former Iranian Ambassador and Mrs. Hushang Ansary $25,000 • Astros in Action Foundation $10,000 • Stearns Charitable Fund $5,000
Neil, with his whoring, conniving crony capitalism, represents in many ways a more forthright version of the entire Bush family in microcosm.
*Landry's generous contribution, by the way, represents Chairman and CEO Tilman Fertitta's desire to bet on two horses, given his prior charitable support of Sharon Bush's pet projects and now of her adulterous ex-husband's self-directed charity.
"For the Black Eyed Peas to get on pop radio with a slickly produced but smart and soulful rap that associates the CIA with international terrorism and implies that George Bush is a liar would deserve our attention. That the tune is impossibly catchy, with a boy-pop pinup singing the candy-coated chorus, makes it a subversive cultural milestone." — Rick Mitchell, Pazz & Jop 2003
"Coup of the year: Fountains of Wayne seduce the cool boys of VH1 with a sexy video about MILFs. Safely inside the palace walls, the band then blindsides 'em with an entire album full of sad songs about downsized America with such sunny harmonies that even Mo Rocca has to sing along." — Tim Grierson, Pazz & Jop 2003
The ruling is the first in a series of subpoenas by the U.S. Justice Department seeking the medical records of patients from seven physicians and at least five hospitals, Crain's sister publication Modern Healthcare has learned. Besides Northwestern, Mr. Ashcroft is seeking patient records from University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers in Ann Arbor; Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp.; Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital both of which are part of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System; and an unidentified San Francisco-area hospital.
[...]
Northwestern received the subpoena in December, a month after obstetrician/gynecologist Cassing Hammond, a member of Northwestern’s staff and medical school faculty, was served with subpoenas seeking his patient records. Hammond is one of seven doctors and three groups who has challenged the constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The American Civil Liberties Union is representing the National Abortion Federation; Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, which are all filing challenges to the law. A hearing for all of the challenges has been scheduled for March 29 in U.S. District Court in New York.
Dr. Hammond refused comment last week. His case is pending.
You think stuff like this doesn't hit home? That it's some vague privacy-related matter that happens to other people?
It hits home. The doctors of Northwestern’s staff and medical school faculty are my healthcare providers. Disgust is not a strong enough word to express how I feel about Ashcroft's fingers riffling through the same filing cabinets that contain my medical records.
bad things reports on the conversion of Dave Louthan from a "happy slaughterer to a food safety crusader."
In other words, mad cow is still very much with us — and people will die as a result of the twisted, ass-covering, population-endangering logic of the USDA.
I assume it's because military people are looking for alternatives. It's hard to know what to do with your personal investments, but that's the price we all pay as Americans for the privatization of our retirement funding — a cherished Republican ideal that doesn't help those of us without expensive financial advisors.
So let me tell you what I do, because I don't have a financial advisor either, and I don't like the idea of paying huge loads (sales commissions) to financial "planners" whose whole idea of planning is taking your money.
Find some no-load mutual funds that are specifically designed for retirement and put your money there. They are the right mix of stocks and bonds and international and all that stuff you don't want to worry about.
In my case, I use the Fidelity Freedom funds, like the Fidelity Freedom 2020 or Fidelity Freedom 2030 or Fidelity Freedom 2040 funds (the number means the approximate year you expect to retire. Go to fidelity.com or Yahoo Finance and poke around for more information.
If you are in the military and you want more information about investing for retirement, email me and if there are enough of you I'll start an online course right here. Free, of course.
I think it's such a crying shame what they're doing to you. In light of very little evidence justifying our actions, there isn't a day goes by that I'm not grateful for the enormous sacrifices you've made.
...the Bush dynasty differs from other American families that have mixed wealth with political prominence. While the Kennedys and the Rockefellers may have a sense of entitlement, they also display a sense of noblesse oblige—what one might call an urge to repay, with charitable contributions and public service, their good fortune. The Bushes don't have that problem; there are no philanthropists or reformers in the clan. They seek public office but, if anything, they seem to feel that the public is there to serve them.
Phillips sees the activity of the Bush family as a return to the royalist privilege and imperial tendencies of European dynasties: "When Bush took office in 2001, a parallel to Stuart and Bourbon arrogance quickly emerged in the new regime's insistence on ideological conservatism despite the lack of any such national mandate."
It is precisely this arrogance that fuels the hatred of Bush, the hatred that his supporters supposedly find so confounding. The reason is Bush is hated, in contrast to conservatives who are merely opposed, is the sense of entitlement without competence — a Bush trait, not a conservative trait.
The president's supporters cannot see how or why people who believe in actual (as opposed to staged) democracy regard the Bush brand of political maneuvering as disastrous and reprehensible if not criminal. Why not? Because they are royalist courtiers themselves.
Even with Rove's stage-managed ground rules — tape on Saturday, home court advantage, no followup questions allowed — the interview revealed a thoughtless, dodgy, repetitive man who is clearly out of touch with the issues, the American people, and reality itself.
How else could he say that the trouble with Vietnam (which he managed to escape) was "politicians making military decisions"?
The head football coach at the University of Colorado told a former colleague it would be harder to recruit star athletes if the school did not show them a good time and take them to sex parties, according to a deposition released on Friday.
"If recruits aren't being shown these type of activities ... it would be a recruiting disadvantage," Robert Chichester, a former associate athletic director at the university, quoted head coach Gary Barnett as having told him.
[...]
The depositions were taken as part of a lawsuit filed by three women who claim they were raped at or after a December 2001 off-campus recruiting party attended by high school recruits.
One nipple on camera, or an authority-condoned system of rape among minors — which is the right way to feed the voracious, monopolistic football entertainment industry?
