Take a look at this government list from just after the September 11th attacks and try to find which country is *not* listed.
Where’s Iraq
by scrappy
With your host and best friend, Scrappy McGowan
by scrappy
Take a look at this government list from just after the September 11th attacks and try to find which country is *not* listed.
by scrappy
From The Associated Press
Updated: 8:20 p.m. ET Sept. 20, 2004
WASHINGTON – President Bush might have been able to say it was simply a slip of the tongue when he confused two terrorists in a campaign speech Monday in New Hampshire. Trouble is, he’s made the same misstatement at least 10 times before.
by scrappy
A couple of weeks ago I forgot to post this link to a great clip from The Daily
Show which discusses how Bush has won the war on words.
by scrappy
No, this is not an article from The Onion, it’s from today’s San Jose Mercury News:
Cheney: Economic numbers ignore eBay trading
Indicators measure the nation’s unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says they miss the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.
“That’s a source that didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. “Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay.”
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney’s comments show how “out of touch” he and President Bush are with the economy.
“If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking,” Edwards said in a statement.
Hmmm, does this mean Jeremy is a member of the workforce now that he’s selling some old games on Half.com/ebay?
by scrappy
Last night I had the great honor of going to see former Georgia Senator Max Cleland when he spoke here in Ann Arbor at the union hall of Local 959 of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. Along with Detroit Congressman John Dingell, who with 49 years of service, is the longest serving U.S. Congressman, Mr. Cleland spoke to the packed hall with honesty, great energy and a wonderful sense of humor.
Despite my leftist views (or perhaps because of them), I have not been a big fan of politics or even the Democrats. But this year it has been clear that as both a citizen and a father of two, I have a moral responsibility to work to insure that America is rid of the most shameful presidency that the U.S. has ever seen. For me, the most wonderful and surprising part of getting involved is feeling a part of a community of Americans who share my anger at this administration and who share the drive to see these horrible people banished from the White House.
From watching Congressman Dingell and Senator Cleland, for once I felt a sense of belonging to the Democratic Party. I felt that this party, flawed though it may be, can truly do good for this country. Despite my original lack of enthusiasm for Kerry (I was a Kucinich supporter and voted for Nader in 2000), the fact that men like Kerry, Dingell and Cleland are people of integrity, means that I owe it to myself and my children to support Kerry with every ounce of political strength I can muster.
The last time I felt motivation to work to elect a new president was in 1984, but the differences are huge between then and now. I remember working in Indiana to help defeat Reagan when he was running for a second term in 1984. Sadly, all along we knew it was a losing cause, but we did something because we felt that we had to, not because we felt we could win. What made me sad then was that not only did I feel Reagan was helping destroy this country, but that I was definitely in the minority. Americans for the most part truly seemed to like Reagan.
This time, we have a president without a moral compass, without any sense of decency. A man who only has compassion for his rich compares. Sadly, this election is not about right and wrong, it’s about good and evil. The war that needs to be fought is not in Iraq, it’s in Michigan. It’s time to take the gloves off, and with the words of Senator Cleland still ringing in my ears, I’ll do everything I can to take this country back for Sasha and for Jeremy.
by scrappy
I know, I know, daddyo is all about predidental politics these days. With all that’s happening and with there is to read, it’s hard not to keep posting political news and opinion pieces.
Today, Paul Krugman of the New York Times weighed in with his thoughts on the shameful Republican convention with the following op-ed piece.
Feel the Hate
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 3, 2004
“I don’t know where George Soros gets his money,” one man said. “I don’t know where – if it comes from overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from.” George Soros, another declared, “wants to spend $75 million defeating George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin.” After all, a third said, Mr. Soros “is a self-admitted atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust.”
They aren’t LaRouchies – they’re Republicans.
by scrappy
It seems that none of the top Republicans knows how to tell the truth. I thought those guys were supposed to be all about morality and godliness. Apparantly honesty has nothing to do with morality…
VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Austrian historians are challenging California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National Convention that he saw Soviet tanks in his homeland as a child and that he left a “Socialist” country when he moved away in 1968.
Historians, however, are questioning Schwarzenegger’s version of postwar history — if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to the highest official in America’s most populous state.
by scrappy
Sometimes when I think about Bush and why I despise him so much, it can be difficult to say just what I can’t stand about the man. In terms of environmental issues, Sierra Magazine’s (the official magazine of the Sierra Club) staff curmudgeon has tallied the president’s environmental crimes…
“A man who presents himself as a down-home Texan, Bush claims to be in touch with common folk. As president, he’s been rock-solid in speaking about core values: the rights of the unborn, law and order, compassionate conservatism, government accountability, and our great American heritage.
Why, then, has he been hammering those core values in his environmental policy? See if you can figure him out.”
by scrappy
From Robin we have this passionate piece from Garrison Keillor…
August 26, 2004
We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore
How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?
By Garrison Keillor
Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned-and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today’s. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.
by scrappy
Last night Sarah was laughing aloud while reading “The Thirteenth Hundred Days” a brilliant quiz in this week’s New Yorker where you try to identify which are the real quotes from the Bush 2 Administration.
Although the quiz is hillarious, it also struck me that while this stuff is funny to read and to discuss, it’s terribly sad that all we can do is laugh at the horror behind the words and actions of the current administration.
by scrappy
With all the endless talk about Kerry’s war record, it’s time to take a look at the War Medals of George W Bush.
by scrappy
The recently launched Liberal Talk Network, Air America, has recently come to the left-leaning city of Ann Arbor. Amazingly enough, the network is broadcast on WLBY 1290 am, a Clear Channel owned station(!)
What’s even better that the same day Air America began broadcasting in Ann Arbor, it also began broadcasting in San Diego on the newly renamed, KLSD.
by scrappy
The August Esquire Magazibe features a wonderfully written piece by Ron Reagan. The Case Against George W. Bush is an insightful and passionate Op-Ed peice from the son of the fortieth president of the United States which, as the title says, makes the case why George Bush should not be president.
The piece is long, but is well worth reading. An exerpt:
“Does anyone really favor an administration that so shamelessly lies? One that so tenaciously clings to secrecy, not to protect the American people, but to protect itself? That so willfully misrepresents its true aims and so knowingly misleads the people from whom it derives its power? I simply cannot think so. And to come to the same conclusion does not make you guilty of swallowing some liberal critique of the Bush presidency, because that’s not what this is. This is the critique of a person who thinks that lying at the top levels of his government is abhorrent. Call it the honest guy’s critique of George W. Bush…”
by scrappy
As if we need more reasons to be terrified about the impact of four more years of Bush, check out the following from Sunday’s Washington Post:
Bush Forces a Shift In Regulatory Thrust
OSHA Made More Business-Friendly
By Amy Goldstein and Sarah Cohen
Sunday, August 15, 2004; Page A01
Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing with alarming frequency across the United States. The government began writing rules to protect 5 million people whose jobs put them in special danger. Hospitals and homeless shelters, prisons and drug treatment centers — all would be required to test their employees for TB, hand out breathing masks and quarantine those with the disease. These steps, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration predicted, could prevent 25,000 infections a year and 135 deaths.
By the time President Bush moved into the White House, the tuberculosis rules, first envisioned in 1993, were nearly complete. But the new administration did nothing on the issue for the next three years.
Then, on the last day of 2003, in an action so obscure it was not mentioned in any major newspaper in the country, the administration canceled the rules. Voluntary measures, federal officials said, were effective enough to make regulation unnecessary.
by scrappy
The Independent folk label, Waterbug, has put out a pro-vote, anti-Bush record called Vote In November: Election 2004 Anti-Theft Device”.
According to Waterbug, “It is our hope that this collection of songs might provide some light in dangerous times, and that it might inspire those who hear it to consider carefully the choices facing us in November… and vote.”
What’s cool is that not only can you buy the album at 4 copies for $20 (to cover the cost of pressing the CD), all the tunes are available for free download on the Waterbug site with the request that if you like the music, put in a donation to MoveOn.org
by scrappy
The banning of Linda Ronstadt from the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas for her praise of Michael Moore from the stage is just the latest attack on free speech by media brokers on the right.
Earlier this month here in the Midwest, a movie chain has refused to show Fahrenheit 9/11 because it incites terrorism.
Back in April, Sinclair Broadcast Group refused to show the Nightline edition where the names of all the war dead were read because it was “an anti-war statement “disguised as news content”.
Funny, I had thought that those on the right were all about defending freedom and the American way of life. Last time I checked, that included freedom of speech. I find it fascinating that under the guise of supporting America, these right-wing powerbrokers think that freedom of speech only applies to those who support the president. Feels like the blacklist all over again.
by scrappy
Some Arnold stats from the LA Times via The Washington Monthly:
Total dollar amount of the 2003-04 budget signed by ex-Gov. Gray Davis: $99.1 billion.
Total amount of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first budget after promising to shrink government: $103 billion.
….Number of employees on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s staff who make $100,000 or more: 14.
Number of employees on Gov. Davis’ staff who made $100,000 or more: 8.
….Schwarzenegger’s whereabouts just hours after vowing to stay in Sacramento and fight like a warrior to end the budget stalemate: Beverly Hills fund-raiser.
Amount raised at Beverly Hills fund-raiser by Schwarzenegger, who earlier promised to end fund-raising during budget season: Roughly $400,000.
….Number of the top 100 donations to Schwarzenegger that came from businesses or their executives: 87.
….Number of people at Stockton mall food court who cheered Schwarzenegger’s criticism of legislators beholden to special interests: Hundreds.
by scrappy
From Caleb we have a link to this absolutely brilliant animated comic from Mark Fiore, a San Francisco cartoonist and animator.
You *have* to see this one (requires Flash).
by scrappy
Why does it not suprise me that the Bush administration is talking about postponing the election in the event of a terrorist attack? Why does it not surprise me that the place you read about this first is the BBC?
by scrappy
Robin sent me along a copy of NY Times columnist Paul Krugnan’s review on Fahrenheit 9/11. As always, Krugman is thought provoking with his insights, and so I thought I’d post his piece here on Daddyo. The review is well worth reading in full…
Moore’s Public Service
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 2, 2004
Since it opened, “Fahrenheit 9/11” has been a hit in both blue and red America, even at theaters close to military bases. Last Saturday, Dale Earnhardt Jr. took his Nascar crew to see it. The film’s appeal to working-class Americans, who are the true victims of George Bush’s policies, should give pause to its critics, especially the nervous liberals rushing to disassociate themselves from Michael Moore.
There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration’s use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?
And for all its flaws, “Fahrenheit 9/11” performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn’t promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren’t the reason why millions of people who aren’t die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it. These people see the film to learn true stories they should have heard elsewhere, but didn’t. Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven’t been doing their job.