The evidence clearly indicates that W used an earpiece during the debate and on other occasions. The pictures above appeared separately on other sites (notably here and here) but the comparison proves quite telling.
Click on the images to see larger versions. (My ladyfriend felt relieved to learn that she was not seeing things when she spotted that telltale dorsal bulge!)
Such a unit is composed of two pieces. The "earpiece" is either lodged deep within the ear or (as current technology permits) placed next to a molar. The within-the-ear version is very difficult to see unless one knows what to look for.
The receiver is a much larger device, and is usually worn in front. However, Bush had to wear a standard television microphone plus a backup mic during the debate, and these are usually fitted by network technicians over the chest. The only way to hide the receiver was to affix it to the back.
You say you want more proof? Fair enough. Here's the capper:
Go here and you'll hear the CNN feed from Bush at the D-Day memorial. The microphones accidentally picked up the signal transmitted into Bush's earpiece. You can plainly hear a phantom voice feeding Bush his lines. (Note: On some systems, you may have to right-click the link and save the file.)
This video was not doctored; many viewers heard the voice during the live broadcast. See, for example, this testimony.
So...you still think that this is just another conspiracy theory?
Additional notes:
1. This piece outlines a truly high-tech approach. The only problem: How to bring such a device covertly into the debate hall.
2. Right-wing bloggers have ignored this issue, concentrating on Kerry's use of (gasp! shudder!) a pen during the debate. Conservatives would have us believe that Kerry "cheated" because he jotted down a couple of notes while Bush spoke. Unfortunately, the same video which proves Kerry's use of a "concealed weapon" also shows Bush unfolding a crib sheet and placing it on the podium.
3. Many have asked: If the President received electronic coaching, why didn't he convey his message more effectivey? I suspect that use of this system requires more "hard work" than most imagine. Newscasters must learn to speak while a director relays instructions into an earpiece, and this is a difficult to art to master, for both the on-camera talent and the behind-the-scenes coach. That's why the use of an earpiece may actually have hurt Bush's performance. In my view, he did much better against Gore.
39 comments:
This qualifies as a stupidity litmus test issue.
And it looks like a lot of the lefties tested stupid.
Now, speaking as an electronics engineer, if this were the 1940s, you MIGHT need a box that big to house a prompting device. (maybe) BUT, if you had access to ultra high tech, cutting edge, advanced electronics, like, say, transistors, and could forgo the vacuum tubes, and took a bold step into 1950s era or later electronics, such a device would be much much smaller.
This afternoon you could buy a suitable gadget off the shelf smaller than a writing pen, and get change back from a twenty. You could go a lot smaller than that for a little more money.
IF, hypothetically, Bush were using some sort of prompting device, you would NOT have been able to see it.
Gee, do you think there is just the slightest chance that the Secret Service stuffs stuff under his jacket, and just maybe they don't want to publicize details about what those things might be?
Now, I know that there are those out there on the left that are so utterly obsessed with all consuming, blind, mindless, baseless, foaming-at-the-mouth, venomous, hate, Hate, HATE!!! (foam, slobber) that they will gleefully grab onto anything that they can possibly spin as an excuse to bleat slander at Bush no matter how desperate, but this is just down right silly. Grow up.
whoa pardner! Calm yer selves. All you Bushies are getting pretty touchy, This from a group of morons that believed Bill Clinton was a communist and that Black helicopters were hovering over your alfalfa field doing a land grab inventory in preperation of handing the US over to the evil UN.
Who really are the whacko conspiracy nuts here? Thats right Republicans, You spend your every waking moment trying to demonize anyone with a belief that differs from yours(Your for us or for the terrorists) .
I think that Republicans are the grown up versions of the brain dead losers in High school. The stoner kids that were busy looking over my shoulder to get the answers to every simple assingment. These same losers couldn't muster enough grey matter to fill a box of tic tacs, let alone ever think for themselves. If you truly wanted the best for this country,Wouldn't you vote for the guy that that impresses you with his wisdom ,knowledge and intelligence?
Or do you prefer the guy that reminds you of your beer drinking buddy that works down at the Quikie Lube?
Remember one of the candidates in question actually wrote a book ,The other candidate would need help just to write a book report.
Gary perkins
Reno,NV.
Bring it on!
Hey Gary.
You asked for "it" to be brought on, well, how about a grammar lesson? Will you accept that kindness from a "brain dead" Republican?
According to Strunk & White's WORLD-RENOWNED book on English grammar and style "The Elements of Style", it is NOT poor grammar to end a sentence with a preposition. Interestng. . . A grammar lesson from someone whose leading candidate refers to Iranian clerics as MOO-lahs, instead of MULL-ahs (the proper pronunciation according to Webster's American Collegiate Dictionary), and the word nuclear as if it were pronounced NU-kyah-lur instead of NU-klee-er (See WCD)!
Grow up!
This isn't a war on words (if it were, your candidate would have lost long ago)! This election has many more important issues, including why our country is fighting a war based on lies and misdeception.
(Excuse all spelling errors because I didn't proofread this...and I want to get back to reading all the juicy stories about our lame President wearing a wire during the debates!! :-) )
No, Gary, I didn't think you would entertain a sincere offer of help from a lame-o Republican. Leftists don't want to be confused by facts or limited by conventions.
I do think it's hilarious that someone as clearly brilliant as you are can't even identify his own errors, but I'm neither shocked nor suprised by that. Furthermore, proofreading is a courtesy writers show to their readers (I think Strunk and White would agree), but your political orientation explains your lack in that department, as well; doesn't it?
Oh, and one more thing, none other than Jimmy Carter, who was trained in nuclear physics, pronounces nuclear as nyu-kyu-ler. Is that my dig at Carter? No, because yet another thing (one in a very long line of things, no doubt) that you obviously do not know, is that while that pronunciation is not standard, it is a recognized alternative pronunciation (check OED online at http://dictionary.oed.com, or if you're not a subscriber (lol), try www.m-w.com. I think either of those sites will back me up.
Wishing you a happy repatriation in '05! Although, I will confess that if all the leftists move to Cuba, who will remain to get flustered by my (always good natured) ridicule?
^^^ BLAH BLAH BLAH ^^^
1. if you listen to that D-Day speech with an open mind, you will hear that both the "front" and "back" voice have the exact same phrasing, cadence, pauses, and intonation, to the point that it's obvious that it's the same audio. (Even the accent is the same; my first impression was, "wow, it's W's dad prompting him!") It's obvious that the "front" voice was delayed for some reason, with the mic picking up a live "back" transmission.
2. if you look at the pictures trying to see bad tailoring, you'll see that the "wire" looks like a bunched-up shirt.
There're plenty of valid reasons to be against Bush without such half-cocked, false accusations.
Whether he was prompted or not during the debate is debatable and I won't debate it. However, I would like to make a comment about the CNN video posted here that supposedly "proves" that bush was prompted. If you listen you'll hear that Bush's "advance" words are exactly and precisely the same words he speaks - same timbre, same pace, same pitch, smae everything. This is not a case of prompting, but of a CNN audio goof. I'm speaking now as a broadcast engineer of 25 years. We get feeds of all types from multiple sources in a typical television studio. When the president is speaking the same speech is available on, in my facility anyway, at least 40 different audio and video sources. Many of them are out of sync with one another due to different satellite delays as the speech is picked up and rebroadcast over and over again. What you heard on the CNN piece on this website, I believe, is a telephone landline IFB feed (interruptable foldback used for cueing studio talent) or a news backup feed accidentally mixed in with the satellite audio on the main feed. The telephone landline audio would arrive much earlier at the CNN studio than the satellite audio, since the satellite audio has to travel to a goestationaty satllite 23,000 miles out in space. The 46,000 mile round trip takes longer than even a coast-to-coast 3000 mile wireline telephone transmission. The delay is right and the quality of the audio is right. Yo're not hearing prompting on the CNN video, yo're hearing a CNN audio engineer screwup.
Gooly gee, A guy posts an argument and gets grilled for his writing style ? Yet I don't see anyone attacking the actual point he was making.
The basic argument seems to be that this country elected a leader with no regard to ability. And we won't even touch the whole "Intelligence" issue.
Don't be discouraged by the weak attacks Gary , That seems to be all they can throw at you.
I not too smaart enuff to rite , So I will let the Big Brained Repugnetkins speak for themselves.
Gary perkins, Reno ,NV.
Why don't YOU get a new job?
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy — or go on Prozac?" Bush campaign worker Susan Sheybani's musings on employee options in the weak U.S. job market.
Space is the Place!
Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) said on the 1/9/04 edition of "Scarborough Country": "Somebody is going to dominate space. When they do, just like when the British dominated the naval part of our globe, established their empire, just like the United States has dominated the air superiority, ultimately, whoever is able to dominate space will be able to control the destiny of the entire Earth. And I think America is the only country with the moral capability and authority to."
"I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman." Arnold Schwarzenegger
"Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life." Republican U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch
"Facts are stupid things." Ronald Reagan
"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk." Ronald Reagan (Wrong, unless the space under your desk can store 30 tons.)
"Africa is a nation with a lot of diseases." --George W. Bush
Billy Graham, speaking about Jews in America: "This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain." Richard Nixon: "You believe that?" Graham: "Yes sir." Nixon: "Oh boy, so do I. I can't ever say that, but I believe it. --From Nixon's secret White House Tapes
"God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." George W. Bush
"It's amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency. It wasn't exactly a landslide, you know?" George W. Bush, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Perrson, unaware that a live television camera was still rolling.
Does Ann Coulter have a head injury?
"I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation. I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious." -- Ann Coulter, missing the point for the one million and 47th time.
"This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." --Right-wing columnist Ann Coulter
"...and of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal. --Right-wing columnist Ann Coulter
"Even Hillary Clinton claimed to have unearthed some evidence that she was a Jew. And that, boys and girls, is how the Jews survived thousands of years of persecution: by being susceptible to pandering." Ann Coulter
Tom Delay Gets His Own Section of Stupid Quotes!
"I have seen these liberal psychologists and sociologists talk about there is no need for the man in the family. 'The woman can take care of it. A woman can take care of the family.' It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. " – House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), in an interview, on the role of women in the home. (Christine DeLay "quickly realized that her hubby was treading on dangerous territory," admonishing, "Let's edit this out," she said. "This is not a good thing for you to be saying.")
"The EPA is the Gestapo of government, purely and simply."
To fix fish kills caused by acid rain: "Just sprinkle a little lime to neutralize the acid."
Tom Delay's shouted reply when he was told it was a federal law that he couldn't smoke his cigar in a no-smoking area: "I AM the federal law!"
"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." --Tom Delay
"How dare Senator Daschle criticize president Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism, especially when we have troops in the field!" Trent Lott, 2/28/02, after spending the last half of the '90s criticizing Clinton's use of troops around the world.
"If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections. Males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes." Newt Gingrich
"Women are best suited for secretarial work, decorating cakes, and counter sales, like selling lingerie. --South Carolina Republican Representative Larry Koon
Clayton Williams, the Republican nominee for Texas governor when running against Ann Richards compared bad weather to rape saying, "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it."
I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. --James G. Watt, Reagan's Secretary of the Interior describing an advisory panel.
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment, it is the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." --Former Vice President Dan Quayle
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." --Dan Quayle
Republican Governor of Alabama, Bob Riley has presented a plan to raise taxes to change what he considers a regressive tax structure that favors the wealthy and brings hardship to the poor. Marty Connors, the Alabama Republican chairman asked, "How far do you go in making a regressive tax structure progressive before it ceases to be a "moral" act and becomes a "liberal" or "Democratic" one? "
"Every person who opens the door -- as long as they are white -- I'll say 'I'm James Hart and I'm running for Congress." Eugenics fan James Hart, running as a GOP Congressional candidate in Tennessee:
"We will never stop thinking of ways to harm America." --George W. Bush
Hypocritical Republican "God and Family" Types: Example #2,118: "Hey baby, it doesn't turn me on when you cry!"
Ah, those family values loving Republicans! "Cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling," says the legal filing, roundly denied by the GOP Senate candidate, of course.
Jeri Ryan said her then-husband took her on three "surprise trips" in the spring of 1998 to New Orleans, New York and Paris, during which he took her to sex clubs. She said she refused to go in the first and went into the second at his insistence.
"It was a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling," she said in the court document, adding that her husband "wanted me to have sex with him there, with another couple watching. I refused."
She said on arriving at the third club, in Paris, "people were having sex everywhere. I cried. I was physically ill. [He] became very upset with me and said it was not a 'turn on' for me to cry."
Hypocritical Republican "God and Family" Types: Example #2,119
(also see: Gingrich, Bennett, Bush's: Brother in Thailand)
The head of the Sinclair Broadcast Group (the broadcast company that yanked the Ted Koppel's Nightline program listing those killed in action in Iraq) apparently needs to spend more time at home reading his Bible. He got picked up a few years ago for buying a blow-job.
Current Republican Chickenhawk:
Georgie himself! Read how Ben Barnes (former Texas House Speaker) got cowardly drunken Georgie into the Champagne Unit of the National Guard here.
Former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes said he is ''more ashamed at myself than I've ever been'' because he helped President Bush and the sons of other wealthy families get into the Texas National Guard so they could avoid serving in Vietnam. ''I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard ... and I'm not necessarily proud of that, but I did it,''
Scott McClellan went on the offensive against Ben Barnes for describing the "shame" he feels over helping President Bush duck service in Vietnam. "It is not surprising coming from a longtime partisan Democrat," he said. "The allegation was discredited by the commanding officer. This was fully covered and addressed five years ago. It is nothing new." It turns out that Barnes is such a down-the-line partisan that he supported Texas's Republican State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn for reelection in 2002.
Strayhorn is Scott's mom.
Previous winners:
Thrice-divorced blowhard Rush Limbaugh avoided service in Vietnam because of a a boil on his ass. It's true!
Senator Saxby Chambliss, Georgia - did not serve, had a "trick knee" (yet somehow feels he has a right to attack Max Cleland's patriotism)
"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. . . Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."
(Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, p. 148)
Who actually served---who didn't.
Last week (or month...)
Dennis Hastert's Trick Shoulder Trumps Saxby Chambliss' Trick Knee:
John McCain: "I don't remember ever in the history of warfare when we cut taxes." Asked about McCain's remarks, Dennis Hastert said: "If you want to see sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda [military hospitals]. There's the sacrifice in this country. We're trying to make sure that they have the ability to fight this war, that they have the wherewithal to be able to do it. And at the same time, we have to react to keep this country strong not only militarily but economically. We want to be able to have the flexibility to do it. That's my reply to John McCain." Where was Hastert during the Vietnam war? He was rejected for military service because of a bad shoulder.
Former winners: A three-way tie between the Pentagon officials who, according to Newsweek, cancelled flights on September 10, 2001 because of "security concerns" (here) John Ashcroft, for flying by private jet starting in July of 2001 because of "security concerns" (here) and Condi Rice for saying, ""I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile" when, as it turns out, they had already received multiple warnings in Bush's PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing)
Tom Delay's words on why he missed Vietnam: "So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like me in Vietnam."
Dick Cheney managed to snag five deferments during the Vietnam war. “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service,” Cheney told a reporter in 1989, according to the Washington Post.
Dick Cheney's Five Big Deferments!
By the time Cheney turned 26 in January 1967 and was no longer eligible for the draft, he had asked for and received five deferments, four because he was a student and one for being a new father.
"Five deferments seems incredible to me," said David Curry, a professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis who has written extensively about the draft, including a 1985 book, "Sunshine Patriots: Punishment and the Vietnam Offender."
"That's a lot of times for the draft board to say O.K.," Mr. Curry said.
1. Mr. Cheney enrolled in Casper Community College in January 1963 — he turned 22 that month — and sought his first student deferment on March 20, according to records from the Selective Service System.
2. After transferring to the University of Wyoming at Laramie, he sought his second student deferment on July 23, 1963.
3. On Aug. 7, 1964, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which allowed President Lyndon B. Johnson to use unlimited military force in Vietnam. The war escalated rapidly from there. Just 22 days later, Mr. Cheney married his high school sweetheart, Lynne. He sought his third student deferment on Oct. 14, 1964.
4. In July, President Johnson announced that he was doubling the number of men drafted. The number of inductions soared, to 382,010 in 1966 from 230,991 in 1965 and 112,386 in 1964. Mr. Cheney obtained his fourth deferment when he started graduate school at the University of Wyoming on Nov. 1, 1965.
5. On Oct. 6, 1965, the Selective Service lifted its ban against drafting married men who had no children. Nine months and two days later, Mr. Cheney's first daughter, Elizabeth, was born. On Jan. 19, 1966, when his wife was about 10 weeks pregnant, Mr. Cheney applied for 3-A status, the "hardship" exemption, which excluded men with children or dependent parents. It was granted.
In January 1967, Mr. Cheney turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft. Yay!
"It has always seemed to me that the leaders who are the quickest to send our boys and our young to war are those who have never known war themselves." George McGovern (a decorated WWII veteran who actually saw combat).
What do you think they're discussing/comparing?
Limbaugh's Rules of Order: We Couldn't Have Put It Better Ourselves
(From Wonkette)
We'd been puzzling over what to say about the news of American soldiers humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners. We felt we should say something; after all, there's (simulated) ass-fucking involved. But, you know, torture. Where are the laughs?
Then Rush Limbaugh put it all in perspective, after a caller remarked that the "stack [of] naked men" was "like a college fraternity prank."
RUSH: "Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?"
Of course. That's how we like to unwind at the end of a hard day ourselves. Some soft music, a cocktail and some simulated ass-fucking. Oh, I'm sorry: Forcing someone else into simulated ass-fucking. And hey, isn't it nice to see a leader in the conservative movement finally come out in favor of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military?
Eloquent rant here
Rush Limbaugh's Canny Insights Into Iraqi Torture
LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at -- if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm -- yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean, I don't, maybe-- it's just me.
(Yes, it's just you, Rush.)
Media Matters for America monitored The Rush Limbaugh Show from March 15 to April 29. During that time, Limbaugh used the term "femi-Nazis" eight times; he suggested that women want to be sexually harassed; he repeatedly equated Democrats with terrorists; he twice resurrected long-discredited right-wing claims that Clinton deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was murdered; he repeatedly called Senator John Kerry a "gigolo"; he called environmentalists "total wackos"; he called Howard Dean "a very sick man"; he said Democrats "hate this country"; he referred several times to Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe as a "punk" ... and so on.
Some Real Nice Things Rush Said:
"Some of these babes, I'm telling you, like the sexual harassment crowd. They're out there protesting what they actually wish would happen to them sometimes." [4/26/04]
"Time magazine has just discovered that stay-at-home moms are women who have made legitimate choices to stay home and raise their young children -- a cover story. Yes, it's a trend. It started years ago when the feminist movement decided that their best friends were going to be German shepherds." [3/19/04]
"I'm going to tell you is what's good for Al Qaeda is good for the Democratic Party in this country today. That's how you boil this down. And it doesn't have to be Al Qaeda. What's good for terrorists is good for John Kerry." [3/15/04]
"So the only real question is, if Al Qaeda's active and capable, what are they going to do? Because we know what they want: they want Kerry, they want the Democrats in power. They'd love that. I'm not guessing." [3/15/04]
(Media Matters for America notes: According to Reuters, an Al Qaeda letter that surfaced in March stated that the group supports Bush's reelection: "The statement said it supported President Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader 'more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.' ... [The letter added,] 'Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization. ... Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected.'" [Reuters, 3/17/04] here
" I'm almost going to come out in favor of war every 10 years so that we always have a group of people in this country that know what it's like. It's not healthy to go without a war for all these many years, because you get people that are born and grow up, and don't know what one is.
Note: It's worth keeping in mind that, while Limbaugh wants to have a "group of people in this country" who know what war is like, he didn't want to be in that group himself: Limbaugh didn't serve in Vietnam and told Jeff Greenfield in 1992, "I did not want to go."
"ON JOHN KERRY'S BOAT"
Over at The Campaign Desk, Thomas Lang has some questions about the Wall Street Journal editorial page and its journalistic ethics.
It turns out that they finally ran their eagerly-awaited hatchet job against John Kerry from Vietnam vet/Republican shill John O'Neill. Lang read the print edition of the WSJ and noted that the editors had added something to O'Neill's contribution to the public discourse: the pull quote "I was on John Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief."
A pull quote is designed to break up the masses of gray type. Lang had a problem with that pull quote: "It's obviously designed to catch the attention of readers who don't actually read the article and fool them into thinking that O'Neill served alongside John Kerry. Saw him in action. Knew him personally back in the day.
Nope. 'On Mr. Kerry's boat' turns out to mean that after Kerry left Vietnam O'Neill happened to get assigned to the boat that Kerry had previously commanded. See? 'On Mr. Kerry's boat.' Cute, isn't it?"
Maybe we should ask, "Fake Republicans?"
First: the "Mission Accomplished" banner and stud-like victory prance around the deck of an aircraft carrier. Oops! Wrong! Fake! Mission Not Accomplished!
Then: Wow! Bush goes to Iraq to serve turkey to the troops! What a guy! Except...wait! The turkey was fake! Oops!
How about those cool-looking firefighters in those slick campaign ads for Bush. Hey! They're not really firemen! They're actors! Fakers! Why couldn't Bush get real firemen? Maybe it's because the National Union of Firefighters endorsed Kerry!
Stop the Presses! Cheney Tells the Truth!
If We Don't Like the Science, Lose the Scientists
CHENEY TELLS THE TRUTH: One top Administration official who managed to tell the truth about the Administration's economic policies and its effect on jobs was Vice President Dick Cheney. He said "If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years...we would not have had the kind of job growth that we've had." And he is correct: with a net 2 million negative job growth record over the last three years, Cheney was correctly asserting that his Democrats' policies would have stemmed the job loss tide.
Dump the Scientists
Ideology trumps science yet again. The White House has consistently placed a conservative agenda above scientific fact. In yet another example, President Bush "dismissed two members of his handpicked Council on Bioethics -- a scientist and a moral philosopher who had been among the more outspoken advocates for research on human embryo cells." In their places, he "appointed three new members, including a doctor who has called for more religion in public life, a political scientist who has spoken out precisely against the research that the dismissed members supported, and another who has written about the immorality of abortion and the 'threats of biotechnology.'" The two scientists Bush removed "were often in the minority on the council as they provided dissenting views." Said Elizabeth Marincola, executive director of the American Society for Cell Biology, "It does seem alarming. It concerns me profoundly…The president is trying to ensure the advice he receives is the advice he wants to hear."
Union of Concerned Scientists' Report on Bush's bending of science to policy
Dick Cheney Consorts With Terrorists
Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton, recently chastised those "who intimidate opposition, tolerate and profit from corruption and maintain ties to terrorist groups." Yet Halliburton, who has plenty of government contracts these days, maintains a mail box in the Cayman Islands in order to do business with Iran, one member of the famous "Axis of Evil" and a presumed exporter of terrorism. Cheney maintains that Halliburton has been "unfairly maligned" by "desperate" political opponents. Does anyone else think it's completely appropriate to malign a company that maintains an offshore shell company in order to evade U.S. sanctions on doing business with terrorist regimes? Does anyone wonder why many of us out here in the heartland of America find it increasingly impossible to trust anything this administration says?
Cheney's quote is here. The "60 Minutes" investigation is here.
An account of Dick Cheney's canned bird shoot is here.
(Can you say, "Weapons of mass destruction-related program activities?" No? Check this parody out: here)
"The Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." - President Bush, 1/20/04 (here)
but:
"We have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook steps to build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material." There has been no evidence of "mobile biological production efforts." Iraq "did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled chemical weapons program after 1991." - The Kay Report, 10/2/03
THE NIGHTTIME IS THE RIGHT TIME : Republicans frequently get what they want by slim margins in the middle of the night – and often in the wee hours of a Friday so that the stories get buried in the low-circulation Saturday papers. On Friday, March 21 at 2:54 AM , the House voted to cut veterans benefits by 3 votes. (here) On Friday, April 11 at 2:39 AM , the House voted to slash education and health care funding by 5 votes. On Friday, May 23 at 1:56 AM , the House passed a tax cut for millionaires by 31 votes.
(William Safire on secretive Republicans here )
U.S. Fights Verdict Backing Ex-P.O. W.'s
When 21 freed American P.O.'s returned home from the Persian Gulf war in March 1991, Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, welcomed them at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
"Every man and woman who cares for freedom," Mr. Cheney said, "owes you a very special measure of gratitude."
Of those 21 former prisoners of war, 17, who had been tortured by their Iraqi captors, would like something more tangible. This month they won a court award of almost $1 billion against Iraq, and a federal law says they may be paid from frozen Iraqi funds.
The Bush administration has expressed sympathy for the plaintiffs over what they endured but is fighting them about the money, saying it is needed to rebuild Iraq.
One plaintiff, Lt. Col. Richard Dale Storr, now with the Washington Air National Guard, said the administration's position troubled him. Colonel Storr endured beatings in Iraq that broke his nose, dislocated his shoulder and burst his left eardrum.
"It's sending a conflicting message to our troops," he said of the administration's recent court filings. "Congress and the judicial branch say, `Let's protect our guys to the maximum extent possible,' " while the executive branch is "saying the opposite."
"Disappointing," he added, "would be a good way to put it."
(full story here)
Voting For Civic Reasons Only
In April, when the Republicans on the New York City Board of Elections killed a plan to repair voting machines that had under-recorded votes in the 2000 election (with most of the unlucky voters being Democrats), Republican Commissioner Stephen Weiner denied that his party's disinterest in properly functioning machines showed bias against Democrats: "There are some people who don't want (their vote) register(ed), but who report to the polls for civic reasons." [Newsday, 4-16-03]
Women With Briefcases
Several controversial bills backed by the Texas GOP are rolling through the Legislature. One gives social conservatives on the state Board of Education -- the same activists who once protested a photo of a woman with a briefcase because it undermined family values -- the ability to reject new school textbooks.
Relentless Moral Crusader Is Relentless Gambler
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
WASHINGTON— William J. Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues" and one of the nation's most relentless moral crusaders, is a high-rolling gambler who has lost more than $8 million at casinos in the last decade, according to online reports from two magazines.
The Washington Monthly said on its Web site that "over the last decade Bennett has made dozens of trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, where he is a `preferred customer' at several of them, and sources and documents provided to The Washington Monthly put his total losses at more than $8 million."
The Monthly said that in one two-month period, Mr. Bennett wired one casino more than $1.4 million to cover his losses.
The magazine says he earns $50,000 for each appearance in speaking fees on the lecture circuit, where he inveighs against various sins, weaknesses and vices of modern culture.
But Mr. Bennett exempts gambling from this list.
Shoot The Queers! Shoot the Liberals!
"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors." Right Wing commentator Ann Coulter, speaking at the 2002 Conservative Political Action Conference
Louie Welch, Republican of Texas, ran for Houston mayor on a "Return to Morality" platform. Once, unaware a microphone in front of him was still on, he outlined his four point plan to combat AIDS, saying, "One of them is to shoot the queers."
Todd Tiahrt, Republican from Kansas: "What is the best way for the Christian to win the race with the Muslim? The Muslim has too many babies, while Americans kill too many of theirs."
Freedom of Speech! Except When I'm Talking
CLEVELAND (AP) - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia banned broadcast media from an appearance Wednesday where he will receive an award for supporting free speech. The City Club usually tapes speakers for later broadcast on public television, but Scalia insisted on banning television and radio coverage, the club said. Scalia is being given the organization's Citadel of Free Speech Award. "I might wish it were otherwise, but that was one of the criteria that he had for acceptance," said James Foster, the club's executive director.
The ban on broadcast media "begs disbelief and seems to be in conflict with the award itself," C-SPAN vice president and executive producer Terry Murphy wrote in a letter last week to the City Club. "How free is speech if there are limits to its distribution?"
Congress's War on France Is Just Starting
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG New York Times
French fries and toast are not the only casualties of the escalating war of words between France and the United States. Add French wine, the French flag, French vanilla yogurt, French dressing, French air shows and, now, American soldiers' remains buried in France.
Angry over the French government's disagreement with President Bush's policy on Iraq, Representative Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the House Administration Committee, last week ordered the word "French" removed from the menus in all House cafeterias.
In Pennsylvania, a Republican state representative has proposed that state liquor stores divest themselves of Beaujolais. In New York, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, the French-owned Hotel Sofitel is no longer flying the French flag — "a precautionary measure," said a spokesman, Paul Charoy.
The managers of the House cafeterias, perhaps fearing Mr. Ney's wrath, have extended the French ban by placing red, white and blue "freedom" stickers over the word French on the yogurt machine and on dozens of individual packets of french dressing.
Meantime, Representative H. James Saxton, Republican of New Jersey, has proposed a ban on Pentagon participation in this year's Paris Air Show, and Representative Ginny Brown-Waite, Republican of Florida, has introduced legislation that would allow the remains of World War II veterans buried in France to be brought home.
"The remains of our brave servicemen should be buried in patriotic soil, not in a country that has turned its back on the United States and on the memory of Americans who fought and died there," Ms. Brown-Waite said. "It's almost as if the French have forgotten what those thousands of white crosses at Normandy represent."
But we'll always have Paris.
Sacre bleu! French Fries Renamed in House Restaurants
Jim Abrams, Associated Press March 12, 2003
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Show the flag and pass the ketchup was the order of the day in House cafeterias Tuesday. Lawmakers struck a lunchtime blow against the French and put "freedom fries" on the menu.
And for breakfast they'll now have "freedom toast."
The name changes follow similar actions in restaurants around the country protesting French opposition to the administration's Iraq war plans.
"Update. Now Serving in All House Office Buildings, 'Freedom Fries,' " read a sign that Republican Reps. Bob Ney of Ohio and Walter Jones of North Carolina placed at the register in the Longworth Office Building food court.
"This action today is a small but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France," said Ney, chairman of the House Administration Committee.
Ney, who said he is of French descent, ordered the menu changes.
The French Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment, except to say that french fries actually come from Belgium.
Reform? Republicans Take It All Back
New York Times
One of the first things Republicans did in 1995 after they took control of the House was to adopt tighter ethics rules for House members, in response to what they saw as decades of Democratic arrogance and abuse.
On Tuesday, after the new House was sworn in, the Republicans passed their first piece of business for the 108th Congress: House rules that overturned some of their old reforms.
Remember term limits? Republicans gave up on that cause long ago, and now they've also overturned their 1995 rule limiting a member to four terms as Speaker of the House. J. Dennis Hastert will now be able to serve as House speaker for years to come.
Republicans chalk up the changes to experience, not a loss of principle. "It took us time to learn about the process of governing," a spokesman said last week in defending the package.
Two other rule changes stand to help Republicans win any public relations war over the budget. Republicans reinstated the so-called Gephardt rule, named after its author, the Missouri Democrat who just stepped down as minority leader. The rule, adopted when Democrats were in the majority, allows the House to evade an unpleasant task: voting on whether to raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt.
Republicans repealed this rule in 2001, when the budget was in surplus, but now they see the wisdom of the provision, which increases the limit on public debt automatically when the House adopts its annual budget resolution.
This means that a separate, potentially embarrassing floor vote to authorize more debt is no longer required at a time when the budget deficit, projected to be about $150 billion this year, is sure to rise if Congress passes a new round of tax cuts.
Last year, Democrats used a vote on the debt ceiling to dramatize the worsening deficit and attack President Bush's economic policies.
The biggest rule change, however, is something that Republicans have long wanted, but thought too controversial to adopt when they first took over the House in 1995.
The Ways and Means Committee, where every tax law originates, will now be required to use "dynamic scoring," which estimates the cost of a tax change by predicting its impact on economic growth, rather than just calculating how much revenue would be lost or gained. Currently, Congressional economists use "static scoring," which assumes that a tax cut of, say, $100 billion will reduce government revenues by the same amount.
For years the supply-side economists have insisted that tax cuts stimulate the economy, producing increased government revenue that partially offsets the original cuts. But to their dismay, their own director of the Congressional Budget Office, Dan L. Crippen, rejected dynamic scoring. His term recently ended, and he was not reappointed. Replacing him is Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, the top economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, who conservatives say is a champion of dynamic scoring. Indeed, the council used dynamic scoring to predict that rather than costing $359 billion over the next five years, Mr. Bush's tax cut will reduce government revenues by only $166 billion.
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