Politics
As seen below, two of the four current lead-ins on The New York Times website (http://nytimes.com) at 2:12AM ET mention a "mandate" for the president and a third states that the country is "center right". Let's stop and think about this. President Bush was just elected in a tremendously close election.
He had 3 percentage points more votes than Kerry.
He won with 51% of the vote.
I don't know about you, but the support of only half the country and the dissent of the other half doesn't seem like a mandate to me. The words I'd use to characterize a president who only has half of the country's support are tenuous, fragile, delicate, and, perhaps, weak.
Why is the New York Times (and countless other mainstream media outlets) using such strong language for Bush and his political agenda?
President Bush has a weak hold over our country. Let's flex some political muscle and break his grip.
From NYTimes.com:
TOP HEADLINE: Bush and Republicans Celebrate Victory; Mandate Is Seen for the Next Four Years
After Kerry Concedes, Bush Cites 'A Duty to Serve All Americans'
He had 3 percentage points more votes than Kerry.
He won with 51% of the vote.
I don't know about you, but the support of only half the country and the dissent of the other half doesn't seem like a mandate to me. The words I'd use to characterize a president who only has half of the country's support are tenuous, fragile, delicate, and, perhaps, weak.
Why is the New York Times (and countless other mainstream media outlets) using such strong language for Bush and his political agenda?
President Bush has a weak hold over our country. Let's flex some political muscle and break his grip.
From NYTimes.com:
TOP HEADLINE: Bush and Republicans Celebrate Victory; Mandate Is Seen for the Next Four Years
After Kerry Concedes, Bush Cites 'A Duty to Serve All Americans'
The Republicans have posted a "Debate Facts" section on their website. As is shown below, there is nothing factual about their claims.
1. Kerry On The Threat Posed By Saddam Hussein
Republicans charge that Kerry once supported and is now critical of the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. This, in their minds, is a flip flop.
RESPONSE: A huge amount of information has been uncovered since 2002, including a great deal of evidence that the intelligence Bush used to the war was incorrect or even forged. Kerry and the rest of Congress voted on Bush’s bad information. Now that we know the justification for the war was invalid, it is by definition a mistake. As a Senator and as a Presidential candidate, it is Kerry's duty to use this information to improve our government's global policy -- to correct a mistake propagated by Bush and his cabinet.
2. Kerry Flip Flop On Iraq
RESPONSE: See point 1.
3. Breaking Debate Fact: Kerry Said President Has Lost Support Among Military Officials
Defending against this statement the Republicans publish nothing more than a list of names of Flag Officers.
1. Kerry On The Threat Posed By Saddam Hussein
Republicans charge that Kerry once supported and is now critical of the decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. This, in their minds, is a flip flop.
RESPONSE: A huge amount of information has been uncovered since 2002, including a great deal of evidence that the intelligence Bush used to the war was incorrect or even forged. Kerry and the rest of Congress voted on Bush’s bad information. Now that we know the justification for the war was invalid, it is by definition a mistake. As a Senator and as a Presidential candidate, it is Kerry's duty to use this information to improve our government's global policy -- to correct a mistake propagated by Bush and his cabinet.
2. Kerry Flip Flop On Iraq
RESPONSE: See point 1.
3. Breaking Debate Fact: Kerry Said President Has Lost Support Among Military Officials
Defending against this statement the Republicans publish nothing more than a list of names of Flag Officers.
Texas populist Jim Hightower, also known as the anti-Bush, spoke at a TrueMajority event in Bexley on August 13. Hightower signed copies of his new book Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush. The highlight of Hightower’s talk was his detailed account on how George W. Bush came to own a “ranchette” in Crawford, Texas. Hightower speaks with great authority as the state’s former Commissioner of Agriculture.
As Hightower told us, Karl Rove, referred to as “Bush’s brain,” decided that Dubya needed a ranch in 1999 if he wanted to be elected President. After all, Ronald Reagan had a ranch and so did that last Texas President, Lyndon Johnson.
“There’s nothing Bush likes better than having a photo op of him clearing brush,” Hightower explained. “Bush is always inviting the media out to take pictures of him clearing brush. In my experience real ranchers spend virtually no time clearing brush. They’re usually tending cattle. But Bush bought a ranch in farm country, and the cattle you see as part of the photo op aren’t even his. They’re somebody else’s that he rents the land to.”
As Hightower told us, Karl Rove, referred to as “Bush’s brain,” decided that Dubya needed a ranch in 1999 if he wanted to be elected President. After all, Ronald Reagan had a ranch and so did that last Texas President, Lyndon Johnson.
“There’s nothing Bush likes better than having a photo op of him clearing brush,” Hightower explained. “Bush is always inviting the media out to take pictures of him clearing brush. In my experience real ranchers spend virtually no time clearing brush. They’re usually tending cattle. But Bush bought a ranch in farm country, and the cattle you see as part of the photo op aren’t even his. They’re somebody else’s that he rents the land to.”
The Nationwide Arena doors opened at 1:00. There would be a four-hour wait before the prodigal son returned to his ancestral home, Columbus, Ohio.
Forget about Kennebunkport, Maine. That’s where George Herbert Walker of the St. Louis Walkers purchased a faux ancestral home. Ignore Connecticut. That’s simply where Prescott Bush went, after his prank letter on being a war hero was published in a hometown newspaper embarrassing the family out of the heartland. Here in Columbus is where it all started. Where the great-grandfather of our current President began the family’s well-documented tradition of war profiteering.
Samuel Bush, friend of the Rockefellers and owner of Buckeye Steel Castings, pulled his own “Halliburton” in World War I simultaneously serving on the Armaments Board and granting contracts to his family business. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church still stands on Broad Street near downtown as a monument to the good old days. The Bush family worshipped there before its new generations embraced evangelical right-wing Christianity.
Forget about Kennebunkport, Maine. That’s where George Herbert Walker of the St. Louis Walkers purchased a faux ancestral home. Ignore Connecticut. That’s simply where Prescott Bush went, after his prank letter on being a war hero was published in a hometown newspaper embarrassing the family out of the heartland. Here in Columbus is where it all started. Where the great-grandfather of our current President began the family’s well-documented tradition of war profiteering.
Samuel Bush, friend of the Rockefellers and owner of Buckeye Steel Castings, pulled his own “Halliburton” in World War I simultaneously serving on the Armaments Board and granting contracts to his family business. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church still stands on Broad Street near downtown as a monument to the good old days. The Bush family worshipped there before its new generations embraced evangelical right-wing Christianity.
It's a wrap for Howard Dean's drive to be the Democratic presidential nominee. Unless the former Vermont governor has souvenirs of malodorous corruption in those famous sealed files from his gubernatorial stints in Montpelier, or once ran a version of Michael Jackson's Neverland in the Green Mountain state, he's got it all sewn up. Al Gore's endorsement earlier this week was only the icing on the cake.
Dick Gephardt and John Kerry will wanly struggle on, but defeat stares them harshly in the face, in Iowa and New Hampshire and beyond. John Edwards and Wesley Clark are struggling. Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely Brown never stood a chance. Joe Lieberman's campaign is also on Death Row, with inmates kept awake at night by the Connecticut senator's plaintive bleats of betrayal by Gore.
Dick Gephardt and John Kerry will wanly struggle on, but defeat stares them harshly in the face, in Iowa and New Hampshire and beyond. John Edwards and Wesley Clark are struggling. Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely Brown never stood a chance. Joe Lieberman's campaign is also on Death Row, with inmates kept awake at night by the Connecticut senator's plaintive bleats of betrayal by Gore.
Part I: Progressives and the Dean Campaign
Let’s take Howard Dean at his word: “I was a triangulator before Clinton was a triangulator. In my soul, I’m a moderate.”
Plenty of evidence backs up that comment by the former Vermont governor to the New York Times Magazine a few months ago. The self-comparison with Clinton is apt. “During his five two-year terms as governor,” the magazine noted, “Dean was proud to be known as a pragmatic New Democrat, in the Clinton mold, boasting that neither the far right nor the far left had much use for him.”
Of course, what a mainstream publication is apt to call “the far left” often includes large progressive constituencies. In the battle for the ’04 Democratic presidential nomination, Dean clearly finds grassroots progressives to be quite useful for his purposes. But is he truly useful for ours?
Let’s take Howard Dean at his word: “I was a triangulator before Clinton was a triangulator. In my soul, I’m a moderate.”
Plenty of evidence backs up that comment by the former Vermont governor to the New York Times Magazine a few months ago. The self-comparison with Clinton is apt. “During his five two-year terms as governor,” the magazine noted, “Dean was proud to be known as a pragmatic New Democrat, in the Clinton mold, boasting that neither the far right nor the far left had much use for him.”
Of course, what a mainstream publication is apt to call “the far left” often includes large progressive constituencies. In the battle for the ’04 Democratic presidential nomination, Dean clearly finds grassroots progressives to be quite useful for his purposes. But is he truly useful for ours?
We can only imagine Limited founder and apparel mag- nate Leslie Wexner’s consternation over the leaking of a document entitled, Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003. The report was prepared for the Wexner Foundation and provides insight into Wexner’s relationship with the state of Israel. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted, Wexner keeps his personal life “under padlock.” But what has surfaced over the years simply adds to his mystery. In the Shapiro murder file, personally ordered destroyed by Columbus Chief of Police James Jackson, Wexner is listed as an alleged organized crime associate. A December 1995 Architectural Digest article and a follow-up 1996 New York Times report detailed the inner sanctum of Wexner’s former Manhattan townhouse, one of the largest in the city.
Columbus Public Schools Acting Internal Auditor Philip Watson’s
7-page summary and report explains why Columbus School Board member William Moss pounded his shoe on the table disrupting the February 4, 2003 Columbus School Board meeting.
An assessment of the mainstream press’ news and commentary surrounding Moss’ imitation of Nikita Khrushchev suggests that only the Columbus Dispatch’s Bill Bush looked past Moss’ tactics to the substance of his complaint. Columbus Dispatch columnist Barbara Carmen, despite the availability of the Watson’s 7-page report, completely ignored its contents, as did The Other Paper’s News Editor Dan Williamson and Alive columnist Jeff Winbush.
Moss told the Free Press in an interview that his outburst was motivated by what he saw as "collusion" between accounting and consulting firm KPMG and Computer Science Corporation (CSC). Moss points out that as former head of the School Board’s Technology Committee, he recommended pulling the CSC contract from the agenda.
Insider info for bid
An assessment of the mainstream press’ news and commentary surrounding Moss’ imitation of Nikita Khrushchev suggests that only the Columbus Dispatch’s Bill Bush looked past Moss’ tactics to the substance of his complaint. Columbus Dispatch columnist Barbara Carmen, despite the availability of the Watson’s 7-page report, completely ignored its contents, as did The Other Paper’s News Editor Dan Williamson and Alive columnist Jeff Winbush.
Moss told the Free Press in an interview that his outburst was motivated by what he saw as "collusion" between accounting and consulting firm KPMG and Computer Science Corporation (CSC). Moss points out that as former head of the School Board’s Technology Committee, he recommended pulling the CSC contract from the agenda.
Insider info for bid
When you mention Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan together, people don’t expect to hear the word alliance. In fact, it would be hard to find two well-known people further apart on the political spectrum. Why then talk of alliances?
Ralph Nader controls a virtual empire of interconnected NGOs. Riding the post-Seattle upsurge in activism, one of these groups, Public Citizen has been at the forefront of education and lobbying efforts on “fair-trade” issues around the nation and in Congress.
During the intense lobbying efforts to derail Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PTR) status for China Mike Dolan (Deputy Field Director for Public Citizen) sent an e-mail to Public Citizen’s e-mail listserv entitled “Trade Patriot Buchanan.” Public Citizen coordinated lobbying activities with Buchanan and other right wing forces in a last ditch attempt to keep China out of the WTO.
Political observers are predicting massive protests and civil disobedience at the Republican convention in Philadelphia and the Democratic convention in L.A. this summer. Many political analysts believe this new wave of militant progressive political dissent started with the outburst in Columbus in 1998 at CNN’s Town Hall Meeting on Iraq. The mood of protest escalated last fall during the battle of Seattle. The demonstrations turned into a full-scale movement this spring at the IMF/World Bank meeting in Washington D.C. Not since the New Left’s last stand against Reagan in Detroit in 1980 or the 1972 Republican convention in Miami have the major party conventions inspired such dedicated counter-demonstrators.