Archive through May 08, 2001

The ClubHouse: General Archives: June - July Archives: Speak Out for the Future: Archive through May 08, 2001

Ocean_Islands

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 03:00 pm Click here to edit this post
Don't be complacent about what the American President is doing. If you've been 'shocked' or surprised by anything Bush has done lately, wake up. You must speak out and be heard.

-- President Bush has initiated further attempts to make "religious government groups" which could discriminate against government employees who do not believe as his "religious-based organisations" do. This is anti-American and anti-constitutional: America was founded on religious freedom and the separation of church and state. He also appointed a religious fanatic to be in charge of the nation's law enforcement.

-- President Bush attempted to weaken clean water standards, allowing arsenic in our drinking water which can damage your health or your loved one's health (it is used to kill rats).

-- The state of Texas's public executions are equivalent to those of a third world Islamic state. Have you seen the tourist ads for Texas, saying Texas is like a "whole other country"? Yea, it is: Afghanistan, Yemen or Iran, take your pick.

Five countries (since 1990) are known to have executed prisoners who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime -- Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen -- and the United States (six since 1990).

Which countries accounted for 85% of executions in 1999? China, Congo, Saudi Arabia, Iran -- and the United States. Are we peers of these third world countries? Bush is a demonstrated advocate of the death penalty through his history as the Texan governor and his public statements.

Also:

-- President Bush reneged on America's promise to reduce poisonous gas emissions from industry. This has made America a laughing stock and has damaged our reputation for sticking to a valid, diplomatic, signed and sealed agreement.

-- Recent news has Bush indicating a desire to renege on the anti-ballistic missile treaty against nuclear proliferation.

-- President Bush's disregard for foreign nations has allowed the United States to lose prestige, influence, and power. This was demonstrated just this last week when the Human Rights commission at the United Nations did not elect the U.S. to continue on its Human Rights committee for the first time since the institution was founded.

Call your congressman, your senator, or your ambassador. Don't let this continue without your voice being heard.

Zeb

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 03:17 pm Click here to edit this post
<sigh>

Judy

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 03:41 pm Click here to edit this post
ditto

Gail

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 04:35 pm Click here to edit this post
>>Have you seen the tourist ads for Texas, saying Texas is like a "whole other country"? >>

Yes I have!! Forget French accents, I love Texas accents so much better!!

Moondance

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 04:38 pm Click here to edit this post
Nothing surprises me... I knew what the counrty was getting if they voted for Bush... this is why I voted for someone else! This is what happens when we vote without research!>Good bye<

Twiggyish

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:20 pm Click here to edit this post
Right Moon!

Ocean_Islands

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:23 pm Click here to edit this post
Some of us knew, some of us didn't. In any case, I'm encouraging people to take an active role in communicating to their representatives their positions so we don't have to explain to a future generation why the environment is ruined.

Moondance

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:28 pm Click here to edit this post
I do on a weekly bases OI:)

Highlander

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:31 pm Click here to edit this post
By Maureen Dowd.
ASHINGTON — W. was hanging out at the White House with the Yankees on Friday, his face aglow as he was presented with a team ball and a signed pinstriped jersey by Roger Clemens, Paul O'Neill and Mariano Rivera.
"Mucho gusto!" he told Mariano.
The president also gave a trophy to the Air Force Academy football team, prepared for the debut of his T-ball league and hosted a Cinco de Mayo festival on the South Lawn.
"Mi Casa Blanca es su Casa Blanca," El Presidente Jorge told the crowd, before flying off to Camp David at 3:30 p.m.
Some days, it's fun to be the boy toy of the military-industrial complex.

As the president fiddled, I burned. Doesn't W. realize that EVERYBODY in the world HATES us?
Not Mexico. Maybe not Monaco. But EVERYBODY ELSE! Even the Swedes can't stand us, for Pete's sake.
Gerhard Schröder thinks that he and W. had no communication when they met, and that W. had trouble remembering his name. Tony Blair has to call Bill Clinton to find a sympathetic ear. And how many times can President Bush trot out Vicente Fox?
During the campaign, W. tried to soothe public doubts about the deep dry well of his foreign policy knowledge. He promised we would feel secure with an array of veterans — Colin, Condi and Cheney.
So why, only three months in, is America roiled by all these bristly spats around the globe? We couldn't be playing the bully boy with a heavier hand if Pat Buchanan had won.

After complaining that Clinton foreign policy was erratic and impulsive, the Bush team turned out to be erratic and impulsive. The Bushies wanted to be more muscular, but have succeeded only in being more high-handed, infuriating allies and rivals with moves both unilateral and pointless.
Fed up with America's "my way or the highway" attitude on global warming, the missile defense shield, AIDS medication for the poor and treaties, the Europeans gleefully went along in slapping the U.S., booting us out of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights for the first time since its inception in 1947.
The U.S. was cast out while Sudan, with its slaughtering and slavery, remains in, as well as Togo, which traffics in child slaves, and Pakistan, which has a military dictator (identified by W. only as "General . . . General" in his campaign pop quiz). France won 52 votes to our 29. When you are deemed snootier than the French, you know you're in trouble.
The Bushies were needlessly humiliated in the Kabuki theater of the U.N., where the outcome of a vote should never be a surprise, because they weren't paying attention. They were too busy brandishing their trompe l'oeil missile shield to worry about shielding real people in real trouble. They were too busy trying to turn Alaska into a giant oil rig and give more riches to the rich.
At a Georgetown cocktail party last week, Robert McNamara, the mastermind behind our most despicable Asian policy, told other guests W. had botched relations with Beijing so badly we could end up at war with China in the next decade. He should know.
The Bushies try to act tough but keep slipping on banana peels. After Rummy's top aide at the Pentagon issued a cold-warlike memo ordering all contacts between our military and the Chinese armed forces to stop, the White House had it revoked.
The world moved on between Bush 41 and Bush 43, but maybe they missed it in Texas. A decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, W. is in a time warp, writing a blank check for a weapons system that Rummy says doesn't have to work.
"Everyone in Europe is rubbing their eyes as this strange laconic creature with miniaturized eyes gads about alternating strange promises with stranger threats," observed one European analyst.
We have never succeeded in shooting down an intercontinental missile. At least when Ronald Reagan pushed his faux shield, it was a way to get the Soviets to spend themselves into oblivion. But there is no Soviet Union now, and Putin is broke. The military-industrial complex cannot justify its flamboyant weapons without the existence of flamboyant enemies.
It was bad enough when President Clinton rewarded his contributors with the Lincoln Bedroom. But President Bush is rewarding his contributors with the Pentagon. (Mi Pentagono es su Pentagono.)

Highlander

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:32 pm Click here to edit this post
Hurry Up and Shield


By GAIL COLLINS


f you want to estimate the Bush missile shield's chances for success, consider the Army beret crisis.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, had a vision of the Army of the future. He called it the Objective Force. All of its parts would be able to move fast and work together in the field without turf battles. And as a first step toward this marvelous goal, the general felt a pressing need for . . . HATS.

Yes, General Shinseki decided our soldiers might feel more like members of the Objective Force if they all wore the same headgear, specifically black berets. When the general thought of black berets, he thought of the need to "maintain relevance for the evolving strategic environment." The rest of us, of course, think of Monica Lewinsky, but that's why nobody named us chief of staff.

The general wanted every single soldier under a beret by June 14, the Army's first birthday in the new millennium. This week, when he was being yelled at by the House Committee on Small Business, and having what must have been the worst day of his life that did not involve bullets, he said he believed that making the beret switchover a sort of birthday celebration would "demonstrate that the Army could accomplish this change effectively and quickly."

Will you be surprised, people, to hear that it demonstrated exactly the opposite? The Department of Defense was given eight months to acquire 1.3 million black berets. Since there was only one medium-sized American contractor with the critical beret- making machinery in hand, many of the orders wound up being placed overseas, outraging American small businesses, not to mention the House Small Business Committee.
The overseas suppliers, who were in Canada and England, had their factories elsewhere. Before you knew it, just as the spy-plane hostage drama was playing out, the Army was receiving crate after crate of berets that had been manufactured in China.
Everybody went crazy. "Somebody should be punched for this," said Representative Bill Pascrell of New Jersey, conjuring up the "image of our guys and gals in uniform, taking off these berets to wipe their brows, and reading `made in China.' "
Eventually, the Army promised that no American soldier would ever go off to war, or even to K.P. duty, wearing a chapeau of Chinese origin. If you have any innovative ideas about what to do with 618,000 surplus berets, drop a note to the Defense Logistics Agency.
The moral of this story is that when it comes to the Pentagon, speed kills. When you hear the president promise to have some sort of a missile shield in place by 2004, remember that there is nothing so disaster-prone as a large military organization attempting to do something really, really fast.
This week a Senate subcommittee held hearings on the Defense Department's promise to quickly train 32 special National Guard units to respond to domestic terrorism. None of them are functioning, and the office created to manage the program has been disbanded. An audit found that in an attempt to get the units up and running, people were being trained to operate nonexistent equipment.
"This was fast-tracked, and as a result some of the things that might have been done, that would have been done, did not take place," said Lt. Gen. Russell Davis.
And over at the Senate Armed Services Committee they were having hearings on the Osprey, the Marines' revolutionary new aircraft that keeps exhibiting a deeply undesirable tendency to fall out of the sky. A Pentagon expert reported that the Osprey was "frightfully immature," and had been rushed into service too fast.
Meanwhile, President Bush was making his long-awaited defense speech, vowing to turn the missile shield into a rush order. The administration, which does not want to race to judgment on reducing the level of arsenic in the drinking water, is perfectly cool about blowing $100 billion on a system that nobody has figured out how to build.
Mr. Bush's leap of faith seems to be predicated on the assumption that if you tell the military to get cracking, that will make something happen. And if you believe that one, I've got a warehouse of Chinese berets to sell you.

Ocean_Islands

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:38 pm Click here to edit this post
It just may be that, as with his father where someone said, "It's the economy, stupid," we might have to say to him, "It's foreign relations and diplomacy, stupid. (Hopefully it won't be us saying to one another: "It's Bush's stupidity, stupid.")

This article reminds of a point I left off my originating post.

President Bush is also giving legitimacy to those who want Spanish to be a second language for the United States.

His cynical and calculated use of Spanish is designed to garner the Mexican-American vote. However, this is not a bilingual country; as all immigrants before them have, the Mexican-Americans need to learn English. This attitude towards the Spanish speakers legitimizes their complaint that we should open America to illegal immigration to the detriment of our own citizens.

Highlander

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:43 pm Click here to edit this post
By MAUREEN DOWD


ASHINGTON — So I found myself on Friday in the Cobra Reading Room on the Web.\

I had discovered on the Hotline, the Racing Form of politics, that President Bush's nickname for me is "The Cobra."
I wasn't sure if that was an insult or a sign of respect. So I figured I'd read up on some cobra traits.
"The cobra lives near towns where mice and rats abound." Well, I thought, that fits.
"Cobras have extensive tissues that store fat." Yup.
"The venom of cobras acts powerfully on the nerves of those it attacks." Clearly.
Maybe the president had it right. I was a major-league asp.
I puzzled over whether W. fancied himself the mongoose or the snake charmer in this allegory. Either way, I knew he would expect me to hiss a bit about his first 100 days.

It has been a strange start. Al Gore jokes he should be addressed as "Your Adequacy." But W. risks being "Your Inadequacy."
Men customarily build their presidencies around their strengths. W. has built his around his weaknesses. His White House reminds me of the 1937 movie "Damsel in Distress," in which Fred Astaire has to frantically pirouette around Joan Fontaine to make up for the fact that she cannot dance.
Bush officials are always frantically pirouetting around W., making up for his stumbles and lacunae. Last week, the president threw the planet into a turmoil when he went on "Good Morning America" and said he was willing to "do whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself" against a Chinese attack, including sending American forces.
Obviously, Mr. Bush did not set out to change nearly 30 years of American policy on a morning chat show. But, sensitive about W.'s reputation as a featherweight, his aides did not want the president to have to admit he made a boo-boo and is a yo-yo who can't be trusted to carry on a brief discussion about his own policies with hard-hitting Charlie Gibson. (Hiss!)
So they tried to soften his statement while letting it stand, thereby enraging Beijing further.

On Friday night, Uncle Dick Cheney had to go on Larry King and explain in that reassuring basso that the Kid was not changing policy.
W.'s advisers tried to make him look more impressive in his first forays into diplomacy by keeping the big world leaders at bay and letting him hang out with lesser leaders he could talk to in Spanish.

So now we have a whole new alliance with Central and South American countries simply because W. feels more comfortable at what USA Today dubbed "amigo diplomacy." The ill-prepared president doesn't seem troubled by the state of his preparedness. There's no indication he's staying up late to make up the work. He isn't even aspiring to on-the-job training. The White House simply pretends that thoughtlessness is thoughtfulness, and that the president is governing when he is gaffe-ing. (Hiss!)

His team overreacts to his father's failings. Karl Rove, a.k.a. "Boy Genius," in W.'s nickname lexicon, is so assiduous about buttering up the right, which grew disillusioned with Bush père, that he has alienated swing voters and Republican suburban women on the environment and abortion.
Lee Atwater, the bad-boy strategist for Bush Sr. who was a mentor to Mr. Rove, aimed to keep the right happy, but he never bowed and scraped to "extra-chromosome conservatives," as he and his boss called them.
It is ironic, given how intently they are shaping Bush II to avoid the errors of Bush I, that W.'s weakness in polls at the start is the same one that sunk his dad in the end.
In last week's ABC News/Washington Post poll, 51 percent said the president does not "understand the problems of people like you."
When the father got tarred for being out of touch, it was because of his patrician ways and because he was absorbed in his avocation, international affairs, while this country was hurting economically.
The son has a plain-spoken, colloquial style and homespun tastes. He runs from his gilded cradle, avoiding Yale and refusing to acknowledge Connecticut as his birthplace on a recent trip there. But he is not seen as a populist, either. He, too, is surrounded by wealthy older men. And they have given his economic and environmental policies a strong corporate aroma.

Highlander

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:47 pm Click here to edit this post
His oft-repeated claim to be a "uniter and not a divider" has only applied to uniting the conflicting elements of the Republican party around a divisive agenda.

As the political pundits reflect on the accomplishments of the first one hundred days of the Bush Administration, the calendar of his record in office speaks for itself:

January 20 President Bush inaugurated.

January 22 President Bush imposes "global gag rule" on family planning organizations that receive USAID funds to prevent use of their own, non-U.S. funds to provide legal abortion services or to lobby their own governments for changes in abortion laws.

January 23 President Bush announces his plans to siphon money from public schools to fund private and religious schools.

January 29 President Bush announces plan to divert public social services money to religious groups, which may discriminate in both their employment and service delivery practices.

February 1 John Ashcroft is narrowly confirmed as the United States Attorney General over the objections of those concerned with his egregious record on issues ranging from civil rights to reproductive freedom.

March 7 President Bush disregards Secretary of State Colin Powell's policy statement a day earlier by announcing that his administration will not pursue negotiations begun by the Clinton Administration to constrain North Korea's ballistic missile development.

March 13 Breaking a campaign promise, President Bush tells Congress he will not regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, thereby undermining a reasoned, bipartisan response to the growing threat of global warming.

March 15 In a letter to Senator Trent Lott, President Bush makes clear his opposition to the bipartisan McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation and support for a new law demanding written permission from each union member to use any dues for political purposes.

March 19 Edwin Feulner, president of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, calls the Bush Administration one that is "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration." Another right-wing leader, Grover Norquist, declares, "There isn't an 'us' and 'them' with this administration. They is us. We is them."

March 21 The Bush Environmental Protection Agency kills standards that reduce the level of arsenic in drinking water, rejecting studies that show that these limits are essential to protecting millions of Americans from cancer and other health threats.

March 21 President Bush renews his vow to reject all "Patients' Bill of Rights" proposals pending in Congress, including the bipartisan McCain-Kennedy bill to protect against health insurer abuses.

March 23 The President's budget plans, including substantial cuts to child care, abuse prevention, and medical training at children's hospitals, are leaked. An "early learning fund" for quality child care and education improvement initiatives will be completely eliminated.

March 27 The Bush Administration announces that it will withdraw from the landmark Kyoto Protocol, a treaty signed in 1997 by the world's industrial nations, including the United States, seeking binding limits on greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

March 30 The Bush Administration overturns a rule that significantly strengthened the government's ability to deny contracts to companies that have violated civil rights, workplace safety, environmental regulations and other federal laws.

April 6 Public outcry forces the Bush Administration to drop plans to eliminate salmonella testing of beef served in federal school lunch programs.

April 9 "Compassionate" Bush budget does away with the Public Housing Drug Elimination Grant Program, which funds anti-crime and anti-drug law enforcement, cuts the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, and cuts nuclear non-proliferation programs to stop the spread of nuclear materials to terrorist groups and nations hostile to the United States.

April 20 The president of the Wilderness Society declares that "the Bush White House is becoming the most environmentally hostile administration ever."

April 23 A White House spokesman indicates Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman was "confused" when she stated the President was backing off support for oil drilling in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

April 24 Even though it has given millions of free paperback books to poor children for 35 years, the Reading is Fundamental program would be terminated by President Bush's education budget.

April 25 Signaling its intention to continue befriending Big Tobacco, the Bush Administration cuts funding for the Justice Department's lawsuit against the tobacco industry for costs incurred by taxpayers such as the $4 billion spent annually for treating veterans with tobacco-related illnesses.

Highlander

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:48 pm Click here to edit this post
O.K. Ocean, I am going to stop myself now. I could go on for pages on this guy.

Ocean_Islands

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 05:52 pm Click here to edit this post
I also forgot another point:

A comparison was made between political appointments within the last few president's first 100 days.

In the first 100 days, George W. Bush has only done 1/3 of the appointments that Clinton had done at the same time, and only about 1/4 of the appointments that Reagan and Bush had done in the same amount of time.

Misslibra

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 06:14 pm Click here to edit this post
I am not surprised either by any of this. And it tends to make my blood pressure rise when I think about it. I have nothing good to say about the Man, and I don't want to ruin my evening by going on a rant here. So I'll do like Ocean said and write my Representives and Congress Men and Women.

I just hope it's not to little to late. The Man should of never been elected to office in the first place. Especially with his environmental record.

I know not everyone agrees with this, and I'm not trying to start another debate about him it's just my opinion. But when people voted him into office they might as well have been saying we don't give a $hit about clean air and water, we just want that nice tax cut your telling us your going to give us... it was pure greed for some.

But the bad part about it, even the poorer people that voted for him didn't understand that they weren't going to be included in that tax cut. A tax cut, the looks a lot different now that he's in office I might add.

Twiggyish

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 07:16 pm Click here to edit this post
Unfortunately, the ones who voted for him, do not care about the environment. They call us "tree huggers" and think their "guy" is doing well.

Tess

Sunday, May 06, 2001 - 11:32 pm Click here to edit this post
Well, I didn't vote for him and neither did my dear hubby. We'd be proud to be called "tree huggers" and a tax cut definitely wasn't first on our list of priorities when deciding for whom we would vote.

We're waging our own war here in Minnesota with our govenor (didn't vote for him either and what the heck happened there??) over education funding cuts among other things. The fact that he is a constant embarrassment is another concern, but then I would tend to say that about our president as well - sadly. <sigh>

Moondance

Monday, May 07, 2001 - 12:44 pm Click here to edit this post
http://web.democrats.org

Max

Monday, May 07, 2001 - 01:08 pm Click here to edit this post
i didn't vote for dubya either. the guy has scared me from the get-go, although i couldn't put my finger on exactly why. the more time goes by, though, the more i can see reasons to be afraid.

i said before the election that if i was only looking out for myself, then dubya would probably be a good choice. i'm in the upper income brackets that could benefit greatly from his tax plans. i just don't believe my own personal gain is worth raping and pillaging the pockets of folks who make less than me, ruining the environment, and destroying international relations is okay as long as my personal bank account gets fatter. evidently, dubya doesn't agree.

i've been writing letters, too. getting the standard form letter responses. i'm not convinced it does much good, but it sure feels better than doing nothing.

Zeb

Monday, May 07, 2001 - 10:24 pm Click here to edit this post
It's going to be a long 4 years for some of you.

Moondance

Monday, May 07, 2001 - 10:31 pm Click here to edit this post
Yes, it will... 4 very sad years for America but that doesn't mean I will take it sitting down... I try to write, research and do what I can on a weekly basis. GW's record stunk before he went in and it is not getting better... proof is his record and actions.

Moondance

Monday, May 07, 2001 - 10:35 pm Click here to edit this post
I just sent you an e-mail Zeb

Grooch

Tuesday, May 08, 2001 - 09:38 am Click here to edit this post
Why does George W. walk around with his fly open?


------------------------------------------------

So he can count to eleven.

Ocean_Islands

Tuesday, May 08, 2001 - 09:43 am Click here to edit this post
More like '10 and a half'.