Not so fast, Dubya
"Kevin Cahill, left, wipes tears from the eyes of Chip Lenno during their wedding ceremony, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004, at City Hall in San Francisco."
Did Bush go too far this time? To read an e-mailer to Andrew Sullivan,
yes.
"We've witnessed a shift in Republican politics. The Republican establishment used to pay lip service to religious conservative interests while openly courting independent voters with moderate policies because it knew it could get the religious conservative vote regardless (who were they going to vote for, Clinton!?). But now, it seems Bush is paying lip service to independent interests while openly promoting religious conservative policy. Who are we going to vote for, Kerry?
Well, yes."
I guess freedom's just for IraqCrispin Sartwell writes in "
'Marriage amendment' a threat to Constitution":
"Bush repeats like a mantra that liberty is a gift from God. Of course, the movement to ban gay marriage is a religious movement. It is one of many illustrations that God as conceived by the Bush administration is dedicated to the destruction rather than preservation of basic liberties. All of us know that theocracy is not compatible with freedom, a fact richly established by history if anything has been, and which was one of the basic insights of the founders of the American republic.
If God is the source of liberty, then God is a supporter of gay marriage. But even if God opposes gay marriage - a claim that cannot be rationally supported at all, much less demonstrated - it still does not follow that the state ought to ban it.
The marriage amendment asserts government control of love. That is sad and impossible. And it is tyranny."
The right's Bizarro WorldConservatives have an entire network of information outlets that allow them to live in their own little information world. If they want to read a newspaper, they have
The Washington Times. If they want to watch TV, they've got Fox News. If they want to listen to the radio, they've got, well, everything. The funny thing is,
the President's just as bad:
"Speaking to a friendly audience of Republican governors, Bush said the Democratic field offered diverse opinions on a host of issues.
"For tax cuts and against them... in favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it," he said, ticking off several other examples. "And that's just one senator from Massachusetts." His supportive audience erupted in laughter and applause."
I guess it's not enough to ignore protesters and newspapers. Now he's avoiding unfriendly audiences too. Let's hope voters cast their ballots from the real world.
2.6 million jobs? WMD? NCLB?
The fingers means the taxesLooks like the President is lying about his tax cuts again.
Factcheck.org calls him out:
"President Bush stumbled Feb. 19, saying the average tax cut is $1,089. The White House corrected that figure to $1,586. But the fact is that most Americans won't see anywhere near either of those amounts."
"Taxpayers making more than $1 million a year get an average cut of nearly $113,000 this year. Such huge cuts at the top tend to pull up the numerical average that the President is fond of citing.
A more meaningful number is the median -- or mid-point. The Tax Policy Center calculates the median cut received for income earned in 2003 is $470.
That means half of all individuals and families get less than that, and half get more."
Next class, we will cover mean and mode.
Psyche not!The Inquirer reports: "The White House struggled yesterday to get its economic message straight, and shied away from its prediction last week that the U.S. economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year."
"Bush wants to sound upbeat about the economy as he seeks reelection, but he risks sounding as if he is out of touch with the unemployed. Democrats are quick to point out that the economy has lost 2.2 million jobs since he took office."
He wants to sound upbeat, but he sounds delusional. About everything.
How they "think"
Heartening news from the Heartland
According to the American Prospect, Bush got a rowdy reception at the Daytona 500 on Sunday:
"A recent ABC News analysis of the exit polls from the 2000 election concluded that the "NASCAR dads" aren't swing voters at all, but, rather, a small and solid part of Bush's core constituency. It may not be worth it for Democrats to pursue these fans, some experts say.
Apparently they weren't in Daytona.
Just before the race began, people were becoming impatient to get to their seats, and the increased security prompted by Bush's visit was slowing things down. To my left, I heard someone ask, "Who's voting for Bush?" Someone else instantly responded, "Not me." I turned back to see who'd spoken, but I was no match for the hundreds of people behind me pressing onward."
It's a funny read,
check it out. My favorite part is when the crowd gives the presidential motorcade the finger.
We don't want the loonies taking overJust in case you couldn't tell,
the Republican party is a threat to democracy: "America has had periods of single-party dominance before. It happened under FDR's New Deal, in the Republican 1920s and in the early 19th-century "Era of Good Feeling." But if President Bush is re-elected, we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S. history.
In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided, and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones. Yet the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little press scrutiny or widespread popular protest."
Bush vs. ScienceNPR has a story today about the Bush administration's manipulation of science for its own ends: "
Scientists Accuse White House of Distortion":
"Scores of scientists release a report alleging the Bush administration distorts and censors scientific findings that contradict its policies. At least 58 leading scientists -- including Nobel laureates, medical experts, former federal agency directors and university executives -- signed a letter accompanying the report circulated by the Union of Concerned Scientists."
Wait, so does that mean car exhaust isn't actually full of essential vitamins? Crap.
A simple planTime's Joe Klein writes a solid column explaining that
Bush's anti-terror policies are dangerously simple:
"That's an interesting question," the President said, having been asked on Meet the Press whether Iraq was a war of choice or of necessity. "Please elaborate on that a little bit. A war of choice or necessity?" It was as if George W. Bush had never considered this most basic of questions. He seemed befuddled, then slowly found his legs. "I mean, it's a war of necessity. In my judgment, we had no choice when we look at the intelligence I looked at that says the man was a threat."
An awkward moment in a suddenly wobbly presidency. Obviously, Iraq was a war of choice."
Obviously.