"George Bush is being criticized for acting like a king as he asserts extraordinary new powers for his office. So it would be clever political theater if this week he delivered his State of the Union address on paper. He could emulate Thomas Jefferson, who in 1801 mailed his speech in, arguing that the ceremony smacked too much of the British monarchy."Newspapers are dead. Blogs rule.
For GOP voters, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous: Behind in the Electoral College even on the afternoon of the vote, the Bush-Cheney ticket staged a stunning comeback. Usually reliable exit polls turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in swing states. Conservatives argued, and the media agreed, that "moral values" had made the difference.Bush Backers = Racist... D'uh!
In his latest book, Fooled Again: How The Right Stole The 2004 Election, And Why They'll Steal The Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them), Mark Crispin Miller argues that it wasn't moral values which swung the election -- it was theft.
"That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did."Who said this was the "Oil Administration"?
Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil company, said fourth-quarter profit rose 27 percent on surging energy prices to a record $10.7 billion, capping the most profitable year for any company in U.S. history.
"This extremity of Bush's position emerges most clearly in a 42-page document issued by the Department of Justice last week. As Andrew Cohen, a CBS legal analyst, wrote in an online commentary, 'The first time you read the 'White Paper,' you feel like it is describing a foreign country guided by an unfamiliar constitution.' To develop this observation a bit further, the nation implied by the document would be an elective dictatorship, governed not by three counterpoised branches of government but by a secretive, possibly benign, awesomely powerful king."Political opposites aligned against Bush wiretaps
A man high on methamphetamine rolled over in his sleep and suffocated his 1-month-old twin daughters, police said.
Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon's decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.Bush the Incompetent
How could a president get these things so wrong? Incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn't explain it. For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.Daily Kos: We're Winning the Long Struggle
Like Gandhi said in the over-quoted line: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you ... then you win."
The Bible and death
A Gallop Poll found that Americans are woefully ignorant of Biblical content, yet the Bible is widely hailed as the underpinning of America's values.
In his letter (Pro-death crowd, Jan 19) Tony Shiflett tells us that Christianity and the teachings in the Bible celebrate life as a gift from God. The pro-death extremists celebrate "death."
While Shiflett no doubt knows there is a commandment against killing, he apparently is unaware that the Bible makes exceptions to this commandment that provide for killing just about anybody and everybody.
The Bible declares the following shall be killed: He that curseth his father and mother; witches; those who lie with beasts; worshipers of other gods; people who work on the Sabbath; adulterers; homosexuals; wizards; whores; blasphemers; stubborn and rebellious sons; thieves.
Notably absent from the Biblical hit-list are the practitioners of abortion. And today, Christ's most fervent followers crusade against abortion. Christ never mentioned the practice.
In Exodus 21:22, we find that an abortion has been induced through violence and this is not considered harmful, nor is it a capital offense or violation of "Thou shalt not kill."
Although Shiflett believes abortion is offensive to God, the prophet Hosea was comfortable asking God to induce abortions in the wives of his enemies.
"Give them, O Lord: what wilt thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb (an abortion) and dry breasts." Hosea 9:14. And from Hosea 9:16 we find, " ... yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb."
While "pro-lifers" thump the Bible in their crusade against abortion, I don't see them thumping the Bible in protest against killing innocents in Iraq or campaigning against the death penalty. Hypocrites!
David N. ****
Orange Beach
And simply by taking a baby step outside his protective bubble and fielding unscreened questions (most, but not all of them, softballs) from a starry-eyed, solidly red-state audience, he garnered buzz about being forthcoming.
But he wasn't.
In that book, Orwell spoke of “doublespeak” - naming something just the opposite, in order to cover how unpleasant it is in reality.
As we saw in the video, the President has been giving us doublespeak for years. He utters platitudes about helping Americans, when he’s really helping his special interest friends.
When he wanted to let energy companies release more pollution into the air, he called it the “Clear Skies Initiative.”
When he wanted to give tax breaks to his special interest friends – even though it meant adding more than $50 billion to the deficit, he called it the “Deficit Reduction Act.”
His “Leave No Child Behind Act” is leaving children behind every day because he refuses to fund it. And his new Medicare drug benefit hardly resembles a “benefit” for seniors.
Tuesday night, it is time for President Bush to end to this pattern of deceit. In his State of the Union, it is not enough for him to declare that the “state of our union is strong.”
