...
bushnews...
opinion...
issues...
bushreport...
gorewatch...
quote/unquote...
site map...
us...
contact...
...
bushnews...
opinion...
issues...
bushreport...
gorewatch...
quote/unquote...
site map...
us...
contact...
"A Republican legislator remarked sourly several months ago, "I actually hope Bush loses just so he'll he have to be here to face the mess he's made."... A $610 million deficit in Texas' famously balanced budget just happened to G.W. Bush on his way to the White House....This deficit is going to get a lot bigger....
The shortfall is covered for now. If the economy remains strong. If the desperately poor in our "soft-landing, slowing economy"...don't decide to apply for the social services that they are entitled to.The dirty little secret of Texas government is that the way we keep it solvent is by shorting the poor. We go to great pains `not' to let people who are qualified for Medicaid know they are qualified, and then we make it incredibly difficult for them to apply.
"As our Health Commissioner Reyn Archer, in one of his moments of disastrous frankness, told `The New York Times' anent the 600,000 poor children in this state who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled: "The problem is that the Legislature knows, if we are successful and we get all those kids enrolled, they would not balance their budgets. It's not one person saying, `Don't do this,' not one agency saying, `Don't do this.' It's sort of, `Why would we all rock the boat at this point?' " Just the other day, a study by the Food Research and Action Center ranked Texas 44th in the country in percentage of eligible children participating in the federal summer lunch program. We have 1.5 million poor kids eligible for the program, and 142,374 were participating as of July.
"Yup, that's the way we do it in Texas: The motto of our social services is "Don't ask, don't tell." We don't even tell when it's federal money paying for the deal.
But you notice that this deficit has appeared at a time when we are not only still keeping eligibility a deep, dark secret -- we are in mid-boom. This is not a hopeful sign.
It has been an open secret in Austin for several months that one state agency after another was going into the red." --Molly Ivins, 7/16/00
MORE BACKGROUND. In 1999 " legal aid attorney Mario Caballero and his 15 clients sued the [Texas Dept. of Human Services] on behalf of food stamp recipients who alleged that the state's toughened verification program, especially in its Houston district, resulted in widespread harassment, delays and rejection of food stamp applications from those entitled to the assistance. Rather than ferreting out welfare fraud, the program frustrated the needy to the point that they dropped out of the effort to get help, advocates for the poor allege. Last [December] U.S. Magistrate Francis Stacy approved a consent order for Caballero to monitor the state's food stamp program for 2.5 years to determine if it meets federal guidelines in processing applications. If the state agency does not comply with the mandated deadlines in certifying the needy for food stamps, it will face potential contempt-of-court action to force compliance. --Houston Press, 12/23/99
The Texas two-step, a nudge and a wink
George W. took his Clinton strategy to Baltimore yesterday to woo if not wow the NAACP, and he's counting on the old reliables in his party's base to catch the nudge and the wink.
The Clinton strategy worked for Bill Clinton in '92, when he pretended to be less liberal than he really was to persuade the country that he wasn't really a clone of the little Duke.
The temptation to see whether a similar strategy can work from the right is irresistible, and so far W.'s conservative friends seem to understand that he's got to talk a lot of mush, strained apricots and mashed bananas because baby food is all that the red-blooded American voter, distracted by demands of belly and telly, can tolerate this year.This is not so much cynicism as compassionate concern for the soft psyche of the constituent, and the strategy seems to be working, as W. nudges farther ahead of Al Gore in the pre-convention polls that might or might not mean anything after Labor Day....
"Some of W.'s friends had to avert their gaze yesterday, when he begged for votes in a place where he won't get any. He went to Baltimore to scratch the delegates where they itch, and watching any pol at work, like watching a butcher make sausage, is not a pretty sight....W. cheerfully ignored the racist insults that Kweisi Mfume and Julian Bond threw at the white folks, counting on his friends to consider the source. Nobody thinks Mr. Bond, the chairman of the NAACP, or Mr. Mfume, the president of the NAACP, are fans of the History Channel, and when they call the Confederate flag "the equivalent of the swastika" they're only demonstrating that neither knows very much about the origins and meaning of either flag or swastika. They were just reaching for the low and ignorant insult. Anyone who invents a name like "Kweisi Mfume" for himself can only appreciate a quasi-history of America.
W. no doubt figures that the trashing of American history is an egghead issue that sails above the heads of many conservatives, who count taxes, abortion, vouchers, defense and keeping the electric chair hot as the issues dearest to their hearts, not necessarily in that order. --Wesley Pruden, Editor-in-Chief, Washington Times, 7/11/00 (more)
"That Christine Todd Whitman photo in yesterday's Times was extraordinary....The way she's dressed in luminous white from head to toe--her jacket, her slacks, her tennis shoes--while the guy she's frisking is not only black but black-clad. I don't know why I'm pointing this out, but it's also striking how, in the blurry photo, Whitman looks so much like Princess Diana. I think this has been said about her before. Together, the angelic glow and cheerful smile make things worse for her, rather than better, I think: It highlights the emotional distance between her and the guy being frisked. Like, I'm sure it wasn't such a lark for him. To me, even more chilling that the stupid photo-op is the ostensible reason for it: According to one lawyer quoted, a police supervisor offered an extra week of paid vacation to anybody who could bring back a photo of Whitman frisking a black suspect. The bastards set her up. Her own police force. Thanks, guys!
"So anyway, why is this photo being distributed? Why was it subpoenaed now? And who's been keeping it on hand? Why has it emerged three weeks before the Republican convention? Who, exactly, is trying to destroy her political fortunes? I wish that news stories would point these things out a little more clearly." --Liza Mundy, 7/13/00
What Bush Sees in Oklahoma Guv-Veep Candidate Frank Keating...His Silence.
"Oklahoma environmental regulators have suspected this dirty little secret for a
while, but now they have proof. Ozone monitors along the border have traced
ozone pollution moving north from Texas going as far as Oklahoma City and
perhaps Tulsa.
"Oklahoma's getting choked by the Texas Smog Express," said Neil Carman,
director of the Texas Sierra Club. Typically, the "smog express" begins in
Houston -- the country's smoggiest city -- and travels north. It picks up
particles from an old Alcoa aluminum plant in Rockdale, which emits 12 tons of
pollutants per hour, and from the smelters and refineries in East Texas.
In a day or so, it arrives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where it mingles
with the Metroplex's cocktail of vehicle pollution and industrial waste.
By the next day, the "smog express" crosses the Red River into Oklahoma.
"Texas leads the nation in toxic air pollutants and is trying to fend off sanctions
from the EPA, which is demanding a plan to clean up its act by 2007.
Oklahoma has enjoyed a clean record with the EPA -- until recently.
Meanwhile, the situation has become political, causing Texas Gov. George W. Bush
to be lambasted in his presidential campaign for being too lenient with
pollution-producing industries."... --Oklahoman, 6/4/00
"George W. Bush staffers are looking into Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee as a possible running mate after a previous front runner was discovered to be a “major skirt chaser,” says a well-placed GOP insider.
'Thompson would be great because he’s got the goods on Clinton’s fund raising. He could steal away a lot of the Tennessee vote, and he’s got great Hollywood connections,' says the source." --The Scoop, June 1.
Bush "dismissed the idea that Sen. Fred Thompson's reportedly swinging bachelorhood might rule him out for consideration as a running mate. 'Too frisky a lifestyle, don't you think?' Matthews asks Bush of the Tennessee Republican. Bush responds: 'I don't think so. Do you?'" --Voter.com Transcript, June 5. Report of off-camera conversation between George W. Bush and Chris Matthews during "Hardball" taping.
" Here's one more reason to call out the troops at
the Red River: nasty Texas air. Seems all that goop from the Dallas-Fort Worth
area's jammed highways and pollution-spewing plants is floating north,
creating a hazard for Oklahomans. 
Does Bush Have A "Skirt Chaser" Problem With His Veep Candidates?
"In this festive election year, our governor has put us once again in the national spotlight, and it's not flattering. Texas, where three white guys out looking for a good time decide to drag a black man to death behind a pickup. Where the retarded and the insane are executed to barbaric yowps from drunken frat boys in Huntsville. Where the guv's response to the dirtiest air in the nation is to politely ask polluters if they will please volunteer to quit polluting instead of making them do it....
"The entire state now stands as proxy for Dubya Bush, under attack for political reasons. The rest of the country likes to look down on Texas as a nest of yahoos, racists and rednecks. It makes them feel superior, especially since they think we're all rich -- they never got over `Giant.' It doesn't help that the governor claims that there are no hungry people in Texas (where has he been?) Or that our health commissioner is a nutball (a nice man, but a nutball)....
"So it's true -- our kids don't have health insurance, our air is filthy, and we rank near the bottom in practically every public thing they keep score in. I once suggested that our State Ambition should be, "Up to average!" It's a low-tax, low-service state -- so shoot us. The only depressing part is that unlike Mississippi, we can afford to do better. We just don't....
"We could get our air and our water a lot cleaner -- other states have, and under Republican governors, too. We could change the criminal justice system so that poor people get some legal protection, and stop stuffing the prisons with nonviolent drug offenders.... It is embarrassing (and unhealthy) not just that we have dirty air but that the guv and the Lege are so dumb that they broke the contract with the company that was supposed to help clean it up, which got us sued for a zillion dollars, and then we had to spend all our clean air money for the next four years paying off the settlement. Stupid is as stupid does." --Molly Ivins, 6/7/00
"Personal note to George W. Bush: Wasn't that a great graduation ceremony last Thursday night? I know you are terribly proud of your daughters, Barbara and Jenna. You probably remember Kristy Reyna -- she was the only one of the 400 Austin High graduates who was in a wheelchair....Governor, I think you should know there is not one single thing you have ever done in public office that has helped the Reyna family. If you've ever wondered why I seem a little sour about your record, chalk it up to the Reynas.
"I know you've helped the oil industry and the insurance industry and the funeral industry and the herbal-diet industry and the utility industry and all those air polluters with your new voluntary clean-up program. All those people who have given so generously to your campaigns. But everything you have ever done that touched the life of the Reynas has made it harder for them.
"When Big Rudy wasn't working, the other kids had no health insurance. Kristy got Medicaid and SSI from the federal government. (The Republicans in Congress wanted the SSI taken away on the grounds that poor parents like Hope might have coached their children into "faking disability." You should come and see Kristy's "fake disability" some time.)
"You wanted to keep 200,000 Texas children like the Reynas off the new federal children's health insurance program, even though it would hardly cost the state. But then, maybe you agree with your Health Commissioner Reyn Archer that health insurance isn't important.
"You tried to make it harder for poor moms like Hope to apply for Medicaid for their kids. You got a tax cut for property owners, but Hope doesn't own any property -- she pays the same regressive sales tax everyone else does, but it eats a bigger proportion of her income. It's nice that the high-tech industry you favor has made Austin boom, but it's also made it impossible for people like Hope to buy a house and it has forced up rents...." --Molly Ivins, 6/1/00
Hunter S. Thompson Talks About Bush, Booze, and Drugs at His Super Bowl Party.
Hunter S. Thompson is the author of "Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas" (1968), which featured his literary alter ego, Raoul Duke, a man who knew his way around drugs and booze. Six years later in "Doonesbury," Garry Trudeau, once called a "character assassin" by Poppy Bush, introduced Uncle Duke, and Thompson thought about a libel suit against Trudeau, but decided against it. "I didn't want to grapple in the gutter with Trudeau," Thompson is quoted as saying in the "Talk of the Town" section of the May 15th "The New Yorker."
This March, Douglas Brinkley reports in "The New Yorker" story, the New York "Observer" (see below) noted that George W. Bush, then 28, attended Thompson's 1974 Super Bowl party in Houston, and, since then, folks have asked Thompson for details. Here's part of what he told Brinkley: "I can't be expected to remember what every drug-addled yuppie hanger-oner who wanted to get close to me during a football game twenty-five years ago digested. There were so many dope fiends milling about, I don't remember what some Yalie named Bush, whose father was a factotum in the Nixon Administration, was doing. But he strikes me as the sort of person I would have thrown out of the room. A rich, beer-drunk yahoo with a big allowance who passes out in your bathtup....I don't want to become the Deep Drug Throat....I won't do it." --Politex, 5/20/00
"W....was my college classmate, though barely known to me....[with] an irreverent spirit, something I thought I glimpsed in a chance encounter with him and Hunter Thompson a quarter-century ago at a Super Bowl in Houston. I can’t recall who was hanging out with whom, but it was January 1974, it was in the atrium of the Hyatt Regency, the Super Bowl headquarters hotel (I was there to write about the spectacle which featured Dolphins versus Vikes that year) and I think it was a mutual friend, a fun-loving preppy guy I knew from college who also somehow knew Hunter and W. who brought us all together in a room in the Hyatt. I don’t remember exactly what went on, but I do remember coming away with a favorable impression of W.
"I remember thinking he was one of the preppy types I’d always kind of liked, the hang-loose, good-ole-boy types, many of whom took the interregnum on careerism, which the war and the draft mandated as a cue to break out of the mold a bit, wander off the reservation, poke into the sides of life their trust funds otherwise might have sheltered them from. I sensed what W. liked about Hunter Thompson was that Hunter too was another button-down good old frat boy (once) who went weird but in a good-old-boy way." --Ron Rosenbaum, "The New York Observer," 3/27/00
"'What Bush is doing is taking a guaranteed system that is indexed to inflation and shifting a portion of those benefits to a non-guaranteed, non-indexed system that's based on the luck of the stock market,' said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, a progressive policy organization in Washington. Even if Mr. Bush's bet is right -- that over the next several years the stock market will do better than most other investments -- there will still be many unfortunate wage earners finding themselves at retirement time on the wrong end of this big policy stick. The stock market, by definition, has winners and losers, even in the best of times. 'You could have pretty good returns in the market on average,' said Mr. Hickey, 'but with a large number of individuals doing very poorly.'
"...There is, however, a group of guaranteed winners under Mr. Bush's plan -- the movers and shakers at the big brokerage houses who have been funneling many millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of Mr. Bush and other politicians, just begging them to steer some of the hundreds of billions of dollars in Social Security taxes their way. Everyone who sells stocks or mutual funds stands to benefit from this welfare scheme for the not-so-idle rich.
"Face it, the Republicans have had it in for Social Security since its inception. The historian William Manchester wrote about the G.O.P.'s desperate efforts in 1936 to block its creation: 'On radio spots, actors hired by the Republican National Committee revealed in shocked tones that each man would be given a number -- as though there were any other way to keep track of Social Security accounts -- and perpetrated the hoax that people would be fingerprinted.'
"When the Republicans won control of Congress in 1946, party leaders called for the repeal of Social Security. And nearly four decades later, Governor Bush's fellow Texan, Senator Phil Gramm, could be quoted as follows on the question of eliminating minimum benefits for the elderly: 'They are 80-year-olds. Most people don't have the luxury of living to be 80 years old, so it's hard for me to feel sorry for them.'" --Bob Herbert, 5/18/00
Bush gets an A for effort, a C for math
"The Texas governor debuted his plan for Social Security reform to mixed reviews. According to the Washington Post, several experts believe Bush's proposal to let younger workers play the stock market with Social Security money could break the bank. Olivia S. Mitchell, a professor of insurance and risk management at the Wharton School, praises Bush's courage in trying to fix the system, but says his plan won't work. "There is no chance," Mitchell said, that Bush's numbers will add up because his proposal's solvency depends on perpetual sunshine on Wall Street. Peter Orszag, a former Clinton advisor who is now president of a firm that analyses pension systems, estimated that payroll taxes would fall short of covering benefits as soon as 2005 under the Bush plan. "He's going to quickly run out of money," Orszag said. Even Bush's economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, acknowledges that Bush's Social Security plan would devour the cash surplus in a few years, and might start nibbling into general revenue by 2030." --Salon, 5/16/00
How Defensible is Gore's Charge that Bush is a Pawn of the NRA?
"Charge: A few days ago, Gore charged that Bush "would take the gun lobbyists out of the lobby and put them right into the Oval Office." Gore was referring to a clandestine videotape in which an NRA official boasted that if Bush won, "we'll have a president ... where we work out of their office." Elaborating, Gore Press Secretary Chris Lehane commented, "This tape is the proverbial smoking gun that proves once and for all that George W. Bush is in the hip holster of the gun lobbyists."
"Rebuttal: "It'll be my office. I'll make the decisions as to what goes on in the White House," Bush responded.
"Analysis: The charge that the NRA will be in the Oval Office is a metaphor as is the charge that Bush is in the NRA's pocket. What is required to sustain them is not literal proof, but support for the assertion that Bush's policies do not differ in any substantial way from those of the NRA. Bush defenders cite three examples of his independence from the group: 1) A few months ago, when NRA President Wayne LaPierre suggested that Clinton and Gore were willing to accept a certain amount of gun violence for political reasons, Bush distanced himself from the remarks; 2) Bush supports mandatory trigger locks and the NRA doesn't; and 3) Bush supports running background checks on purchasers at gun shows and the NRA doesn't. On closer examination, however, these differences recede into near-irrelevance. In March, when LaPierre said that Clinton had "blood on his hands," Bush tepidly averred that LaPierre "may have gone too far." Bush has spoken skeptically about trigger locks for guns. He has said that he might sign a bill mandating them but not that he would push for one. On the gun show loophole, Bush and the NRA find common ground on "instant" background checks. In any case, Bush's differences with the NRA are minor in comparison with the major areas where they agree: Handguns shouldn't have to be registered, people should be able to carry concealed weapons, and gun manufacturers should be immune from product liability suits.
"Verdict: Gore's charge is defensible. Bush hasn't broken with the NRA on any significant issue." --Jacob Weisberg, 5/10/00
"Ford Motor Company, which depends on sport utility vehicles for much of its profit, acknowledged today that they cause serious safety and environmental problems. In its first "corporate citizenship report," issued at the company's annual shareholders' meeting here, Ford said that the vehicles contributed more than cars to global warming, emitted more smog-causing pollution and endangered other motorists. The automaker said that it would keep building them because they provide needed profit..." NYT, 5/12/00
"Dubya, as [George W. Bush] is known in Texas, is a cunning politician. Even his enemies admit that. As governor, though with powers that are weaker than those of any other in the union, he has been good at acquiring friends and boxing clever....Three themes emerge from Dubya's political biography.
"The first concerns his personal limitations, of character and public competence. He made his money by parlaying investment from friends of his father, then vice-president and Reagan's presumptive successor, in oil businesses that they excused him for failing to make pay. He lost $2m of other people's money but somehow left with $840m in his own pocket. An entrepreneurial coup, you might say, but scarcely the stuff of substantive achievement. As governor he maintained the pattern, showing little serious interest in policy detail, while maintaining heavy rightist attitudes. As an alternative to Clinton, Bush seems to embody a tenth of the natural intelligence, and not obviously more of the famous "integrity" which McCain and the right pretend he will bring back to the White House. Insider share-dealing, documented by Ivins and Dubose, made Bush millions more than Clinton could ever have got out of Whitewater. He cleared a cool $15m after investing in the Texas Rangers baseball club, built almost entirely at taxpayers' expense.
"Second comes his adoration for the corporate world. His two-term governorship has been an exercise in incessant mutual support between Texas business and Texas politics. He received hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars from oil companies that got tax breaks, and corporate interests whose main priority was so-called "tort reform", a rearrangement of the law that makes it virtually impossible for consumers or employees to sue them. Raising money is the apogee of Bush's political skills, and opposition to financial giving-limits the fiercest of his obsessions. The case for campaign finance reform has begun to inch forward, but Bush preaches a regime that would formalise politics as an activity for rich men only. His policy priorities are arranged accordingly. Environmental controls, especially, are anathema. In water quality and air quality, Texas has the worst record of any big state. Laws about toxic emissions, like membership of regulatory bodies, have been dictated by industry lobbyists. The agenda that failed to pass in Washington at the height of Newt Gingrich's supremacy is law in Texas. This is not a man driven unwillingly to keep political clients sweet, but one who would bring to the White House the most explicit anti-environment prejudices any president has ever had.
"Third, his concern for society at large is tightly confined by his greater concern for those who have succeeded. It is sometimes tempting to regard British politics, Tony Blair's included, as having abandoned a preferential option for the poor, in favour of tax advantages for the aspirational. But that's nothing. In Bush's Texas, the governor fought for property tax breaks while denying children elementary healthcare. For most of his time, the welfare allowance for a woman and two children was $188 a month , recently raised to a princely $201.
...Republicans will pay any price to elect a man without qualities, save deep pockets and an empty smile - and a set of prejudices that will seriously upset the world.
As governor, Bush did much to stand in the way of localities being able to sue firearms manufacturers. Would he do the same as president? Gore asks. "If I'm entrusted with the presidency, I will veto any bill like the one Governor Bush signed ... I challenge Governor Bush to make the same pledge. Will he veto any bill that lets gun manufacturers off the hook? Will he fight for the gun industry or for America's families?" In San Diego, Bush responds that "it depends on what's in the legislation," and says, "What I did in office was sign a bill that made it very difficult for local municipalities to sue manufacturers of a legal product."
Bush then repeats a completely unsubstantiated claim -- the kind known outside the world of politics as a "lie" -- that Gore once was a member of the NRA. When asked where he got such information, Bush responds, "A little birdie." Hearing Bush's response while at Holt High School, [Gore spoksman] Lehane wets his finger and makes a "score" mark in the air. Not only does the gun subject bode well for Gore, and put Bush on the defensive, but by lying about Gore's NRA membership, Bush isn't exactly shoring up his credentials as the more credible of the two candidates." --Jack Tapper
"DeLay Pushes for Religion Rights," Washington Post 5/5/00
"'What we need is simply a return to the healthy appreciation for religion that has always sustained the nation,' DeLay said. 'Government can't enforce religious teachings or doctrines of specific faiths. But at the same time, federal power must not be distorted into a wedge that splits the vast majority of Americans from the sacred ideals that guide their lives.'
"The whip sharply criticized journalists and those in the entertainment industry for showing a 'disdain for faith,' citing statistics that indicate 60 percent of Americans attend church or a synagogue at least once a month, compared with 19 percent of journalists and 13 percent of major movie producers, directors and writers."
"Religious Practice in the U.S.," --Ontario Consultants For Religious Tolerance, 3/29/00
"Poll data on religious behavior and practice are notoriously unreliable. Individuals often describe their own behavior inaccurately; they answer questions according to what they think they should be doing. For example: 17% of American adults say that they tithe (give 10 to 13% of their income to their church). Only 3% really do. Many polls indicate that the percentage of adults who regularly attend a religious service is about 40% in the U.S., 20% in Canada and perhaps 10% or less in Europe. But when noses are actually counted, the true figures are about half the stated figures (about 20% in the U.S. and 10% in Canada.)
"The precise makeup of the question can produce widely variable results: The Gallup Organization found that 96% of adult Americans answered positively to the general question 'Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?' 3% said no and 1% had no opinion. The term 'universal spirit' is a curious one. It was left up to the subject to define. A brief Internet search showed that the term has been used by tiny religious minorities such as medieval Christian Cabalists, Transcendentalists, the Unification Church and readers of the Urantia Book. The International Social Survey Program in the U.S. received only a 63% positive response to the question 'I know God exists and I have no doubts about it.'
"Gallup's 96% value has been widely quoted 'time and time again in academic journals, professional publications and in the mass media' as proof that essentially every American believes in God. But when the pressure is increased and the question becomes an 'are you REALLY certain' query, the results drop precipitously from 96% to 63%. When pressed, the number of Americans who show doubt about the existence of God rose from about 4% to 37% between the two polls. Many Americans appear to lack really firm beliefs about the existence of God.
"A similar drop in affirmative answers is seen in the question about the afterlife: Gallup typically receives a 75% positive response to 'Do you believe there is a life after death?' The International Social Survey Program found that only 55% answered positively when asked whether they definitely believed in 'life after death.'"
Is there some law I'm not aware of that prohibits a reporter from politely asking a politician where his rather startling statistics are coming from? Does this law prohibit checking the politician's facts after the interview but before filing the story, in those cases where the reporter is either too chickenshit or too ill-informed to be able to challenge the source at the time? On the other hand, is it a sin to lie about church attendance? Is God more attentive than the Washington Post's editors? 63% of the American public believes that Tom DeLay will be in for a rude awakening one of these days . . . .--Doris, 5/7/00
In a recent interview, Bush the Younger called [foreign policy advisor Condi Rice] a "brilliant person (who) can explain to me foreign policy matters in a way I can understand." --
You can almost hear it now.
"You see, W, it's like a football rivalry. China, Russia and the United States are like Yale, Princeton and Harvard. They'll always be rivals, no matter what their standings or academic exchanges.
"But we always have to be ready to counter threats from small rogue powers like Iraq and North Korea -- in Ivy League football terms, the equivalents of Columbia and Brown."
Rice is a big football fan and served on the search committees for two Stanford coaches, so I'm sure she could come up with even better football analogies for international affairs -- ones that W could understand, of course. --
A friend of mine asked, "If Condoleezza Rice is so smart, why is she working for George W. Bush?" --Rob Morse, 5/2
"George W. Bush took another pop quiz – and he didn't exactly get a passing grade. The Republican candidate for President, who has flubbed when asked to name world leaders, found himself on the wrong side of a verbal Rorschach test in an interview with Glamour magazine. Writer David France rattled off a series of names and asked Bush to come up with the first thing that popped into his mind. When France said 'Gloria Steinem,' Bush responded 'Pioneer.' When he said 'New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman,' Bush responded, 'Good friend.' But the game started going downhill when 'Madonna' came up and Bush waved off talk of the Material Girl by saying, 'I'm not into pop music.' Undaunted, the writer continued with 'Sex and the City.' 'The face of the man who would be President blistered in a purple fury,' wrote France. 'He turned toward me for the first time, only to narrow his dark eyes and glower.' The press aide present during the interview reminded Bush that 'Sex and the City' was a hit show on HBO. 'You don't have cable in Texas, I guess?' joked France, trying to lighten the mood. But Bush wasn't impressed. 'What?' Bush shot back. 'I don't get cable?' France then went on to tougher topics and mentioned the Taliban. Bush shook his head, but remained silent. Bush was given a little hint when France said 'because of the repression of women — in Afghanistan?' 'Oh,' Bush said finally. 'I thought you said some band. The Taliban in Afghanistan! Absolutely. Repressive.' All in all, Bush wasn't exactly the picture of poise during the chat, which appears in Glamour's June issue. 'He was very short-fused,' France said." [Fink, New York Daily News, 5/4/00]
Privatizing Social Security is a solution in search of a problem. Oh, the problem with Social Security is real enough. But "privatization"--the hot policy idea of the season--simply doesn't address the problem. It's as if you were crawling across the desert, desperately thirsty, and you meet a fellow who says, "What you need is some lemonade." You say water would suffice. He says, "Oh, but lemonade is much nicer. Here"--handing you a packet of lemonade powder--"just add water and stir." --Michael Kinsley, Slate, 5/2/00
Tax Cuts...Education...Health Care...Environment...Housing...Welfare...Character Ed... Foreign Policy...
Bush Watch... Gore Watch... McCain Watch... abortion... april fool... archives... autobiography... books... brasin's beat... bush bedrooms... bush league... blacks... blurbs... bushisms ... bush speak... bush whitewater... california... catholics... cartoons... character ed... charter schools... cocaine... comedy... compassion... culture... debates'99... debates jan.... debates 2000... de lay... dirt... driver's license... drugs... education... elian... the english patient... endorsements... environment... executions... exploitation... family... faith-based institutions... faq... foreign policy... free speech... funeralgate... gays... gipper vs. dubya... guns... health care... his heart... indians... insider trading... iowa... jews... justice... latinos... letters... links... lotterygate... missing in action... media... millions... negative politics... oil-gate... our birthday... parody... pat... personality... poems... pollution... press kit... primaries... principles... quizgate... rankings... reformer... religion... st. patrick... schedule... skull... soft money... songs... taxes... texas record... tobacco... welfare... women... end...
daily briefing... ap breaking... election 2000 ... today's houston air... bush web o' wealth...
music to listen to us by... daily feed... mojotoons.com...
Bush Watch is a daily political internet magazine, a non-advocacy site paid for and edited by Politex, a non-affiliated U.S. citizen.
Based in Austin, Tx., publication began on February 1, 1998, prior to any other official or unofficial G. W. Bush site.
Text (c)
Politex.
Permission of author required for reprinting.
The duration of the working links is not under our control.
Bush Watch has not reviewed all of the sites linked to our site and is not responsible for the content of any off-site pages
or any other sites linked to our site. Your linking to any other off-site pages or other sites from our site is at your own risk.
Send all e-mail to
Politex.