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Hey zit, your fave writer, so this is for you. By the way, how is the peace coming???
Ignorance Isn't Strength
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 8, 2004
I first used the word "Orwellian" to describe the Bush team in October 2000. Even then it was obvious that George W. Bush surrounds himself with people who insist that up is down, and ignorance is strength. But the full costs of his denial of reality are only now becoming clear.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have an unparalleled ability to insulate themselves from inconvenient facts. They lead a party that controls all three branches of government, and face news media that in some cases are partisan supporters, and in other cases are reluctant to state plainly that officials aren't telling the truth. They also still enjoy the residue of the faith placed in them after 9/11.
This has allowed them to engage in what Orwell called "reality control." In the world according to the Bush administration, our leaders are infallible, and their policies always succeed. If the facts don't fit that assumption, they just deny the facts.
As a political strategy, reality control has worked very well. But as a strategy for governing, it has led to predictable disaster. When leaders live in an invented reality, they do a bad job of dealing with real reality.
In the last few days we've seen some impressive demonstrations of reality control at work. During the debate on Tuesday, Mr. Cheney insisted that "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." After the release of the Duelfer report, which shows that Saddam's weapons capabilities were deteriorating, not advancing, at the time of the invasion, Mr. Cheney declared that the report proved that "delay, defer, wait wasn't an option."
From a political point of view, such exercises in denial have been very successful. For example, the Bush administration has managed to convince many people that its tax cuts, which go primarily to the wealthiest few percent of the population, are populist measures benefiting middle-class families and small businesses. (Under the administration's definition, anyone with "business income" - a group that includes Dick Cheney and George Bush - is a struggling small-business owner.)
The administration has also managed to convince at least some people that its economic record, which includes the worst employment performance in 70 years, is a great success, and that the economy is "strong and getting stronger." (The data to be released today, which are expected to improve the numbers a bit, won't change the basic picture of a dismal four years.)
Officials have even managed to convince many people that they are moving forward on environmental policy. They boast of their "Clear Skies" plan even as the inspector general of the E.P.A. declares that the enforcement of existing air-quality rules has collapsed.
But the political ability of the Bush administration to deny reality - to live in an invented world in which everything is the way officials want it to be - has led to an ongoing disaster in Iraq and looming disaster elsewhere.
How did the occupation of Iraq go so wrong? (The security situation has deteriorated to the point where there are no safe places: a bomb was discovered on Tuesday in front of a popular restaurant inside the Green Zone.)
The insulation of officials from reality is central to the story. They wanted to believe Ahmad Chalabi's promises that we'd be welcomed with flowers; nobody could tell them different. They wanted to believe - months after everyone outside the administration realized that we were facing a large, dangerous insurgency and needed more troops - that the attackers were a handful of foreign terrorists and Baathist dead-enders; nobody could tell them different.
Why did the economy perform so badly? Long after it was obvious to everyone outside the administration that the tax-cut strategy wasn't an effective way of creating jobs, administration officials kept promising huge job gains, any day now. Nobody could tell them different.
Why has the pursuit of terrorists been so unsuccessful? It has been obvious for years that John Ashcroft isn't just scary; he's also scarily incompetent. But inside the administration, he's considered the man for the job - and nobody can say different.
The point is that in the real world, as opposed to the political world, ignorance isn't strength. A leader who has the political power to pretend that he's infallible, and uses that power to avoid ever admitting mistakes, eventually makes mistakes so large that they can't be covered up. And that's what's happening to Mr. Bush.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dE...
Working for a Pittance
By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 8, 2004
Reality keeps rearing its ugly head. The Bush administration's case for the war in Iraq has completely fallen apart, as evidenced by the report this week from the president's handpicked inspector that Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons stockpiles in the early 1990's.
Coming next week are the results of a new study that shows - here at home - how tough a time American families are having in their never-ending struggle to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. The White House, as deep in denial about the economy as it is about Iraq, insists that things are fine - despite the embarrassing fact that President Bush is on track to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs during his four years in office.
The study, jointly sponsored by the Annie E. Casey, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, will show that 9.2 million working families in the United States - one out of every four - earn wages that are so low they are barely able to survive financially.
"Our data is very solid and shows that this is a much bigger problem than most people imagine," said Brandon Roberts, one of the authors of the report, which is to be formally released on Tuesday. The report found that there are 20 million children in these low-income working families.
For the purposes of the study, any family in which at least one person was employed was considered a working family. Very wealthy families were included.
The median income for a family of four in the U.S. is $62,732. According to the study, a family of four earning less than $36,784 is considered low-income. A family of four earning less than $18,392 is considered poor. The 9.2 million struggling families cited by the report fell into one of the latter two categories. And those families have one-third of all the children in American working families.
Not surprisingly, the problem for millions of families is that they have jobs that pay very low wages and provide no benefits. "Consider the motel housekeeper, the retail clerk at the hardware store or the coffee shop cook," the report said. "If they have children, chances are good that their families are living on an income too low to provide for their basic needs."
Neither politicians nor the media put much of a spotlight on families that are struggling economically. According to the study, one in five workers are in occupations where the median wage is less than $8.84 an hour, which is a poverty-level wage for a family of four. A full-time job at the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour is not even sufficient to keep a family of three out of poverty.
Families with that kind of income are teetering on the edge of an economic abyss. Any misfortune might push them over the edge - an illness, an automobile breakdown, even something as seemingly minor as a flooded basement.
For the families in these lower-income brackets, life is often a harrowing day-to-day struggle to pay for the bare necessities. According to federal government statistics, the median annual rent for a two-bedroom apartment in major metropolitan markets is more than $8,000. The annual cost of food for a low-income family of four is nearly $4,000. Utility bills are nearly $2,000. Transportation costs are about $1,500. And then there are costs for child care, health care and clothing.
You do the math. How are these millions of poor and low-income families making it?
(A lot of those families are going to get a shock this winter as price increases for crude oil get translated into big jumps in home heating bills.)
The economy relies heavily on the services provided by low-wage workers but, as the report notes, "our society has not taken adequate steps to ensure that these workers can make ends meet and build a future for their families, no matter how determined they are to be self-sufficient."
Mr. Roberts said he hoped the study, titled "Working Hard, Falling Short," would help initiate a national discussion of the plight of families who are doing the right thing but not earning enough to get ahead. "Seventy-one percent of low-income families work," he said. More than half are headed by married couples. But economic self-sufficiency remains maddeningly out of reach.
Even in a presidential election year, these matters have not been explored in any sustained way. We're quick to give lip service to the need to work hard, but very slow to properly reward hard work.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08herbert1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2d...
Just like your boy, can't admit being wrong....big time wrong at that.
F6, easy, et al.....keep it up. Good reading!!!
I can see your time off has not helped any....your Prez looked like a deer in the headlights. Very presidential indeed. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
lol....first edddddie, now roooster, where is zit??? Hey, if you find him, tell him to update us on how 'winning the peace' is going!!
By the way, Rooster, Bush at best got a draw. AT BEST. IMO, Kerry won.
Easy, once again Krugman hits it on the head. This administration has been an abject failure. Bin Laden had Bush checkmated long ago and Bush has played right into his plan. Say what you want about bin Laden but his intellect and ability to look ahead far exceeds this mental midget in the White House. Thanks to Bush we have now created two failed states in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both Karzai and Alawai (sp?), our appointed leaders of Democracy (loved those Olympic commercials touting this 'fact') are walking dead with the only outcomes when or, if lucky, they escape with their lives. Zitocrite will vote for a Democrat before a democracy (read this administration's definition of democracy, which means non-Islamist) rises from the ashes of these two countries. Bin Laden attacked the WTC because it represented our economic might and successfully inflicted a huge hit. Now he has successfully (had to use that word again) drawn our cowboy into Iraq and will bleed us financially bigtime while tugging on the strings of the Bush puppet. What a friggin' mess and all the liberal media talks about is 30 plus years ago. Shameful.
Hey zitiot, give us the truth...how is winning the peace in Iraq going??? You and your fellow swollen brains best keep spewing about 30 plus years ago 'zause you ain't got a clue about today let alone the future.
after months and years of hearing these lies, the american people WILL know the truth about gwb's militarty service, and it will cause more votes to come gwb's way............let's hope we see a 527 ad real soon on this....for that matter, gwb should just hold a news conference and spill it
Good post Rico....and nary a comment.
Time to unleash the twins....just brilliant!!
Actually, sluggo beat us all. Should have read the 150 posts or so I was behind before posting any articles.
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=3994497
Cheney Spits Toads
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 9, 2004
WASHINGTON — George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have always used the president's father as a reverse lodestar. In 1992, the senior Mr. Bush wooed the voters with "Message: I care.'' So this week, Mr. Cheney wooed the voters with, Message: You die.
The terrible beauty of its simplicity grows on you. It is a sign of the dark, macho, paranoid vice president's restraint that he didn't really take it to its emotionally satisfying conclusion: Message: Vote for us or we'll kill you.
Without Zell Miller around to out-crazy him, and unplugged after a convention that tried to "humanize'' him with grandchildren, horses and wifely anecdotes about his inability to dance the twist, Mr. Cheney is back as Terrifier in Chief.
He finally simply spit out what the Bush team has been more subtly trying to convey for months: A vote for John Kerry is a vote for the terrorists.
"Because if we make the wrong choice,'' Mr. Cheney said in Des Moines in that calm baritone, "then the danger is that we'll get hit again. That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war.''
These guys figure, hey, these scare tactics worked in building support for the Iraq war, maybe they can work in tearing down support for John Kerry. They linked Saddam with terrorism and cowed the Democrats (including Mr. Kerry, who has never been able to make the case against the Bush administration's trompe l'oeil casus belli) and fooled the country into going along with their trumped-up war. So why not link Mr. Kerry with terrorism and cow the voters into sticking with the White House they've got?
It's like that fairy tale where vipers and toads jump out of the mouth of the accursed mean little girl when she tries to speak. Every time Mr. Cheney opens his mouth, vermin leap out.
The vice president and president did not even mention Osama at the convention because of the inconvenient fact that the fiend is still out there, plotting. Yet they denigrate Mr. Kerry as too weak to battle Osama, and treat him as a greater threat.
Mr. Cheney implies that John Kerry couldn't protect us from an attack like 9/11, blithely ignoring the fact that he and President Bush didn't protect us from the real 9/11. Think of what brass-knuckled Republicans could have made of a 9/11 tape of an uncertain Democratic president giving a shaky statement that looked like a hostage tape and flying randomly from air base to air base, as the veep ordered that planes be shot down.
Mr. Cheney warns against falling back "into the pre-9/11 mind-set,'' when, in fact, the Bush team's pre-9/11 mind-set was all about being stuck in the cold war and reviving "Star Wars" - which doesn't work and is useless against terrorist tactics. The Bush crowd played down terrorism because Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger had told their successors that Osama was a priority, and the Bushies scorned all things Clinton. The president shrugged off intelligence briefings with such headlines as "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States'' because there was brush to be cleared and unaffordable tax-cutting to be done.
After the blue-ribbon graybeards declared the Bush administration's pumped-up W.M.D. claims and Saddam-9/11 links bogus, the White House went into a defensive crouch - especially the man in the undisclosed bunker, who had veered wildly between overly pessimistic predictions of Saddam's nukes and overly optimistic predictions of grateful Iraqis with flowers and chocolates.
For a time, it seemed that Americans were realizing they'd been flimflammed by the Bushies. But at the convention, the swaggering Bush juggernaut brazenly went back to boasting about its pre-emption doctrine, tracing imaginary connections between 9/11 and Saddam, and calling all our foes terrorists.
Why should the same group that managed to paint a flextime guardsman as a heroic commander - and a war hero as a war criminal - bother rebutting or engaging with critics?
As the deaths of American men and women fighting in Iraq topped 1,000, and with insurgents controlling parts of central Iraq, the White House trotted out the same old discredited line, assuming it can wear - and scare - everyone down by November.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/opinion/09dowd.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
Skip this zit. If your boy gets elected for the first time, or appointed for a second term, you'll get your wish of another front or two. Can't wait, huh?? Your son 17 yet???
By Sharon Cohen and Pauline Arrillaga
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:41 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2004Their faces, smiling or solemn, have become all too familiar in our newspapers and on television. Their names sound a somber roll call — Smith, Falaniko, Ramos, Lee — a roster that seems to grow daily.
There have been more than 1,000 now, U.S. military personnel who have died in the Iraq war.
They are sons and daughters from city streets and rural hamlets. They are teens who went from senior proms to boot camp and battle and middle-aged family men who put aside retirement and grandchildren for the dangers of a war zone.
What they share is that they will not see home again.
What does the number mean? On D-Day alone, more Americans lost their lives. At the peak of Vietnam, hundreds of U.S. troops were dying every week. And in just one September morning three years ago, 2,792 people perished when two towers crumbled to the streets of New York.
Still, 1,000 is a grim milestone.
The conflict in Iraq has claimed almost three times the number of Americans lost in the entire Persian Gulf War. And this time, the vast majority of U.S. deaths — all but 138 — came after major combat operations were declared over. “Mission Accomplished,” read a banner on the aircraft carrier where President Bush spoke on May 1, 2003.
Sixteen months later, the fighting goes on. So do the funerals.
The lengthening casualty roster reflects a front line that shifted from sandy deserts to shadowy streets, a stubborn insurgency, a conflict far bloodier than many expected.
Back home, there is another growing count: towns that lost future firefighters and policemen, churches left without Sunday school teachers, families where infants will never meet their dads.
“It’s almost like losing a community,” says Luis Pizzini, an educator in San Diego, Texas. Two of his former students died in Iraq.
Ruben Valdez and Jose Amancio Perez grew up on the same block. Valdez, 21, was a Marine. Perez, 22, chose the Army. In their little community of fewer than 5,000, not once but twice, townsfolk lined the road to pay tribute as a hearse carried a native son home.
Now, the two men lie buried only a few feet apart.
Courtesy of the Hampton family via AP
When Kimberly Hampton headed off to war the first time, she sent her mother an e-mail, joking about the hazards of flying a small helicopter. But she had a serious message, too.
"If there is anything I can say to ease your mind ... if anything ever happens to me, you can be certain that I am doing the things I love," she wrote. "... I’m living my dreams for sure, living life on the edge at times and pushing the envelope. ...
"So, worry if you must," she added, "but you can be sure that your only child is living a full, exciting life and is HAPPY!"
Kimberly Hampton wrote that message on Feb. 4, 2003, while stationed in Afghanistan. Eleven months later, the 27-year-old Army captain was killed in Fallujah, Iraq, when her Kiowa helicopter was shot down.
"A lot of times when I’m feeling down, I’ll read it," her mother, Ann, says of the note. "It doesn’t take away the hurt or the loneliness. It does reinforce the fact that she was happy."
Growing up in Easley, S.C., Kimberly Hampton excelled at most everything: She was the high school student body president and captain of the tennis team, then ROTC battalion commander and an honors graduate from Presbyterian College.
Her dreams of taking to the skies began early. When she finished Army flight school, her parents presented her with a composition she had written in third grade saying she "would like to fly like a bird."
Hampton liked the structure and discipline of the military and in college wrote a letter to her mother, saying: "The United States needs good, solid troops in the hot spots. That’s where I want to be."
Stationed with the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq, she had taken over a troop command months before her death.
"She was an overachiever," her mother says. "She felt she had to work harder, maybe because she was female. But that didn’t bother her."
Ann Hampton says she was comforted by a chaplain in Iraq who said he admired her daughter because "she never lost her femininity."
"Being in command, she had to be rough and tough ... but she was extremely fair," her mother says. "Just because she lived in a man’s world, she didn’t try to be a man. At night, she could take her hair out of the bun, and still look like a beautiful girl."
"She was a sweet girl, tenderhearted," her mother adds. "She was just real genuine."
Eagle Butte News via AP
To his friends in the Army, he was known as Sheldon Hawk Eagle.
To his family and fellow tribe members, the 21-year Army private killed in Iraq was also remembered with a proud Lakota name: Wanbli Ohitika — Brave Eagle.
A member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, he was one of 17 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division killed last November in a collision of two helicopters in Mosul, Iraq.
Hawk Eagle could trace his bloodline to two great Indian chiefs: Crazy Horse on his father’s side, and Sitting Bull on his mother’s, according to his aunt, Barbara Strikes Enemy Turner.
Her nephew was quiet and loyal, a mature young man who gave every decision careful thought, says Turner, who helped raise him after his parents died. "He didn’t jump into anything," she recalls. "He was very meticulous and organized."
Hawk Eagle was a talented artist who loved to draw and paint and a classic car buff who knew every model he saw on the road. Hawk Eagle also adored kids and talked about a career in child psychology, looking to the Army to pay for college. But the military turned out to be such a good fit, his aunt says, he thought it might be his life.
"He loved it and everything about it," she says. "He said, ’This is where I need to be right now.’"
Other American Indian troops have died in Iraq, including Army specialist Lori Piestewa, a Hopi believed to be the first American Indian woman killed while fighting for the U.S. military.
Friends and family mourned and celebrated Hawk Eagle’s life in two days of ceremonies that featured tribal drums, Lakota songs and prayers, an overnight vigil and, his aunt says, the presentation of a red feather — akin to a Purple Heart.
A procession led by a riderless horse covered with a red, white and blue blanket and a wagon carrying the flag-draped coffin made its way through the streets of Eagle Butte, S.D. Hawk Eagle’s sister, Frankie, removed her brother’s yellow ribbon from a tree outside the high school gymnasium, where more than 1,000 people gathered.
Hawk Eagle’s funeral was held at sunrise, then a cortege made the 150-mile journey to the Black Hills National Cemetery, where a Black Hawk helicopter flew overhead in tribute.
"The sun was shining. That was good," his aunt says. "But it was a hard day. It was so hard."
Amanda Brown / Star Ledger via AP
When Frank T. Carvill told his sister he had been called up to go to Iraq, she was stunned.
"Gee, Frank, are you going to be part of the AARP battalion?" she teased, referring to the retirees lobbying group.
At 51, Carvill, an Army sergeant with the New Jersey National Guard, was among the oldest soldiers to die in Iraq. He was killed last June in an ambush outside Baghdad that also claimed the lives of four other Guard members from New Jersey and Oregon.
Carvill had escaped both terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, where he worked as a paralegal. In 1993, he helped a co-worker down 54 floors to safety. On Sept. 11, 2001, he left the north tower moments before one of the hijacked planes plowed into the building.
Carvill was a voracious reader who loved politics, an outdoorsman who enjoyed kayaking, a trusted friend who had the same buddies for 30 years.
He was a devoted big brother to Peggy Liguori, who still remembers how as kids, he took her to see "Blue Hawaii" and "Born Free" at the movies. He was the longtime pal to Rick Rancitelli who admired Carvill’s "million-dollar vocabulary" and his writing and public speaking skills.
Carvill joined the Guard two decades ago out of a sense of patriotism and never regretted it, though he believed the war in Iraq was a political mistake, Rancitelli says.
Rancitelli sent his friend copies of The New Yorker, military history books and Grateful Dead music. He also e-mailed him photos of a lake house he recently bought — a perfect spot to decompress when Carvill returned.
"Just get home, everything else will be gravy," he wrote Carvill.
But on the day he was supposed to head home on leave, he gave up his seat on the plane to another soldier who had a family emergency, according to his sister.
"My brother’s biggest downfall was never being able to say no," Liguori says. "He was always willing to help."
He was killed, she says, that day he gave up his seat.
In May, Carvill sent friends an e-mail, saying he was trying to make the best of the situation but was looking forward to joining them for dinner back home.
He also offered some reflections about the war that turned out to be prophetic.
"Our occupation is not intended to be forever," he wrote. "I don’t know how we can get out in the short run. We as a nation are going to have absorb huge costs, both in money and in lives, for several more years...."
One month later, he was dead.
The Wellsville Daily Reporter via AP
Jason Dunham stepped into the role of protector long before he ever donned a Marine uniform.
As a teenager, he put himself between a friend and an adversary to protect his buddy during a fight. As a brother, he would warn his little sister to watch out for boys. As a man, he dreamed of becoming a state trooper — so long as work didn’t take him too far from home, where he could keep an eye on those he loved most.
Dunham died as he had lived, said the minister at his burial last May: "Caring more for others than himself."
He has been nominated for the Medal of Honor, given for extraordinary valor without regard to one’s safety.
On April 14, the 22-year-old corporal from Scio, N.Y., was patrolling a vehicle checkpoint near Husaybah, Iraq, when a man leapt from a car and snatched Dunham by his throat. As Dunham wrestled with his attacker, he apparently spotted a grenade in the Iraqi’s hand and shouted a warning to other Marines rushing to his aid.
Marine officials would later conclude that Dunham dived onto the explosive and covered it with his helmet to shield his comrades. He died a week later at a U.S. hospital, his parents by his side. His mother, Deb, held one hand. His father, Dan, clasped the other.
"He never opened his eyes," his mother said.
Dunham is among several Americans in the Iraq war who gave their lives to save another. Marine Sgt. Kirk Straseskie, 23, of Beaver Dam, Wis., drowned after he jumped into a canal to rescue victims of a helicopter crash. Army Sgt. Jaror Puello-Coronado, 36, of Pocono Summit, Pa., was hit by an out-of-control truck after he pushed another soldier out of its path.
Dunham is the first person in this conflict to be recommended for the nation’s highest military honor, according to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. In a letter asking President Bush to approve the Medal of Honor nomination, Schumer noted that Dunham’s "unbelievable bravery and selflessness" saved the lives of at least two other Marines.
"I can imagine no clearer a case of an individual soldier exhibiting the ideals that the Congressional Medal was established to honor."
Dunham’s mother says they were ideals her son displayed all his life.
"He was a hero before this," she said. "It didn’t take this for us to find that out."
The number stood at 1,001 on Tuesday, including three civilian contractors working for the Defense Department. About 7,000 other Americans have been wounded.
Of those who have died, 97 percent were men; two dozen were women. While more than 600 were white, others were black, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian — including the first Indian woman killed in combat while fighting for the U.S. military and a Cheyenne River Sioux who traced his ancestry to two great chiefs, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
There were kids who had never fired a shot at an enemy and veterans of Desert Storm, Bosnia, Kosovo — even Vietnam.
They hailed from the urban bustle of Chicago, New York and Houston, as well as the cornfields of Silvana, Wash., and the coal mine country of Varney, W.Va. — and from every state but Alaska.
They represented U.S. territories: American Samoa, the Northern Marianas, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
More than three dozen were born in foreign countries — including Thailand, India, Albania, Poland, Nicaragua, Colombia and the United Arab Emirates — but ended up fighting for a nation they embraced as their own.
While many had been naturalized, at least 10 died reaching for their vision of the American dream: to become U.S. citizens.
Army Pfc. Diego Rincon, a native of Colombia, was among them. After he was killed in a suicide bombing, his father, Jorge, lobbied Congress, which passed legislation giving posthumous citizenship to his 19-year-old son and other foreign-born soldiers killed in battle.
“It’s good it happened — but at the same time, he’s not here to enjoy it,” Jorge Rincon says. “He was supposed to be here.”
Jose Gutierrez grew up an orphan on the streets of Guatemala, rode rail cars to California, crossed the border illegally, obtained a visa and graduated from high school, then joined the Marines. At age 28, the lance corporal was buried in his native land, a U.S. flag covering his casket.
In a poem called “Letter to God,” Gutierrez once wrote: “Thank you for permitting me to live another year. Thank you for what I have, for the type of person I am, for my dreams that don’t die.”
(The Iraq war also has claimed the lives of more than 120 foreign troops who are part of the U.S.-led coalition; about half were in the British military. Nearly 100 Americans have died in operations in Afghanistan, along with 35 others in related action in Pakistan and other countries.)
Public memorials to those lost in the Iraq war have taken many forms: rows and rows of combat boots in a traveling exhibit; crosses covering a California beach; baseballs, each marked with a name, at a Massachusetts park. Anti-war protesters carried hundreds of flag-draped, coffin-shaped boxes through the streets of New York.
Although most — more than 700 — were in the Army, Americans who died wore the uniforms of every branch of service, including the first Coast Guardsman to die in combat since Vietnam.
More than three-fourths were in the active-duty military. But with the largest deployment of Guard and Reserve units since World War II, about 18 percent of those who died were part-time troops: 109 National Guard members and 74 reservists. Thirteen were from a single Army National Guard brigade based in Arkansas.
About 70 percent were killed in action, many in roadside explosions while on patrol or making supply runs, rocket-propelled grenade attacks that took down helicopters, sniper shootings and suicide bombings.
There were more than 160 accidental deaths, many involving vehicles, and at least 27 suicides. Twelve people were lost in so-called friendly fire incidents, Central Command reported.
Numbers are only part of the story
Those who died were as different as they were the same: Homecoming kings and class presidents, Scout leaders and Little League coaches. A young man from the projects who put a hip-hop beat to “Amazing Grace” on the bus to church camp. A lawyer fascinated with tanks. An Army specialist nicknamed Ketchup who would sneak food to Iraqi children. A National Guardsman who once dyed his hair blue and red for an Independence Day parade.
There was Trevor Spink, a 36-year-old staff sergeant in his third tour in Iraq. His steady, confident gaze was once the face on Marine recruitment posters. Now, his mother has decided, that portrait will adorn his tombstone.
His friends still marvel at his transformation when he donned his Marine uniform. “It was as if God had dropped Trevor into life’s slot of complete comfort,” one wrote in a condolence note to his mother.
There was Army pilot Aaron Weaver, 32, who had survived cancer and a rocket attack in the 1993 battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, that was recounted in “Black Hawk Down.” The Bronze Star recipient and father of a baby girl was so determined to go to Iraq that he secured special medical clearance so he could fly.
“Nobody wants to leave their buddies behind,” says his father, Mike Weaver. “Being an Army Ranger — it’s a close-knit family.”
So many were so very young, men and women just beginning lives filled with promise.
Marine Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin, 21, proposed to his fiancée, Tiffany Frank, by telephone from Iraq, then asked her to send him catalogues circling the engagement rings she liked best. They set a wedding date — Dec. 11. Tiffany had picked up her wedding gown the day she learned of his death.
“We had the church reserved, the pastor reserved, the reception hall reserved,” she says. “Everything was coming together. Now I can only dream about what we would have had.”
Roger Rowe already had everything he wanted: a 34-year marriage to his childhood friend, four children and seven grandchildren who called him “Papa” and for whom he planned to build a clubhouse. Still, at 54, the Vietnam veteran had no hesitation about serving in Iraq as part of the Tennessee National Guard.
“He said, ‘What a lifetime experience this will be to be able to help that country,’” remembers his widow, Shirley. “He was always an optimist.”
After Rowe was killed by a sniper, Guard members went to his home in Bon Aqua, Tenn., and built the clubhouse Papa promised.
The path to a better life
Army Pvt. Robert Frantz, 19, considered it a training ground for a career in law enforcement to support his young daughter.
“His buddies weren’t getting anywhere,” recalls his mother, Kim Smith. “I told him: ‘Son, you have a child. You have to do something.’ It motivated him. He wanted her to be proud of him.”
Brad Coleman had a job recommendation at a mine in Pennsylvania, but at 19, the Army private “wanted to get out and see the world,” says his father, Donald. “He felt with the war going on, he could lend a hand.”
James Adamouski also felt compelled to serve in Iraq, despite previous tours in Bosnia and Kosovo — and a bright future.
At 29, the Army captain already was accomplished: He was a West Point graduate and a former semiprofessional soccer player in Germany. He was about to start Harvard Business School, and he had his eye on a political career.
During a Memorial Day visit to the White House last year, his father, Frank Adamouski, spoke briefly with President Bush about what might have been. “I always knew I was going to have breakfast in the White House,” he recalls saying. “But I always thought my son was going to be president when I did.”
Army Pfc. Jesse Buryj had his own career plans — to become a Canton, Ohio, police officer. He enlisted because he was too young to be on the force.
The 21-year-old newlywed died a hero — one of many killed trying to help or protect others. Buryj was credited with saving fellow soldiers when he fired more than 400 rounds at a dump truck that was trying to crash a checkpoint near Karbala, Iraq.
“I know he went out in a blaze of glory,” says his mother, Peggy. “They say he showed no fear and gave no ground.”
Others expressed bitterness over the loss of loved ones in a war they considered unjustified.
“It just rubbed salt in the wound to hear them talk about ‘well, maybe they didn’t have all the information; maybe the intelligence was faulty,’” says Oliva Smith, whose 41-year-old husband, Bruce, was among 16 U.S. soldiers killed when a surface-to-air missile downed their helicopter.
If the war separated families, it also united them.
Michelle Witmer, 20, was serving in the Wisconsin National Guard with her twin, Charity, and a third sister, Rachel, when she was killed in an ambush in Baghdad. Her sisters returned home to complete their duty.
Kimberly Voelz, 27, and her husband, Max, both explosives experts, headed off to the war together. She died in his arms, killed by a makeshift bomb she was preparing to disarm. Max Voelz called her parents that morning, telling them: “She died 10 minutes ago.”
A void too great to fathom
More than 500 sons and daughters have been left without a father, and at least five boys and girls lost their mothers.
Sharon Swartworth, 43, was about to retire to Hawaii with her naval commander husband and their 8-year-old son when she was killed in a helicopter crash while on a mission to hand out medals. As lead adviser to the Army’s judge advocate general, she had a distinguished 26-year military career.
Her father, Bernard Mayo, says she wasn’t interested in discussing her work but would say: “Talk to me about my little boy, Billy.”
Two dozen soldiers had wives who were pregnant, men like 23-year-old Micheal Dooley, who had picked a name from afar for his first child.
Dooley was manning a traffic control post when the occupants of a car asked for help for a sick friend, then opened fire. His wife, Christine, was in her second trimester. Their daughter bears the name he chose, Shea Micheal Dooley.
“She’s so beautiful and she’s so much fun, and he’s not here to enjoy this,” says Christine, who lives with her parents in Murrysville, Pa. Sometimes, she and Shea go to the mausoleum where Dooley rests. Christine takes her daughter’s hand, presses it to her own lips and then to the wall of the crypt, telling her: “That’s the way we kiss Daddy.”
These 1,000 men and women are home again, their war over.
The Rincon house in Conyers, Ga., is filled with memories of Diego: His neatly pressed uniform is spread out on his bed, his drum set and his telescope are in his room, his yellow Mustang sits in the garage — just as he left them. His framed citizenship papers are on the wall.
Diego Rincon was cremated, but he has not been laid to rest. His family isn’t ready for the final goodbye.
“One day when I’m old,” his father says, “I’m going to bury him in Arlington. But not now. Not right now.”
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Missing in Action
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: September 8, 2004
President Bush claims that in the fall of 1972, he fulfilled his Air National Guard duties at a base in Alabama. But Bob Mintz was there - and he is sure Mr. Bush wasn't.
Plenty of other officers have said they also don't recall that Mr. Bush ever showed up for drills at the base. What's different about Mr. Mintz is that he remembers actively looking for Mr. Bush and never finding him.
Mr. Mintz says he had heard that Mr. Bush - described as a young Texas pilot with political influence - had transferred to the base. He heard that Mr. Bush was also a bachelor, so he was looking forward to partying together. He's confident that he'd remember if Mr. Bush had shown up.
"I'm sure I would have seen him," Mr. Mintz said yesterday. "It's a small unit, and you couldn't go in or out without being seen. It was too close a space." There were only 25 to 30 pilots there, and Mr. Bush - a U.N. ambassador's son who had dated Tricia Nixon - would have been particularly memorable.
I've steered clear until now of how Mr. Bush evaded service in Vietnam because I thought other issues were more important. But if Bush supporters attack John Kerry for his conduct after he volunteered for dangerous duty in Vietnam, it's only fair to scrutinize Mr. Bush's behavior.
It's not a pretty sight. Mr. Bush was saved from active duty, and perhaps Vietnam, only after the speaker of the Texas House intervened for him because of his family's influence.
Mr. Bush signed up in May 1968 for a six-year commitment, justifying the $1 million investment in training him as a pilot. But after less than two years, Mr. Bush abruptly stopped flying, didn't show up for his physical and asked to transfer to Alabama. He never again flew a military plane.
Mr. Bush insists that after moving to Alabama in 1972, he served out his obligation at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery (although he says he doesn't remember what he did there). The only officer there who recalls Mr. Bush was produced by the White House - he remembers Mr. Bush vividly, but at times when even Mr. Bush acknowledges he wasn't there.
In contrast, Mr. Mintz is a compelling witness. Describing himself as "a very strong military man," he served in the military from 1959 to 1984. A commercial pilot, he is now a Democrat but was a Republican for most of his life, and he is not a Bush-hater. When I asked him whether the National Guard controversy raises questions about Mr. Bush's credibility, Mr. Mintz said only, "That's up to the American people to decide."
In his first interview with a national news organization, Mr. Mintz recalled why he remembered Mr. Bush as a no-show: "Young bachelors were kind of sparse. For that reason, I was looking for someone to haul around with." Why speak out now? He said, "After a lot of soul-searching, I just feel it's my duty to stand up and do the right thing."
Another particularly credible witness is Leonard Walls, a retired Air Force colonel who was then a full-time pilot instructor at the base. "I was there pretty much every day," he said, adding: "I never saw him, and I was there continually from July 1972 to July 1974." Mr. Walls, who describes himself as nonpolitical, added, "If he had been there more than once, I would have seen him."
The sheer volume of missing documents, and missing recollections, strongly suggests to me that Mr. Bush blew off his Guard obligations. It's not fair to say Mr. Bush deserted. My sense is that he (like some others at the time) neglected his National Guard obligations, did the bare minimum to avoid serious trouble and was finally let off by commanders who considered him a headache but felt it wasn't worth the hassle to punish him.
"The record clearly and convincingly proves he did not fulfill the obligations he incurred when he enlisted in the Air National Guard," writes Gerald Lechliter, a retired Army colonel who has made the most meticulous examination I've seen of Mr. Bush's records (I've posted the full 32-page analysis here). Mr. Lechliter adds that Mr. Bush received unauthorized or fraudulent payments that breached National Guard rules, according to the documents that the White House itself released.
Does this disqualify Mr. Bush from being commander in chief? No. But it should disqualify the Bush campaign from sliming the military service of a rival who still carries shrapnel from Vietnam in his thigh.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/opinion/08kristof.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dE...
Oh, what a relief it is over
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
Stephen Colbert, correspondent for The Daily Show, the only news program to watch during the Republican National Convention, found the theme of this convention like a homing pigeon: "Unmitigated gall."
This convention alone would have been enough to convince me that John Edwards is right about "two Americas," except I don't think he's gone far enough. These folks are in from another planet. They're living in an alternative reality.
When is a fact a fact to these people? When did anyone ever find evidence that Saddam Hussein had dog to do with Sept. 11?
It's all very well to claim that our invasion of Iraq may yet bring about peace and democracy in the Middle East -- hey, miracles happen -- but when Rudy Giuliani assured us that this "idealism" is in fact triumphing as he speaks, one must question the man's grip on sanity.
Even the president is now claiming that the disastrous occupation is the result of "catastrophic success." That seems to mean he thinks we won the war too quickly.
Speaking of what Bush means, what a dumb flap over his obviously accidental misstatement that we can't win the war against terrorism. As I have often noted, even when Bush misspeaks, you can usually tell what he meant to say. This little doozy was "clearified" the next day -- on that mighty organ of reliable information, The Rush Limbaugh Show -- only to be followed by Democrats chanting, "Flip-flop."
That level of stupefying pettiness should be legally limited to Republicans.
Meanwhile, note that Bush is back to being "a war president." Just a few weeks ago, he was going around claiming to be "the peace president" every 10 minutes, after months of claiming to be "a war president." So that makes the new shift a flip-flip-flop.
One of my favorite moments of non-reality came from Education Secretary Rod Paige, formerly school superintendent in Houston, where the stats on student performance have been so badly twisted that it is now a national scandal.
It was Compassion Night at Madison Square Garden, so we were celebrating Republican domestic achievements -- a short list unless you just make stuff up, such as "All across America, test scores are rising, students are learning, the achievement gap is closing, teachers and principals are beaming with pride." Now you tell me if this guy is living in Never Never Land.
The party platform, written in large part by Phyllis Schlafly and her Eagle Forum, condemns stem cell research, a woman's right to decide whether to bear a child under any circumstances and gay people. Just as a historical curiosity, I present the fact that at the party's 1988 convention in New Orleans, Schlafly gave a party with the theme "Let the Good Times Roll," proving the enduring role of irony at conventions.
The real theme of the convention was "George W. Bush Makes Us Safer," as dubious a proposition as Madonna's virginity. In the current issue of Mother Jones magazine is a must-read by Matthew Brzezinski called "Red Alert." The "pull quote" is: "It was billed as America's front-line defense against terrorism. But badly underfunded, crippled by special interests and ignored by the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has been relegated to bureaucratic obscurity."
Brzezinski reports that "the administration's misplaced priorities -- particularly its obsession with Iraq -- have come at the expense of homeland security." What a mess. What a waste of money. What colossal ineptitude. It's so dispiriting to read about it that one can't even work up a Henry Higgins-like "Safer? Ha!"
Although I was prepared to listen to rhetoric about Bush's stalwart firmness as he steers the ship of state in the wrong direction, I was startled to hear Giuliani try to make points over our falling out with so many allies.
Look, the Coalition of the Willing is a public embarrassment, a monument to diplomatic witlessness, not to mention open bribery. To blame others for our diplomatic failure is both fatuous and offensive. Then to repeat Bush's obnoxious little bully line, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists," is both stupid and dangerous.
The perception that we lack a decent respect for the opinions of mankind contributes to terrorism. Why encourage Americans, many already dangerously xenophobic, to treat the arguments of other nations with contemptuous dismissal -- especially when so many of them have been proved right?
lol...old news, that is funny, all from a chickenhawk living 35 years ago...I'll bet you got some great stories to share with your son, audio clips and all...lol.
good grief dude.....it's the same stuff the liberal biased media spent a week on at the beginning of the year.....the same stuff!
it's old news......
zit for brains...thank God nobody listens to you.
that's the most ignorantly disgusting statement you've made, and you've made quite a few..........you have absolutely no clue how to accomplish peace...........thank God you're not a teacher
COMMENTARY
Late, Great Middle Class
By John Podesta and David Sirota, John Podesta is president of the American Progress Action Fund. David Sirota is the fund's director of strategic communications.
Over the last four years, President Bush has been ridiculed for his public speaking errors. He's been hammered for saying people "misunderestimate" him and mocked for asking "is our children learning?" But it's his omissions, not his errors, that should concern Americans.
Since his inauguration, the president has delivered more than 1,000 major addresses, news conferences and short public remarks. Yet he has uttered the phrase "middle class" in only 34 of them. On Thursday night at the convention, he kept the pattern going — the phrase never passed his lips.
Maybe it's just an oversight, but in such a highly scripted White House, is anything left to chance? Omitting references to America's most critical demographic is surely no accident — it's evidence of a tectonic shift in philosophy. No longer part of a bipartisan consensus that government should work to expand opportunity for ordinary Americans, conservatives are instead eliminating those opportunities. Bush's words — or lack thereof — simply punctuate the effort.
Consider, for example, decent wages. The gateway to the middle class is considered to be a salary of about $35,000 a year. Yet the Bush administration has refused to support a serious increase in the minimum wage, which at $5.15 an hour provides a salary of less than $12,000 a year — well below the poverty line. At the same time, the White House has worked to strip workers of federal overtime pay protections, and in budget after budget it has tried to cut billions out of job training programs.
Access to adequate healthcare is another marker of middle-class status. And yet the White House is making it harder to get that care. The president's health savings accounts, which would put money into the consumers' hands, also would allow employers to contribute less to workers' coverage. In other words, annual health insurance deductibles probably would go up. And then there's last year's Medicare reform. According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration included a little- noticed provision in the legislation that allows companies to continue receiving tax breaks even if they severely reduce workers' healthcare coverage.
On prescription drugs, it's a similar story. As prices skyrocket, the president's Medicare bill all but ensured hundreds of billions in profits for the pharmaceutical industry without providing truly comprehensive drug coverage to seniors. The bill did nothing to prevent drug companies from charging Americans the highest prices in the world. When lawmakers tried to give Medicare the power to negotiate discounts, they were blocked by White House allies. And the administration continues to oppose letting Americans purchase lower-priced, FDA-approved medicines from abroad.
In fairness to the president, on a few occasions he has targeted the middle class for aid. In 2001, his tax policy was supposed to help "families struggling to enter the middle class." But that was the same policy that rolled back the top tax rates, stock dividend taxes and the estate tax on the super-wealthy. In fact, the White House has given more than half of all its new tax cuts to those making an average of $1 million a year, leaving the middle class with a larger share of the tax burden. And it could get worse. On Thursday night, Bush mentioned "tax reform" — a likely reference to a national sales tax or flat tax that congressional Republicans already are pushing. Even President Reagan's Treasury Department noted that a flat tax "would involve a significant redistribution of tax liability" away from the wealthy and onto ordinary Americans. And a study by the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice finds a national sales tax would mean tax increases on the bottom 80% of income earners.
Instead of squeezing the demographic group that defines the American dream, Bush and his band of conservatives should be working to expand it. One of their own icons got it right many years ago. "Upper classes are a nation's past," wrote Ayn Rand, "the middle class is the future."
Unfortunately, Bush and his Republican Party disagree.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-podesta6sep06,1,7526688.story
Mr. three legged stool....I assume you are spouting the party line that democracy will be flowering in Iraq. Care to make a bet???
and with iraq, as history bears out, liberals will be wrong (again) about the outcome
Violence May Force Iraq to Bypass Hotspots in Election
Plan would allow voting to proceed in January but might undermine credibility of the results.
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — Iraq remains on course to hold landmark elections in January, but violence could force authorities to exclude hotspots such as the western city of Fallouja from voting, a top U.S. general said here Sunday.
Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, operations chief of more than 150,000 mostly U.S. troops, said in an interview that the "cancer" of anti-American militancy in places such as Fallouja would not derail national elections.
A "contingency" plan, Metz said, is to bypass Fallouja — and perhaps other violent enclaves — and concentrate on ensuring electoral security in Baghdad and other population centers where hostility is lower.
"We'd have elections before we let one place like Fallouja stop [national] elections," said Metz, the No. 2 U.S. military official in Iraq. "The rest of the country can go on about a process that heads right for an election."
Still, Metz cautioned that the participation of Iraq's three largest cities — Baghdad, Mosul in the north and Basra in the south — was essential to any election.
Metz's statements are among the strongest to date by U.S. or Iraqi officials, conceding that the security situation is so perilous that some areas may not be pacified in time for elections.
Although bypassing some cities could allow officials to stick to their planned January timetable, doing so could detract from the election's credibility, foment discontent in Iraq and leave other countries reluctant to acknowledge any government chosen in the vote.
Much of the heartland of central and western Iraq remains a hostile zone for U.S. and Iraqi forces because of a Sunni Muslim-led insurgency.
In the capital and to the south, meanwhile, a Shiite militia that launched bloody uprisings in the spring and summer has yet to be dismantled. In August alone, more than 1,000 U.S. troops were hurt and at least 63 killed.
Two more U.S. soldiers died Sunday and 16 were injured when a mortar round hit a base west of Baghdad, officials said. The military also announced the deaths of four Marines on Friday in Al Anbar province, which includes Fallouja. More than 982 soldiers have died in Iraq since the invasion began in March 2003.
The elections scheduled for January are the next major milestone for Iraq as the nation follows a plan backed by the U.S. and U.N. for its transition to democracy.
The country became sovereign again under a U.S.-backed interim government on June 28, about 15 months after the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein.
The election is to choose a transitional government charged with writing a constitution and overseeing full elections to be held later. But many Iraqis and outsiders have expressed doubt about how a legitimate election can be held in a society reeling from almost daily bombings and other attacks.
Ideally, experts say, voters should feel free from intimidation and candidates should be able to move freely — elusive goals in a country where assassinations, abductions and ambushes have become commonplace. No candidates have begun campaigning publicly, and there are few signs of electoral activity. No plan has been announced for voter registration or what documents will be needed.
How to provide security at a projected 9,000 polling places is among the momentous challenges facing Iraqi and Western officials now trying to craft a workable election blueprint for the nation of 24 million.
"There's no scenario being ruled out," a U.S. official here said. "The idea is that people in one or two cities cannot be allowed to veto an election."
One possible option, officials say, is to allow voters from places like Fallouja — with an estimated population of 280,000 — to cast their ballots at polling places in designated safe zones outside of their towns.
U.S.-led forces, Metz said, have also not ruled out military action before the vote to win back control in such places as Fallouja and Samarra, a city 60 miles north of Baghdad that is essentially controlled by insurgents.
By December, authorities hope more than 200,000 Iraqi police and troops will be providing primary security for much of the country, with U.S.-led multinational forces as a backup, he said. Intensive training of Iraqi forces is underway nationwide.
"I don't think today you could hold elections," Metz said. "Our goal is to get ourselves to local control … so that we can conduct an election in January that is recognized internally and externally as a legitimate election."
Excluding polling booths from an entire city or cities, though, may be perilous. The plan would probably alienate those excluded from voting — most likely minority Sunni Muslims, who have spearheaded the insurgency in places like Fallouja. It could also detract from the international legitimacy of the critical vote.
Yet skipping some dangerous areas, analysts say, may be better than delaying national elections long demanded by many Iraqis, especially the country's Shiite Muslim majority.
The nation's preeminent Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, used his considerable moral authority to press for direct elections as soon as possible after the fall of the Hussein regime. The cleric ultimately signed off on a compromise plan scheduling elections for no later than January. Aides have warned that that date is firm.
Aware of the extreme sensitivities at play in the run-up to elections, the government of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has stated that the voting would come off in January and no part of the country would be excluded.
In an effort to reach out to hostile areas of the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad, Allawi has offered an amnesty to insurgents who come forward and renounce violence. He has also met with delegations from Fallouja, Ramadi, Samarra and other hostile zones.
In addition, the interim leader has invited militant Shiites who revolted earlier this year to participate in the political system.
"There is no exclusion for any city," Adnan Ali, a spokesman for Vice President Ibrahim Jafari, said Sunday. "There are some security problems in Fallouja, but we are hoping to settle them."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-vote6sep06,1,4277412.story?coll=la-home-headlines
don't know dzr's son but he could never be that dumb...
so don't be surprised if he actually does grow up being more like gwb
hey dzr, easy on that California guys stuff...btw, you got that Texas swagger, er, walk??? :)
George Shirley, 61; Controversial Teacher Pushed Poor Youths to Attend College
By Elaine Woo
Times Staff Writer
September 5, 2004
George Shirley, a controversial former high school teacher in Salinas whose belief in the innate abilities of his underprivileged students helped dozens of them enter prestigious colleges — including Harvard, Yale and Princeton — during one remarkable year in a brief teaching career, died of cancer Aug. 30 at his Sacramento home. He was 61.
In 1985, Shirley was in his second year as a government and English teacher at Alisal High School in Salinas when he made an unusual class assignment: He instructed his students, most of them children of poor migrant workers, to apply to 10 colleges and universities outside of California and three in state.
For Alisal students, attending the local community or state college was their highest ambition — if they considered college at all. Disparaged by one student as a "factory for farm workers," Alisal had a 50% dropout rate, and the median SAT score was 700 out of a possible 1,600. English was virtually a foreign language for a majority of Alisal's 1,400 students, and three-quarters of them read below grade level. Shirley's assignment struck some as an exercise in futility.
But the former poverty lawyer, who had switched to teaching for a "lower stress" job, pushed his students to give the assignment their all. He helped them polish their essays, wrote scores of recommendation letters, got application fees waived and even convinced the principal to pay the postage out of Alisal's budget. He told college admissions officers that they should overlook the students' dismal test scores in favor of personal qualifications forged by their real-life struggles.
The results, for Alisal, were astonishing. In 1986, 84 of the 225 graduates were admitted to four-year colleges that included Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Notre Dame and Cornell. That was almost three times the number who went to such colleges the previous year.
About three-quarters successfully completed college and went on to professional careers as teachers, lawyers, doctors and business executives.
Shirley did not fare as well. The year that he helped send a record number of Alisal graduates to college, he was fired. His dismissal came amid reports that he had psychological problems and that he had mismanaged a student trip to Washington, D.C., that had left the district with a $6,000 tab.
Although the official reasons were never given, anyone who knew Shirley could not have been completely mystified by his firing. A renegade who broke rules and spoke his mind, Shirley bristled at injustice and wasn't afraid to bite the hand that paid him $18,000 a year. His recommendation letters for college-bound students contained what he acknowledged was "a direct attack on the school," arguing that the colleges should disregard the applicants' low grades and paucity of advanced classes because Alisal was a segregated campus that offered "a lousy education."
"He knew what he was," Laura, his wife of 12 years, told The Times last week. "He was a rabble-rouser."
After his dismissal, Shirley dabbled in politics and did some private legal work. He was inundated by offers to turn his Alisal experiences into a movie but none of the scripts met his approval.
No stranger to adversity, Shirley had been a Tennessee "hillbilly" who overcame poverty to earn a law degree at the University of Denver in 1966. After doing some teaching and legislative work, he spent the 1970s working on poverty issues and civil rights for California Rural Legal Assistance and similar organizations in Florida and Minnesota.
By the early 1980s he had a private trial practice in Monterey, but assumed such a heavy caseload — much of it pro bono — that, in late 1983, he suffered a breakdown outside the county courthouse and woke up in a hospital the next day.
Diagnosed with mental exhaustion, he took anti-depressants and spent the next year at home taking care of his son, Bryan. (In addition to his wife and Bryan, Shirley is survived by sons Andrew, 11, Robert, 8, and James, 6; two grandchildren; and a brother.)
When he recovered, he decided it would be therapeutic to teach. The Salinas Union High School District hired him as a substitute but soon offered him a one-year contract to teach at Alisal High.
His unconventionality was evident his first day on the job. Pam Bernhard, an Alisal counselor who would become his primary ally in the college drive, remembered that Shirley took the outdated history textbook and just "tore it up and threw it in the garbage can." He used the U.S. Constitution as his teaching manual, brought guest speakers to class, made his students read the newspaper and discussed current affairs.
It pained him to see how limited their horizons were.
When he mentioned the names of distant colleges such as Bard, Oberlin, Brown and Williams, he might as well have been talking about the moon. "I was blown away," recalled former student Manuel Lopez. "I had never heard of 99% of these schools." His goal had been to attend Salinas' two-year Hartnell College and become a bank teller. But Shirley "told me I could go to Vanderbilt, I could go to all these places," Lopez said. "No teacher had told me that before."
Shirley rounded up his best students to meet visiting college recruiters. He held after-school and Saturday sessions to help them fill out applications and apply for financial aid. He guided them to write essays that tugged at the heartstrings, telling of illiterate parents who gave them love and hope, of selling vegetables from a truck for a few dollars a day, of missing months of school to work in the fields. "If it doesn't bring a tear to my eye," Shirley said of the essays, "do it again."
Years later, he admitted he actually rewrote some of the essays himself, an ethical breach that would have doomed Shirley as well as the applicant if detected by college admissions officials. But, Shirley explained a few years ago, "it was a war to me, and it was a war hopelessly stacked against them," his students.
After months of anxious waiting, proof of victory began pouring in. Nine in the Class of 1986 were admitted to the Ivy League, including a boy with a 990 SAT. Another student with a 600 SAT but a 97% on his French achievement test won a full scholarship to a small Eastern private college.
With each triumph, Shirley grabbed the victor from class and headed for the principal's office, where the good news would be trumpeted from the PA system. "Today, Princeton University accepted … "
Newspapers wrote glowingly of Shirley's successes, but resentments quickly surfaced. The principal and district officials hated Shirley's depiction of Alisal as a substandard school that stunted the intellectual development of its students. He received his termination letter the same day he was honored as Alisal's employee of the month.
His students, though dismayed at his firing, took away an important lesson: how one person can make a difference. "He could have just gone through the motions, taught what needed to be taught and never created this big stir," said Miguel Cordova, a graduate of Minnesota's Carleton College and the first in his family to earn a degree beyond high school. "His biggest role was to open our eyes to the importance of getting involved and trying to make a difference wherever you can."
Cordova went to work in programs that prepared and recruited minority college students. Now he helps shape the tests that measure the proficiencies of elementary to high school students in California public schools as a consultant in the state Department of Education.
Lopez went to Bard College in upstate New York and studied pre-law but discovered that education was his true calling. He became a teacher, then a principal who turned around a failing middle school in Soledad, Calif. He returned to the classroom this year as a teacher at Salinas' Alvarez High School.
"He [Shirley] tapped into our dreams," Lopez said recently. "We didn't know we had those dreams. He knew all along we just needed to believe in ourselves."
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-shirley5sep05,1,2486228,print.story?coll=la-news-obitua...
Damn good post, JM!!
encephalitis brain...
ROTFLMAO@U
If you want to talk about "messes", take a look at the economic bubble that was created by the previous administration.
zithead, as usual, lost in your own drivel...I'll bet you reread your posts over and over again in admiration of your intellect while enjoying cute audio clips. That said, I can only wish it is stumble and bumble along the path of daily life that could explain this president, but sadly, this buffoon's (bet you love HIS intellect) strings are being pulled by pseudo Christians with no intention of doing God's true will, unless of course, it constitutes a land grap with all the ensuing riches...under the guise of, how did you say it...establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. I hope you are wearing your boots for your crap is no more impressive then this president's swagger. Pure crap.
F6, good stuff you are posting. Amazing how this administration, doing God's will, has such disdain or lack of empathy for a vast majority of Americans. Program after program has been gutted, underfunded or in their crosshairs yet Bush proclaims these very issues will be addressed...in his second term. Yeah, they'll be addressed all right. I love how the Medicare premium increasing 17% was released on Friday going into a three day holiday weekend. These guys are masters at giving Americans a good Cheneying all the while waving the flag.
hey dude, if you're are out there, I feel you're hatred of Kerry and those not goose-steeping with you. Here is a slurpy for you!!
Feel the Hate
By PAUL KRUGMAN
I don't know where George Soros gets his money," one man said. "I don't know where - if it comes from overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from." George Soros, another declared, "wants to spend $75 million defeating George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin." After all, a third said, Mr. Soros "is a self-admitted atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust."
They aren't LaRouchies - they're Republicans.
The suggestion that Mr. Soros, who has spent billions promoting democracy around the world, is in the pay of drug cartels came from Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, whom the Constitution puts two heartbeats from the presidency. After standing by his remarks for several days, Mr. Hastert finally claimed that he was talking about how Mr. Soros spends his money, not where he gets it.
The claim that Mr. Soros's political spending is driven by his desire to legalize heroin came from Newt Gingrich. And the bit about the Holocaust came from Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of The Washington Times, which has become the administration's de facto house organ.
For many months we've been warned by tut-tutting commentators about the evils of irrational "Bush hatred." Pundits eagerly scanned the Democratic convention for the disease; some invented examples when they failed to find it. Then they waited eagerly for outrageous behavior by demonstrators in New York, only to be disappointed again.
There was plenty of hatred in Manhattan, but it was inside, not outside, Madison Square Garden.
Barack Obama, who gave the Democratic keynote address, delivered a message of uplift and hope. Zell Miller, who gave the Republican keynote, declared that political opposition is treason: "Now, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief." And the crowd roared its approval.
Why are the Republicans so angry? One reason is that they have nothing positive to run on (during the first three days, Mr. Bush was mentioned far less often than John Kerry).
The promised economic boom hasn't materialized, Iraq is a bloody quagmire, and Osama bin Laden has gone from "dead or alive" to he-who-must-not-be-named.
Another reason, I'm sure, is a guilty conscience. At some level the people at that convention know that their designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are impugning the patriotism of men who have.
That's why Band-Aids with Purple Hearts on them, mocking Mr. Kerry's war wounds and medals, have been such a hit with conventioneers, and why senior politicians are attracted to wild conspiracy theories about Mr. Soros.
It's also why Mr. Hastert, who knows how little the Bush administration has done to protect New York and help it rebuild, has accused the city of an "unseemly scramble" for cash after 9/11. Nothing makes you hate people as much as knowing in your heart that you are in the wrong and they are in the right.
But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity.
The convention opened with an invocation by Sheri Dew, a Mormon publisher and activist. Early rumors were that the invocation would be given by Jerry Falwell, who suggested just after 9/11 that the attack was God's punishment for the activities of the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way, among others. But Ms. Dew is no more moderate: earlier this year she likened opposition to gay marriage to opposition to Hitler.
The party made sure to put social moderates like Rudy Giuliani in front of the cameras. But in private events, the story was different. For example, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas told Republicans that we are in a "culture war" and urged a reduction in the separation of church and state.
Mr. Bush, it's now clear, intends to run a campaign based on fear. And for me, at least, it's working: thinking about what these people will do if they solidify their grip on power makes me very, very afraid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dE....
It must have been the million extra votes the twins brought!!
Did I say a 8 point gain? Make that a 10 point gain!
the talking heads blathered about "sealing the deal"
DONE DEAL!
Rising, terrible cost of war
By Tom Hennessy
Staff columnist
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."
The man who said that, on April 16, 1953, was Dwight D. Eisenhower. By then the former general was president of the United States.
But people, even presidents, sometimes say things that are quickly forgotten. On April 16, 2003, Congress approved $79 billion in the first of two supplemental appropriations to finance the war in Iraq.
If anyone in Congress noticed the irony 50 years from the day of Eisenhower's thoughtful comment I did not read about it. On Nov. 5, another $87 billion was appropriated for the war.
When I left home at about 8 Tuesday morning, the estimated cost of America's war in Iraq had reached $130,302,865,947.
When I left home Wednesday morning, about the same time, the estimated cost was at $130,421,659,244. What a difference a day makes.
I will explain momentarily how I keep track of the rising cost and tell you how to do the same.
Billion here, there
Save, perhaps, for politicians, most of us probably have difficulty measuring the true worth of a billion dollars. By way of illustration, let's take the $130,421,659,244 spent on the war up to Wednesday morning. The amount is equal, for example, to enrolling 18,422,845 children in the Head Start program for a year.
It is equal to the cost of providing a year of health insurance to 55,852,953 children.
It is equal to the cost of hiring 2,481,999 additional public school teachers for one year.
It is equal to the cost of providing 3,305,138 students with four-year scholarships at public universities.
It is equal to the cost of funding global anti-hunger efforts for five years.
It is equal to the cost of funding worldwide AIDS programs for 13 years.
It is equal to the cost of providing every child in the world with basic immunizations for 43 years.
How do I know?
As many of you might guess, I'm not smart enough to have done such calculations. The above figures, including the rising cost of the war, come from an ingenious Internet feature, the Cost of War calculator on www.costofwar.com
The figures are said to be the lowest estimate of what Congress approved in the two appropriations cited above.
The calculator was devised by Niko Matsakis of Boston and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, Md. A computer programmer and writer, respectively, they call themselves "citizen-activists who believe that everyone should know and understand the total financial cost of invading and occupying Iraq."
There is, of course, an additional cost of the war which cannot be measured in dollars not even billions. According to the last figure I saw Tuesday, 976 American men and women have died fighting this war.
They continue to die, despite the U.S. having returned sovereignty to the Iraqis, and 16 months after George Bush's camp proclaimed "Mission accomplished," American troops in Iraq are still being attacked an average of 60 times a day.
As the late Ernie Pyle said long ago, 'Here is your war."
http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204%257E27141%257E2374141,00.html?search=filter
It fairness, zithead, let's put the full article out there from this right winger. The title reads Don't Send More Kids to Die
Your post:
zit is a biiig fan of the twins, I mean BIG, really BIG
i believe there's another person who fits this category better than i do, and here's what that right-winger had to say
It has been a pretty thrilling week so far, my favorite moment by far being the rebellious Bush twins who, in just a few short minutes, delivered on their promise to issue "payback" to their parents and all authority in general.
They revealed their parents' pet name for each other: "Bushie" or "Bushy" — no spelling was provided. They seemed to have embarrassed their grandmother with a joke about the TV show Sex and the City as a place to have sex. And they claimed to have seen their boogieing parents "shake it like a Polaroid picture." That's one picture that took the rest of the night for me to shake out of my head.
Nonetheless, I loved the Bush daughters: They were funny, sassy and free spirits. Back in 1999, they told their father in no uncertain terms that they did not want him to run for president. They wanted their dad at home, they wanted their privacy, and they wanted to go to college in peace. He chose to ignore their pleas — and I guess Tuesday night was their way of saying, "Thanks, Dad."
And thank him they should. He and Laura have obviously done a good job raising two bright, independent women. He made their privacy a top priority and did what he could to protect them. They clearly love their parents and, when you see that happen, you know the Bushes did something right in their home. For that, they should be commended.
http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+Don%27t+send+m....
oops!
The rest of the article...
Other fathers and mothers who loved their daughters and sons across America can no longer celebrate with them. That's because their children are dead on the streets and roads of Iraq, sent there by Mr. Bush to "defend" America.
This week, in an appearance leading up to his arrival here Wednesday night, Bush acknowledged he had miscalculated what would happen in Iraq after he invaded it. He had thought it was going to be much easier. It turned out to be much, much worse.
That must be some comfort to the parents of nearly 1,000 brave soldiers now dead because of his "miscalculation." If I made a miscalculation and ran over a child on the street, what do you think would happen to me? Do you think the cops would simply say, "Hey, Mr. Moore, you did your best driving down this street, you made a miscalculation, the kid is dead, but you are trying to save the world, so be on your way?" Something tells me this is not what would happen. What I don't get is that Mr. Bush makes his mistake and thinks he has a right to continue in his job.
Let's hope he isn't getting his inspiration from Richard Nixon, the same man Arnold Schwarzenegger hailed Tuesday night as his reason for becoming a Republican. You have to give Arnold an award for guts. He must be the first Republican convention speaker to mention Nixon since he resigned. Nixon snuck into office in 1968 with his secret plan to end the Vietnam War. Another miscalculation: The war continued for years, and thousands more died.
I would love to hear Bush apologize tonight to the parents and loved ones of those who have died in Iraq. I would like to hear him say he knows what it means to love your children and that he, in good conscience, cannot send any more children to their deaths.
I would like to hear him say tonight, "I'm sorry. There never were weapons of mass destruction and there never was a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. There was no imminent threat, our lives were not in danger, no missiles were going to hit Cleveland. Because of our desire to get our hands on the second largest supply of oil in the world, we sacrificed a thousand of your sons and daughters. For this, we are greatly sorry."
I guess a boy can dream.
The other thing I would like to hear tonight is: Why haven't you caught Osama bin Laden? You've had three years to find him. The man killed nearly 3,000 people here on our soil.
Maybe Bush has no worse explanation than he just hasn't been able to do it. Well, if your town's dogcatcher couldn't catch a wild dog that has been on the loose biting people for three years, what would be the dogcatcher's chances for re-election? Not good.
And so it should be for Bush.
Unless he has the answers tonight. Perhaps he has a reason or can accept responsibility for his actions and promise to send no one else's child off to die for a cause that has nothing to do with the defense of this country.
If he takes a moment to look into his daughters' eyes tonight, he will know the answer and give the greatest speech of his life.
Political conventions have become predictable rituals, four-day cheerleading sessions for both parties. So USA TODAY is offering readers an alternative perspective. Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11, is writing daily from the Republican convention in New York. A month ago, conservative National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg weighed in from the Democratic convention.
teapee, as zit is a biiig fan of the twins, I mean BIG, really BIG, this I'm sure was the highlight of his evening. After a hiatus with Bubba, I'm surprised he hasn't extolled the virtues of this dynamic duo and reiterated yet again how they are worth 'a million votes'. :)
Another 4 years of Bush and you may have a hard time getting the warden's attention let alone have the 'powers that be' even care about 'the injustice of your internment'. But then again, it just depends on who is the 'free speech decision-maker(s)'. Go back and read the last two pargraphs of Molly Ivins column I posted today.
LOL.....thanks for the Thursday morning funny. Good to have you back....lol, one of your best posts, zit. Nice to see slurping with Bubba in jail didn't dampen your sense of humor or discolor your rose-colored glasses.
The news gets worse and weirder
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
Another record. We lost more American soldiers (488) in Iraq in 239 days of this year than we did in 287 days last year (482), when there was a war on and before our mission was accomplished.
The grind of the numbers is so relentless. Price of oil -- sometimes pressing $50 a barrel. Poverty rate -- increased again, third year in a row. Number of Americans without insurance -- increased again, third year. Part of the "vibrant economy" that President Bush touts daily now.
And the news from Iraq just keeps getting worse and worse.
Then, to liven things up, someone from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office is suspected of passing classified information to the Israelis via a lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
It'll be interesting to see whether suspect Laurence A. Franklin gets as much publicity as did Bill Clinton's former NSC adviser Sandy Berger, who allegedly took notes on classified documents for his 9-11 Commission testimony. The Justice Department has announced that no charges will be filed against Berger, and the matter is closed.
At least this gives us an opportunity to revisit one of my all-time favorite statements by Feith, a key member of the neocon inner circle that dominates foreign policy in this administration.
On May 4, Feith observed in a speech, "No one can properly assert that the failure, so far, to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction stockpiles undermines the reasons for the war."
Uhhh. What a bunch of clear thinkers they are. An enterprising student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Devon Largio, has done an honors thesis delineating 27 separate rationales advanced by the administration for the war in Iraq. The only one left, of course, is "Saddam Hussein was a bad guy" -- in other words, the human rights argument, the only one specifically rejected by the administration before the war.
Some days it's hard to figure out what the Bush administration thinks it's doing. It started its convention in New York City by announcing a new formula for distributing public housing funds that will cost New York City billions of dollars and benefit primarily Texas and California.
You just never know about timing with this bunch: The Census Bureau jumped the gun by a full month reporting the new, highly unfortunate numbers on both poverty and health insurance.
This put the announcement in the August congressional recess, with many newsies on vacation -- poverty up by 1.3 million, uninsured up by 1.4 million. Median income stagnant. Children hardest hit -- 12.9 million children living in poverty.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, George W. Bush's top donors -- the Pioneers ($100,000) and Rangers ($200,000) -- have delivered a total of $76.5 million during this campaign.
According to Texans for Public Justice, 69 percent of the 544 elite donors are CEOs and business executives. Seventeen percent are lobbyists.
One hundred of them are connected to the corporate scandals that Bush now lists as among the economic factors to which he had no connection. (Ken Lay was his largest single donor in 2000.)
And 146 of the big-time donors received government appointments.
Unnumbered weirdness by John Ashcroft (it's too hard to keep count): The Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office "to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the department has deemed 'not appropriate for external use.' Of the five publications, two are texts of federal laws. They are to be removed from libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library," according to the American Library Association.
All the documents concerned either federal civil or criminal forfeiture procedure, including how to reclaim items that have been confiscated by the government during an investigation.
Speaking of freedom, at a public campaign rally in New Mexico at which Dick Cheney spoke, those who wished to attend were asked to first sign a public loyalty oath, to wit: "I, (full name), do herby [sic] endorse George W. Bush for re-election of the United States." The form also announced, "In signing the above endorsement you are consenting to use and release your name by Bush-Cheney as an endorser of President Bush."
Meanwhile, at Bush's "Ask President Bush" events being staged around the country, only Bush supporters are allowed in. This results in such tough questions as: "This is the very first time that I have felt God was in the White House."
Did any of us sign up for this four years ago? As a new bumper sticker says, "Re-Defeat Bush."
Cutups and Cutthroats
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 2, 2004
I always enjoy hearing about how a teenage Dick Cheney stood off to the side with buckets of water to put out Lynne's flaming batons.
But there was an even better moment during Claire Shipman's two-part "Good Morning America" interview at the Wyoming ranch this week. Trying to humanize Dr. No, ABC was let into the inner sanctum to watch Mr. Cheney take his 4-year-old granddaughter on her first solo horsie ride and hear how he's teaching his granddaughters fly-fishing.
Ms. Shipman asked the vice president "his greatest guilty pleasure."
His wife quickly interjected that it was fishing. But we all know, of course, it's global domination.
It's always amusing to watch Republicans try to get down. At convention time, they stop bilking Joe Lunchbox to act like Joe Lunchbox.
How awkward in Columbus, when W., hanging with Jack Nicklaus, noted that his grandfather was born there, so they should "send a homeboy back to Washington, D.C." Do they know a homeboy from a Lawn-Boy?
How you livin', dawg?
And speaking of dawgs, whuddup with that video of Barney debating that French poodle Fifi Kerry about taxes? By the time the twins finished their White House Valley Girl routine, and Karl Rove and Karen Hughes went all giddy in the sendup, the convention's arc was clear.
Highly scripted screwball moments designed to soothe fears that the Bushies are bullies alternate with high-octane, turbo moments designed to stir up fears that we won't be safe without the Bush bullies.
Unlike the arrogant Boston Kerry strategists, who focus-grouped and dial-a-metered their convention to death, scrubbing most of the direct attacks on President Bush, the arrogant Austin Bush strategists have encouraged their non-girlie-men speakers to put the pedal to the metal and flatten the poor Democrat who is windsurfing through his free fall.
Despite the fact that the economy is cratering, Iraq is teetering, Afghanistan is reverting to warlords, Dick Cheney is glowering at the world, the war on terror has created more acts of terror, Ahmad Chalabi is an accused spy for Iran and the Pentagon has an accused spy for Israel, Republicans felt so good about themselves that when Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was inspired to become a Republican by Richard Nixon, they exploded. When Tricky Dick is a hot applause line, they're feeling cocky.
Republicans are political killers. They are confident that Americans, in a 9/11 world, are going to be more drawn to political killers who have made some "miscalculations" on Iraq, as W. put it, than with a shaggy-haired Vietnam War protester whom Bush 41 compares to Hanoi Jane.
"I still have great difficulty with his coming back and making those statements before the Congress and throwing medals away," the president's father told Don Imus yesterday.
Republicans know that plunging ahead with a course of action, even if it becomes obvious it's wrong, is an easier political sell than flip-flopping, even if it's right.
When the president slipped, admitting that the war on terror is unwinnable - perhaps recognizing that terror's a tactic, not an enemy - he had to be saved later by Laura Bush, who fixed his stumble into nuance. Then Mr. Kerry made the mistake of responding in Bush black-and-white, calling the war on terror winnable.
While Democrats whined about the meanies and their Swift boat attacks, the G.O.P. juggernaut rolled on.
Zell Miller, playing Cotton Mather behind the cross-like lectern, made Mr. Cheney seem rational, with a maniacal litany of weapons he said Mr. Kerry had opposed that can destroy any mud hut in any third world country: B-1 and B-2 bombers, F-14A Tomcats, F-15 Eagles, Patriot and Trident missiles, and Aegis cruisers.
Just as the "third party" ad effort has been ferocious and misleading, so have some of the attack speeches here. Dick Cheney stomped on John Kerry the way he's stomped on the world. In fact, he stomped on Mr. Kerry for trying to get along with the world: "He talks about leading 'a more sensitive war on terror' as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side." It's nice to know Mr. Cheney remembers Al Qaeda.
As others raged, Mr. Bush flew to New York and went to an Italian community center to eat pizza with Queens firemen. The homeboy was having a ruthless, but effective, week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/02/opinion/02dowd.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
September 2, 2004 / 1:57 a.m. ET
From Chris Matthews
MSNBC TV
Click to watch the video of the interview.
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I just had this incredible moment with Senator Miller, the Democrat who just gave the Republican keynote.
It was only an hour after his speech, and I guess he came to the interview loaded for bear.
I questioned him about some of his remarks. Knowing what I know about how they vote on Capitol Hill, I tried to get him to talk about how senators all the time, for legislative reasons, vote "No" as a legislative tactic because too much money is being spent, when they couldn't have backed the bill otherwise. This goes for conservatives voting against social programs just as it does for liberals voting against weapons systems.
Senator Miller didn't buy what I was saying. I can't tell you why. And I was pretty surprised with his reaction. Maybe because it was a remote and there was a lot of noise in the convention hall, he just couldn't hear what I was asking.
I'd hate to leave things where they are without giving him the opportunity to discuss these important issues. I was glad he said he wanted to come over and meet with me in person, so I hope he accepts my invite to join me at the MSNBC set Thursday evening.
• September 1, 2004
You gotta a lotta nerve, zithead. Must be comforting to hide behind your keyboard and talk tough. When your three-legged stool is falling apart, change the subject. When someone posts something you can't refute, attack the messenger. Better yet, attack both messengers. Typical of right wing chickenhawks. Real tough as long as it is someone else doing the fighting. I can see where Bush is your kinda 'man'. Not too bright while letting someone else do their dirty work, then show up and take the credit.
I certainly don't want to live in your world.
were you employed as a prison guard at one time?........someone in love with their power to biasedly make judgements of punishments, with absolutely no incline for proper perspectives of comparison...........or maybe i'm mistaken, and it's just that being a self-deluded tattletale has always been your best quality
i certainly don't want to live in your world
I will venture to guess Rush's divorce, from his third wife, must be final...or he found potential #4 Mrs. Rush. Gotta love the party of family values.
THE PRESIDENT: How you feeling? Most importantly.
RUSH: Never better. I've never been happier. I've never been better,
Rooster, then it can't be enough for you since Mr. you-know-who, AKA 'wanted dead or alive' is still on the loose.
Tax Cuts! And Killing Al-Qaeda! That's enough for me!
F6, zithead calls that winning the peace!
An Iraqi man dips his foot into a huge crater where a bomb fell, now filled with muddy water. A bedraggled family stares straight into the camera in front of the garbage dump that is their home.