By: Rebecca Knight  

Don't make the mistake of believing that George W. Bush is dumb or stupid. Dumb can be defined as "conspicuously unintelligent". Stupid can be defined as "slow to learn or understand". Bush is definitely perceived as being conspicuously unintelligent and slow to learn or understand because of his pattern of speech, poor vocabulary, and inability to process thoughts quickly enough when unscripted. This is more an indication of poor preparation, lack of attention to detail, laziness, and absolutely no intellectual curiosity.

But don't let Bush's obvious intellectual failings confuse the issue. He does have certain qualities that have served him well. He is crafty, cagey, and clever. These are not admirable qualities. They are qualities used by the "big bully" types of the world to dominate the less fortunate. Bush is like the big kid who steals the little kid's lunch money on the way to school. Then the bully dares the little kid to do something about it. These Bush qualities are slightly below the surface, but they can be detected through his smirks and that certain gleam in his eye. It's like he is thumbing his nose at America and saying, yes, I am here and I can do what I want. What are you going to do about it?

Simply put, George W. Bush reached his level of incompetence by being a part of the monied elite. Those connections served him well. Think about it. What has he ever accomplished through hard work, intellectual challenge, commitment to task, or ingenuity? Well educated? Nope, skimmed by with C averages and more than a little help from Poppy's money. Successful businessman? Nope, failed oil businesses and a baseball scam making him a millionaire come to mind. Military man? Nope, got into the Texas Air National Guard through favoritism and ran out on his commitment. Successful politician? It would appear so, but in reality he did not achieve his lofty positions as a governor or president through accomplishment - he achieved them by deception. Bush is more than a little bit lucky. How else could someone of such intellectual inconsequence be sitting in the Oval Office?

"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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

By: Lisa Kadonaga  

The intelligence agencies of the mightiest government on Earth received warnings about potential terrorist attacks, but due to a failure to "connect the dots", nothing was done. Only a handful of fighter jets were scrambled, and by that time it was too late. Months before, a report had been presented to the administration, warning of the dangers to commercial aircraft posed by hijackers. Its security recommendations were not implemented.

So when I hear about the dead of September 11^th being referred to as a "sacrifice" - I shiver. Consciously or not, this word choice implies that somebody knew what could happen. In ancient times, sacrifices were made to appease a god who was angry, or in the hopes of winning a favor - getting something you want. And these days, I fear that the old gods are still very much alive, only they've changed their names - "Greed", say, or "Power".

Questions such as "who" and "what" are so terrible to contemplate, I don't want to think about them. Yet we all must. Salman Hamdani, who rescued injured pigeons from the streets of New York as a child, ran to offer his assistance at the WTC when he saw the smoke from the fires. A Pakistani immigrant who loved his country even though it would not allow him to become President (something he longed for during his brief life), he died when the tallest buildings in his city fell on top of him. Instead of demanding vengeance, his family joined the "Peaceful Tomorrows" organization, calling for an end to bloodshed.

By: Paul Krugman  

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Colin Powell and Dick Cheney are in perfect agreement. And the Bush administration won't privatize Social Security.

Ari Fleischer's insistence that Mr. Powell and Mr. Cheney have no differences over Iraq seems to have pushed some journalists into facing up, at least briefly, to the obvious. ABC's weblog The Note described it as a "chocolate-is-vanilla" claim, admitting that "The Bush team has always had a credibility problem with some reporters because of their insistence on saying 'up is down' and 'black is white.'"

By: Joe Conason  

Let's pretend for just a moment - against all previous knowledge of both speaker and subject - that Ari Fleischer's denial on Sept. 2 of any internal rift over Iraq within the Bush administration might be accurate.

How could it possibly be that the Secretary of State, who urges the renewal of United Nations weapons inspections, and the Vice President and Secretary of Defense, who dismiss that proposal and demand military action, are working together toward the same goal?

The press secretary's preposterous statement could be true if George W. Bush is as clever as his defenders claim he is. But that could be the case only if the President and his hawkish advisers are not quite so intent on war as they seem to be - and believe that the credible threat of invasion may finally force Saddam Hussein to accept a new, rigorous inspection regime.

Appearances, of course, strongly suggest the opposite.

"Wrapping myself in the flag and blindly following the lead of a man who has never served into the morass of an endless war is not my way of loving and serving my country."

- Wilson Powell, Korean War veteran and National Administrator of the St. Louis-based Veterans For Peace

By: W. David Jenkins  

Summer 2001 was the year that one would've thought Peter Benchley was having an identity crisis. It was the year of the shark. Every time you turned on your TV, there was another hapless swimmer getting munched on. Oh, it was terrible. It was like those pesky man eaters were everywhere. Never mind that an un-elected President was crashing a disastrous tax-cut through Congress. The economy was in the early stages of being undermined by a political toddler paying back his campaign contributors, but so what? People were being bit up by sharks, for crying out loud.

Pay attention, will you?

And if sharks weren't good enough to keep your mind off the really important stuff, there was always Chandra Levy. Don't even get me started on that one.

Oh, did I mention? Baby Bush was on vacation for the month of August last year. Remember he gave that "I'll let stem cell research go forward just a little bit" speech from Crawford while that big ol' horsefly shared the stage with him? Then he came back from vacation - and less than two weeks later it all hit the fan. And for some doggoned reason, I just can't seem to shake the feeling of déją vu' this year. I mean, here we are in August a year later and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report says that Bush's tax cut really helped to tank the economy and instead of rogue shark attacks (they must have got their fill last year) we have to worry about our kids being kidnapped.

"It is tempting to believe that Bush rose to the occasion last September because flag and country demanded it. But with the passage of a year, and a chance to watch the President in action at home and overseas, it's harder to get away from the idea that Bush didn't rise to meet history but that history fell to meet him."

- Michael Duffy, in a Time magazine article

Editorial from:  

It's one thing to imagine how Wall Street works. It's another to see the actual numbers. Even scandal-weary investors couldn't help but be stunned last week upon learning that Salomon Smith Barney allowed Bernard Ebbers, WorldCom's former chief executive, to help himself to nearly one million hot initial public offering shares during the recent bubble, for a personal gain of more than $11 million.

Favored access to these offerings was just one more way in which some executives enriched themselves while running their companies into the ground. Scott Sullivan, WorldCom's former chief financial officer, who was indicted last week for allegedly orchestrating the largest accounting fraud in history, also appeared on Salomon's IPO distribution lists.

By: Bill Straub  

Gerald McEntee, the fiery president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, was typically blunt this summer when he urged his fellow union members to "commit ourselves to putting George Bush out of work in 2004".

"American workers are under attack by an anti-worker President who didn't even win the election for the office he holds", McEntee said.

Ticking off a list of what he views as the administration's assault on organized labor, ranging from last year's $1.3 trillion tax cut to the decision to kill ergonomic regulations, McEntee said the "real threat in this country comes from an administration that shuns working families and sides with big business - like Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, Arthur Andersen, and so many more".

"Those who seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings, call this a New Order. It is not new and it is not order."

- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

By: Faith Bremner  

The man chosen to head the Bush administration's wildfire prevention program doubts the existence of ecosystems and says it would not be a crisis if the nation's threatened and endangered species became extinct.

Allan Fitzsimmons was named yesterday to be in charge of reducing fire danger on lands managed by the Interior Department. But Fitzsimmons' background as a free-market policy analyst and his writings for libertarian and conservative think tanks have alarmed environmental groups across the West. The groups say Fitzsimmons' appointment confirms their fears that the recently announced program the administration calls the Healthy Forests Initiative is a smokescreen for a return to unfettered logging. "How can a man who doesn't understand ecological systems and community values for wildlife run a program that's supposed to protect forests and communities?" asked John McCarthy, spokesman for the Idaho Conservation League. "People won't have confidence in this guy. He'll be divisive, it will all be based on junk science."

"If each of these species were to become extinct tomorrow, our total biological endowment would decline by less than 1%, which would be a disconcerting loss but would not constitute a crisis", Fitzsimmons writes. "Conversely, at least 4,500 non-indigenous species have established free-living populations in the United States over the past few hundred years, so that on balance, this part of the world has seen an increase in biological diversity."

"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward."

- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

- John Kenneth Galbraith

From:  

Ann Coulter crashes onto the list in the number one slot this week, beating out a host of worthy contenders. It was tough, But little Annie's comments on fellow right-wing nutcase Tim McVeigh gave her the boost she needed to fend off the challengers. Left gasping for breath in second place is Don Bates, whose political career has been rudely ended by Madam Palm and her five sisters. Jeb Bush can only manage a paltry third place this week for his defence of child-beating advocate Jerry Reiger; meanwhile, the tap continues to drip on Thomas White (4). And poor old George W. Bush can only manage a sad tenth place this week after practically owning the Top Ten for the last two months. Enjoy.

"If the Republicans stop telling lies about us, we will stop telling the truth about them."

- Adlai Stevenson

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America."

- President William Jefferson Clinton

By: Thomas L. Friedman  

The point here is that we are talking about nation-building from scratch. Iraq has a lot of natural resources and a decently educated population, but it has none of the civil society or rule of law roots that enabled us to quickly build democracies out of the ruins of Germany and Japan after World War II. Iraq's last leader committed to the rule of law may have been Hammurabi - the King of Babylon in the 18^th Century BC. So once Saddam is gone, there will be a power vacuum, revenge killings and ethnic pulling and tugging between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites.

This is not a reason for not taking Saddam out. It is a reason for preparing the U.S. public for a potentially long, costly nation-building operation and for enlisting as many allies as possible to share the burden. There is no avoiding nation-building in Iraq. Because to get at Iraq's weapons of mass destruction we'll need to break the regime open, like a walnut, and then rebuild it.

What's worrying about the Bushies is that they seem much more adept at breaking things than building things. To do nation-building you need to be something of a naïve optimist. I worry that the Bushies are way too cynical for nation-building.

"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair."

- H.L. Mencken

The Biblical zeal with which the U.S. President is waging a moral crusade against Saddam Hussein owes much to the dissenting protestantism of America's original settlers.

By: Tristram Hunt  

From the landing of the Mayflower, those Pilgrims who fled the tyranny and irreligion of Stuart England believed they were establishing a new moral order. America was to be the Promised Land, the New World free from the decayed corruption of courtly Europe. Its virgin wilderness offered a modern Garden of Eden. And the model piety of the Puritan settlers would act as a beacon for the fallen old world to follow. America was unique and its people blessed.

Across the centuries the Puritan spirit, which helped foster an incredible economic dynamism, a self-righteous moral certainty and, in 17^th Century Salem (as later in the hands of Joseph McCarthy), a frightening propensity to crush free-thinking, has remained quietly resilient in American political discourse. Now in the character of George Bush, and most spectacularly in the form of Attorney General John Ashcroft, it has come to dominate America's public image.

Bush's presidency was built on Puritan legend. He placed the story of his own personal redemption at the heart of his political narrative. As Clinton was the boy from a broken home who battled against an alcoholic step-father, Bush was the man who at the age of 40 saw the light. His youthful alcoholism, his rumoured drug abuse, and his numerous arrests were forgotten as he swapped the bottle for Bible study with librarian wife Laura. Dubya had lived and loved in darkness but he saw the error of his ways, embraced the Lord, and the slate was wiped clean. A true Pilgrim's Progress.

Editorial from:  

When Washington preaches democracy while tolerating the tyranny of allies, America looks double-faced. That's certainly the unflattering picture the world sees today. Mr. Bush has ordered the government to dry up the funding of Islamic terrorism, but Saudi Arabia is the principal financier of groups that promote such terrorism. The White House is pressing the Palestinians to establish democratic institutions while largely condoning the undemocratic actions of Mr. Mubarak. Vice President Dick Cheney's recent calls for bringing democracy to Iraq ring hollow as long as Washington is silent about General Musharraf's arbitrary rule in Pakistan.

A long, unhappy history illustrates the cost of cozying up to dictators. America still pays for its blind support of the Shah of Iran. The blank checks Washington wrote to Gen. Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan in the 1980's helped nurture what later became Al Qaeda. Decades of misguided American support for Gen. Suharto in Indonesia and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, now Congo, left both countries a legacy of debt, violent ethnic conflict, and weak institutions. Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines was another painful embarrassment.

The Bush administration seems to have learned little from these costly mistakes. Meeting America's short-term military and diplomatic needs should not require abandoning its democratic principles.

Key lawmaker disputes earlier estimate; Perry says tax increases aren't the solution.

By: Polly Ross Hughes  

Texas' state budget shortfall may hit a nightmarish $12 billion by early next year, according to a key Republican lawmaker.

"I think we could very easily be looking at $12 billion", Sen. Chris Harris of Arlington told the Houston Chronicle.

Harris, vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a member of the Legislative Budget Board, warned that candidates are doing a disservice to the public by denying the depth of the problem.

From:  

U.S. Air Force commanders considered crashing fighter jets into hijacked planes on 11 September because of a lack of armed planes, a BBC investigation reveals.

In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks U.S. fighter planes took to the skies to defend America from any further attacks.

It was very possible that they (U.S. pilots) would have been asked to give their lives themselves.

Their mission was to protect President George W. Bush and to intercept any hijacked aircraft heading to other targets in the U.S.

By: Molly Ivins  

Gosh, silly us, getting in a swivet over war and peace.

The President is on vacation!

He's giving interviews to Runner's World, not Meet the Press.

He and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld didn't even talk about Iraq during their meeting at Crawford. It was all the media's fault. We were "churning", we were in "a frenzy". Heck, Mr. Bush himself has never even mentioned war with Iraq, much less going it alone.

We don't have to worry, so party hearty, and try not to make a big deal out of the fact that Mr. Bush's lawyers are now claiming he can launch an attack on Iraq without congressional approval because the permission given by Congress to his father in 1991 to wage war in the Persian Gulf is still in effect.

By: Richard L. Berke  

It sounds so Machiavellian, even treasonous, that no one at the White House would dare endorse such an outcome - at least not in public. But many prominent Republicans, including some of President Bush's most faithful backers, are convinced that the most certain way for Mr. Bush to continue to rise politically, and ultimately win re-election in 2004, is for Republicans to, well, lose in November.

"Many Republicans have thought all along that there will be crocodile tears shed if they don't succeed in taking over the Congress", said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who ran Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996. "But in a way, it guarantees easier re-election."

By: Matthew Daly  

The Bush administration is reviewing a landmark environmental law both reviled and praised because it requires lengthy studies before foresters cut a tree or developers start to dig.

White House officials say they want to modernize the 32-year-old law they blame for bureaucratic gridlock, but environmentalists fear it's a move to roll back crucial protections.

"Given this administration's past record on the environment, it's hard to imagine they are up to any good", said Maria Weidner of Earthjustice, an environmental law firm and advocacy group.

"I just hope America doesn't cross the line and become what Japan was before. America has become rich and powerful and arrogant. The impression we had of America in the 1960's - a lovely, good America - can't be found anymore. If a country begins to think too much of itself and its power, it will destroy itself."

- Yojiro Iokibe, a former Japanese pilot during World War II, in a Washington Post interview

By: James Carroll  

The United States, in fact, is in a crisis of language. This is what it means to have a President who, proudly inarticulate, has no real understanding of the relationship between words and acts, between rhetoric and intention.

Consider his heated boast about his own patience. I saw his declaration on the evening news, and it was clear that, as he began that second sentence, seeking to emphasize the first, he meant to find another way of displaying his determination. But he was, as usual, at a literal loss for words. And so he fell back on empty repetition. "When I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man."

Bush mistakes tautology for explanation, a habit of mind marking his entire administration. Bush governs by assertion instead of persuasion. Whether the United States seeks to exercise power over the Taliban, or over Sharon and Arafat, or over Russia, or over its European allies, or even over its own citizens, the method is the same. Washington doesn't waste a moment trying to persuade the Taliban to side with us against bin Laden. Washington rejects Arafat as a dialogue partner and forgoes any effort to influence Sharon. Washington presents Moscow with ultimatums on arms control treaties.

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