Editorial from:  

When President Bush ran for office in 2000, he supported a ban on making, selling, and importing such vicious assault weapons as Uzis and AK-47's.

It was a politically smart move when polls showed many Americans did not want those killing machines on the streets, and an admirable one in the face of criticism by the gun lobby and pro-gun GOP legislators.

Now that the ban on assault rifles is set to expire, Bush has fallen woefully silent on the matter, just when his influence in Congress could be used to make the nation safer.

By: Lisa Walsh Thomas  

The greatest crime? Tall order, even if the millennium isn't three years old yet, because the new leaders of this country have had a running start since before the new millennium bells started ringing.

The prize for MOST heinous crime doesn't go to George or Colin or ANY of the oily-fingered bunch, not even those who now face charges of war crimes (if we don't knock off Belgium first). It goes to the people of this country, those who are checking the DOW today, those out laughing over dinner as if all's right with the world, those signing new contracts for "better" lives, those with fourteen tattered flags bedecking their SUV, those who sleep well, truly believing that God's on our side even when we fib a little, those who, in blunt terms, simply don't give a damn that thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of innocent Iraqis lie dead, that more than a thousand Iraqi kids will never see summer. Never. OUR kids will go to summer camp; a thousand Iraqi kids will rot underground. Therein lies a difference to be noted.

Editorial from:  

Last August, President Bush seized upon the wildfires then raging throughout the West to offer a fire-prevention plan that alarmed environmentalists even as it delighted the logging industry. The worst features of that plan, and more, have now found their way into a bill that will be offered in the House today by Scott McInnis of Colorado. The bill appears to be aimed as much at opening up remote parts of the national forest to the timber companies as it is at protecting obviously vulnerable communities from fire.

Mr. McInnis, of course, would disagree. But unlike a far more precise bill that will be offered by George Miller, a California Democrat, the McInnis bill does not require the federal government to focus its resources on communities that are clearly at risk. Indeed, it is so loosely drawn as to allow tree-thinning and other "fuel reduction" projects in backcountry areas where fire offers no threat to human safety but where the trees are biggest and the timber companies have the most to gain.

"[It is amazing] that the Americans looked at us 500 professors who have lived in the west, were educated in the west, and know very well the ins and outs of democracy, to think that we do not know how to elect a president from our group. The arrogance that the Americans have, is overwhelmingly disgusting... I would have appreciated more, if a group of professors from universities like Yale and Harvard and Princeton have come and joined us in this process. But to have an American administrator doing this and imposing his will on us, only shows how ignorant they are of us."

- the new president of the University of Baghdad

In Fascism Anyone? (Free Inquiry - Spring 2003, p.20), Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded the following "identifying characteristics of fascism":

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

From:  

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, the public face of the Bush administration through two wars and a terrorist attack, said Monday he will resign in July to enter the private sector. His replacement will likely be deputy press secretary Scott McLellan.

Bush has not decided who will replace Fleischer, two senior White House officials said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Texas native McClellan is the likely replacement but there are other candidates.

Republican strategist Ed Gillespie and Pentagon spokesman Victoria Clarke are potential prospects.

From:  

They like to do things big in Texas, which probably explains why they have some of the biggest conservative idiots in the country. The Texas redistricting fiasco fills up almost half of the list this week, with the Texas GOP, Tom Delay, Tom Craddick, Will Crais, and Dan Branch grabbing the top slots. But it's not all about Texas this week. Michael Graham (5) gives us a great example of how conservatives prefer logic to emotion, Team Bush Misinformation Squad (7) and Jeb Bush (9) make reappearances, and Star Spangled Ice Cream (10) takes the conservatives' warped idea of patriotism to new levels of dumb.

"No deity that men have ever worshipped is more ruthless and more hollow than the free market unchecked; there is no reason why shantytowns should not appear on the outskirts of every American city... Left to its own devices, the free market always seeks a work force that is desperate, hungry, and cheap - a work force that is anything but free."

- Eric Schlosser, in his new book, Reefer Madness

By: Ernest Partridge  

The Democratic Party has at its disposal a devastating array of issues, foreign and domestic, moral and economic, and yet there it sits, at best dumb-frozen and impotent, and at worst complicit in the crimes and outrages of the Bush administration.

In the two short years of the Bush administration, The United States of America has become an international pariah as the Bush regime violates treaties, disregards international law, and launches an aggressive war on a defenseless nation. This aggression has been justified by a succession of lies - Saddam's "hidden weapons", the Saddam-Osama connection, the plagiarized student paper, the Nigerian forgery - all these well-known both at home and abroad to be lies.

Those same two years follow upon decade of unprecedented prosperity, and with it the promise of huge Federal surpluses and the end of the national debt. All this has been transformed into economic stagnation, a staggering national debt. and the prospect of endless deficits...

"George Bush has unleashed a new McCarthyism that, under the cloak of a time of crisis and peril, has vilified and questioned the patriotism of those who have policy and political differences with him and his administration."

- Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the National Democratic Party

Editorial from:  

Any list of the flaws in these bills should begin with one that has received less notice than it deserves, namely their fundamental dishonesty. You'll recall that President Bush originally asked for $726 billion in cuts over 10 years to go with his $1.3 trillion cut of two years ago. Everyone said that was too much, so the House passed a $550 billion bill, the Senate a $350 billion bill. Both numbers, as it turns out, are fictitious.

The Senate bill, for example, calls for substantial dividend tax relief that will "sunset" in five years so that the overall cost of the bill will not exceed the $350 billion limit. However, if one assumes (as one must) that the promised sunset will never occur, and that the dividend relief will instead become a permanent part of the tax code, then the true cost of the bill becomes $660 billion. Similar sleight of hand disguises the true cost of the House bill, which sunsets everything in sight - child tax credits, marriage penalty relief - and whose true cost, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is $1.1 trillion.

By: Mike Hersh  

Republican right wingers - really wrong whiners - never stop. They shamelessly complain that Democrats treat them almost as bad as they treat Democrats. The nerve! But the truth is, no one treats Republicans the way Republicans treat everyone else. Take the judicial appointment controversy.

Republicans whine that Democrats "obstruct" Bush's choices for judgeships to the point of crisis. They never admit Bush's choices have been outside the mainstream, inexperienced, and otherwise unqualified. If that were the extent of this controversy, the Republicans would have a point. They don't.

The fact show the "judicial crisis" Republicans scream about doesn't even exist. Here are the facts: Judicial vacancies are lower than any time in over 12 years. Republican complaints about Democratic "payback" - their admitted mistreatment of Democrats they claim provoked this alleged backlash - are lies.

Democrats: The Party of Tax Cuts, Homeland Security, and a Sound Economy... Oh, Yeah, and Health Care... Oh, Yeah, and Education Too!

By: TygrBright  

This, my friends, is the winning Democratic platform for 2004. This is the 5-point, focused, unifying juggernaut that will propel us to victory. This is the plan that the GOPpies don't want you (or any other Democrat) to know about, to talk about, to think about, to campaign on.

This is the unashamedly patriotic agenda that is also simultaneously liberal, broad-spectrum, principled, and positive for all Americans.

It's all in the spin, as the dear GOPpies have taught us...

By: Paul Krugman  

The administration's antiterror campaign makes me think of the way television studios really look. The fancy set usually sits in the middle of a shabby room, full of cardboard and duct tape. Networks take great care with what viewers see on their TV screens; they spend as little as possible on anything off camera.

And so it has been with the campaign against terrorism. Mr. Bush strikes heroic poses on TV, but his administration neglects anything that isn't photogenic.

I've written before about the Bush administration's amazing refusal to pay for even minimal measures to protect the nation against future attacks - measures that would secure ports, chemical plants, nuclear facilities, and so on. (But the Department of Homeland Security isn't completely ineffectual: this week it helped Texas Republicans track down their Democratic colleagues, who had staged a walkout.)

By: Molly Ivins  

Faced with a $10 billion deficit, the Republicans decided to outlaw gay marriage. Then they kicked 250,000 poor children off a health insurance program that is mostly paid for by the feds in the first place. Picking on the weakest, the frailest, the youngest, and oldest Texans has been the sport of choice this session. When the handicapped came to the capital to protest cuts in their services, the governor had them arrested. The combination of cruel budget choices and an unfair process made this the session from hell.

They are, at long last, the perfect unpoliticians - they don't compromise, they don't deal, they don't look for the middle way, they don't give a damn about accommodating anybody else. Because they believe they're right. And they won't go out for a beer after work. They think it's them against evil. And everybody who ain't them is evil. These are Shiite Republicans.

By: Julie Winokur  

According to the Institute of Medicine, some 18,000 people die prematurely every year as a result of being uninsured. If that isn't an epidemic, then what is? That's like having six September 11th's every year. It makes a mockery of our preoccupation with bio-terrorism and small pox vaccines. While we direct inordinate resources toward a potential threat, we are allowing real people to die real deaths every day on the home front. As though this weren't dire enough, now even the future of our existing subsidized programs is in jeopardy. Nearly every state has announced plans to trim Medicaid, potentially leaving millions more without any coverage in the coming year. In California, the cuts go painfully deep, with a projected 10% reduction likely next year. That means services will be reduced, while the eligibility bar will be raised.

Currently one in seven people is uninsured - more than the populations of Texas, Florida, and Connecticut combined! The Wessenbergs happen to live in Texas, which has the highest percentage of uninsured people in the country. California ranks fourth, with over 21% of the population uninsured.

Every expert I interviewed for this book concurred that it's not a matter of whether the system will crack, but rather when it will crack. "No one who studies the healthcare system believes it will stay afloat too much longer", says Dr. Sandra Hernandez, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation. The future looks catastrophic.

By: Robert J. Shiller  

The Senate debate over President Bush's tax plan has focused so far on the plan's short-term effects, like whether a reduction in the dividend tax will help the stock market. While economic stimulus is important, Congress and the President should also take up an issue with far more consequence for America's long-term growth and stability: economic inequality.

According to the Census Bureau, the bottom 40% of American families earned 18% of the national income in 1970, but by 1998 they earned only 14% - and that figure could fall to 10% before too long. On a global scale, too, inequality is a problem. Per capita gross domestic product in India in 2000 was only 7% of that of the United States, and for China the figure was 11%. Such a difference could increase the possibility of greater inequality within America.

"God has chosen through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians... to save our country and save our courts."

- William Pryor

Editorial from:  

President Bush says that, when crafting a tax plan, the government shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers. But the tax bills making their way through Congress do precisely that - and you can probably guess how things are turning out.

The winners are those at the top of the income scale, and not just because they pay more taxes to begin with. Both the House and the Senate would speed up cuts in individual income tax rates passed in 2001. For three income brackets, rates would drop by 2 percentage points. But the top rate falls by 3.6 percentage points, from 38.6% to 35%. One argument for this is that it would help small businesses, many of which pay taxes at individual rates. But only 2% of taxpayers with small-business income pay the top rate - and many of these are not mom-and-pop businesses but rather wealthy individuals with complex tax returns full of partnerships and royalty income and the like.

The losers are those near the bottom: low-income working families eligible to receive money under the Earned Income Tax Credit. The House bill approved last week accelerates a planned increase in the child tax credit and relief from the so-called marriage penalty - for everyone except those who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit...

By: William Rivers Pit  

"The United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice", said George. Will they learn this meaning the way Osama bin Laden, still alive and free after almost two years, has learned it? Will they learn it the way Saddam Hussein, still alive and free as well, has learned it? Thousands and thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians have learned what justice means to George W. Bush. It means a terrible grinding death in the dirt while the real killers get away.

Such a catalog of failure and shame is the Bush administration record to date. They walked away from the Israel/Palestine talks and let that situation turn into a bloody horror. They pointedly ignored a vast array of warnings about impending terror attacks in the summer of 2001 and let that situation turn into the nightmare we currently endure. They fought a war in Afghanistan and walked away before the job was done, allowing the enemy to escape and regroup. They poured vital resources into an Iraq war that did nothing to curb terrorism and did everything to inspire and motivate the terrorists. They passed tax cuts and budgets that steal money from the coffers of Homeland Security - that means cops and fire fighters and emergency response crews - to make sure their wealthy friends and corporate sponsors feel well and truly loved.

No WMD's after all, no excuse for war, too late for anyone to care anymore. Ha-ha, suckers.

By: Mark Morford  

No warehouses teeming with nuclear warheads, no underground bunkers packed with vats of boiling biotoxins, no drums of crazy-ass chemical agents that will melt your skin and turn us all into drooling flesh-eating zombies - unless, of course, you count the sneering vat of conservative biotoxin that is, say, FOX News, in which case, hell yeah baby, we gotcher WMD's right here beeyatch.

Go figure. Those lowly U.N. inspectors were right after all. Who knew? It was all a ruse. We've been sucker-punched and ideologically molested and patriotically sodomized and hey, what the hell, who cares anyway, we "liberated" an oppressed people most Americans secretly loathe and fear and don't understand in the slightest, even though that was never the point, or the justification, or the goal. Go team.

But wait, is liberation of a brutalized and tormented people now the reason? The justification for our thuggery? That is so cool! So that means we're going to blow the living crap out of Sri Lanka and Sudan and Tibet and North Korea and about 47 others, right? Right? Maybe Saudi Arabia, too, second only to the Talilban itself in its abuse of women? Cool! As if.

By: Robert Scheer  

In its latest bid to frighten the planet into a constant state of shock and awe, our government is accelerating its own leading-edge weapons-of-mass-destruction program: President Bush's allies on the Senate Armed Services Committee have approved ending a decade-old ban on developing atomic battlefield weapons and endorsed moving ahead with creating a nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb. They also rubber-stamped the administration's request for funds to prepare for a quick resumption of nuclear weapons testing.

What's going on here? Having failed to stop a gang of marauders armed with nothing more intimidating than box cutters, the U.S. is now using the "war on terror" to pursue a long-held hawkish Republican dream of a "winnable nuclear war", as the President's father memorably described it to me in a 1980 Times interview. In such a scenario, nukes can be preemptively used against a much weaker enemy - millions of dead civilians, widespread environmental devastation, and centuries of political blowback be damned.

Building a new generation of battlefield nuclear weapons sets the stage for another round of the most dangerous arms race imaginable...

Editorial from:  

President Bush and his fellow tax-cut salesmen have a stock reply when asked why they would drive the nation into long-term deficit in order to give a tax break primarily to the very rich. Don't worry, they say: The rich will invest their money, thereby creating economic growth and jobs and higher stock prices for less-rich people, who will pay more taxes and so reduce the deficit. Unfortunately, no matter how many times they change the ground rules for calculating the economic effects, the numbers still won't add up quite the way they hope. Their latest disappointment - not that it will deter them - comes in a little-reported but highly significant analysis by Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation.

The committee, like the CBO, used dynamic scoring, predicting the tax cut's effect on the economy and taking that into account when measuring revenue impact. And, as Mr. Snow hoped, it considered the effect of tax cuts without changes on the spending side. Nevertheless, it found that a tax cut totaling $550 billion through 2013 would barely budge the economy. Three of five models predict an increase of 0.2% of gross domestic product between 2003 and 2008 - or an average of $18 billion annually. The most optimistic suggests a rise of 0.9% - an average of $76 billion a year. And that's the good news. During the second five years, from 2009 to 2013, the tax cut would likely be a drag on economic growth. Three of the five models show a drop in gross domestic product of 0.1%, one foresees a 0.2% decrease and one is simply flat-lined.

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