| September 30, 2004
Thursday |
|
 |
Bush's Reserve Resignation Cited 'Inadequate Time'
Reuters --
9-29-04
President Bush, accused by Democrats of shirking his duty in the Texas Air
National Guard during the Vietnam War, wrote that he had "inadequate time"
to meet future Reserve commitments in his Nov. 1974 letter of resignation
released on Wednesday.... |
|
Lynne Cheney remarks on Kerry's tan
Grand Forks Herald, N.D. --
9-29-04
Mrs. Cheney remarked on the Democratic candidate's
appearance Wednesday as she campaigned here with her husband, Vice President
Dick Cheney. ...
|
Baghdad bombings kill 34 children; new hostages seized
Boston.com -- 9-30-04
BAGHDAD,
Iraq (AP) -- At least three bombs exploded near a US convoy in western
... |
The
Cheney tag team, as the AHNC Large Editor has coined them, sure have brought
honor and dignity to this war time debate.
"My mom and I are going to
watch the debates together. She plans to do a vodka shot every time Bush says
'flip-flop."'
-– David Letterman
www.bettybowers.com
"The first presidential
debate is Thursday in Florida. I think it's Bush's way of saying thank-you for
that last crooked election." -- David Letterman
The-World-Is-A-Safer-Place-Without-Saddam News
"Everyone
is talking about the ground rules. Kerry wants his podium to be tall enough so
he can rest his hands. And President Bush wants it to be wide enough to hide
Dick Cheney." -- Conan O'Brien
"Before the
debate, Bush is concerned about the lectern, he's worried about the room
temperature and the lighting. Kerry is making the mistake of worrying about the
issues." -- David Letterman
Daily News Haiku
Opponents
debate,
While U.S. citizens wait
To be told who won.
Edwards v. Cheney,
Tort lawyer v. Tort Feasor,
Lawyer v. Liar.
There are lots more news haiku here:
http://www.madkane.com/news_haiku.html
Disturbing News
 Hey, Soccer Moms – Read this!
A
group of pediatricians, among them author and child development specialist Dr.
T. Berry Brazelton, criticized President Bush, arguing that the Republican's
policies neglect children's health care and young Americans deserve better …
saying his administration has reduced funding for prevention and left 27 million
children without health insurance at some time in 2002-2003.... –-
The Guardian
The
response from the Bush administration:
``It is absurd and
despicable that doctors are playing politics with children's lives.” -- Health
and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson
Excellent biography on Kerry.
Introducing
John Kerry
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/093004A.shtml
Thursday 30 September 2004
Everyone knows John Kerry by now, right?
He's the tall guy who went to Vietnam and then wounded himself three times
to get his medals, while simultaneously conning the bureaucracy of the Navy into
giving him citations for valor. Or he's the guy who volunteered for Vietnam, and
then volunteered for Swift Boat duty, and then was wounded three times while
serving with distinction. He's the guy who opposed the war upon his return and
thus became a traitor, or he's the guy who opposed the war upon his return and
thus became a hero.
The John Kerry people know is a fellow of wealth and privilege, a rich man
who married richer, a silver-spoon type of guy who lives in the most expensive
neighborhood in Boston when not gallivanting from one townhouse to another. The
John Kerry people know is a Forbes, and a Winthrop. The John Kerry people know
isn't all that trustworthy because of his wealth, because despite notions to the
contrary, we are still a society based upon class struggle. It is an article of
faith among the 90% of Americans who aren't rich that those with money aren't to
be trusted. That this same measure of distrust isn't extended to George W. Bush
is a triumph of 'regular fella' marketing.
That is the Kerry people know, or think they know, thanks to this brainless
campaign season. This is the Kerry created by commercials, by inane debate on
the national cable news channels, by reporters who believe the shortest way to
the truth is a straight line in the other direction.
There is another John Kerry to whom America deserves to be introduced.
The story of any person begins with their parents. John Kerry was born to
Richard Kerry and Rosemary Forbes, who met in Paris just before the war. Richard
Kerry, marked early in life by the suicide of his father and the death from
polio of his sister Mildred, became a student of the law who eventually
distinguished himself in the Foreign Service during the Eisenhower years.
Rosemary, despite her Forbes and Winthrop heritage, was not spared her own deep
trials. When the Nazis invaded Paris, Rosemary had to flee the city on a
bicycle. She spent weeks foraging for food, hiding in barns and cellars,
avoiding German soldiers and falling bombs, until she finally reached Lisbon and
boarded a ship bound for Boston.
How do the ordeals of parents affect the fate of the child? Because of his
father's government service, John Kerry saw the world, and came to know the art
of diplomacy. He learned very young that there is much beyond the borders of
America to value. His time abroad with his father shattered the quiet xenophobic
tendencies many Americans get with mother's milk.
Because of his mother's narrow escape from the Nazi armies, John Kerry
learned that there is indeed evil in the world which no amount of money or
privilege can deflect. Living in post-war Berlin during one of his father's
diplomatic postings, Kerry saw the bombed-out buildings, the refugees who were
everywhere, and the tens of thousands of people who left everything behind to
flee the Soviet sector. Kerry learned that such evil must be confronted. In the
experiences of his parents, John Kerry developed the nuanced, intricate and
informed view of the wider world that has since defined his life.
Of course, he came from privilege. Educated at the exclusive Fessenden
School, and then at the super-exclusive St. Paul's School, and then at Yale
University, Kerry was surrounded by the scions of wealthy families and was
afforded an education available to only the richest few. In order to fit in with
his fellow students, Kerry should have adopted the attitude of world-weary
condescension, of laid-back expectancy, which marked children of the wealthy
Eastern Establishment in that time and place.
He didn't. Inspired by teachers like Reverend John Walker, who taught those
privileged children at St. Paul's about the realities of race in America, and
later by President John Kennedy, whose call to service motivated millions, and
always by his father Richard, who taught by word and example that service to
country is the highest calling, John Kerry became a man of action and of
ambition. Here was no callow youth marking time until his family's money became
his money. Kerry became active in politics, and augured his life towards
government work.
John
Kerry served in the Navy from 1966 to 1970, volunteered for combat duty in
Vietnam, and earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts, two
Presidential Unit Citations and a National Defense Medal. Upon his return from
the war, he became centrally involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
helped to create Vietnam Veterans of America, and brought the realities of
Vietnam into living rooms all across America. He served as a prosecutor in
Middlesex County, Massachusetts, beginning in 1976. From 1977 to 1982 he served
as First Assistant District Attorney, during which time he successfully battled
organized crime, prosecuted and jailed the number two crime boss in New England,
fought for victims' rights, and organized rape counseling programs.
From 1983 to 1985, John Kerry served as Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor,
and transformed what had been a symbolic position to one with muscle. He
organized Governors all across the country to combat a new and disturbing
reality - acid rain caused by industrial pollution that was destroying lakes,
rivers and the country's water supply. This activity began what has since become
a lifetime of activism to protect our environment, a lifetime of activism that
has made John Kerry perhaps the most effective fighter for environmental
protection in American government.
In 1985, John Kerry was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he has served for
the last 19 years. Coming into the Massachusetts delegation under the long
shadow of Edward Kennedy, who had already cornered the hail-fellow-well-met
market of Massachusetts retail politics, Kerry worked to the strengths he had
inherited from his parents and became a master of national and foreign policy
issues. It would take a great deal of ink to detail the committees he served on,
the legislation he shepherded into passage, the arguments he championed and the
policies he pushed.
The best illustration of the man Senator John Kerry became, the man we now
see standing for President, came when he decided to wage war against one of the
most far-reaching and dangerous criminal enterprises ever seen in the world. In
1988, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI, was a highly
respected international financial institution which catered to the most powerful
of the powerful. BCCI had allies all through Washington D.C. and across the
world.
The public reality of BCCI changed completely when John Kerry, fresh from
his lead role investigating the Iran/Contra scandal, was tasked to run down
Iran/Contra drug connections as chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Narcotics, and International Operations. Very soon, Kerry discovered damning
BCCI connections not only to Noriega and the laundering of drug money, but to a
massive international network of dirty cash moving to and from the most
dangerous people in the world.
Immediately, Kerry met with opposition from power-players in Washington.
Everyone - literally everyone, from both parties, including President George H.W.
Bush, whose son George W. had enjoyed BCCI financing for one of his doomed oil
businesses - pressured Kerry to back off. Instead, Kerry took the information he
had gathered and gave it to New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
Morgenthau agreed to begin a criminal investigation into BCCI. By 1991, the
investigation had blown up what Morgenthau described at the time as "one of the
biggest criminal enterprises in world history."
Journalists David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin, writing for Washington
Monthly, published an article titled
'Follow the Money',
which chronicled Kerry's work against BCCI. In their article, Sirota and Baskin
state, "As Kerry's subcommittee discovered, BCCI catered to many of the most
notorious tyrants and thugs of the late 20th century, including Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein, the heads of the Medellin cocaine cartel, and Abu Nidal, the
notorious Palestinian terrorist. According to the CIA, it also did business with
those who went on to lead al Qaeda. And BCCI went beyond merely offering
financial assistance to dictators and terrorists: According to Time, the
operation itself was an elaborate fraud, replete with a 'global intelligence
operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad.'"
"By
July 1991," continued Sirota and Baskin in their article, "Kerry's work paid
off. That month, British and U.S. regulators finally responded to the evidence
provided by Kerry, Morgenthau, and a concurrent investigation by the Federal
Reserve. BCCI was shut down in seven countries, restricted in dozens more, and
served indictments for grand larceny, bribery, and money laundering. A decade
after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered Osama bin Laden was
among those with accounts at the bank. A French intelligence report obtained by
The Washington Post in 2002 identified dozens of companies and individuals who
were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the
bank collapsed, and that the financial network operated by bin Laden today 'is
similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI.' As one senior U.S.
investigator said in 2002, 'BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist
financing operations.'"
Here is a man who came from a level of privilege most Americans have never
known. He could have become what so many children from the upper echelons of
money and power become - callow, shallow, lazy, biding his time until he got
everything he thought his position granted him, leaning on powerful family
friends to make up for the shortcomings that arise from an idle life and the
sense that the world owes him whatever he desires, believing that making money
and enjoying position are the alpha and omega of life.
John Kerry went in the opposite direction. He was raised to believe that
privilege has its duties, that public service is the alpha and omega of life,
and has worked every day to fulfill the obligations his parents and his
education and his own deeply-held beliefs instilled in him. In his fight against
BCCI, he revealed himself to be a man of great purpose, of mission, who refused
to bow before the altars of status quo and go-along-to-get-along that are all
too worshipped in Washington.
A life of service and study crafted a man of depth, of intelligence, who
can see all the sides of any issue and incorporates all available data before
making a decision. The opponents he has faced and defeated throughout his career
have enjoyed painting him as vacillating, as indecisive, as a man who holds
several positions at once in order to cover his political backside. In truth,
these incomplete views on John Kerry are born from a modern political landscape
that cannot fathom a man who is judicious, contemplative and thorough, because
such attributes have been all too absent from our political discourse.
Judicious, contemplative and thorough. In a dangerous world, made vastly
more dangerous by politicians who think in violent black and white because
simplicity polls better and fits into soundbites, a man like John Kerry may seem
out of place. He is, in fact, in exactly the right place at exactly the right
time.
----
Author's Note: This article is dedicated to my father, who was born in a
small Southern river town, who heard Kennedy's call, who volunteered for
Vietnam, who returned to spend his entire professional life as a public servant
in a variety of government positions. He was not born into the same privilege as
John Kerry, but the fact that their lives have followed incredibly similar
tracks speaks volumes on the character of each man.
Republican Shenanigans
G. W. Bush
and John Kerry somehow ended up at the same barbershop.
As they sat
there, each being worked on by a different barber, not a word was spoken. The
barbers were even afraid to start a conversation, for fear it would turn to
politics.
As the
barbers finished their shaves, the one who had Bush in his chair reached for the
aftershave.
Bush was
quick to stop him saying, "No thanks. My wife, Laura, will smell that and think
I've been in a Texas whorehouse."
The second
barber turned to Kerry and said, "How about you?"
Kerry replied, "Go ahead. My wife, Teresa, doesn't know what the inside of
a Texas whorehouse smells like."
"Our
president is neither a knight nor a cowboy. He doesn't believe in taking care of
the little guy, nor does he have the restraint or dignity of the cowboy." -–
Bonnie Wheeler, who
teaches at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
See how the little feller
measures up to the Cowboy Code, and you tell me.
George W. Bush Ain't
No Cowboy
by Erik Baard
Incredibly, the audience will
not be made up of undecided voters but of the candidates’ “soft supporters,” who
have been selected by the Gallup Poll organization.
http://www.asticles.com/asticles/think.htm
Good News
Majority of Registered Voters Think Bush Is A Hamster
www.realvoices.org
Biz/Tech
News
"During a speech this
week, John Kerry said if President Bush is re-elected he might bring back a
military draft. When asked, Bush said, 'Trust me, even if I bring back the draft
there are plenty of ways to get around it.'" -- Conan O'Brien
Bush-Prison-Torture News
Go-F***
-Yourself News
Kerry Haters for
Kerry
Kerry/Edwards News
"Of course you know,
President Bush has been taking a couple days off this week to prepare for the
debates. In fact, he's having a having a microchip implanted in his ear. This
will allow Dick Cheney to speak to him directly. 'It's pronounced 'Falloujah'
'Abu Ghraib."'
-– Jay Leno
Odd News
A page
stolen more than 500 years ago from a celebrated Italian book of prayers has
finally been recovered, the British Library says. The page depicts the
occupations of the month of October and comes from the Sforza Book of Hours, one
of the most lavish books of the Italian Renaissance and a treasured item in the
national library's collection. (British Library)
Peace.
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"Lisa, Congrats on your sweep! As George Bush might
have said, 'Lucky me, I hit the trifecta.' Seriously, I'm glad to be able to
salute you and all the great laughs you provide." - Daniel Kurtzman, About.com
Guide to Political Humor.
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