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a-ok
a-ok
special"As questions continue to be raised, aides point to Bush's honorable discharge as the best proof that he fulfilled his duty. 'When the Air National Guard assessed someone's ability to receive an honorable discharge, they made sure they fulfilled their duties in a manner that was honorable,' said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan. 'Clearly, they concluded he had.'"Bottom line? He got an honorable discharge. Bottom line for Kerry? He was awarded his Purple Hearts and Bronze Star.
chatty"The CBS statement followed a report in the online edition of Newsweek that described the frustration of CBS News reporters and producers who said the network had concluded that it could not legitimately criticize the president because of the questions about the National Guard report.You can see the problem, of course, can't you?
"According to the Newsweek report, the '60 Minutes' segment was to have detailed how the administration relied on false documents when it said Iraq had tried to buy a lightly processed form of uranium, known as yellowcake, from Niger. The administration later acknowledged that the information was incorrect and that the documents were most likely fake."(Italics mine)
"Burkett is angry with CBS and anchor Dan Rather for disclosing his identity after promising him anonymity, his current attorney, Gabriel Quintanilla, said yesterday. Quintanilla said Burkett's life had become 'pure hell' since Monday, when Rather disclosed on the 'CBS Evening News' that Burkett was the network's confidential and 'unimpeachable' source for the controversial documents."Lawyers quoted in the article say he doesn't have much of a case.
bright"Republicans are peeved over Democratic claims that the president will impose a draft if he's re-elected. John Kerry was hammered for mildly suggesting that such an idea was even 'possible.' "He writes in this vein even after admitting
"Bush backers are right that this is a suburban myth and no such plans are underway. A scary and misleading Democratic e-mail circulating on college campuses highlights pending legislation to revive the draft and efforts by the administration to bolster local Selective Service boards. Predictably, the e-mail doesn't mention that the draft bills, which are going nowhere, are sponsored mostly by Democrats (who think military service falls too heavily on minorities) and that the draft-board system is being kept well oiled because of old laws requiring it--not some nefarious Bush plot.He even quotes Michelle Malkin
"Not. Gonna. Happen,"But it doesn't keep him from speculating. Nor does it stop John Kerry, it seems.
"A reader forwarded to us the following email, which is being sent to a countless number of young Americans by the 'Rock the Vote' people, an ostensibly non-partisan group..."He then goes on to quote the email which can be seen here.
The reason they have is that they feel the poor and minorities are bearing the brunt of service.
The proposal to reinstate the draft was made last week by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y....Rangel was backed by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich.
"...the draft issue has largely come to public attention due to pair of bills introduced in Congress (S.89 and H.R.163) which seek to obligate all citizens and residents of the U.S. beween the ages of 18 and 26 (both male and female) to perform a two-year period of national service (not necessarily as part of the military).... However, both these bills were introduced not by legislators genuinely seeking to reinstate the draft, but by Democrats seeking to make an anti-war statement. The bills have since languished in committee....Of course, facts are not important. The name of the game on both sides is the "Gotcha!" factor. A shame.
bright
cheeky"Take this Journal Sentinel editorial entitled 'Smaller tent for GOP?'He then goes on,
" 'Grothman's victory, as impressive as it is, raises concerns that the state Republican party may be moving farther to the right...Panzer got it right when she said, "You don't govern from the extreme, you govern from the center."...A party loses something when it consciously makes its tent smaller.'
"From the Sheboygan Press: 'Grothman's victory will likely mean a veer to the right for the state GOP...'
"And from the Oshkosh Northwestern: 'By promising a vote on TABOR (new Senate Majority Leader) Fitzgerald has stroked the ego of his party's ultra-rightists who intend to vote on the concept until it becomes law.'
"Of course, I wouldn't accuse these fine publications of taking orders from the state Democratic Party, but it's funny just how much their reactions sound like the DPW press release:
" 'The Republican Party took an extreme turn to the right yesterday, when moderate incumbent legislators in both houses were defeated by right-wing conservative sin the Republican primary election.'
"Finally, saving the best for last, consider these paragraphs from the far-left writer Joel McNally, published in the Shepherd Express:
" 'We all could enjoy the gang fight going in Wisconsin right now between the far right Crips and the extreme-right Bloods if we didn't have to worry about getting caught in the crossfire. Paleolithic Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman took on Mary Panzer, the Neolithic Republican majority leader of the state Senate, to prove that the party wasn't ready for such newfangled ideas as using stone implements to carve out their right-wing legislation.' "
"Extreme. Ultra-right. Right-wing. Knuckle-dragging (to paraphrase McNally)."Never mind that Grothman got 79% of the vote in a higher than normal turnout. The impression is that a small faction of conservatives are about to take over.
bright"Nearly three-fourths of Wisconsin voters support constitutional spending limits in Wisconsin, according to a recent poll.
"To hear the establishment tell it, of course, that means three-fourths of Wisconsin voters don't know what they're talking about. TABOR, they say, will be disastrous. Just look at Colorado.
"Oh, but in Colorado, where TABOR has been law for a decade, 60% say keep it. Another 16% say keep it with changes. Only 15% want to dump it."
surprised"I know from my service in the Senate that Saddam Hussein was an active supporter of terrorism. He used weapons of mass destruction on innocent people and left no doubt that he would do so again. It was crucial to the cause of world peace that he be removed from power.I'm not sure what makes this interventions different from the others. Some would say that "war is wrong in nearly every circumstance."
"Having seen atrocious loss in World War II, I understand the devastation of armed conflict. We have paid dearly with American and Iraqi lives for our commitment, but we cannot afford the alternative. Nor can we afford a president who puts a wet finger in the air and turns over his decisions to pollsters."
chatty"If nothing else, John Kerry's apparent decision to close out the 2004 Presidential campaign as the 'antiwar' candidate would seem to be true to himself and to the party he now leads.The choice is becoming clearer--do you prefer Bush's or Kerry's way of handling Iraq? I prefer Bush's for the simple reason that Saddam needed to go.
"The Democratic nominee entered public life, after all, questioning both America's policy and its purposes in Vietnam. He's now staking his bid for the White House as a critic of the boldest and most divisive American foreign policy initiative since. In the process, Mr. Kerry just might offer us all a clarifying debate over the proper scope and scale of the war on terror, and his Democratic base a badly needed sense that its misgivings about Iraq in particular have gotten a fair hearing."
bright
bright"The truth is that many people start out making the minimum wage and work their way up. Once they do, someone else backfills the position and begins working at minimum wage. In my company, I hired a guy early this year at minimum wage. He is young and inexperienced. Over several months, he proved himself to be an excellent worker. Now, he makes quite a bit more than minimum wage. I plan to backfill his former position with another person at minimum wage. The minimum wage allows me to hire people with little or no experience and give them a chance to prove themselves. If I am forced to pay more for the employee, then I must expect more from the employee. This forces me to find people with experience that I can make productive faster, rather than taking the chance on someone. Speaking from first-hand experience, if the State forces me to pay $7/hour, then I will not hire people with no experience. I can't afford it. Thus, on my little scale, the State will be shutting possibly good people out of an opportunity."
bright
sharp"'Is George W. Bush responsible for the fact that the employment situation is lousy?' asks Brad DeLong, a former Clinton Treasury official who teaches economic history at the University of California at Berkeley. 'No,' he says. 'Presidents influence the economy. They don't control it.'"Now he doesn't let Bush off the hook, but as a conservative, I think he overstates his case by saying that "nearly every major Bush economic decision will hurt the U.S. economy."
celebratory
rushed"Neither presidential candidate deals with the central issue of cost containment, which is at the heart of any solution. It's about the costs, stupid. Both gloss over that reality and talk about who and how to pay."Mr. Torinus then says:
"Both candidates have to come to understand that no plan can be successful financially unless it promotes responsible health care behavior on the part of each and every American. That means some of the medical expenses have to come from the pockets of the patients, whether from a health savings account or elsewhere."There can be competition without the involvement of health care recipients in the cost of health care somehow. Most people's medical bills are paid "by the insurance company," so people hardly ever see a bill. No "shopping around" is possible. Mr Torinus adds that people
"can't really act like consumers and reward the 'cheaper, better' providers until they have transparent information about hospital and doctor pricing and quality. They need a "consumer report."Competition is what keeps costs down. No amount of government "planning" can. Health care insurance is one thing keeping competition from happening.
chillin'
cheeky"Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a '60 Minutes Wednesday' story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question-and their source-vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.Rather sticks by the truthfulness of the story, but if we can't trust them in this, how can we trust the story? Not that the story is outside the realm of possibility. Bush, as well as Clinton, Kerry and many others including me, sought to avoid the conflict in Vietnam, each in their own way.
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully."
accident prone
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