Category: Grave

Actual waste products
As Ed Gillespie, Karl Rove, et al prepare for this fall’s upcoming Republican National Convention in Manhattan, we thought it wise to advise the party’s pollsters to not have President Bush’s chief economist N. Gregory Mankiw give one of his customarily rousing speeches about economic populism, which, in the past, have gone something like this:

Outsourcing jobs overseas is “probably a plus for the economy in the long run…outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that’s a good thing.”

Perhaps Gillespie and Rove might consider having Pennsylvania State Legislator Frank LaGrotta speak:

“I wonder if George Bush believes this. I doubt it, I tell myself. George Bush is a ‘compassionate conservative.’
Compassion: A feeling of empathy, concern, care…
Outsourcing: Treats working Americans like waste products of a Robin-Hood-in-reverse strategy to rob from the poor and give to the rich.”

OK, scratch LaGrotta, too. Better to avoid the topic entirely and stick to “safe” themes, like recalling how close Madison Square Garden is to Ground Zero.

From the February 22, 2004 Washington Post:
Edwards, Kerry Were Barely Solvent Last Month

New campaign finance reports show that the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination were barely solvent at the end of January heading into a prospective $50 million-plus ad blitz by President Bush.
Bush ended January with $104.4 million in the bank, nearly 100 times as much as the net balances of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic front-runner, and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), Kerry’s leading challenger for the nomination.
“We will never catch up,” said Michael Meehan, Kerry’s spokesman, noting that so far in February, Kerry had raised $5 million.

A Dog’s Life Remembered: Spot Is Dead At Age 14

As seen in The New York Times: Billionaires for Bush. Finally, a charity I can support without feeling guilty.
[via Wonkette]

Best Bets “Bush Doormat”… Mosaic floor pattern of Bush, Sr. at the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad
[Best Bet via Wonkette]

“Daddy, what’s Vietnam?” A question a child might ask, but not a childish question.
I read the news today, oh boy, and it made me feel like I’d fallen through a wrinkle in time and wound up in 1972. Suddenly, it’s like the last 30 years hadn’t happened and the battle between the hippies and the pigs never ended.
Is this just another example of Baby Boomer self-absorption, or is there something more behind all this talk of who was and wasn’t “in the shit” and the dubious influence of “Hanoi Jane” Fonda? Whatever it is, it’s captured the hearts and minds of the Gratingest Generation more than the other issues we face in the Presidential election, namely national security, the crushing budget deficit, lack of jobs, AIDS, education, millions of Americans still living below the poverty line, guns, the evironment, corporate malfeasance, and… oh, a million other issues.
But everywhere you turn it’s Vietnam. There hasn’t been an orgy of Boomer self-love this bad since… well, since last week when everyone celebrated the fortieth anniversary of The Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan.
Remember when this election was about us? The Deanie Babies? The inheritors of that aforementioned deficit? The kids working overtime in that MoveOn.org commercial? Forget it, man. It’s all about campus turf wars from before we were born. Just look at this nugget buried in Jane Mayer’s article on Haliburton, Contract Sport, in this week’s New Yorker:

Around this time, in 1968, Dick Cheney arrived in Washington. He was a political-science graduate student who had won a congressional fellowship with Bill Steiger, a Republican from his home state of Wyoming. One of Cheney’s first assignments was to visit college campuses where antiwar protests were disrupting classes, and quietly assess the scene.

That disruption continues, but on the op-ed pages of papers from coast-to-coast.
Like Eminem, ecstasy, and Outkast, this election has been co-opted by our moms and dads and it’s time for us to say, “Don’t bogart it!”
Yes, Vietnam matters: one man’s service followed by principled opposition means something and so does another man’s avoidance of battle and subsequent insistance on sending thousands of others off to fight 30 years later. But these are not the main issues at hand here, and if we don’t move on, we’re going to get stuck in a quagmire, the likes of which we haven’t seen since, well, Vietnam. Isn’t it time the fighting stopped?

Mother Jones a great timeline of George Bush and John Kerry’s experiences in the 60’s and 70’s that shows each man’s baby steps to the White House.
The cool, omniscient approach is like an outline for a John Dos Passos or Tom Wolfe novel about politics, class, changing social mores, and the military. Of course, since it’s MoJo, there’s some sly wit:

And so on. Definitely worth a look, if only to wonder how this story will end.
[via The Morning News]

So, you’re hankering for more news articles about President Bush, and you enter some Google News search terms that you suppose will bring up likely hits. You know, all the current and past administration/media buzzwords such as “National Guard” and “terrorism” and “Al-Qaeda” and “Washington”…
Only, you get the following instead. Damned imperfect technology.

U.S. soldier arrested in Washington state for allegedly aiding al-Qaida
SEATTLE (AP) – A U.S. National Guardsman stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash. was arrested Thursday and charged by the army with trying to provide information to the al-Qaida terrorist network, a federal law-enforcement official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Spc. Ryan Anderson was charged with “aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to the al-Qaida terrorist network.”
It was not immediately known what information Anderson allegedly provided.

Next time, I guess “Iraq” or “economy” or “Wasn’t James Yee acquitted after his career was ruined?” will narrow the field a bit more.

Editorial, San Diego Union-Tribune, February 11, 2004:

Meanwhile, the White House released pay records this week which also document the dates on which Bush was paid for National Guard duty. They provide further evidence that Bush did not shirk his obligations to the Guard between May 1972 and May 1973.
Of course, there are some die-hard Bush detractors who are unwilling to accept that the president did not go AWOL, that he was not a deserter. But the fair-minded can lay the controversy to rest once and for all.

Editorial, The Daily Iowan, February 11, 2004:

Amid accusations of being AWOL in the National Guard and lying to the American public about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush remained as confusing and contradictory as always during the “Meet the Press” segment Sunday on NBC.
On Tuesday, White House officials released payroll records demonstrating that Bush in fact did get paid for his service in the Guard. However, spokesman Scott McClellan admitted that the records do not specifically show that the president reported for duty. Bush’s response to reports of his first-lieutenant evaluation showing that the future leader had not been seen during 1972 is a simple, “They’re just wrong.”

It’s over, it’s over, it’s over, I won’t look back,
Won’t look back, my bridge has been crossed.
It’s over, it’s over, it’s over, I’ll walk away,
I’ll stay away, cause my heart’s been lost.
Losing is not a happy thing when the stakes are high,
Not when you lose your lover on a simple goodbye.
—Frank Sinatra, “It’s Over, It’s Over, It’s Over” (lyrics by Don Stanford & Matt Dennis, 1960)
Related: “Moonlight in Vermont”; “That’s All”; “The Impossible Dream”; “Walk Away”; “Lonely Town”; “No One Cares”; “Here’s to the Losers”; “Say It Isn’t So”; “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”; “The Hurt Doesn’t Go Away”; “Goodbye, Lover, Goodbye”; “We’ll Meet Again”.