"This is a classic case: if you try to ride the
back of this tiger, you're going to get
swallowed," he said. Now, "I believe they're
getting it, because they've been attacked now, two
or three times this year, in a devastating way,"
said Joe
Lieberman about Saudi Arabia’s treatment of
extremists.
"Dean is a bulldog. He keeps after things. He is
driven, and he knows just what he wants,"
said Willard
Sterne Randall, a professor at Vermont's Champlain
College.
"The administration is run by people who have been
obsessed with Saddam Hussein for more than a
decade, and the fact that they could have been so
poorly informed and prepared raises a lot of
serious questions about the decisions they are
making now,"
said Hillary Clinton.
"It will be a chance to make fun of the pomposity
and the bullying which the right has engaged in,
and which a good chunk of the mainstream media has
bought into. The self-righteousness of the right
is now their greatest weakness, and I think we
need to put those people on a whoopee cushion,"
said Martin
Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Southern
California hired by a new liberal radio network.
"Please! On TV you own C-Span, PBS, C-Span 2, CNN,
ABC, CNNfn, CBS, MSNBC, CNN Headline News, NBC,
CNBC, Bloomberg, Lifetime, Oxygen, etc. Simply for
giving the conservative point of view equal time,
you call Fox `conservative.' You have radio guys
on NPR 24/7!" --
wrote Rush Limbaugh on his Web site this year,
addressing liberals.
Dean’s bombast
At a time when in party
Democrats are uneasy about Howard Dean and his
military credentials, Dean has decided to give
President Bush a tutorial on defense, according to
Howard Kurtz of the
Time Mirror:
At another town hall meeting, in Manchester, Dean
added: "Mr. President, if you'll pardon me, I'll
teach you a little about defense."
Dean provided the strongest
denunciation of the President to date stating that
Bush has "no understanding of defense," is
conducting diplomacy by "petulance" and lacks "the
backbone to stand up against the Saudis." Dean,
the story relates, kept coming back in his
appearances on Sunday to criticize Bush on defense
and foreign policy:
Amid a crush of well-wishers seeking autographs at
a high school here, Dean said of Bush: "I think
he's made us weaker. He doesn't understand what it
takes to defend this country, that you have to
have high moral purpose. He doesn't understand
that you better keep troop morale high rather than
just flying over for Thanksgiving," as Bush did in
visiting Baghdad.
Dean also criticized the
administration concerning cutting combat pay and
dropping veterans from health care coverage. A
Pentagon spokeswoman noted, Bush signed a bill
last week that boosts monthly combat pay from $150
to $225, along with family separation benefits.
The Veterans Administration also countered Dean’s
charges:
Veterans Affairs Department spokesman Phil Budahn
said no one has been kicked off the health care
rolls but that an estimated 164,000 higher-income
veterans will be excluded in the future because
their ailments are not service-related.
It seems that once Dean was into
his bombastic attack he wasn’t able to curtail his
assault to Bush alone. He accused all of his
opponents of supporting the war. This discounting
of lesser candidates and including Wesley Clark
into war supporters has been a constant for Dean.
Clark’s campaign disagreed with Dean’s
characterization of their candidate.
As
with 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis
-- riding into town in that tank -- 2004
presidential candidate Howard Dean mimics that
same New England style braggadocio. And we all
know how well Dukakis faired with his theatrics,
which brings things back to Dean. Perhaps Dean
would be better off sticking with what he knows.
For example -- if Dean had just said, "Mr.
President, if you'll pardon me, I'll teach you a
little about skiing....."
Dean’s Education bash
Howard Dean told a crowd of
teachers and supporters at Merrimack High School
in New Hampshire that "Vermont would have been the
first state to turn down that money" if he still
was governor, according to an
Associated Press story. Maybe the most
pugilist statement, though, was that every school
would fail:
Dean criticized President Bush, saying his
administration will lower the standards for good
schools in New Hampshire, making them more like
poorly performing schools in Texas. The Bush
administration believes "the way to help New
Hampshire is to make it more like Texas," Dean
told supporters in Manchester, adding that "every
school in America by 2013 will be a failing
school."
Dean’s recognized that Vermont
would have to find $25 million in lost education
funds if they rejected the No Child Left Behind
funds. However, he countered that he believes that
the terms of improving the schools in the act cost
more than the money provided. Dean favors cutting
unfunded mandates, testing and the "highly
qualified" standard teachers must meet. He cited
the fact of tenure as proof enough that a teacher
is qualified:
"I just rode in a car with a woman who taught for
twenty years and she's been told she's not a
highly qualified professional," Dean said.
Dean fiscal conservative days
Howard Dean as governor was a
fiscal conservative, the
LA Times story documents. This is in contrast
to using the Bush Tax Cut three or four times over
to pay for his current proposals if he were
President:
Unlike the ideological presidential candidate who
first distinguished himself by condemning the war
in Iraq, Dean as governor was a pragmatist who ran
his state with the blunt efficiency of a CEO. As a
pro-business centrist, he was so out of step with
the liberal Democratic majority in the Statehouse
that he had to recruit a team of other legislative
allies to make sure his budgetary goals would
pass. To the consternation of many, he all but
ignored issues such as civil unions for gays and
lesbians as he steadfastly based decisions on the
bottom line.
Dean used his iron will to make
it happen, according to the article:
"He told us that the No. 1 concern for Democrats
was how we handled the public purse," said former
state Rep. Dick McCormack. "In many ways, that
defined his whole administration."
Edwards supporters hopeful
Sen. John Edwards was in Iowa
City on Sunday and his supporters hope their hard
work pays off for the candidate, according to the
University of Iowa Daily Iowan:
A characteristically hopeful Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.,
signed copies of his new book at a downtown
bookstore Sunday while provoking speculation he
will surpass expectations in Iowa's Jan. 19
caucuses.
The hope for Edwards is that he
beat expectations and come in third:
"I think there's a scenario where it could
happen," said David Redlawsk, a UI assistant
political-science professor, noting that dampened
expectations can be advantageous in the Iowa
caucuses. "The Edwards people have been doing
their thing quietly."
UI Student Government Vice President Mayrose
Wegmann, an active Dean supporter who attended the
signing, said Edwards ascended to her
second-choice candidate after she became
discontent with Kerry.
Clark offers $30 billion to fight aids
Wesley Clark campaigning in
Florida on World Aids Day is going to propose $30
billion to fight aids. You guessed it -- paid for
by repealing Bush’s tax cuts. He would also
provide financial incentives for pharmaceutical
companies working on vaccines for AIDS, malaria
and tuberculosis -- diseases that
disproportionately affect people in developing
countries. The NY Times reports that Clark’s plan
gives control of the money to international
organizations:
Unlike the president's plan, which directs most
financing through agencies controlled in part by
the United States, General Clark's proposal would
provide "a large majority" of the money to
international organizations like the Global Fund
to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.
Double-dealing
Des Moines Register columnist Rob Borsellino
writes about the fact that former Democrat Jo Ann
Zimmerrman feels she is getting back at the
double-dealing Dick Gephardt:
In 1988 Jo Ann Zimmerman was the Iowa
lieutenant governor, and she says she made a deal
with Dick Gephardt - she'd support him in
the caucuses if he backed her bid for governor in
1990. "He agreed, and I campaigned for him and I
even brought in other lieutenant governors to
support him. I brought in Howard Dean." Two years
later when she ran for governor, Gephardt
supported her opponent, Don Avenson. The
Gephardt folks say they know nothing about this.
But Zimmerman hasn't forgotten. Now she's backing
Dean.
Taken?
There is a question as to
whether the Dennis Kucinich women are dreaming of
matrimony for naught. The Washington Times
Inside Politics reports that Kucinich already
has a girl:
According to numerous press reports, Mr. Kucinich
already has a longtime girlfriend — Croatian-born
employment lawyer Yelena Boxer, who inspired him
to become a vegan eight years ago.
"She is known locally as his girlfriend," the
weekly Forward noted earlier this year, adding
that the couple shared holidays, including
Passover.
Are they still an item? That depends on what the
definition of "friend" is. Most recently, Mr.
Kucinich called Miss Boxer "a close friend" in an
interview with the Des Moines register on Aug. 23.
Bush economy recovering
Reuters reports that Bush picked
up $750,000 in Dearborn, Michigan. It also
reports, as other news agencies are, that Bush
will end the Steel tariffs:
"Our
economy is strong and it is getting stronger,"
Bush said at an event that raised $750,000 for his
already-healthy campaign coffers. "Our
manufacturing sector is getting stronger."
Bush push for cash
Time is running out for the
Bush-Cheney campaign to raise funds to combat
opponents. The
Associated Press reports that President Bush
will attend four fundraising events this week:
He heads to Michigan on Monday for a fund-raising
luncheon in Dearborn, outside Detroit, and ends
the day in New Jersey at a $2,000-per-person
reception in Whippany, near Newark.
And:
The week's other fund-raisers come Tuesday in
Pittsburgh and on Friday in Baltimore. Like
Monday's Michigan event, the Baltimore appearance
is paired with an "official" event on the economy.
The events will be coupled with
events that focus on the economy. He will be
pushing for cutting health care costs by reducing
medical liability lawsuits, decreasing
class-action lawsuits and making other broad
changes to the legal system, increasing domestic
energy supplies and making all recently passed tax
cuts permanent:
Bush was to appear at Dynamic Metal Treating Inc.
in Canton, Mich. He planned to participate in an
event designed to sell his economic agenda.
Musicians against Bush
There seems to be a new
political movement to do in Bush among musicians,
according to the Washington Post’s Inside
Polities:
"Bruce Springsteen told a crowd of 50,000 New
Yorkers on Oct. 4 to 'shout a little louder if you
want the president impeached.' Two weeks later,
John Mellencamp posted an open letter to America
on his Web site, declaring, 'We have been lied to
and terrorized by our own government, and it is
time to take action.'
Meanwhile, Moby, Eddie Vedder and Michael Stipe
are organizing a TV ad campaign that will run
anti-Bush commercials during the week of the State
of the Union address in January," the magazine
reports. "Dave Matthews is railing against the war
in Iraq. ... Thirty major artists interviewed for
this story cited many concerns: U.S. policy on
Iraq, the Patriot Act, the Bush administration's
assault on the environment, the economy and the
media."
More troops, more time
Hillary Clinton, interviewed in
Kuwait, said that the U.S. needs to give Iraq more
time to make sure that the process and the Iraqi
people have enough time to make sure they are
being successful. She also called for more troops
in both Afghanistan and Iraq. internationalizing
the situation and giving up contro, according to
Reuters:
"In Iraq, I still think the administration should
internationalize the military, political, civilian
presence," she said.
"And that means to go to the United Nations, to go
to NATO and to go to other willing allies and be
willing to share the authority and power as well
as the responsibility."
Unions sacrificing
The AFL-CIO is doing everything
they can to allocate all the resources possible
into the 2004 campaign. This includes 200 workers
at the AFL-CIO who are taking two days of unpaid
leave to avoid layoffs. In part, the unpaid leave
days are the result of a bad economy as well as
the priority of allocating resources toward the
campaigns. The commitment to the campaign cycle is
strong, according to the
Associated Press:
"It's safe to say we will put as much as we
possibly can of all of our resources into the
political campaign," said AFL-CIO President John
Sweeney.
The unions are contemplating
asking their unions to pay a surcharge so that
they can fill their coffers for the campaign.
Other unions are taking austerity measures to fill
their coffers as well. AFSCME is suspending raises
for its employees next year and directing the
six-figure savings to politics, said President
Gerald McEntee. Travel also is being restricted,
including a ban on first-class tickets. Other cuts
are being considered.
"We're telling people for 2004 we've got to
postpone a lot of this — this is kind of a
do-or-die situation," McEntee said.
Liberal radio network
A group of investors and
liberals that include former V.P. Al Gore are
close to buying stations that reach all radios in
5 of the 10 largest media markets: New York, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston.
They said they would buy stations in other markets
in the near future, according to a story in the
NY Times:
Progress Media would not say which stations it was
planning to buy. Officials said they had begun to
build a central studio space in midtown Manhattan.
They would not say how much the stations would
cost altogether. But a major-market station can
cost on the order of $30 million.
Much of the money for the company initially came
from Sheldon and Anita Drobny, wealthy Chicago
Democrats who originated the project but sold much
of their stake to Evan Cohen, a New York investor.
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