We Warned You...

[LS]

Roland said:

Much of the last election was based soley on the candidates' personalities and like-ability quotient rather than who was the more qualified candidate. Perhaps if more people had taken the time to look past personalities and had taken a hard look at which candidate was more qualified, we wouldn't be in the dreadful position we are today.

I know I sure tried my best to get people to do that. Funny you should bring that up...RS recently put up an article-
"We warned you about George W. Bush back in 1999. Revisit Paul Alexander's profile."

All this stuff was out there back then- but sadly few people bothered to look at the facts. It's a good article that rounds most of them up in one place...and those people that are just reading this info for the first time will find out just why we're where we are today.
It's a really long article so I'll just post the link...hopefully people will read it- and pay attention this time[/b]:

www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6482734?pageid=rs.Politics&pageregion=single4

[Roland]

Nice LS! Now if people will read this profile along with the one you posted about Cheney, perhaps they'll finally wake up and see the writing was all over the wall a long, long time before the last election and if they aren't re-defeated and allowed to stay, this country hasn't begun to see the worst yet.

[Roughneck]

Americans Show Clear Concerns on Bush Agenda
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

After enduring a brutally fought election campaign, Americans are optimistic about the next four years under President Bush, but have reservations about central elements of the second-term agenda he presented in defeating Senator John Kerry, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

At a time when the White House has portrayed Mr. Bush's 3.5-million-vote victory as a mandate, the poll found that Americans are at best ambivalent about Mr. Bush's plans to reshape Social Security, rewrite the tax code, cut taxes and appoint conservative judges to the bench. There is continuing disapproval of Mr. Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, with a plurality now saying it was a mistake to invade in the first place.

While Democrats, not surprisingly, were the staunchest opponents of many elements of Mr. Bush's second-term agenda, the concerns extended across party lines in some cases. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents - including 51 percent of Republicans - said it was more important to reduce deficits than to cut taxes, a central element of Mr. Bush's economic agenda.

The poll also found pervasive concern about what Americans view as the corrosive effect Hollywood and popular culture have on the nation's values and moral standards. Seventy percent said they were very or somewhat concerned that television, movies and popular music were lowering moral standards in this country.

While this sentiment was voiced by supporters of Mr. Bush and of Mr. Kerry, it appears that the concern about a decline in values is becoming another point of polarization in American politics. Mr. Bush's supporters were more likely to cite it than were Mr. Kerry's voters, and it was an issue that had particular resonance in the South and among weekly churchgoers, rural voters and women.

The poll found that 55 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters said that Mr. Bush's supporters did not share their views and morals; 54 percent of Mr. Bush's voters said the same thing of those who voted for Mr. Kerry.

In addition, 70 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters said they were more worried about candidates who "are too close to religion and religious leaders" than about political leaders who "don't pay enough attention" to religion, after a campaign in which Mr. Bush repeatedly spoke of God and his faith. By contrast, 52 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters said they were more worried about public officials who "don't pay enough attention to religion and religious leaders."

Still, in a telling contrast with the 2000 election, 82 percent of respondents said that Mr. Bush legitimately won on Nov. 2. Just before Election Day, 50 percent of respondents said they considered Mr. Bush's defeat of Al Gore in 2000 a legitimate victory.

And even after this tense and vituperative campaign, 56 percent said they were generally optimistic about the next four years under Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush's job approval rating has now inched up to 51 percent, the highest it has been since March.

The Times/CBS News poll was taken from Thursday through Sunday, after a three-week period in which some pollsters questioned some findings of the survey of voters leaving polling places on Election Day. The nationwide telephone poll of 855 adults has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The poll reflected the electoral feat of the Bush campaign this year. He won despite the fact that Americans disapproved of his handling of the economy, foreign affairs and the war in Iraq. There has been a slight increase in the number of Americans who believe the nation should never have gone into Iraq. A majority of Americans continue to believe the country is going in the wrong direction, traditionally a warning sign for an incumbent.

Across the board, the poll suggested that the outcome of the election reflected a determination by Americans that they trusted Mr. Bush more to protect them against future terrorist attacks - and that they liked him more than Mr. Kerry - rather than any kind of broad affirmation of his policies. As such, the result was reminiscent of the state of play Ronald Reagan found in 1980, when he defeated President Jimmy Carter.

Even as two-thirds of respondents said they expected Mr. Bush to appoint judges who would vote to outlaw abortion, a majority continue to say they want the practice to remain either legal as it is now, which was Mr. Kerry's position, or to be legal but under stricter limits.

Americans said they opposed changing the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, which Mr. Bush campaigned on in the final weeks of his campaign. A majority continue to support allowing either same-sex marriages or legally recognized domestic partnerships for gay people.

The public appears ambivalent about the two proposals that Mr. Bush has identified as his major domestic initiatives for a second term: rewriting the Social Security system and reshaping the tax code, including more tax cuts.

On the tax code, administration officials are discussing plans that would, among other things, lower the tax rate on higher-income Americans and eliminate some deductions. In the poll, more than 6 in 10 of the respondents said people with higher incomes should pay a greater proportion of their income in taxes; 3 in 10 said all income groups should pay the same proportion.

About one-third of the respondents said the tax cuts passed in Mr. Bush's first term had been good for the economy; but nearly a fifth said they had done more harm, and just under half said the tax cuts had made little difference.

"I don't mind cutting taxes to some extent, but I think we've cut them quite a bit," Ron Clark, 63, a Republican from Livingston, Mont., said in a follow-up interview. "I'm not really against making the current reductions permanent, but I don't think we need to go beyond where we've gone, because I do worry about the deficit. It's gone up a heck of a lot in the last couple of years."

[Roughneck]

On Social Security, 45 percent said a proposal to permit people to invest their Social Security withholding money in private accounts was a bad idea; 49 percent said it was a good idea. The poll also found little confidence among Americans that Mr. Bush would assure the future solvency of the program: 51 percent said that Mr. Bush was unlikely to "make sure Social Security benefits are there for people like me."

Among the disputed results of the Election Day survey of voters was the finding that moral issues were critical in determining the outcome.

That survey found that 22 percent of respondents called it the most critical issue in making their decision. Some pollsters criticized the way the question was asked because it was presented as a general category, without any kind of explanation, along with a list of six other specific issues, including Iraq and health care.

In this poll, when allowed freely to name the issue that was most important in their vote, 6 percent chose moral values, although smaller numbers named issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. On a separate question in which voters were given a choice of nine issues, 5 percent chose abortion, 4 percent chose stem cell research and 2 percent chose same-sex marriage.

The top issue was the economy and jobs, which was cited by 29 percent of respondents.

That said, there is a little question that Americans have grown increasingly unhappy with the influence of popular culture on daily life, and that was a significant dynamic in this election. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said that Hollywood was lowering the standard of popular culture. And 70 percent said that all popular culture - music, movies and television - was lowering moral standards in America.

The poll also found, though, that Americans were evenly divided on whether television, movies and books were including too many gay themes and characters.

The poll and follow-up interviews found that Bush supporters and Kerry supporters were in different camps on these issues, eyeing each other with suspicion.

"I think they're driven by hatred and homophobia and vitriol," said Paul Cuthbertson, 53, a Democrat from Atlanta. "The Republicans in recent years have turned 'liberal' into a dirty word, which it isn't. I'm a liberal and proud to be so. This so-called Christian ideal of being against gay marriage is neither American nor Christian. I think it's un-American to discriminate against fellow citizens, and God does not call upon Christians to be vigilantes to punish people that they perceive him not to like.''

Pat Gilbert, a Republican from Battle Creek, Mich., said, "The two sides will be as far apart as can be forever.''

"I'm sure there are different pockets of voters who voted for Kerry, but I think they believe more in society in general - if you're not hurting anybody it's all right to do it," Ms. Gilbert said, adding: "I don't think they have a firm belief system that they base decisions off of. It's whatever today's climate is. In the long term, you'll have a society of chaos."

By 48 percent to 40 percent, respondents said they believed four more years of a Bush presidency would divide the nation more than it would unite it.

For all the attention paid to the effort Mr. Bush made to increase his support from religious supporters, 31 percent of respondents said they thought that evangelical Christians had too much influence over the administration. By contrast, 66 percent said they thought big business had too much influence over the administration.

Finally, in one bit of presumably good news for a party that is looking for it, Americans now have a better opinion of the Democratic Party than of the Republican Party: 54 percent said they had a favorable view of Democrats, compared with 39 percent with an unfavorable view. By contrast, 49 percent have a favorable view of Republicans, compared with 46 percent holding an unfavorable one.


Fred Backus contributed reporting for this article.

Cry me a river! I hear violins! Those idiots voted him in, now this is what they get! Don't act surprised!

[LS]

Expect 4 More Years Of The Same Bush

Marie Cocco

January 18, 2005

Four more years.

What will they be like? Here is a preview: As the president's supporters and campaign donors were plumping furs and polishing jewelry and anticipating candlelight dinners of lobster medallions and filet of beef, word came from the White House that the District of Columbia - where one in five residents lives in poverty - must use its own money to pay the unprecedented security and public-service costs of this week's inaugural festivities.

It is a unique arrangement. All other inaugurals were financed with a separate congressional appropriation. Inaugurations are supposed to be celebrations for all Americans and so by this logic Congress allocates special funds for them.

But this is the second inauguration of George W. Bush, the first since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the first to require something akin to construction of an armed encampment. And for reasons no one can explain - the president was asked to in a Washington Post interview, but did not - a majority-black city that just went through a searing argument over whether it can afford to lure a major league baseball team when it badly needs to repair its schools has been told to foot the inaugural bill.

The White House graciously said the city may use some federal homeland security money to pay the tab. This money was supposed to buy firefighters' equipment and upgrade hospitals in case of a bio-terror attack and fund emergency command centers in the transit system. Now it will be spent to ensure a safe and pleasant party for the president's supporters.

To govern is to choose, and this is the choice of our government.

It is consistent with most choices the president has made since he took office four years ago. His first priority was to take large projected surpluses and turn them into tax cuts for the benefit, most of all, of the people who are arriving now, eager for the balls. The president has, in a round of pre-inaugural interviews, made clear his intention to take the deficits his tax cuts and his unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have built up and whittle them down. The idea is to tamp down spending where he does not want to spend. The notion of capping "entitlements" has been floated.

That word - "entitlement" - is less politically perilous than the names by which the public knows these programs: Medicare, Medicaid for poor families and the elderly in nursing homes, veterans' benefits, student loans.

The biggest entitlement of all is Social Security, and the president intends to take that on, too. Like the eccentricity of forcing inaugural expenses onto a strapped municipal government, this is another mismatch at the start of his new term. The president's top domestic policy goals - changing Social Security from a guarantee to an investment vehicle, curtailing lawsuits, revising the tax code - are at odds with what Americans say are the problems they most want their government to fix.

For the first time since 9/11, public concern about domestic issues is resurgent, according to polling by the Pew Research Center. But what's most in need of overhaul, the people say, is the health care system - not Social Security, the tax code or civil torts. Social Security also needs adjustment, the public says, but half say the system works well and needs only minor changes, not the wholesale makeover the president envisions.

Bush is unlikely to trouble himself over this. He relishes his repeated triumphs over conventional wisdom and low expectations. He is a man of brave ideas and bold action. The ideas do not necessarily comport with the facts; the actions do not necessarily prompt the desired reactions. Iraq is the template.

Though academics and even some politicians tell the president to change some of his more controversial ways in this second term, there is little likelihood of it. There was an election, the people spoke and gave Bush his "accountability moment," as he put it to the Post.

Now it is time for him to party, and for the rest of us to brace for more of the same.

[LS]

The Return of the Draft

With the army desperate for recruits, should college students be packing their bags for Canada?

By TIM DICKINSON
January 27, 2005

Uncle Sam wants you. He needs you. He'll bribe you to sign up. He'll strong-arm you to re-enlist. And if that's not enough, he's got a plan to draft you.
In the three decades since the Vietnam War, the "all-volunteer Army" has become a bedrock principle of the American military. "It's a magnificent force," Vice President Dick Cheney declared during the election campaign last fall, "because those serving are ones who signed up to serve." But with the Army and Marines perilously overextended by the war in Iraq, that volunteer foundation is starting to crack. The "weekend warriors" of the Army Reserve and the National Guard now make up almost half the fighting force on the front lines, and young officers in the Reserve are retiring in droves. The Pentagon, which can barely attract enough recruits to maintain current troop levels, has involuntarily extended the enlistments of as many as 100,000 soldiers. Desperate for troops, the Army has lowered its standards to let in twenty-five percent more high school dropouts, and the Marines are now offering as much as $30,000 to anyone who re-enlists. To understand the scope of the crisis, consider this: The United States is pouring nearly as much money into incentives for new recruits -- almost $300 million -- as it is into international tsunami relief.

"The Army's maxed out here," says retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, who served as Air Force chief of staff under the first President Bush. "The Defense Department and the president seem to be still operating off the rosy scenario that this will be over soon, that this pain is temporary and therefore we'll just grit our teeth, hunker down and get out on the other side of this. That's a bad assumption." The Bush administration has sworn up and down that it will never reinstate a draft. During the campaign last year, the president dismissed the idea as nothing more than "rumors on the Internets" and declared, "We're not going to have a draft -- period." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in an Op-Ed blaming "conspiracy mongers" for "attempting to scare and mislead young Americans," insisted that "the idea of reinstating the draft has never been debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered or even whispered by anyone in the Bush administration."

That assertion is demonstrably false. According to an internal Selective Service memo made public under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency's acting director met with two of Rumsfeld's undersecretaries in February 2003 precisely to debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft. The memo duly notes the administration's aversion to a draft but adds, "Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc." The potentially prohibitive cost of "attracting and retaining such personnel for military service," the memo adds, has led "some officials to conclude that, while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis." This new draft, it suggests, could be invoked to meet the needs of both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

The memo then proposes, in detail, that the Selective Service be "re-engineered" to cover all Americans -- "men and (for the first time) women" -- ages eighteen to thirty-four. In addition to name, date of birth and Social Security number, young adults would have to provide the agency with details of their specialized skills on an ongoing basis until they passed out of draft jeopardy at age thirty-five. Testifying before Congress two weeks after the meeting, acting director of Selective Service Lewis Brodsky acknowledged that "consultations with senior Defense manpower officials" have spurred the agency to shift its preparations away from a full-scale, Vietnam-style draft of untrained men "to a draft of smaller numbers of critical-skills personnel."

Richard Flahavan, spokesman for Selective Service, tells Rolling Stone that preparing for a skills-based draft is "in fact what we have been doing." For starters, the agency has updated a plan to draft nurses and doctors. But that's not all. "Our thinking was that if we could run a health-care draft in the future," Flahavan says, "then with some very slight tinkering we could change that skill to plumbers or linguists or electrical engineers or whatever the military was short." In other words, if Uncle Sam decides he needs people with your skills, Selective Service has the means to draft you -- and quick.

But experts on military manpower say the focus on drafting personnel with special skills misses the larger point. The Army needs more soldiers, not just more doctors and linguists. "What you've got now is a real shortage of grunts -- guys who can actually carry bayonets," says McPeak. A wholesale draft may be necessary, he adds, "to deal with the situation we've got ourselves into. We've got to have a bigger Army."

Michael O'Hanlon, a military-manpower scholar at the Brookings Institute, believes a return to a full-blown draft will become "unavoidable" if the United States is forced into another war. "Let's say North Korea strikes a deal with Al Qaeda to sell them a nuclear weapon or something," he says. "I frankly don't see how you could fight two wars at the same time with the all-volunteer approach." If a second Korean War should break out, the United States has reportedly committed to deploying a force of nearly 700,000 to defend South Korea -- almost half of America's entire military.

The politics of the draft are radioactive: Polls show that less than twenty percent of Americans favor forced military service. But conscription has some unlikely champions, including veterans and critics of the administration who are opposed to Bush's war in Iraq. Reinstating the draft, they say, would force every level of society to participate in military service, rather than placing a disproportionate burden on minorities and the working class. African-Americans, who make up roughly thirteen percent of the civilian population, account for twenty-two percent of the armed forces. And the Defense Department acknowledges that recruits are drawn "primarily from families in the middle and lower-middle socioeconomic strata."

A societywide draft would also make it more difficult for politicians to commit troops to battle without popular approval. "The folks making the decisions are committing other people's lives to a war effort that they're not making any sacrifices for," says Charles Sheehan-Miles, who fought in the first Gulf War and now serves as director of Veterans for Common Sense. Under the current all-volunteer system, fewer than a dozen members of Congress have children in the military.

Charlie Moskos, a professor of military sociology at Northwestern University, says the volunteer system also limits the political fallout of unpopular wars. "Without a draft, there's really no antiwar movement," Moskos says. Nearly sixty percent of Americans believe the war in Iraq was a mistake, he notes, but they have no immediate self-interest in taking to the streets because "we're willing to pay people to die for us. It doesn't reflect very well on the character of our society."

Even military recruiters agree that the only way to persuade average Americans to make long-term sacrifices in war is for the children of the elite to put their lives on the line. In a recent meeting with military recruiters, Moskos discussed the crisis in enlistment. "I asked them would they prefer to have their advertising budget tripled or have Jenna Bush join the Army," he says. "They unanimously chose the Jenna option."

[LS]

...continued

One of the few politicians willing to openly advocate a return to the draft is Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, who argues that the current system places an immoral burden on America's underprivileged. "It shouldn't be just the poor and the working poor who find their way into harm's way," he says. In the days leading up to the Iraq war, Rangel introduced a bill to reinstate the draft -- with absolutely no deferments. "If the kids and grandkids of the president and the Cabinet and the Pentagon were vulnerable to going to Iraq, we never would have gone -- no question in my mind," he says. "The closer this thing comes home to Americans, the quicker we'll be out of Iraq."

But instead of exploring how to share the burden more fairly, the military is cooking up new ways to take advantage of the economically disadvantaged. Rangel says military recruiters have confided in him that they're targeting inner cities and rural areas with high unemployment. In December, the National Guard nearly doubled its enlistment bonus to $10,000, and the Army is trying to attract urban youth with a marketing campaign called "Taking It to the Streets," which features a pimped-out yellow Hummer and a basketball exhibition replete with free throwback jerseys. President Bush has also signed an executive order allowing legal immigrants to apply for citizenship immediately -- rather than wait five years -- if they volunteer for active duty.

"It's so completely unethical and immoral to induce people that have limited education and limited job ability to have to put themselves in harm's way for ten, twenty or thirty thousand dollars," Rangel says. "Just how broke do you have to be to take advantage of these incentives?" Seducing soldiers with cold cash also unnerves military commanders. "We must consider the point at which we confuse 'volunteer to become an American soldier' with 'mercenary,' " Lt. Gen. James Helmly, the commander of the Army Reserve, wrote in a memo to senior Army leadership in December.

The Reserve, Helmly warns, "is rapidly degenerating into a broken force." The Army National Guard is also in trouble: It missed its recruitment goals of 56,000 by more than 5,000 in fiscal year 2004 and is already 2,000 soldiers short in fiscal 2005. To keep enough boots on the ground, the Pentagon has stopped asking volunteer soldiers to extend their service -- and started demanding it. Using a little-known provision called "stop loss," the military is forcing reservists and guardsmen to remain on active duty indefinitely. "This is an 'all-volunteer Army' with footnotes," says McPeak. "And it's the footnotes that are being held in Iraq against their wishes. If that's not a back-door draft, tell me what is."

David Qualls, who joined the Arkansas National Guard for a year, is one of 40,000 troops in Iraq who have been informed that their enlistment has been extended until December 24th, 2031. "I've served five months past my one-year obligation," says Qualls, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the military with breach of contract. "It's time to let me go back to my life. It's a question of fairness, and not only for myself. This is for the thousands of other people that are involuntarily extended in Iraq. Let us go home."

The Army insists that most "stop-lossed" soldiers will be held on the front lines for no longer than eighteen months. But Jules Lobel, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing eight National Guardsmen in a lawsuit challenging the extensions, says the 2031 date is being used to strong-arm volunteers into re-enlisting. According to Lobel, the military is telling soldiers, "We're giving you a chance to voluntarily re-enlist -- and if you don't do it, we'll screw you. And the first way we'll screw you is to put you in until 2031."

But threatening volunteers, military experts warn, could be the quickest way to ensure a return to the draft. According to O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institute, such "callousness" may make it impossible to recruit new soldiers -- no matter how much money you throw at them. And if bigger sign-up bonuses and more aggressive recruitment tactics don't do the trick, says Helmly of the Army Reserve, it could "force the nation into an argument" about reinstating the draft.

In the end, it may simply come down to a matter of math. In January, Bush told America's soldiers that "much more will be asked of you" in his second term, even as he openly threatened Iran with military action. Another war, critics warn, would push the all-volunteer force to its breaking point. "This damn thing is just an explosion that's about to happen," says Rangel. Bush officials "can say all they want that they don't want the draft, but there's not going to be that many more buttons to push."

[Roughneck]

The part that scared me the most was his language towards the Iranians. It sounds scarily similar to the ways he talked about us having to go into Iraq in his State of Disunion speeches in 2002 and 2003. the only thing that gives me hope is that to the best of my knowledge, the Bush family doesn't have any personal scores to settle with that regime.

[LS]

Rove's New Position Will Involve Policy

By DEB RIECHMANN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Karl Rove, the senior political strategist who orchestrated President Bush's re-election campaign, has been promoted to deputy chief of staff, a job that will involve him in most White House policy and not just politics.

Rove will now coordinate White House policy developed within the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council, although intelligence and other national security issues from those councils will be handled by deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin.

Rove will retain his title as senior adviser and continue to oversee strategy to advance the president's agenda. In addition, Rove will continue to oversee the offices of intergovernmental affairs, political affairs and strategic initiatives. The new responsibilities do not come with a pay raise.

``Karl Rove is a longtime adviser and trusted member of my team,'' Bush said in a statement. ``His hard work and dedication have been invaluable. I appreciate Karl's willingness to continue to serve my administration in this new position.''

Rove's promotion has rankled a few Democrats.

``Empowering Rove in this way shows that Bush cares more about political positioning than honest policy discussions,'' said Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. ``Bush knows that Rove is neither an economic nor a national security expert. He is simply an ideological strategist. ... Clearly, Bush thinks political manipulation matters more than keeping the president honestly informed about the state of the country.''

The White House also announced that deputy chief of staff Hagin, the other right hand man of White House chief of staff Andy Card, is taking on more responsibilities.

In addition to his duties overseeing administrative and logistical matters, McClellan said Hagin would represent Card at meetings on intelligence, counterterrorism, proliferation, counter-proliferation, the Defense Department and Homeland Security Council.


Other staff changes:

Sara Taylor, deputy strategist on Bush's re-election campaign, will oversee political affairs at the White House.

Michael Gerson, Bush's top speechwriter, has been given a new title as assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning. He will oversee most major addresses, but will focus on the president's compassionate agenda, human rights and advancing freedom and democracy.

Kristen Silverberg, as deputy assistant to the president for policy, will also help coordinate policy development among the four councils.

Dana Perino, former communications director for the Council on Environmental Quality, is replacing deputy press secretary Claire Buchan, who is the new chief of staff for Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.