Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Bush cabinet officials are hitting the campaign trail to praise his tax cuts. Out in Wisconsin, the tour ran into trouble–one laid-off software guy with his own Economic Reality Tour. It’s a great (and ongoing) story, so check out www.JobForJohn.com!

The back of my mind is buzzing — am I about to have an accidental conversation with Secretary John Snow in the drive-thru of a Culvers in Wausau, Wisconsin?! Is this happenning completely by luck and because the drive-thru cashier knows me on a first name basis?

“What’s your story?” Snow says.

I tell him I was laid off last week & saw that he was coming & I thought it was important to come here and let him see the reality of what’s going on in today’s economy.

“What industry were you in?”

“Most recently the software industry.”

“That’s a particularly vulnerable part of the economy.”

“Yes, well, I need a new job & it doesn’t look good.”

“Just wait,” he said. “The first tax cuts haven’t really taken effect. So just wait… the second tax cut… well, it’ won’t hit the economy for several months, but I’m sure you’ll get a job.”

“But, but… we’ve already lost over 900,000 jobs just since March first… a job at Wall-Mart just won’t support my family.”

“Just wait, I’m sure you’ll find a job.”

At that moment the car in front of me pulled ahead for their order and John stepped back from my window. The SS agents signalled for me to pull ahead.

“Just wait?!” I’ve got a $350 payment for this minivan, a morgage and two kids! Here’s a guy who drives a few hundred miles to see you, four days after he’s been laid off, and you tell him to “just wait?”

Boy I’d like to see those words on a PR banner behind Snow at the podium: Jobs and Growth: Just Wait.

Thanks to TAPPED for the link. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 486,000 jobs have disappeared since January, 44,000 of those disappeared during July.

Oops–the Army Times just caught on that Republican talk about “standing behind our troops” was a thin cover-up for doing the dirty to soldiers and their families.

In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap — and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately.

For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary — including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.

Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones….

Army Times, June 30 editorial “Lip Service”

[rant]Grrrrr–this makes me (Betsy) so angry! I’m not pro-military, but I am pro-working-class-kids, and that’s what our army is mostly made up of these days. These kids signed up for a dirty dangerous job and were promised a lot of benefits in return. Now a lot of those kids are still getting shot at and killed–and the Bushies are shutting down VA hospitals and letting military bases deteriorate to save money for fat-cat tax breaks and stupid imaginary super-weapons. [endrant]

Who had this story weeks before Army Times? The Onion did:

NORFOLK, VA—With more than 5,400 jubilant Marines and sailors cheering him on, President Bush landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Harry S Truman in a Navy jet Monday to preside over a historic veterans’-benefits-cutting ceremony.

…After congratulating the soldiers on their victory over Saddam Hussein, Bush announced that the new budget passed by the Senate includes a $14.6 billion reduction in veterans’ benefits. He then held aloft a pair of oversized scissors and snipped a ribbon bearing the words “Veteran’s Benefits.”

The Onion, June 4 story on “Dramatic Veterans’-Benefits-Cutting Ceremony”

I’m hoping the kids will get their benefits back once Karl Rove reminds Bush just where those absentee military ballots come from.

Thanks to Oliver Willis for the Army Times link–thanks to Dave Winer for the naughty acronym!

Almost two years after 9/11, the United States is still “Dangerously Unprepared and Underfunded for a Catastrophic Terrorist Attack“, says a report just released yesterday by a blue-ribbon panel of former military officials, business leaders and Nobel laureates.

The report details $98.4 billion dollars badly needed to fund port security and local first responders.

The Department of Homeland Security gave this unnerving response

The Department of Homeland Security took exception to the findings. A spokesman said critics could just as easily have focused on what has been accomplished since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

What has been accomplished? Homeland Security dollars are being doled out to cash-starved states–with enormous fanfare. New York State got the most–$321 million–of the mere $3 billion given out so far. On a per capita basis, however, Republican states like Texas and Wyoming are getting many more dollars than New York.

Ohio hopes to use some of its Homeland Security windfall to fight zebra mussels in the Great Lakes. Just goes to show the Bush team can be trusted to frustrate terrorists.

More proof if you need it that Google isn’t God: None of this made the front page of Google News.
You can see real (but short) news reports at NYT , CNN, and USAToday.

Clockwise from lower left: George W Bush with newborn twins Barbara and Jenna. Laura Bush with six-month old twins, looking exhausted. Fake ID confiscated from brunette twin Barbara Pierce Bush in a New Haven bar. Tabloid photo of blonde twin Jenna Bush partying.

Chelsea Clinton, bombarded with “She so ugly” jokes while still in her teens, should have been so lucky as to be invisible. Years after her father left office, Chelsea remains a target for rabid attacks. (Google hits in past six months: 29,000 for “Chelsea Clinton”, 7,000 for “Bush twins”.)

The Bush twins got into the papers only when busted for underage drinking, and then only briefly. (Pro-morality-right-wing-Bush-supporters dismiss these arrests, like their daddy’s DUI when he was 30, as youthful hijinks.) The twins vanished again once their age made their drinking legal.

The twins aren’t the issue here–their father is. Because there may be a darker connection between the twins’ invisibility and Bush’s past history:

“During his presidential campaign, Mr Bush has repeatedly refused to answer questions about self-described “youthful indiscretions” or deny rumours that he had used cocaine in the 1960s or early 1970s. He gave up drinking in July 1986 after waking up with a hangover following a 40th birthday party.”

The twins were born in November, 1981, so for most of the critical first five years of their lives, their dad was a problem drinker. Then he quit–why? His autobiography tells us:

“I am a person who enjoys life, and for years, I enjoyed having a few drinks. But gradually, drinking began to compete with my energy. I’d be a step slower getting up. My daily runs seemed harder after a few too many drinks the night before.”

In the early eighties, W’s business ventures lost many millions of dollars for family-and-friend investors.
Did business worries, or those “few too many drinks the night before,” create problems for his wife or his little daughters? If so, they were not as important as his daily jogging.

Kids get their own page on the White House website. The Clinton White House kids page introduced visitors to recent White-House kids. The Bush White House kids page has links to info about pets Spot and Ebony–Mrs. Cheney gets more ink than Barbara and Jenna.

Well, I suppose we’ll get to hear all about their early lives, once the Bush twins decide to start penning ghost memoirs.

Thanks to David Weinberger for wondering about this issue in such an interesting way he made me wonder also.

If I hear one more “Democratic” pundit claim that Dean can’t win….

First, how good are they at predicting politics? Would they have predicted

• that Bush with his history of drinks, drugs, and AWOL would end up President?
• that the Religious Right would trash McCain and go for Bush?
• that millionaire Yalie Bush would successfully paint Gore as a dishonest elitist?

Second, is Dean the “lefty” that they claim? Dean, who balanced the Vermont budget and gets top ratings from the NRA? Dean is a guy with beliefs he actually believes in, and principles he has spent years trying to live by. He’s not a toe-the-line lefty, or righty, or centrist.

And that’s the real problem for the self-styled “Democratic Leadership Council.”

Dean is not a paranoid Bush-lite Democrat. He’s not a DLC sock puppet afraid to blow his nose without a focus group telling him how loud to honk.

I have baaaaaad news for the DLC:

• It costs big money to get sock puppets elected.
• The Republicans are the party with the big money.
• Democrats win by running a candidate people want to vote for, who runs on a clear honest platform of social justice.

That’s how Carter won, it’s how Clinton won, and it’s how Dean is going to win.

I don’t remember politics being so much fun…

Hanging out with the young caffeinated Dean crowd is keeping me busy and buzzy. And, to pick up the pace, now Georgia for Dean has come out with a peppy new dance mix.
The tune blends boinky dance music with bits of Dean’s tub-thumping “What I want to Know” speech at the California Democratic Party Dinner. Woo hoo! Click here to download the mp3–it is fun.

(Thanks for the link to Dean Call to Action Blog.)

Academics are terrified of looking stupid–that’s why we make so many jokes about stupidity. In politics though–well, insert your favorite Bush quote. But politicians don’t want to look insincere.

“Some people have criticized the United States and the United States military for guarding oil fields and not guarding the Iraqi National Museum which had priceless antiquities in it. They say that this shows a fundamental lack of respect for Iraqi history. I want to remind those people of this: The oldest relics in the museum, 5,000 or 6,000 years old. That oil is 65 million years old.”

Jon Stewart

Philip Greenspun (check out his Harry-Potter analysis of the $100 million-a-year manager) has the most honest-sounding tagline I’ve ever seen on a blog: ” an interesting idea every three months; a posting every day”! Well, at least Greenspun probably meant it to be sincere. In fact, interesting posts show up a lot more often than he claims. Matt Drudge could make a nice case that they show up daily.

Dave Winer was kind enough to link to me as a supporter of Howard Dean, so it’s only fair to return the favor by linking to his pitch for Greenspun for president. But now, just days into his campaign, Greenspun could already be vulnerable to <drumroll>

Tagline-gate

I hope Winer and Greenspun read my blog and decide to throw their support to Dean instead. Maybe Greenspun in 2008, Dave….

Before the 1972 election, Nixon’s tricksters worked long and hard to shape the Democratic primaries. Bernstein and Woodward’s catalog of their dirty tricks shows how
Donald Segretti tried to knock down the Democrat front-runners–Muskie and Humphrey–with great success. Nixon wanted to run against McGovern. Once McGovern had the Democrats’ nomination, the Republicans rolled out their long-hidden big guns–remember the war cry “Acid, Abortion, and Amnesty”? McGovern, portrayed as a far-out radical, lost all but one state.

So doesn’t it seem strangely familiar–the way Republicans are suddenly ganging up to attack John Kerry? Both Kerry and Howard Dean have talked about a need for “regime change” in Washington. What else to you expect Democratic candidates to want? Republicans, however, are pulling out all the stops in denouncing Kerry–and only Kerry–for these remarks.

Check out these recent
comments aimed to hurt Kerry:

• Republican National Committee chair Marc Racicot: ‘Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America’s commander in chief at a time when America is at war…this use of self-serving rhetoric, designed to further Senator Kerry’s political ambitions at a time when the lives of America’s sons and daughters are at stake, reflects a complete lack of judgment.”
• House Speaker Dennis Hastert: ”We are at a serious and somber point in this conflict, and unfortunately both American citizens and Iraqi citizens will lose their lives….What we need is for this nation to pull together, to support our troops, and to support our commander in chief.”
• House majority leader Tom DeLay: ”America before New Hampshire.”

I think the Republicans are dead wrong here, and not just morally wrong but stupid-wrong. They’re stupid because those good old Nixon-tricks can’t pass unnoticed by bloggers and their memes. They’re stupid because the counterfit coin of their flag-waving can’t match even one of Kerry’s Vietnam medals. They’re stupid because Dean won’t be easy to beat.

Dean is going to win in 2004, I’m going to work my butt off for him between now and then, and won’t it be great to see an honest guy in the White House for a change?