Gore in 2004 is nothing
for GOP to chortle over
Is there anything more pathetic than a GOPer chortling over the idea that Al Gore (left) is going to run for president in 2004? Hey, if I did nothing all day but hang around other lard-assed Rotarians and fellow conservative funtionaries, like National Review's Jonah Goldberg, I would be hard-pressed to believe Gore could win over Bush in 2004. But the problem is that there are black voters and labor voters and seniors on Medicaid who are also voters. And -- let this sink in for a moment, Nushies -- Gore won the 2000 general election. He probably would have won Florida's electoral votes had the vote and the recount been conducted according to the rule of law. There are a lot of voters who are still very, very pissed that GW is sitting in the White House instead of the person the voters actually wanted to be there. The only thing going for Bush is the War on Terrorism, and voters are fickle. They will get very fickle if the economy continues to tank. Would Gore be conducting the war in the same way Bush has? No. Would a Gore administration be as willing to jetison personal liberties in the name of safety? Well, maybe. In all fairness, Democrats are barely more sensitive to civil liberties than are Republicans.

posted by Bill at Saturday, July 20, 2002

Chaney is toast
George Bush will dump Dick Chaney. The GOP will not nominate him to run for vice president. Chaney -- whose own role in Halliburton is probably less problematic than George W's role in the rancid Harken deal -- will be given the boot, perhaps before he can completely serve his term. Health problems will probably be cited as the reason. There are more than two years until the 2004 general elections. If we are still fighting the war, or if Osama Bin Laden is alive (or not yet proven to be dead) then Bush looks weak. If there is another big terrorist attack, American may finally get wise tot he fact that there is no easy victory in this necessary war, then Bush is toast as well. Americans have been fed made-for-televison easy victories for far too long. Forget the approval polls. Only a fool believes he or she can predict a presidential election this far out. The Democratic nominee may be a guy very few people have heard about.

posted by Bill at Saturday, July 20, 2002

Dammit! We want our kids to be ignorant and scared!
Some GOP members of Congress recently sent letters to the Public Broadcasting Service that stressed their objections to the introduction on Sesame Street of a new Muppet character who happens to have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Thay worry that kids at that age are too young to be presented with such information. What a bunch of reactionary dolts. They hear the word AIDS and they believe the new character must be a promiscuous homosexual, a prostitute or a drug user. The character is going to be introduced in South Africa, which is suffering in numbers far beyond what is happening in the United States. Also, the character is going to be used to fight some of the prejudices and misinformation that surrounds the disease in the Third World. It is amazing that conservatives will endorse almost any loss of individual liberty in order to "protect the children." But suggest a little education that might save kids' lives and they balk. Are we to conclude that GOP wants to keep poor people stupid and ignorant?

posted by Bill at Friday, July 19, 2002

Harkengate Hangover
Ariana Huffington gives George W. some hell
over his handling of
the Harkengate matter.

"If Bush were serious about sobering up corporate America, he would go cold turkey. That means, for starters: supporting the Sarbanes bill just passed by the Senate; authorizing the SEC to release all documents connected to his Harken deal; demanding the resignation of Harvey Pitt and Enron-tainted Secretary of the Army Thomas White; and coming out in favor of treating stock options as an expense, strict rules prohibiting conflicts of interest among stock analysts, and the elimination of loopholes allowing offshore tax havens."

Ariana has come a long way from her years spent as a GOP apologist.

posted by Bill at Friday, July 19, 2002

Cokie bites the dust, and good riddance
Eric Alterman in the Nation takes Cokie Roberts to task for her general lack of reporting skills and conventional punditry. Cokie is simply a lousy journalist. Of course, Cokie's work as a reporter-turned-pundid for National Public Radio doesn't make her popular with the right-wing nutcases. Rodger Schultz, of course, takes Alterman to task for criticizing Cokie's insistance Bush got a clean bill of health from his daddy's Security Exchange Commission regarding Harkengate. How predictable that the conservatives will not admit their guy done wrong when they spent eight years criticizing Democrats for not abandoning Clinton for his many outrages.
UPDATE: I am reporting htis from memory, but I recall a stink about her using a fake background to imply she was actually filing a report from the Capitol, when in fact, she was in a nice, clean and dry office building.
UPDATE 2: Cokie recently announced she was treated for breast cancer. My own mother is a breast cancer survivor, so I want to make it clear I wrote the original post weeks before the cancer was revealed. I hope Cokie has a complete recovery.

posted by Bill at Friday, July 19, 2002

Coulter is a (very pretty) clown
Double Click Dailies has a good take on Ann Coulter (right), the sexy-as-all-Hell Democrat basher who can't get her facts straight. What is it with conservatives anyway? Don't they have any issue as important to them as whether there are too many so-called liberals in the media? Rodger Schultz, as usual, comes to her defense. The photograph came from The Jewish World Review Web site, where Coulter occasionally has intelligent things to say about the right of Israel to defend itself. Also, any site that repularly publishes Nat Hentoff can't be all bad.

posted by Bill at Thursday, July 18, 2002

Cat got your tongue?
What the hell is wrong with YACCS? Are are you finding it hard to post comments to your favorite Blogs? YACCS has been down all day. UPDATE! The commenting system is now up and running. I guess I can start giving Rodger Schultz hell again.

posted by Bill at Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Those eyedrop commercials may suck, but ...
... Former Nixon staffer (and current Nixon apologist) Ben Stein is actually a pretty decent guy. He is a sentimentalist at heart, but he also retains a strong pro-capitalistic streak. In Monday Night at Mortons, he writes about life as a "A-list" celebrity (l'd rate him a B+, byt why quibble?) for E! Online. His most recent column criticized Hollywood for its habit of portraying Blacks as buffoons. He targets Men in Black II, in particular. Comedy Central's Win Ben Stein's Money is also a hoot for fans of the quiz show genre.

posted by Bill at Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Mussolini would be proud
George W. Bush lost the general election. There was no clear winner of the Electoral College vote. The GOP desperately needed to not only get the courts to rule in their favor on all recount issues, they needed to stop votes in areas of Florida where they might lose. This wasn't accomplished through the courts. Mobs organized by the GOP used physical intimidation to stop these recounts. Many of those who did so have been rewarded with top-level jobs. Meanwhile, we are being lead into war by the man who was America's second choice for the job.

posted by Bill at Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Greed is good, but so are
accuracy and honesty
In "Whose Side Is Bush On?", Jonathan Alter makes a lucid point about the greed of the '90s. Now, as a capitalist and lower-case "L" libertarian, I believe greed is good. But honesty is important too. Alter writes: "This corporate greed thing is big. how big? well, did you know that roughly one third of all profits in the boom years was the result of a single accounting gimmick? That?s right: the research firm Sanford Bernstein studied the Fortune 500 from 1995 to 2000 and found that if companies had been forced to record stock options as expenses (as logic, not law, dictates), their average annual profits would have been 6 percent instead of 9 percent."

posted by Bill at Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Everyone move along,
nothing to see here ...
Has it ever occured to anyone that it's not the %&$*ing government's job to prop up the stock market? It's is govenrnment's job to provide a basic framework and establish what behaviors are crimes and punish those who committ them. Why should the president take to the airwaves and reassure the public that the market is healthy, when in fact it might very well not be healthy? Will George W. say he is sorry to little old ladies who pumb their life's savings into stocks -- then lose their money -- when it might not be the safe thing to do. The president should be a leader, but not a cheerleader. Did anyone see the recent split screen on one of the 24-hour news networks? One screen had G.W. praising the market's strength, the other showed a board with dropping stock prices.

posted by Bill at Monday, July 15, 2002

To get back on their feet,
Enron girls get on their backs
Their employer did them wrong. Now these employees are taking advantage of their situation to make a few quick bucks. Some folks see this is a good sign that the American way is alive and well. Playboy didn't use any red ink to print these pictures.

posted by Bill at Monday, July 15, 2002