President Truly Loathes Planet Earth

I guess we can be "dumb" and "dumber". So long O lofty atruistic fake.

 

Great response, how witty, I'm charmed.

 

Firefighters to go after Bush 'loudly and aggressively'
By Klaus Marre

When, in the future, the Bush campaign is “using firefighters for their photo op,” the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) “will loudly and aggressively” make known the administration’s cuts to federal funds for first responders, Harold Schaitberger, the group’s general president, told The Hill.

Schaitberger, responding to a controversial campaign ad featuring fire fighters, said President Bush has “the right to focus on his performance and leadership during a catastrophic and disastrous day.”

But he added that the use of images in the ad, “by any candidate, for any reason, is unacceptable,” especially for “partisan, purely political reasons.”

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is among several GOP members who have jumped to the president’s defense, calling the criticism of the ads “totally political” and “purely partisan.”

Schaitberger said the administration had “failed the profession,” and he listed initiatives for first responders that the administration cut, including programs to add staff and equipment to firehouses.

The IAFF has called on Bush to apologize for including the images in his ad campaign and to pull it from the air. Schaitberger said a delegation of local firefighters submitted a resolution passed on the issue to Bush’s campaign headquarters, but was left waiting for 45 minutes and departed without meeting any campaign officials.

Republicans dismissed the IAFF request as politicking. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he “wouldn’t have run the part [of the ad] where the body was brought out.”

But he added that “everybody realizes that one of the strongest aspects of [Bush’s] presidency is his leadership after Sept. 11” and that he has “every right to use this as an issue.”

Lott added, “I love firefighters and policemen as individuals and as a group, [but] I don’t think much of their unions.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) called the IAFF criticism an “outrageous charge,” adding that it is part of the political “silly season.”

Lott predicted that in the end, “firemen will vote for Bush and the bosses will endorse” Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

The Bush campaign did not return calls seeking comment.

The IAFF played a critical role in helping Kerry secure the Democratic nomination and could play a role in the general election.

The group, seen as one of the most effective labor unions, admits that it usually has operated under the radar screen. However, the voice and stature of firefighters has increased since Sept. 11.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) called the firefighters “one of the most active and effective organizations in their endorsements. They really come out for whoever they endorse.”

The IAFF endorsement means the Kerry campaign will have the support of a credible group willing to criticize the administration on homeland security and for trying to capitalize on Sept. 11.

The administration’s response to the 2001 terrorist attacks is a cornerstone of Bush’s re-election campaign, as evidenced by the first batch of ads he has aired.

But these first spots also brought controversy over the use of the images from Sept. 11, including those of firefighters. The IAFF, along with the families of some victims, has been most vocal in condemning the ads.

The relationship between the Bush administration and firefighters turned sour quickly after the terrorist attacks.

The IAFF and Congress wanted more federal funding for firefighters, which the administration opposed. Schaitberger argued that this has resulted in fire stations being closed and fire fighters being less safe.

Though Schaitberger calls Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge “a great American patriot” and “an honorable man,” the two never saw eye to eye on the role of the federal government in funding first responders.

Regarding differences between the administration and Congress on federal first- responder funding, McCain said, “We’re still working on that.”

Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade said Bush’s “broken promise to the firefighters of this country makes it more difficult to argue their effectiveness on homeland security.”

“It is one thing to put your arm around a firefighter,” but another to make good on a promise “after the bagpipes stop wailing,” Wade said.

Bush often surrounded himself with firefighters and other first responders after the terrorist attacks, but the IAFF is now focused on getting him out of the White House.

Asked whether the IAFF’s reaction to the Bush ads reflects the union’s support for
Kerry, Schaitberger said only that there is a “perfect contrast” between the candidates. “[Kerry] has responded to fire fighters and their community throughout his career,” he added.

The Kerry campaign knows how much the IAFF endorsement has meant to the candidate’s winning the Democratic nomination. Wade said the majority of meetings Kerry held in Iowa took place in firehouses, adding that there is not a “harder-working, more loyal organization within organized labor.”

Clinton said that the fire fighters “have national standing but also local influence all over the nation.”

Schaitberger said he believes his organization is so effective because fire fighters “are part of the very fabric of their communities.” He said firehouses are a place of “safety and trust” and build a connection with citizens.

 

''Bush's pattern of breaking promises''
Printed on Wednesday, March 10, 2004 @ 00:10:44 CST ( )

By John Janney
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (United States)

(YellowTimes.org) – Besides the question of taste, one particularly important issue regarding the Bush campaign's use of imagery from the 9-11 tragedy is the Bush administration's pattern of breaking promises.

For example, the Bush campaign promised they would not use the tragedy of 9-11 for political gain after catching sharp criticisms for raising funds by selling copies of a photograph of President Bush taken just hours after the infamous terrorists' attacks. They unrepentantly reneged, but that is only one small sample of Bush's pattern.

During his 2000 campaign, candidate Bush repeatedly expressed revulsion against racial profiling. During his administration, Bush has practiced gross racial and religious profiling to the tune of thousands of individuals detained for the crime of being Muslim or Arab. The Bush regime raided dozens of homes of Muslim activists and shut down the three most successful Muslim charities without any due process of law or a shred of evidence to support any claims of wrong-doing.

During the second presidential debate of 2000, candidate Bush said, "I don't want to federalize the local police forces." During his administration, Bush's creation of the Department of Homeland Security has moved our law enforcement in the very direction he claimed to oppose, and the proposed CLEAR Act, along with other troubling legislation, will move us further in this dangerous direction.

In this same debate, Bush voiced strong opposition to U.S. involvement in nation-building. In his time in office, he has turned U.S. troops into occupying forces of Afghanistan and Iraq with clear nation-building agendas that have failed miserably thus far. His administration's support of the military coup in Venezuela is another embarrassing example.

Bush also stated during this debate that he "wouldn't have sent troops to Haiti. I didn't think it was a mission worthwhile." Now we are witnessing Bush's military machine occupying Haiti after supporting a military coup to oust the leftist Aristide.

Bush promised reforms to the American healthcare system, but his rule in Washington has produced over 40 million uninsured Americans who are more afraid of getting sick than getting attacked by terrorists. His insistence that our healthcare system must remain private to maintain quality is a statement against reality and further establishes your life as just another market for corporate exploitation.

To say the administration's predictions on employment and economic growth have come up short would be the understatement of the century. Bush's tax cuts are not helping the economy, and the breadcrumbs he threw to millions of taxpayers have created economic indigestion in the forms of higher energy bills, higher tuition and increasing healthcare costs. Bush's claims of new job creation fail to mention that many of these jobs are created overseas or that the overseas labor market competition is driving the wage level downward as cost of living expenses in America are driven upward.

Bush boasts about passing the No Child Left Behind Act and promised this legislation would bring forth fruits of educational progress. In reality, funding for this initiative has been left behind by his administration and the promised fruits have yet to show any signs of ripening.

Candidate Bush promised to reduce the national debt. As president, Bush has brought the national debt to its highest point in history. He also claimed the ability to bring Democrats and Republicans together, but his shrewd tricks of fraudulently fear mongering politicians into obedience has backfired and created the most politically divided America we have seen in decades.

Bush promises many things and fails to deliver in most cases. In fact, with the exception of big business, anyone to whom Bush promises anything will eventually receive the opposite and feel burned by this hideous process.

Soon, it will be time to thank Bush for his consistent pattern of performance.

[John Janney operates http://www.johnjanney.org/.]

John Janney encourages your comments: op-ed@johnjanney.org

 

Bush Admin Ordered
Medicare Cost Estimates Withheld
By Tony Pugh
Knight Ridder Newspapers
3-12-4


WASHINGTON -- The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.

When the House of Representatives passed the controversial benefit by five votes last November, the White House was embracing an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But for months the administration's own analysts in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had concluded repeatedly that the drug benefit could cost upward of $100 billion more than that.

Withholding the higher cost projections was important because the White House was facing a revolt from 13 conservative House Republicans who'd vowed to vote against the Medicare drug bill if it cost more than $400 billion.

Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, one of the 13 Republicans, said she was "very upset" when she learned of the higher estimate.

"I think a lot of people probably would have reconsidered (voting for the bill) because we said that $400 billion was our top of the line," Myrick said.

Five months before the November House vote, the government's chief Medicare actuary had estimated that a similar plan the Senate was considering would cost $551 billion over 10 years. Two months after Congress approved the new benefit, White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten disclosed that he expected it to cost $534 billion.

Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which produced the $551 billion estimate, told colleagues last June that he would be fired if he revealed numbers relating to the higher estimate to lawmakers.

"This whole episode which has now gone on for three weeks has been pretty nightmarish," Foster wrote in an e-mail to some of his colleagues June 26, just before the first congressional vote on the drug bill. "I'm perhaps no longer in grave danger of being fired, but there remains a strong likelihood that I will have to resign in protest of the withholding of important technical information from key policy makers for political reasons."

Knight Ridder obtained a copy of the e-mail.

Foster didn't quit, but congressional staffers and lawmakers who worked on the bill said he no longer was permitted to answer important questions about the bill's cost.

Cybele Bjorklund, the Democratic staff director for the House Ways and Means health subcommittee, which worked on the drug benefit, said Thomas A. Scully - then the director of the Medicare office - told her he ordered Foster to withhold information and that Foster would be fired for insubordination if he disobeyed.

Health and Human Services Department officials turned down repeated requests to interview Foster. The Medicare office falls under the control of HHS.

In an interview with Knight Ridder, Scully, a former health-industry lobbyist deeply involved in the administration's campaign to pass the drug benefit, denied Bjorklund's assertion that he'd threatened to fire Foster. He said he curbed Foster on only one specific request, made by Democrats on the eve of the first House vote in June, because he felt they'd use the cost estimates to disrupt the debate.

"They were trying to be politically cute and get (Foster) to score (estimate the cost of the bill) and put something out publicly so they can walk out on the House floor and cause a political crisis, which is bogus," Scully said.

"I just said, 'Look, (Foster) works for the executive branch; he's not going to do it, period,'" he said.

Otherwise, Scully said, Foster was available to lawmakers and their staffs.

" ... I don't think he ever felt - I don't think anybody (in the actuary's office) ever felt - that I restricted access. ... I think it's a very nice tradition that (the actuary) is perceived to be very nonpartisan and very accessible, and I continued that tradition."

Scully said Liz Fowler, the chief health lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, could confirm the actuary's independence. Fowler didn't.

"He's a liar," she said of Scully.

At a Ways and Means Committee hearing last month, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson all but repudiated Scully's tactics.

"I may have been derelict in allowing my administrator, Tom Scully, to have more control over it than I should have. ... And maybe he micromanaged the actuary and the actuary services too much. ... I can assure you that from now (on), the remaining days that I am secretary you will have as much access as you want to anybody or anything in the department. All you have to do is call me."

Democrats asked Thompson on Feb. 3 and March 3 for a complete record of Foster's estimates. They've yet to get it.

Said HHS spokesman Bill Pierce: "We respond to all inquiries in time and we will do the same" with these.


Scully left the administration and in January took a job with Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based law firm that represents numerous hospitals and health insurers. He was exploring jobs in the private sector while he was pushing for passage of the prescription drug bill, thanks to a waiver from Thompson that allowed him to conduct job interviews while he was still a federal employee.

In February, the White House announced that President Bush's appointees no longer would be permitted to job-hunt while on the federal payroll.

Members of Congress and congressional staffers complained that Scully's handling of Foster has deepened congressional mistrust of the Bush administration and that withholding information makes it harder for Congress to draft good legislation.

Myrick didn't think the episode was an effort to "pull the wool over our eyes."

But Democratic Rep. Pete Stark of California felt otherwise. "This `need to know, our eyes only' stuff is getting too restrictive for us to do a decent job," said Stark, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means health subcommittee.

For years before Scully's arrival in 2001, key lawmakers had direct access to Medicare actuaries.

In 1997, when Republicans were having trouble getting health-care cost information out of the Clinton administration, Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., who's now the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, added language to the Balanced Budget Act conference report to emphasize the importance of free access to Foster.

"The process of monitoring, updating and reforming the Medicare and Medicaid programs is greatly enhanced by the free flow of actuarial information from the Office of the Actuary to the committees of jurisdiction in the Congress," the report says.

"When information is delayed or circumscribed by the operation of an internal Administration clearance process or the inadequacy of actuarial resources, the Committees' ability to make informed decisions based on the best available information is compromised."

© 2004 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources.

 

Rumsfeld Caught Lying, Yet Again, On "Face the Nation." But This Time, a Journalist Actually Threw It In His Face.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Thanks to David Sirota of the Center for American Progress for spotting and forwarding this excerpt in which Rumsfeld is caught in a brazen lie by Bob Schieffer of CBS. Sirota also suggests seeing this [LINK] for further proof of Rumsfeld's lie on "Face the Nation."
Excerpt from "Face the Nation":

SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you this. If they did not have these weapons of mass destruction, though, granted all of that is true, why then did they pose an immediate threat to us, to this country?

Sec. RUMSFELD: Well, you're the--you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase `immediate threat.' I didn't. The president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's--that's what's happened. The president went...

SCHIEFFER: You're saying that nobody in the administration said that.

Sec. RUMSFELD: I--I can't speak for nobody--everybody in the administration and say nobody said that.

SCHIEFFER: Vice president didn't say that? The...

Sec. RUMSFELD: Not--if--if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.

Mr. FRIEDMAN: We have one here. It says `some have argued that the nu'--this is you speaking--`that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain.'

Sec. RUMSFELD: And--and...

Mr. FRIEDMAN: It was close to imminent.

Sec. RUMSFELD: Well, I've--I've tried to be precise, and I've tried to be accurate. I'm s--suppose I've...

Mr. FRIEDMAN: `No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.'

Sec. RUMSFELD: Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

See: [CBS Interview Link for "Face the Nation" (.pdf file)]

 

What's the point of these endless paste jobs? We already know the media desperately wants a Dem, any Dem, to win and they will do their best to see that it happens.

As for Rumsfeld, I don't see any inconsistency. He said Iraq posed a threat of developing nukes and that was true. They were close during the first Gulf war. Bush specifi8cally said the threat wasn't imminent but could get that way without warning. Nothing that has been said or done since makes that untrue.

I suppose the responsible thing to do was to wait until Saddam had nukes? That should be called the "Clinton Doctrine", after the way he handled the North Korean situation. Temporize endlessly, get suckered in negotiations, then wake up one day with the worst thug state on the planet armed with nukes and selling them to anyone with cash. Is that the Kerry plan?