Political leanings of network anchors
 

This is sort of a follow-up to the "DNC" thread. I wondered if anyone knew, or had a strong inkling as to what the political leanings are of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather (or perhaps, who do you think they voted for in the last election, and who will they vote for in this one)?

I feel like many people in the news media are liberal.

Tom - from the midwest (may be conservative)
Peter - from Canada (may be liberal)
Dan - has a boy's haircut (may be confused)

Left, left, and far left (in no particular order).

I don't watch TV so I don't see much of any of them. But I occasionally catch a commentary minute by Dan Rather on WTOP, my local news/traffic/weather radio station. In the little I've heard, I feel he's more or less in the middle, assuming his commentary reflects his personal feelings/beliefs. I've heard him give sometimes stinging commentary on the Bush administration then later do the same for some stunt the Democrats may have pulled, then even later point out the folly of people of Nader's persuasion.

My all-time favorite commentator is Dave Ross with CBS. The man cracks me up.

I guess if it makes you happy, you can call them liberal. Considering the major news outlets' under-reporting or just plain non-reporting of George Jr.'s various pecadillo's, I'd call 'em conservative. But then we all know I'm a commie every since SM pulled my cover in the philosophy forum. ;)

Liberal is a good thing. No... liberal is a great thing. Liberals embrace reason and thought. Liberals seek progress and improvement. Liberals believe in the balance of powers. Liberals champion personal freedom, human rights and social responsibilty. Liberals believe in the separation of church and state.

Dan reported attrocities from the trenches of Viet Nam, the assasination of leaders, so I'm guessing those experiences have made impressions. He's as liberal as old Walter Cronkite.

I think the other two are more news readers than actual reporters.

I think its telling that you dont know for sure. That speaks to some bit (at least) of balance. Youre guessing from their hometowns and haircuts. The guys I worry about have the flag in their lapels and say things like "shut up" during their interviews.

I watch Fox like one watches a car wreck. I have to mention I saw Bill Maher take on Sean Hannity over the weekend over Hannity's book riddiculously titled "Deliver Us from Evil : Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism". Maher actually got him to admit that liberals were not evil. Perhaps Sean overstated. Sales, you know. That was sweet. Then the best part was when he asked Hannity something that he said he's been asking all conservatives. "Does it bother you that Bush sat stunned for 7 minutes in a classroom before taking any action, gathering any more information when he learned that the country was under attack?" Why didnt the commander and chief feel the immediate need to command? Not even excuse himself to gather more information. Particularly if he believe Iraq's nuclear attack could reach us within 45 minutes and not knowing the details of the country under attack. Dont you think he would be curious to get right on it?

Actually it was 27 minutes if you include the hanging around, figuring out the safest place to go (meanwhile endangering the whole school) After hemming and hawing Hannity conceeded that it was not the reaction he looks for in a commander in chief. Me neither.

Warch - the problem is that the terms liberal and conservative are very subjectively applied. it isn't like saying x is white/black or open/closed. who gets to decide who is liberal or conservative?

and maybe even deeper than that - how do those terms really even apply to our political philosophies ?
by most people's standards i'm a "conservative", but am i? i once had a professor who called me a flaming liberal. but why? i support a limited governmental role in our lives. i support a safety-net version of our welfare system - not large scale entitlement programs that have crept up on us. i support a large standing military with the budget necessary to maintain the US military's place as the best trained, best equipped in the world. i believe in a fiscally responsible method to government A & R. i would support a law making lobbiest groups illegal. although i oppose quota systems and the direction that affirmative action programs have taken, i support the idea of a color blind society. i don't really care about gay marriage, and i don't believe we need too many laws about reproduction.

my political views could go on page after page but what i am getting at is that each of have views that are labeled as "liberal" and "conservative". it is very subjective and there are shades of gray - as if your liberal/conservativeness is on a sliding scale. a while back Jag and i were throwing the terms about when talking about news outlets. he stated that CNN is right leaning, i disagreed. what it boiled down to is that he was comparing CNN to BBC and european outlets. it is all a matter of perspective.

neither liberal nor conservative are good or bad. they are just different views of the world. good and bad leaders apply each of their preferred labels to themselves and what they view to be the unfavorable label to their opponents. the problem is that the uneducated, ill-informed grab their "knowledge" from headlines, commercials, pamphlets, and worst of all - the grapevine. they believe what the world around them tells them to believe. liberal=democrat=takes care of working class/are tax and spend fiends; conservative=republican=believe in limiting the power of gov't/are in bed with big business and the rich.
there is some truth in these stereotypes, but there is more inaccuracy than truth. we don't vote for parties, we vote for and are governed by individuals. people that will be "liberal" or "conservative" depending on the situation.
if we made a scale where 1= liberal and 10 = conservative people like michael moore and al franken would be pretty close to a 1 while rush/hannity types would be 10. most of us are pretty close to 5's but would move a couple of points in either direction, depending on the specific issue.
the problem is that we get caught up in the labels. we become to proud of being liberal, not conservative; or vice versa that we forget to just think about the specific issues and the specific candidates (read job applicants). that is the D's and R's like it, because they keep us common folk battling against each other to the point that we don't just pull back from the situation long enough to vote them both out in favor of someone who is really willing and able to put the american public ahead of their own dreams of avarice.

anyway - that is my view of the peanut gallery.

From the little I've seen of network news lately, I'd say they're all middle of the road to left, with Dan being the furthest left. My dad is super conservative and was a huge Nixon supporter back in the day--he HATES Dan Rather with a passion.

This is one criticism of Bush I have trouble with. I don’t think even Bush is dumb enough to believe that Iraq could stage a nuclear attack on the US unless it came UPS or FedEx, then the 45 minutes would be moot.
That aside, I don’t believe any President would, or should, leap up on the table with a blade in his teeth, to lead the country to victory. Our military and emergency response professionals work almost autonomously, in initial response. The President isn’t a planner in these situations, he’s presented with options to yea/nay, or multiple choices with pros and cons to discuss with advisors and reach a consensus or if at impasse, make a decision. Whatever the scenario, it takes time to gather this information and present it to the President, so 7 minutes or 27 minutes doesn’t matter. He just has to wait for others to do their job first.



Then he can screw things up. :worried:

bush has screwed up plenty since then, but Bruce is right. Bush did exactly what he should have done. present a calm face to the children he was with, and by extension the rest of the world. wait for more complete reports to come in and prepare himself for the decisions that lie ahead.

Saying he did "exactly what he should have done" is as silly as saying that displays a major personality flaw. It's not like politely excusing himself and getting to the info center in his limo and then Air Force One would have caused panic.

It's not like politely excusing himself and getting to the info center in his limo and then Air Force One would have made any difference. :eyebrow:
That's why I feel this particular criticism is a moot point. There are plenty of valid reasons to get on his shit, so why bother with this?

Nothing ticks me off more than this kind of Monday morning quarterbacking. When the first plane hit the tower NOBODY had any concept, save a few really panicked air traffic controllers, that it was an attack on the USA. If the Pres is supposed to get up and panic at every single bad event that occurs he is going to be very tired by the end of the week and no children are going to be read to. The only reaction that matters is what he decided to do in the long run and frankly the first few months of reaction was exactly what I would look for in a commander-in-chief.

UT, I'd like to jump in here and agree with you before TW comes to bitch slap us with Bush knew in July of '01. :lol:

I can't beleive the Bush apologists on this one.

When I heard about the second plane, I knew instantly that we were under attack, and that it wasn't an accident. You probably did too. I don't know what took Bush so long to accept that and act on it. It was obvious.

He's the leader. He's supposed to lead in a situation like that. Maybe there were things he could do during the attack, and maybe not, but he didn't even try. He just sat there. He has bad instincts.

I remember very clearly that Bush wasn't the nation's leader that day, Rudy Giuliani was. Bush made a brief statement in the morning and then was whisked away for the rest of the day. It took him a couple of days to really pull himself together and start acting like a President.

He is obviously not the man you want to have around in an emergency. His instincts suck.

That's fast for the feds. ;)

And if you're calling ME, a "Bush apologist", I'll kick your ass. :boxers:
I'm not a political animal, nor do I have the desire to be one. Just an ordinary guy that sees/hears all this shit flying around the media/net. I'm trying to sort this shit storm into rational thoughts and I just can't buy this particular criticism. That's good because I'm running out of #2 pencils, listing just the valid ones. :)

You're just ticked off because he's not letting you use your regular parking space.

Actually, Bruce, I pretty much agree with you. I think he was wrong to just sit there, but I don't think it's a big deal. So the guy freezes in an emergency for ~10 minutes. The reality is that we aren't that likely to have a similar emergency out of the blue in the future. And there has presumably been a lot of planning going on since then, so reactions (even his) will hopefully be better next time.

But my position is different on this one issue than lookout's, for example, who says he did the right thing by doing nothing. UT also defends him, but is wrong in implying that Bush only knew about the first plane as he sat there. Bush knew about both planes at that point.

Is it a big deal? I don't really think so, but it certainly was not right. We were in the midst of an attack, and he just sat there. He had bad instincts. I can't believe anyone would try to spin it another way.

When people call me a Bush apologist it helps me to understand their point of view. I won't say what I think of the label because that way I retain this advantage. :P

Even if the entire attack was on at that point, it's stupid, self-indulgent and non-helpful second-guessing today almost three years later. Of course there were any number of worse reactions Bush could have had. He could have lept and ran out of the room without making any statements. This would have had the effect of putting the entire country into a deeper panic. Maybe the very very best reaction would be to quietly excuse himself to attend to the business of the country. But it was not up to him what the next immediate move was anyway, and the very big-picture seriousness was only wholly understood to us for months afterward.

The fact that the country was not really interested in his immediate reaction AT THE TIME tells you what you need to know about it.

It's stupid self-indulgence to only talk about seven minutes following the attack and to avoid the following seven days and seven months, in which the Pres acted in ways that 90% of the public reacted with a deep "hell yeah" no matter which political party they were in. To me, his action during THAT period was exactly right, and so it was to the rest of us too... resulting in stratospheric popularity numbers.

And self-indulgent, too, to look at only that period and not the period that followed, in which the resolve of the people fell and those popularity numbers slowly dribbled down to where they are now.

But of all the periods to look at and judge, those seven minutes are the stupidest.

Fair enough. The topic was already being discussed, so I threw my two cents in. It's not high on my list of priorities either.

I don't often praise Bush, but I will say that much of what he did and said in the months after 9/11 was just what we needed, and attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan was the right thing to do. Too bad we've put it on the back burner.

The seven minutes was after the second plane. The message whispered in his ear was "a plane has hit the second tower. America is under attack."
This is what I hate about this debate. I wouldn't bother talking about the seven minutes if this didn't keep getting brought up: "get up and panic at every single bad event". His options weren't "sit and ponder" vs "get up and panic". Nobody is saying he should have panicked. Nobody wishes he had jumped up and run out of the room, leaving panicked, crying kids in his wake. He could have gotten up, thanked them for hosting him, and told them he had president business to attend to. I'm not saying that, in retrospect, he could have done anything (But he didn't know that). My main point is that getting briefed immediately would not have necessarily entailed panicing the kids or himself.

Maybe the very very best reaction would be to quietly excuse himself to attend to the business of the country. But it was not up to him what the next immediate move was anyway, and the very big-picture seriousness was only wholly understood to us for months afterward.

He's the freakin commander in chief! His primary job is the security of the country. It takes precedent over a photo op. To go and do his job would not have caused panic. We were watching planes topple building and people throwing themselves out of windows, for godsake. He's told the country is under attack and his reaction speaks volumes towards his leadership or lack thereof. I disagree that the seriousness wasnt understood till months later. At 9:45 that morning we, who were watching it live, knew some serious shit was going down. We imagined more might be on the way. I was praying those who could know, would do their jobs. I assumed the President got right on it. The emergency response was tremendous, but the air guard response was not quite on guard. We learn after the 911 commission report that Bush didnt move to seek out more information for himself in those first crucial minutes- (7 sitting, 20 figuring out to scramble to Nebraska). Cheney was/is in charge.

Is it stupid to look back at Bush's performance? No. Its a rarity to get a candid, non scripted view. Why didnt we hear more about this pause in leadership AT THE TIME? I heard nothing of it in the news. Probably because the last thing we, as a country under attack wanted to project was any WEAKNESS. It wasnt until the 911 commission's interview of Bush/Cheney and Moore's film that Bush's inaction was presented. Once again, hes the commander in chief and he displayed WEAKNESS.

Bush's popularity soared afterwards, as did America's. We were wronged! We were rallied around. Bush consoled us, he rode the wave. The fact that Bush squandered that goodwill also displays not his leadership strenghth, but his weakness.

And self-indulgent, too, to look at only that period and not the period that followed, in which the resolve of the people fell and those popularity numbers slowly dribbled down to where they are now.

So the trouble today is we the people just lost our "resolve". Bullshit. What we got was more information. What we got was some truth about the leadership's bad decisions. What we got was a civil war in Iraq. What happened is that Bush proved to be a poor leader. I think it is self-indulgent to blame Bush's loss of popularity on a public that just isnt resolved enough. Bush is going to have to start owning some of this fuckups. And they start in a classroom on Sept 11, 2001. I think its evidence worth knowing about.

wouldn't it make more sense for the people who brief the president to get briefed. it isn't like there was a telex that just starts spitting out info explaining the details of an event for someone to read to the president.
someone has to pull together the known facts, assemble them in a logical way and then report it to the individuals who brief the president. at that point in time the president and his advisors would probably sit down for an effective briefing.

the alternative is that the moment the plane hit the 2nd tower his aides could have pulled him out and sat him down while he watched them talk on the phone to those with the info. he could then have watched them hang up the phones, discuss the issue among themselves, only hearing snippets of the conversation - and possibly forming an inaccurate or tainted view of the situation based on small tidbits of info.

this briefing prep shouldn't take hours, but 7 minutes seems pretty reasonable.

His indecisions and inaction were a major deal. George Jr sat there fully knowing America was under attack while never even once asked a single question. Those seven minutes are symonomous to the entire George Jr administration response during the 11 September attack AND later decisions that let Ossam bin Laden go free.

I note in another post that as I read more, I become more appalled at who really is in command. I no longer believe George Jr makes any decisions until told to do so by his political advisors including Rice, Rove, and Cheney. Even Card appears to be more of a care taker. Details of indecision and resulting actions will be provided. Details demonstrate absolute and total mismangement by the mental midget president as he waits for his advisors to tell him what to do.

Furthermore UT's idea that air traffic controller were in panic mode is a complete lie. So much a lie that UT must have made his conclusions using a political agenda. Demonstrated is that the little people - including ATC personel - were the only persons doing things right. The only person paniced were a US president frozen in a classroom when the little people needed command decisions to be made. So indecisive that George Jr could not even ask one question such as, "Is anyone in charge?" Yes I am blunt because UT belligerently misrepresents 11 September and the superb response by so many little people when confronted by total indeicsion by the George Jr administration. Numerous details and examples follow:

From the 9/11 Commission Report: Let's see. On 6 Aug, his PDB said an immenent attack would involve planes and buildings. The people desperate for leadership needed someone who knew this fact to make decisions. But George Jr just sat there. Before he got off Air Force One, he already knew one plane had hit the WTC. He was told by Andy Card - specifically - the second plane was an attack on the US. He sat there for seven minutes and did not even ask one question! This is leadership? No this is a president waiting for his people to tell him what to do. UT would have you believe otherwise. Unlike UT, I have spent substancial time reading the details. The more details I read, then the more indecision existed in the White House. Indecision as to even what questions to ask.

If the president got up from his chair and immediately consulted with his advisors, would people then go running in panic down the street. Of course not. In fact, if the president immediately left the room, well, no one would have cared especially since everyone knew the WTC was hit. Leaving the classroom immediately would have been the logical and responsbile actions of a decisive leader. But he did not act decisive. He just sat there and never once asked a single question. What was he waiting for - god to tell him what to do? Others are so foolish as to call that "not causing panic". Yes I am openly challenging the credibility of anyone who believes if the president left that classroom, then Americans would be rioting in panic. How silly as to buy into that presidental propaganda spin. And yet so many so love the mental midget as to buy that lie. A decisive president leaving the classroom would have projected the calming effect of a leader in charge. But he was not in charge. He just sat there as the government suffered from indecision - as will be exampled.

Government operating without direction as the president just sat there reading a childrens book. Even fighter protection for NYC and Washington was never authorized to shoot down any plane to protect the city. At 10:07, even after the Pentagon was attacked and the number of other highjacked planes was unknown: The president knew where the threat was coming from. It was stated in his 6 August 2001 PDB and in other PDBs. But without his direction and without the CIA intelligence from that PDB, then government was lost as to how to respond. Fighters even went out to sea in response to some kind of naval attack. They had no facts or leadership and therefore went the wrong direction. American 77 had already crashed into the Pentagon at 9:38. United 93 was still somewhere out there, undetected, missing, and still no one in the White House authorized fighter pilots to defend Washington or New York. More indecision as George Jr asked no questions and provided no leadership.

So what does George Jr do? Card tells him America is under attack. Does he ask Card a simple question such as who is in charge? Does he ask for further information? Does he even ask how many more attacks are coming? No, he sits there waiting for Cheney, et al to make a decision. Even Rumsfeld was not available to issue orders. Rumsfeld was lost outside in the parking lot, moving stretchers when command decisions by him and the President were required.

While the president sat there dumbly reading children's books, the US response to ongoing attacks was paralyzed - except where people not in command took charge without leadership orders. Example:The military responded because air traffic controllers in Boston Center did not wait for the George Jr administration to respond and were not paniced as UT would have us believe. FAA Administrators were notified but also did not ask for military assistance. In fact top Geroge Jr administrators repeatedly did not respond - as George Jr sat in that elementary school knowing that America was under attack.

George Jr would not understand that the FAA leaadership was doing nothing. He did not ask a single question - such as, "Is anyone in command?"

UT has totally misrepresented the US response to those 9/11 attacks. Apparently he likes George Jr more than he does the American people. The entire US response to the 9/11 attacks were by the little people who had no authority to do what they did. The closer one gets to Washington, then indecision was greatest - as George Jr sat in the FL classroom doing nothing.

Field commanders responded without orders:[continued in the next post]

Command during crisis starts immediately. Cheney, not Bush, was put in the immediate command role to make the call whether or not planes should be shot down. Cheney was the commander in chief. Cheney was in charge. That's not how its billed though.

That may be true. I am primarily objecting to the false dichotomy between doing nothing and panicking.

For reference: a timeline

8:46am - First plane hit. Bush is told before 8:55
9:03am - second plane hit.
9:06am - Bush told
9:38am - Pentagon hit
10:03am - Pennsylvania plane crash

[continued from the previous post]

Indecision and inaction is exactly what the mental midget president did. He was told that America was under attack - told so specifically. And yet he just sat there for seven minutes without asking even one question! Any action to stop the highjacking - well the farther we go outside Washington, then the better the response. "Frozen in fear" seems greatest the closer we get to the president - who sat there frozen in a FL school for seven minutes.

Boston Center had quickly determined the situation and was desperately trying to get the George Jr administration to respond. They told their FAA bosses to notify all aircraft to fortify the cockpits. They suspected that Delta 1989 would also be hijacked. FAA responded just like George Jr in that classroom. Top administrators asked no questions. They did nothing. In fact, United 93 got orders to heighten security only through their own airline flight dispatcher: Ballinger, another little person without authority, did not panic. He made simple decisions that were decisive and responsible while at the same time a president had just decided to leave the classroom.

Other ATC centers such as NY, Cleveland, and Indianapolis also assessed their situation and properly responded without panic. As it flew over Toledo, Cleveland center feared that Delta 1989 was also a highjacking. Fighter jets from Michigan and Ohio followed Delta 1989 into Cleveland International - confused as to why Delta 1989 had reversed course. But then little people had properly assessed the situation, had responded accordingly, and could not get any help from the George Jr administration. Meanwhile Cleveland Center was desperately trying to get FAA administrators to provide military help. Even at 9:50, we have this request from the field that is ignored by FAA HQ:Jeff would be Jeff Griffith, Deputy Director for FAA ATC who is being called by Jane Garvey into the telephone conference where no decisions will be made.

The FAA later grounded all aircraft. Who did it? Not any administrators - no matter how they tried to lie around that fact.The operation manager of FAA control center, Ben Sliney, his first day on this job, and at repeated strong demands from his new employees, unilaterally orders a nationwide shutdown at 9:42 without authorization and without knowing if he can even do it. FAA administrator Jane Garvey and the White House would later say she was requesting permission from the White House. That claim and the White House supporting response are both lies. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta would claim he ordered it. But facts suggest Mineta only learned about the nationwide shutdown 15 minutes later from the press. Sliney took charge, as so many little people did that day, on his own with no response from the George Jr administration: In response to the first attacks, fighters from Langley AFB are launched at 9:30. But without information from the leadership, instead, those fighters head out 60 miles to sea where they will still be when the Pentagon is hit. However a general at Andrews AFB takes it upon himself to respond with three F-16s from the DC National Guard. With no direction from George Jr or his administration, many individuals in government took initative (without permission) to institute actions to thwart the 11 September attacks. Repeatedly missing in every report is any decisive action by any George Jr administration officials. While George Jr sat in that elementary school reading a child's book and asking no questions, the US Government was desperate for leadership from George Jr and his people. They needed to know the information in that 6 August PDB. George Jr provided no commands, issued no decisions, asked no questions, and took his orders from Cheney who told him not to come back to Washington. How dare anyone suggest the little people were paniced. That is an outright lie. The little people are the only ones who did anything right on 11 September while George Jr sat reading a child's book - knowing full well that America was under attack AND that this was predicted by his 6 August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing.

Reality is that fighter planes were never authorized to shoot down attacking airliners - at least not by Cheney. But then it gets worse. George Jr even complains how difficult it was for him to contact Cheney. Richard Clarke tells the story. It turns out that the open speaker phone used during this crisis was too loud for Mrs Cheney (what is she even doing there?) So she repeatedly goes over to that speaker phone and hangs it up - so that she can hear the sound from CNN.

Its called a game of telephone. How many people completely distort the message. Five? A responsible president, while the nation was watching the WTC attacks unfold on live TV, would have gotten up, taken the phone himself, and immediately called the White House situation room. Instead this president waits for the game of telephone to provide him with a distorted summary? As if that president is waiting for his political advisors to tell him what to do. Waiting for Cheney, Rove, and Rice to make decisions.

After reading so many insider stories, I now suspect this president does not make the decisions. He sits there waiting for someone to tell him what to do. The fact that he asks no questions only demonstrates what so many others have said about meetings with this president. He just sits there. He asks nothing as if he already knows all the answers. This was disturbing even to his Secretary of the Treasurey Paul O'Neill. This president has found a way to mask his ignorance. He asks no questions.

Interesting timeline link Mr. Monkey. Thanks.

Regardless of which way these guys lean they say only what they are told to say. The ones who make the big time are the ones who do it with the least prompting.

Even the ones that seem to lean conservatively spend most of their time accosting the liberals, not telling tales on the people who own them.

Don't forget that all, all of the channels are owned by conservative corporations whose job is to make the most money, not necessarily to tell the truth.

i don't know about that... didn't the big dog over at Fox throw his support behind Kerry?

Part 1
 

Show me a serious difference between Bush and Kerry and we'll see if that point is moot or not.

To borrow a whole article from Reason Magazine

Ten Reasons to Fire George W. Bush
And nine reasons why Kerry won't be much better
Jesse Walker



If you're looking for reasons to be disgusted with George W. Bush, here are the top 10:

1. The war in Iraq. Over a thousand soldiers and counting have died to subdue a country that was never a threat to the United States. Now we're trapped in an open-ended conflict against a hydra-headed enemy, while terrorism around the world actually increases.

One of the silliest arguments for the invasion held that our presence in Iraq was a "flypaper" attracting the world's terrorists to one distant spot. At this point, it's pretty clear that if there's a flypaper in Baghdad, the biggest bug that's stuck to it is the U.S.A.

2. Abu Ghraib. And by "Abu Ghraib" I mean all the places where Americans have tortured detainees, not just the prison that gave the scandal its name. While there are still people who claim that this was merely a matter of seven poorly supervised soldiers "abusing" (not torturing!) some terrorists, it's clear now that the abuse was much more widespread; that it included rape, beatings, and killings; that the prison population consisted overwhelmingly of innocents and petty crooks, not terrorists; and that the torture very likely emerged not from the unsupervised behavior of some low-level soldiers, but from policies set at the top levels of the Bush administration. Along the way, we discovered that the administration's lawyers believe the president has the power to unilaterally suspend the nation's laws—a policy that, if taken seriously, would roll back the central principle of the Glorious Revolution.

Two years ago, when Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was running for governor of Maryland, I noted her poor oversight of a boot camp program for drug offenders where the juvenile charges had been beaten and abused. "It's bad enough," I wrote, "to let something like institutionalized torture slip by on your watch. It's worse still to put your political career ahead of your job, and to brag about the program that's employing the torturers instead of giving it the oversight that might have uncovered their crimes earlier. There are mistakes that should simply disqualify a politician from future positions of authority." Every word of that applies at least as strongly to Donald Rumsfeld and to the man who has not seen fit to rebuke him publicly for the torture scandal, George Bush.

3. Indefinite detentions. Since 9/11, the U.S. government has imprisoned over a thousand people for minor violations of immigration law and held them indefinitely, sometimes without allowing them to consult a lawyer, even after concluding that they have no connections to terrorist activities. (Sirak Gebremichael of Ethiopia, to give a recently infamous example, was arrested for overstaying his visa—and then jailed for three years while awaiting deportation.) It has also claimed the right to detain anyone designated an "enemy combatant" in a legal no-man's land for as long as it pleases. Last month the Supreme Court finally put some restrictions on the latter practice, but that shouldn't stop us from remembering that the administration argued strenuously for keeping it.

4. The culture of secrecy. The Bush administration has nearly doubled the number of classified documents. It has urged agencies, in effect, to refuse as many Freedom of Information Act requests as possible, has invoked executive privilege whenever it can, and has been very free with the redactor's black marker when it does release some information. Obviously, it's impossible to tell how often the data being concealed is genuinely relevant to national security and how often it has more to do with covering a bureaucrat's behind. But there's obviously a lot of ass-covering going on.

And even when security is a real issue, all this secrecy doesn't make sense. Earlier this year, the Transportation Security Administration tried to retroactively restrict two pages of public congressional testimony that had revealed how its undercover agents managed to smuggle some guns past screeners. Presumably they were afraid a terrorist would read about it and try the method himself—but it would have made a lot more sense to seek some outsiders' input on how to resolve the putative problem than to try to hide it from our prying eyes. Especially when the information had already been sitting in the public record.

The administration has been quick to enforce its code of silence, regularly retaliating against those within its ranks who try to offer an independent perspective on its policies. While the most infamous examples of this involve international affairs, the purest episode may be the case of chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster, who apparently was threatened with dismissal if he told Congress the real projected cost of Bush's Medicare bill. Even if the White House didn't know about the threat—and I strongly suspect that it did—it created the organizational culture that allows such bullying to thrive.

5. Patriot and its progeny. The Patriot Act sometimes serves as a stand-in for everything wrong with the administration's record on civil liberties, and at times is blamed for policies it didn't create—those detentions, for example. Nonetheless, there's plenty of reasons to despise a law that allows warrantless searches of phone and Internet records; that gives police the right to see what books you've bought or checked out of the library while prohibiting the library or bookstore from telling you about the inquiry; that requires retailers to report "suspicious" transactions and, again, prevents them from telling you that they've done so. And there are plenty of reasons to despise an administration that rammed this bill through at the eleventh hour—and still wants to extend its reach.

(cont.)

Part 2
 

6. The war on speech. Not all of the White House's assaults on our freedoms are linked to the war on terror. In March 2002, Bush signed the McCain-Feingold "campaign finance reform" bill, whose restrictions on political speech in the months approaching an election—i.e., at the time when political speech is most important—are so broad that they've forced a filmmaker, David T. Hardy, to delay the release of his documentary The Rights of the People until after November because it mentions several candidates. Bush approved this bill fully aware that it was a First Amendment nightmare; it's generally believed that he did so assuming that the Supreme Court would strike down its unconstitutional elements. Surprise: The Court weeded out a few measures but left most of them in place.

That's not to say the government hasn't done anything to increase the amount of political speech. Its ham-handed crackdown on "indecent" broadcasts—an effort that is to the cultural realm what McCain-Feingold is to the political sector—has turned Howard Stern into Amy Goodman.

7. The drunken sailor factor. Fine, you say: We all expect a Republican president to molest our civil liberties. But this one has poached the Democrats' turf as well, increasing federal spending by over $400 billion—its fastest rate of growth in three decades. Even if you set aside the Pentagon budget, Washington is doling out dollars like crazy: Under Bush, domestic discretionary spending has already gone up 25 percent. (Clinton only increased it 10 percent, and it took him eight years to do that.) "In 2003," the conservative Heritage Foundation notes, "inflation-adjusted federal spending topped $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II."

Of all those spending projects, Bush's Medicare bill deserves special attention. It will cost at least $534 billion over the next decade, and probably more. And it doesn't even deliver on its liberal promises: It does much more to distribute new subsidies and tax breaks to doctors, HMOs, and the pharmaceutical industry than it does to help seniors. The Medicare bill is to Bush's domestic policy what the Iraq war is to its foreign policy: an enormous expense of dubious merit that's come under fire from both the left and the right.

8. Cozying up to the theocrats. There are those who believe the White House is being run by religious fanatics, and there are those who believe it's mostly paying lip service to Bush's Christian base. I lean toward the second view. But whether he's cynical or sincere, there's nothing good to be said for the president's willingness to demagogue the gay marriage issue (and throw federalism out the window in the process), or—worse yet—to restrict potentially life-saving research on therapeutic cloning because it offends that constituency's religious views.

9. Protectionism in all its flavors. Bush has repeatedly sacrificed the interests of consumers to help politically significant industries, giving us tariffs on products from steel to shrimp. This doesn't just make a mockery of his free-trade rhetoric—it's also bad policy.

10. He's making me root for John Kerry. I haven't voted for a major party's presidential candidate since 1988, and I have no plans to revert to the habit this year. The Democrats have nominated a senator who—just sticking to the points listed above—voted for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, McCain-Feingold, and the TSA; who endorses the assault on "indecency"; who thinks the government should be spending even more than it is now. I didn't have room in my top ten for the terrible No Child Left Behind Act, which further centralized control of the country's public schools—but for the record, Kerry voted for that one too. It's far from clear that he'd be any less protectionist than Bush is, and he's also got problems that Bush doesn't have, like his support for stricter gun controls. True, Kerry doesn't owe anything to the religious right, and you can't blame him for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Other than that, he's not much of an improvement.

Yet I find myself hoping the guy wins. Not because I'm sure he'll be better than the current executive, but because the incumbent so richly deserves to be punished at the polls. Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn't the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it's the offense that I take most personally.

Managing Editor Jesse Walker is author of Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America (NYU Press).

huh-uh - you're asking the wrong person for that. that has been one of my points all along. i don't think they are really all that different. the only real difference i see is that:
1) Bush picks a philosophy or belief that makes sense to him and holds onto it like a pit bull. nothing can make him let go of it, even when he should.

2) Kerry changes his beliefs based on his audience, what the polls say, or what the popular movement in the democrat party is at the time.

i've said all along that neither of these individuals are the best choice for president. i firmly believe that the best thing that could happen for the future of our country would be if 98% of those currently in high level government service disappeared without a trace.

barring that we should change the laws so that an individual can only be elected to national office(house,senate,president) once - for a 6 year term. there should be an election every year for a portion of the positions. the beauty is that the people would have only 1 term to create their legacy and wouldn't have time to worry about pandering to the lobbiests for money to get elected again.

Whoa! i must have dozed off there for a minute because a government that is working for the good of the people instead of for themselves is just a dream.

It used to be more than a dream. When this all started, they actually believed it could work.

So we agree then that my initial assertion is correct or am I delusional? No, wait, let's just ask if I'm right or not.

if your assertion is that the candidates are not much different and that the country is in a general state of decline... yes we agree.

I meant the part about the leanings of the newscasters being irrelevant due to the fact that the people that own them are in the business of making money not telling the truth and thusly say only what they are told.

i'm still not sure about that one. i think it does matter what their leanings are because somewhere in the last decade (or so) they have forgotten that they aren't supposed to show bias.
i've actually seen an improvement recently among most of them, but in the buildup before the war the geniouses at Fox were... well we know where they stand, Peter Jennings couldn't even say Bush, US, or American without sneering and the others each have taken pot shots. for individuals, such as most cellarites, it is no big deal because they are smart enough to listen to the story being read from a teleprompter and form their own opinions. unfortunately there are many who get their view of the world from the talking heads and don't realize that they may not be getting the whole story. sometimes what isn't reported or even a few words left out of a story are more important that what iis said.

that is why i've decided to only get my news from the water cooler, blog sites, and most importantly the cellar. if it wasn't true - it wouldn't be posted, right? right? RIGHT???

I'm all for this.

all right then - let's start a new party and this is the central plank in our platform. let's open the floor to other cellarites who want to join - what suggested issues does our party stand for?

So, since many of the people in this thread seem to agree that Bush and Kerry aren't that different (as do I), why didn't more people respond to my Libertarian Party thread?

That question was both a joke and a serious statement.

Also, I applaud everyone for drifting in this thread, that made me happy. Because, remember what sycamore said, "If a thread doesn't drift, then it's crap."

1) Why not vote for Ralph Nader. It accomplishes the same thing.

2a) Returning to the original question and adding to what others have said. Many also accused Walter Cronkite of being a liberal even though an analysis by a conservative think tank concludes he was rather conservative. But Walter told the truth about VietNam when Paley finally let him do that famous news special. At report's end, Walter said what insiders had been saying all along and what history proved. We could send in the entire US military and we still could never win that war. It was this Walter Cronkite report that finally forced Johnson to concede the war was indeed lost. But for telling something that was contrary to a right wing politcal agenda, Walter was then labeled a liberal.

2b) Brit Hume was an ABC and Nightline correspondent for many years. Because ABC is also a responsible news bureau, then many speculated that Brit Hume was a liberal. Now that Brit is on Fox, did they change his brain or political affliation? It only demonstrates that there is no liberal or conservative on the mainstream (responsible) news services. There are the facts presented first no matter what the correspondent's political affliation may be.

3) Is there no difference between Kerry and George Jr? Would Kerry (or most any other politican for that matter) sit on his ass waiting for someone to tell him what to do while America was being attacked? Remember George Jr did not enter politics because he was good, knowledgeable, seasoned, business saavy, or experienced. He was literally carried into the presidency, it part, because he speaks a right wing religious agenda - which dominates the Republican party back rooms. He was selected and then indoctrinated by the Vulcans. George Jr can speak the right phrases that enthral conservative religious factions. Unlike Kerry, George Jr never really made hard decisions - even failing to drill a successful oil well.

No minimally responsible leader - even a school principal - would have sat in that school room without at least asking a few questions. But unlike most all other politicans and business leaders, the mental midget president just sat their knowing full well the country was under attack. He did nothing. He inspired no confidence. He asked not one question. He did not immediately phone the White House situation room to discover who was in charge - if anyone. He just sat there and waited. That makes George Jr as mentally deficient as any leader could be.

There is no politican so mentally reactive as to only sit there for seven minutes and wait; knowing full well the United States of America is under attack. And as we now know, the greatest weakness to America's 11 September response were inaction and indecision by the George Jr administration. Virtually the entire administration did nothing to deter any attacks. They did not one thing. They did not even authorize fighters to go 'weapons free'. Four more planes could have been coming and the administration had done nothing to stop any of them. Thank goodness we have the little poeple who stepped in while George Jr sat in that classroom doing nothing. My god man. This is the most damning part. Look at those press clips. Not once did he ever even ask a single question. No responsible politician would have done that. Virtually every politican would have been more responsible than George Jr. He did absolutely nothing. How could anyone say Kerry is that dispicable?

Vote for what you believe in.

I believe in the the small of woman's back, the hanging curveball, high fiber, good scotch...

:thumbsup:

Let it go man, let it go.

The only difference in response between Bush and Kerry would have been that Kerry would have covered his ass better while getting to the phone for instructions.

They are both political puppets, and as long as the American voter remains in the dark about that we will end up with the same situation in pertuitum.

Any responsible politician would have done more than George Jr. Last thing he was told was that America was under attack. He just sat there for seven minutes. He did not even ask a single question for seven minutes. Even a College Student would not have been so pathetic. So America is under attack. There was nothing actionable - as Rice is so found of saying? Please name me one other president who would have just sat there - and never asked another question. Not even Nixon was that despicable.

I have been denying this for some years now. However I cannot ignore this fact any longer. George Jr does not make decisions. He is either told or manipulated as to what to decide by his political officers. Numerous people who instead come from where the work gets done have been suggesting this for some time now. George Jr was sitting there waiting for his people to tell him what to do. That is the most likely reason why he sat there for seven minutes just waiting. And this is the most damning part: not asking a single question for seven minutes. Name me another politician who would be so mentally deificent as to just sit there? I cannot think of any other than maybe Dan Quayle.

There is no way around this fact. He was told that America is under attack. He did nothing. He asked not one question. No wonder he just knew those aluminum tubes must have been for weapons of mass destruction. No wonder he let events get so out of hand that we almost had a shooting war with China over a silly spy plane. No wonder the Norwegian foreign minister immediately predicted that George Jr would subvert the Oslo Accords. He just sat there because he did not know what to do or what to ask. Damning exposure into how this mental midget president - god's choosen one - actually thinks. Even Nixon would not have just sat there. Even Nixon would have been asking questions.

It's stupid self-indulgence to only talk about seven minutes following the attack and to avoid the following seven days and seven months, in which the Pres acted in ways that 90% of the public reacted with a deep "hell yeah" no matter which political party they were in.

I am convinced that he would not have gotten such a "hell yeah" if he had treated 9/11 as a law enforcement problem and, for example, gone and asked the UN whether they would patiently ask the Taliban to turn over bin Laden.

So why is bin Laden running free? George Jr ordered the US military to stop going after him. Again seven minutes of intelligent action appears in other decisions by this president. Bin Laden - and clearly not Saddam Hussein - is America's #1 enemy. So when will the mental midget president order even one division to go get bin Laden? Even when bin Laden was cornered in Tora Bora, and even with the 10th Mountain division in country, still the president never once sent even one division to go get bin Laden. Was that another seven minutes just like in that FL classroom?

Instead George Jr ordered Central Command to execute plans to invade Iraq. Only months after the WTC was attacked and with bin Laden still not captured, instead, the president must have spent a whole seven minutes to decide that Saddam was a greater threat - facts be damned.

Those seven minutes in a FL classroom are consistent with other seven minute decisions. Well he only spent a few embarrassing minutes on national TV futilely trying to decide if he had even made a single mistake. So yes, sometimes he does spent less than seven minutes on a decision - and comes up empty handed. It took him seven minutes after being told America was currently under attack to decide to stand up in that FL classroom. Seven minutes and we still don't know if he asked even one question while America was under attack.

"It's stupid self-indulgence to only" think we are discussing those seven classroom minutes, UT. In previous posts, did we mention other major decisions 'supposidely' by this president. Ie. letting a crisis go so critical as to risk a shooting war with China (thank you Colin Powell for finally taking charge). To outrightly pervert the Oslo Accords by doing the same thing he did for seven minutes in a FL classroom. To spend a whole seven minutes in a meeting on counter terrorism before 11 September. Oh! He never did that, did he. He never once convened a meeting on terrorism even with a 6 Aug PDB on his desk saying an attack was immenent. Was that another command decision on George Jr's part?

His previous command decisions take the mystery out of what he was thinking for those seven minutes - such as "Who's in charge?" How dumb can one be to give this president any credence. It is self-indulgent to question my post when this president did nothing to defend America under attack. It is anti-American to suggest a president can or should do nothing - not even ask a question - when told America is under attack. Shame on UT for not openly criticizing this president for doing nothing to defend America - for not even asking one question. But then this is the same president who let bin Laden run free and invented Weapons of Mass Destruction when major American intelligence agencies could not find same. UT does not criticize the mental midget president for those decisions either. However he too was so sure those aluminum tubes were for WMD production even after all facts said definitely otherwise.

My posts have become more critical of George Jr with each new years and with more facts. Each year brings more layers of incompetance by this president - who even tried to quash the 9/11 Commission. I don't see UT openly criticizing him for that act either. It takes great Americans such as the Jersey Girls to rise up and confront presidents who also take seven minutes in a FL classroom while America is under attack.
With knowledge necessary to thwart that attack, **including the 6 Aug PDB that said an attack is immenent**, instead this president took seven minutes to contemplate? Right. Is Mickey Mouse really the US president?

Those seven minutes in a FL classroom explain why America has done so badly this past three years. Economy remains lackluster with indications that the economy will only get worse. American credibility around the world is so poor that Americans avoid admitting they are Americans. We have tapped out the military, blown a budget surplus into the largest debt in history, spent $billions on a useless missile defense system that does not work, and are even perverting space science so that George Jr can say he sent a man to Mars. Stifled science including innovations in energy reducing technologies. But he does promote religion in the schools. That must account for something positive.

Due to total mismanagement at the White House level, if four more planes had been hijacked, then US Air Force fighter pilots still had no authorization to defend America. George Jr never even authorized the military to go 'weapons free'. Please cite just one thing the George Jr administration did that could have defended America from the 11 September attackers? Should I expect seven minutes of silence in honor of this president?

Yes, I have been reading more insider accounts which is why my attitude and tone have changed again even more sharply concerning the mental competance of this president. I suspect George Jr does not make the decisions which is why he sat there in the chair for seven minutes while America was under attack. Which is why he needed Cheney at his side to testify before the 9/11 Commission. Those decisions apparently are made by political White House people - America be damned. Seven minutes in a FL elementary school demonstrate how White House leadership works, why we have undermined our relations with virtually every nation in the world, why science is perverted, why this nation's top anti-terrorism people were driven from government, why the 9/11 Commission was opposed, why we have record debts, and why even electricity production in Iraq still cannot maintain what Saddam provided Iraqis in only one month after Desert Storm. This president cannot even get the electricity working in Iraq let alone get up from a chair in FL to ask some important and necessary questions. He is no doubt a mentally deficent president supported by people, even in the Cellar, who are in denial.