W stands for Weak

If you've ever wondered what the W in George W. Bush stands for, it stands for Weak.

How else would you explain when offered the option of two bills that would provide $87 billion for troops Bush would support the one that doesn't require any sacrifice of its constituents?

If Bush was truly a strong leader he would have told his supporters that in a time of war it was not fair to ask only the troops to sacrifice, that they too must help the effort.

Kerry supported the other bill, the one that would have paid for the war effort through higher taxes on those most able to pay. Instead Bush decided he couldn't do that, apparently he was too weak to do so.

Supporters claim that Bush's unwillingness to admit mistakes or ask the rich to help out America is a sign of strength. Instead it is a sign of weakness. A strong leader would lead all Americans into battle, not just send some off to war and then reward those who stayed behind.

The Unwatchable Convention

Since someone in the GOP had the bright idea to have an "extreme makeover" of the face of the Republican convention and promote speakers with little in common with the average Republican delegate, apparently conservatives in the party responded by putting together a convention that is akmost unwatchable.

From possibly the worst stage setup in recent convention history to speakers whose reception by the audience that was limited, one can only imagine people turning off CSPAN in droves.

Perhaps the idea was to force people to turn to FOX and other news channels where GOP talking heads parroting GOP talking points.

However, the first thought that went through ones head while attempting to watch the convention is "who designed that piece of $#&@ stage." For those who didn't see it, it's basically a high school woodshop podium in front of a giant video screen. Both are in front of a set of steps so steep that anyone under 40 shouldn't attempt going down.

If you got past the stage and listened to the speakers, such as McCain, who for the most part got polite applause, it seemed like people were putting up with him rather than endorsing him. New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani did give the crowd what they wanted with factless sarcasm aimed against Kerry and factless praise of Bush, comparing him to Winston Churchill.

So with a preseason NFL game as competition, it was easy to turn off the convention. One just wonders if that was the goal or an unintended consequence?

Do those in the know favor the guy who knows?

Conservative media are all upset that surveys have shown that a majority of the media support Sen. John Kerry for President.

So let's see, reporters who, through their job, are most familiar with the issues, prefer Kerry. Somehow that's bad.

If that's bad then if an auto mechanic (who works on all sorts of cars) says he wouldn't buy a type of car, should one not pay attention to him because his working on cars makes his opinion's biased?

How is that logical?

On the other side, conservative commentators, who aren't known for being strong on accuracy, support Bush.

One would think that people might respect the views of those in the know. Instead, for some reason its bad. And people, despite claims, haven't shown that the journalists' views impact the reporting.

In the end conservatives expect reporting to be conservatives and get upset when it's moderate. Liberals expect reporting to be balanced and get mad when it's conservative. That's why conservatives like FOX, which is unfair and unbalanced, and liberals like NPR which is fair and balanced.

Election Hypocrisy

Nearly four years after George Bush was installed in the White House after questionable results in a state run by his brother the Wall Street Journal and other conservatives have finally decided that some elections need to be questioned.

Not of course the US 2000 Presidential election where Bush "won" by 537 votes after tens of thousands of democratic votes were not excluded but hundreds of GOP votes were included.

No, the WSJ is concerned that the election in Venezuela where Hugo Chávez won a recall vote by 58%-42% should be questioned, claiming "widespread allegations of fraud are casting serious doubt on the results."

One could only imagine what the WSJ would have said if, oh say Chavez's brother ran the election and had his cohorts decide which ballots to count. No the Journal repeats a claim that "evidence is growing that the software of the touch-screen voting machines had been tampered with." [Exactly the concerns Democrats have on Florida this year.]

President Jimmy Carter said his own quick counts coincided with the electoral council's figures in Venezuela. Compare that to what he said in 2001 about Florida.

I was really taken aback and embarrassed by what happened in Florida. If we were invited to go into a foreign country to monitor the election, and they had similar election standards and procedures, we would refuse to participate at all.

The idea that conservatives are concerned over the fairness of elections is laughable. Their concerns only arise when the results don't go their way. From the 2000 US election to redistricting Texas which allow them to choose many of the states representatives, conservatives believe in elections to extent that they like the results. Why else would elected officials try to place limits on voters and draw boundaries based on politics rather than community?

Cheney slams Bush

After hearing comments by Dick Cheney recently, the debates this fall should not be between George Bush and John Kerry but between George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Cheney has criticized the use of the term "sensitive" in regard to United States foreign policy, a term George W. Bush has used several times in terms of US foreign policy.

Bush said in 2001 at the christening ceremony of the USS Ronald Reagan that ‘‘precisely because America is powerful, we must be sensitive about expressing our power and influence."

At the recent UNITY: Journalists of Color convention Bush said "Now, in terms of the balance between running down intelligence and bringing people to justice obviously is -- we need to be very sensitive on that."

Cheney, on the other hand, apparently has a very different view.

‘‘America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive,’’ Cheney said. ‘‘President Lincoln and General Grant did not wage sensitive warfare — nor did President Roosevelt, nor Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur. A ‘sensitive war’ will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans and who seek the chemical, nuclear and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more.”

One might think that Cheney would be fired for so forcefully criticizing his boss. Well of course he won’t. The White House is full of hypocrites and Cheney was in full hypocrite mode when he made the comment.

Sen. John Kerry had said at the same UNITY meeting "I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."

Cheney couldn't question Kerry regarding fighting a war more strategic, more proactive, or thoughtful so he jumped on sensitive, the EXACT same word George W. had used at the SAME convention.

Cheney was going for cheap laughs and expected that the public would never figure it out. And he's probably correct, although a few media people are starting to show some life. In a New York Times article which some other papers actually carried, included Bush's use of the word, although far down the story.

Lack of Convictions

The latest scurrilous line the Republicans are using in their sick and twisted campaign against Sen. John Kerry is that he lacks convictions. Perhaps they are right.

Afterall George Bush was arrested for DUI and Dick Cheney had two DUI arrests yet one never hears of Kerry having any convictions. And that doesn't even bring up the rumors that Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972.

Texas author J.H. Hatfield quotes a former Yale classmate who told him: "George W. was arrested for possession of cocaine in 1972, but due to his father's connections, the entire record was expunged by a state judge whom the older Bush helped get elected. It was one of those 'behind closed doors in the judges' chambers' kind of thing between the old man and one of his Texas cronies who owed him a favor ... There's only a handful of us that know the truth."

Throw in the theft of the presidency in 2000, the "clerical mistake" Bush's lawyers made in failing to disclose an $848,560 stock sale in a timely fashion, as required by federal law, when he was on the board of directors of a Texas oil company in 1990; and his going AWOL from military service one gets a good picture of the type of convictions the Bush Cheney team hold.

Shh! Nixon resigned 30 years ago, pass it on

Thirty years ago Richard Nixon resigned the presidency following a determination that he had lost support among his own party following the Watergate break-in and resulting coverup.

On June 17, 1972 five employees of Nixon's re-election campaign were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Party Headquarters at the Watergate and later convicted of burglary. Two years later the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend three articles of impeachment against Nixon for obstructing justice in connection with the Watergate investigation.

However to too many Republicans there is a belief that Nixon either didn't do anything wrong or did nothing more than any president and that the media forced him out of office. Yet 30 years later there is little coverage marking the anniversary of the scandal.

The Washington Post, in it series on past eventful summers touched Watergate in July with an article about a Kansas Republican who learned civics that summer. They also did a story on "the summer of Monica" but managed to run that story the day after former President Bill Clinton spoke to the Democratic convention.

The Post's Metro editor tried to explain it away by saying "I don't think anyone thought of the juxtaposition of the long-planned summer of Lewinsky with Clinton's appearance before the convention."

So no one the Metro desk of the nation's top newspaper wasn't following the news closely enough to notice that it would appear the same day as a review of Clinton's speech? They managed to not run the Watergate story during the Republican National Convention but figured out a way to run the Monica story during the democratic Convention, and by chance on the same day President Clinton's speech was reviewed.

As the Church Lady would say "How convenient."

Distorting the Record

At the Democratic Convention and on the road this week Republicans have been sent forth to spread their lies, excuse me, "talking points" on John Kerry and John Edwards.

The most pervasive, and questionable is the claim that John Kerry has been ranked the most liberal senator and John Edwards was the fourth most liberal. In reality, those rankings represent only votes the National Journal tracked in 2003 when both candidates missed a number of votes as they were campaigning.

As Media Matters points out Edwards's average National Journal "liberal score" during his five years in the Senate (1999-2003) is 75.7 percent, "a number that puts him in the moderate wing of his party," and is almost 20 points lower than the 2003 rating that Republicans are touting with the help of the conservative media.

Unfortunately, it has been left up to web sites like Media Matters, the Daily Howler and TV shows like the Daily Show to point out the facts, or even just the full story. The Daily Howler was one of the few to run the definitive part of Richard Cohen's article in the National Journal.

The bigger picture presents a more nuanced view of the two senators on the Democratic presidential ticket. Since joining the Senate in 1985, Kerry has compiled a “lifetime average” composite liberal score of 85.7 in NJ's vote ratings. Ten other current senators have a lifetime composite liberal score that is higher than Kerry’s. Meanwhile, Edwards, who first joined the Senate in 1999, has a lifetime composite liberal score of 75.7, a number that puts him in the moderate wing of his party.

But all people remember is one and four. Is it any wonder people like Bush end up in the White House?