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?

Jebbing the Vote, Day 1162

With the election only a few months away and Florida expected to play an important role again in 2004 it is not surprising that a state that couldn't count votes right is still having problems.  Despite spending millions to improve the process, voters may still go to the polls in November without confidence that their vote will count, or be counted.

As the New York Times  said in an editorial today - "Millions of Florida voters will cast ballots this November on electronic voting machines that do not produce paper records. State election officials have insisted that the machines have safeguards to ensure that votes are accurately recorded and counted, including a computerized audit function. Recently, however, Miami-Dade County officials admitted that almost all of the audit records from a disputed 2002 primary had been accidentally destroyed. This is disturbing news and casts serious doubt on Florida's ability to run a fair election this fall."
 
Much like the pundits and GOP told the public to "get over it" regarding the 2000 voting count disaster, state officials are saying the problems are no big deal. Perhaps they should listen to the Times.

"Florida's secretary of state, Glenda Hood, has insisted that the voting technology is thoroughly reliable and that the critics are simply stirring up trouble. Ms. Hood should drop this head-in-the-sand approach and quickly provide the protections the voters need. The most urgent would be a review by a team that includes independent computer experts. Florida's election system was a national disgrace in 2000, and it is well on its way to becoming one again."
 
Perhaps Florida voters will actually get to tell the nation who they voted for this year rather than having the Supreme Court and the GOP tell them who they voted for. But for too many people there is a concern that Florida will return to the days of 2000 where, as a one comedian commentator put it, "for a brief shining moment we were Guatemala."

The Real "Extreme Makeover"

After methodically planning a convention that hides the voices of the true nature of the Republican party, a GOP hit squad, led by Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, has the gall to accuse the Democrats of "going through an extreme makeover."

Um, Mr. Gillespie, what about the GOP convention where traditional Republicans are few and far between?

Even conservative Kate O'Beirne noted that "The decision to showcase rogue elephants as representatives of the modern Republican party is not the mark of a self-confident party establishment. If the lineup is intended to make an overwhelmingly conservative party attractive to swing voters, it does so by pretending to be something it's not."

Now that's an Extreme Makeover. But Boston Globe Columnist Alex Beam has an even better example.

"The most astonishing transformation of recent times is George Bush's journey from Yalie drunk to the leadership of what still passes for the free world. That is an extreme makeover."

Gillespie and the GOP are in Boston to fill gullible reporters with GOP talking points, which many are only too willing to use. Brit Hume of FOX News went straight to his computer after Ron Reagan's talk for the latest GOP talking points last night in order to rebut the speech.

The GOP has tried to hide its presence in Boston but CNN said that "Democrats had discovered the location and sent a costumed character named "Enron Ed" to poke fun at Gillespie's past work as a lobbyist for the troubled energy trading company."

I'm sure "Enron Ed" is more than willing to question Kerry's values. Maybe someone should questions his and the GOP's, "pre-extreme makeover."

Much ado about nothing

Republicans and conservative media are in full attack mode over Teresa Heinz Kerry telling a "journalist" to "shove it" and the media is buying it, hook, line and sinker.

Considering “Vice President” Dick Cheney recently told a senator to ”GFY” this is much ado about anything, unless the Republicans are successful with their chant “Act like an American, not like a Republican.”

The person who asked the question was NOT a reporter but the editorial page editor of the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review which has a mean-spirited editorial page which has attacked the Heinz family in the past.

Mrs. Heinz Kerry in her speech said -"We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics." The “writer” repeatedly pressed her about what she meant by "un-American activity."
"You said something I didn't say, now shove it," Heinz Kerry said.

So Heinz Kerry said “un-American traits.” The writer claimed she said “un-American activity.”

Is that the same thing? Was she right in pointing out he changed her quote and then refused to answer for a quote she didn’t make?

The New York Daily News pointed out that the paper - which in the mid-1990s notoriously promoted the theory that Clinton White House lawyer Vince Foster's suicide was really a sinister murder plot to protect the political interests of Bill and Hillary - is owned by reclusive right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Richard Mellon Scaife is behind the “newspaper,” and James Carville in 1999 called him "the archconservative godfather in [a] heavily funded war against [Clinton]."

As one web site wrote In his 2003 book Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them), Al Franken said that the abusive tone of rightwing zealots like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter can be traced back to Scaife, and in particular to one episode in 1981 when Scaife verbally assaulted a reporter. When the reporter, Karen Rothmeyer of the Columbia Journalism Review, asked Scaife about his funding of conservative groups, he replied, "You fucking communist cunt, get out of here." Franken writes that Scaife "went on to tell her that she was ugly and that her teeth were 'terrible.' Of Ms. Rothmeyer's mother, who was not present, he said, 'She's ugly, too.'"

I suppose Mrs. Kerry should be nice to everyone, including those who hate and unfairly attack her. The key to whether this incident hurt the Kerry’s is whether most people will learn the truth of the incident. Unfortunately, based on how the media acted in 2000 during their “War on Gore,” I expect only a few people will know the full story.

Lack of imagination

Among the areas of fault the 9/11 Commission found, as pointed out by Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, was that those in government had "a lack of imagination" and that "was the most important failing."

However, the Commission also had a failure of lack of imagination. One of the most important questions theCommission considered was whether anything could have been done to prevent the terrorist's attacks on 9/11. However one of the major events that might have played a part in allowing the 9/11 attacks was barely mentioned in the report.

In November 2000 the American people selected Al Gore as the 43rd president, however thanks to the efforts of Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, numerous Republicans, and a politically motivated group of US Supreme Court justices, Gore was denied the presidency.

As the 9/11 report states on page 198...The dispute over the election and the 36-day delay cut in half the normal transition period. Given that a presidential election in the United States brings wholesale change in personnel, this loss of time hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees.

The thing was, there didn't need to be a major transition. If allowed to win, Vice President Al Gore probably would have kept a number of Clinton appointees. In addition, as the one who lead the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security (also known as the Gore Commission) which investigated terrorism in the 1990s, Gore had a greater understanding of the importance of the issue and undoubtedly would have placed a higher level of importance on the topic.

Unfortunately, the GOP and Supreme Court thought they knew what was best for the country and denied Gore the Presidency. As attorney Mark H. Levine explained in A LAYMAN'S GUIDE TO THE SUPREME COURT DECISION IN BUSH V. GORE, the Surpreme Court stopped the counting of the votes in Florida because "if America knows the truth that Gore won, they won't accept the US Supreme Court overturning Gore's victory."

This was an important issue but one no one was willing to discuss. Some may find it distasteful to ask if a Gore Presidency could have prevented 9/11 but in reality not asking that question showed a lack of imagination.

Second thoughts

One of the keys to the GOP "winning" the 2000 presidential election were overseas ballots from military personnel. Bush was able to "gain" enough of a margin through those ballots that Florida called the state for him.

However, close to 700 of the military ballots were improper, according to the New York Times. Military ballots are viewed as favoring Republicans so they were probably responsible for the 500-plus "win" by Bush.

"Citing the Florida Department of State's web site, the Times reports that without the overseas ballots counted after election day, Gore would have won Florida, and thus the White House, by 202 votes."

So four years later one has to wonder how many of those soldiers are having second thoughts

In a Knight Ridder story (registration required) one soldier put it "I don't have any idea of what we're trying to do out here. I don't know what the (goal) is, and I don't think our commanders do, either. I feel deceived personally," Staff Sgt. A.J. Dean.

Another added "A lot of times I look at this place and wonder what have we really done. When we first got here, we all wanted to change it and make it better, but now I don't (care)," he said. "What am I here for?"

Sounds like Democrats should do better at the polls in 2004. In 2000 the Bushies "won" on military ballots (well actually the Times found that it was more like Republican military ballots, a number of which shouldn't have been counted) so you have to wonder this time whether the Bushies will decide to limit the number by saying "only legal ballots should be counted"?

Lies, lies and more lies

After seeing the GOP parade their officials out on Thursday in an effort to divert attention from the 9/11 commission report one has to wonder if they believe what they are saying or do they know they are lying and don't care.

GOP officials said the the investigation of Samuel R. Berger regarding missing document raised questions about whether Berger was trying to keep information from the 9/11 commission. That was flatly denied by both Berger and one of the commission members, who called the charge ''ridiculous."

"Berger's allies rallied behind him, questioning whether the Bush administration leaked news of the 10-month-old probe to deflect attention just days before the commission is set to publish its findings from its inquiry into the suicide jet attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

''None of our work is affected in any way," said the panel member, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ''We have many copies of it. He did not have access to anything that wasn't in duplicate. It can't have been to deprive us of information."

Hidden Agenda

What do you do when you are afraid of being called to task for mistakes. Blame someone else of course. With the release of the 9/11 commission set for this week, a months old investigation into whether Samuel Berger, the former White House national security adviser removed inadvertently took copies of several versions of an after-action memo on the millennium bombing plot from the Archives last fall.

Note the important word - Copies. Got that. Copies. Not originals.

The vein-bulging wild eyed groupies on the right immediately went into full "throttle" mode.

Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader, called it "a third-rate burglary", a reference to the Watergate scandal. "Berger's theft and destruction of classified documents is not 'sloppy', it's gravely serious," he said. "It is a national security crisis right now."

Un huh. Copies of copies are missing and it's a national security crisis. Makes you wonder what he would think if say a "president" didn't pay attention to security memos. I'm sure that's ok, but misplacing copies, now that's something to be concerned about.

If this is a "third-rate burglary" does that make what happened in Florida a FIRST RATE FELONY?

Democrats questioned the timing of the leak, which came months after the investigation began, on the eve of the Democratic convention and the final report of the September 11 commission.

"I do think the timing is very curious, given this has been under way now for this long," said Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader. "Somebody leaked it, obviously, with an intent, I think, to do damage to Mr Berger, and I think that's unfortunate."

Second Choice

The Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign team (notice they don't use the word re-election) recently announced the release of a television advertisement ("First Choice") which "features John Kerry’s first choice for a vice presidential running mate, United States Senator John McCain. In the new ad, John McCain discusses his support for the President and the leadership President Bush has provided in the War on Terror. "

Two questions - One - how come the ad doesn't reference that Al Gore was America's FIRST CHOICE in 2000 for President. "Gore Got More," votes that is, winning the election by a half million votes. Bush was only able to get his way into the White House thanks to his father's friends on the Supreme Court and nifty moves in Florida to throw out thousands and thousands of votes.

Second how come the ad didn't mention that McCain disagrees with a lot of Bush's policies? Also, wasn't Dick Cheney was Bush's SECOND CHOICE for Vice President, McCain being his first?

So since Bush likes nicknames so much, how about calling him George "Second Choice" Bush?

GOP admits Gore won Florida

In planning strategy for the 2004 election both parties look at the results of the 2000 election to give them idea of where they stand. For Republicans, Iowa, New Mexico and Wisconsin are states they lost narrowly and they are working hard to overcome those losses.

Apparently the GOP has added Florida to the list of states that they lost in 2000 and must to more to win this year

Robert Novak, best known for outing a CIA operative, recently wrote "Florida Republicans also are worried that the new voting machines may give Sen. John Kerry some 15,000 votes that Al Gore lost in 2000 because of ''overvotes.''

So there you have it. The GOP views Florida as a state they lost by 15,000 (yes, thousand) votes in 2000. The GOP will try to argue that the votes were properly thrown out and that they won. That's kinda like a convicted felon freed on a technicality claiming innocence.

Don't blame us - we didn't elect him

Apparently the White House has lodged a complaint with the Irish Embassy in Washington over RTE journalist Carole Coleman's interview with George Bush. The reason - as John Nichols of the Madison Capitol Times put it, "Bush had an unpleasant run-in with a species of creature he had not previously encountered often: a journalist. He did not react well to the experience..."

"Apparently under the mistaken assumption that reporters in the rest of the world are as ill-informed and pliable as the stenographers who "cover" the White House, Bush's aides scheduled a sit-down interview with Carole Coleman, Washington correspondent for RTE, the Irish public television network...Unfortunately, it appears that Coleman failed to receive the memo informing reporters that they are supposed to treat this president with kid gloves. Instead, she confronted him as any serious journalist would a world leader."

In evaluating the complaint, the Irish government must understand that Mr. Bush is not representative of the United States and was NOT elected president, rather installed through the actions of his brother in Florida and his father's appointees on the Supreme Court. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and was behind in the electoral vote when he and his brother's actions allowed him to ignore the wishes of the American people and take the presidency.

Unfortunately, the American press has too often stood by and not questioned his actions and it has taken the foreign press to ask him tough questions. To that end the American people owe a debt of gratitude to Ms. Coleman and possibly an apology for the administration's reaction.

Lying with impunity

One of the reasons the right wing and the GOP have been successful in defining the issues of the day is that they have figured out that in today's sound-bite mentality they can lie and not be called on it.

On Larry King's show former President Bill Clinton said "Some of the right-wing Republicans -- Rush Limbaugh, a lot of the other talk show people -- immediately said he was murdered. It was -- it was a mad time where you could say anything you wanted about the president or anybody that had the misfortune to know me."

So on the CNN media watch show Reliable Sources, how did rightwing talk show host Laura Ingram respond to Clinton's statement?

"I never heard Rush Limbaugh say anything of the like. And I'm certain he didn't say that."

When pushed about it she said "It wasn't Rush Limbaugh. .. No, he didn't say anyone - that the Clintons murdered anyone."

So just what did Limbaugh actually say?

OK, folks, I think I got enough information here to tell you about the contents of this fax that I got. Brace yourselves. This fax contains information that I have just been told will appear in a newsletter to Morgan Stanley sales personnel this afternoon.... What it is is a bit of news which says...there's a Washington consulting firm that has scheduled the release of a report that will appear, it will be published, that claims that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton, and the body was then taken to Fort Marcy Park.

So is Ingraham correct, that Limbaugh didn't actually allege that Foster "was murdered" by just repeating someone else's story "that claims that Vince Foster was murdered" or was it a lie? To me it's a lie. And did Ingraham get called on this lie? No, host Howard Kurtz replied "We'll have to revisit that another time."

I'm sure Ingraham smiled, knowing she and her ilk got away with another one.

Who's the Slimeball?

Former President George H.W. Bush said he had "total disdain" for Michael Moore and called Moore a "slimeball." Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, is likely to open eyes and help the current join his father as a "former" president.

But considering the slimy presidential election campaign George H.W. Bush ran in 1988, he should be the last one to criticize someone else for sliminess (or does he believe it takes a slimeball...).

For anyone who has forgotten, Bush (along with his RNC Chairman Lee Atwater) led one of the most disgusting and dishonest campaigns in recent memory, utilizing questionable advertising and speeches. Following the election, many news organization instituted Fact checks of candidates advertising to prevent future politicians from benefiting from lies the way Bush 41 did in 1988.

As one media outlet put it, Atwater was a "protage of the late South Carolina segregationist senator, Strom Thurmond, and personal Machiavelli to George Bush Sr. He's the man credited with coining "wedge issue." On his deathbed, he apologized for saying of Dukakis that he'd "strip the bark off the little bastard" and "make Willie Horton his running mate." His repentance made good press at the time of his death from a brain tumor in 1991, but his methods are still a blueprint for how we the living can run and win a nasty campaign."

Maybe the lack of grace and ethics is a family thing. After the 1984 vice presidential debate which pitted Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York against George H.W. Bush, Barbara Bush said she could not say on television what she thought of Ferraro, but "it rhymes with witch."

This from a woman whose family's accomplishments included sons (Jeb and Neil) who were involved in savings & loans that went under, and sons (Jeb & George) who possibly stole a presidential election.

Yeah, George you've got real moral authority to call someone a slimeball...