the daily snivel

  Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Three debates, three disasters for George W. Bush. Here's the transcript.

Tonight he came off to the voters, once again, as smirking, jumpy, pugilistic, arrogant, and dishonest. This was his last chance to convince people to vote for him, and instead all he could manage was a litany of sound bites about why people shouldn't vote for his prepared, charismatic, well-spoken, and presidential opponent.

But onto the lies:

I have got a comprehensive strategy to not only chase down the Al Qaida, wherever it exists -- and we're making progress; three-quarters of Al Qaida leaders have been brought to justice -- but to make sure that countries that harbor terrorists are held to account.

We're doing everything we can to protect our borders and ports.

But absolutely we can be secure in the long run. It just takes good, strong leadership.

SCHIEFFER: Anything to add, Senator Kerry?

KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.

KERRY: Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Liar!

What he said on March 13, 2002:

So I don't know where he is.  You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you.  I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.

And there will be other battles in Afghanistan.  There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly.  We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy.  We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q    But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him.  And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure.  And, again, I don't know where he is.  I  --  I'll repeat what I said.  I truly am not that concerned about him.  I know he is on the run.  I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country.  I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

Video link if you're not much for the reading. [or here if that one goes down]

Next we move on to the economy. This is dangerous territory for Bush, because the economy has suffered terribly under his administration's ideology:

SCHEIFFER: Senator Kerry, a new question. Let's talk about economic security. You pledged during the last debate that you would not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year. But the price of everything is going up, and we all know it. Health care costs, as you all talking about, is skyrocketing, the cost of the war.

My question is, how can you or any president, whoever is elected next time, keep that pledge without running this country deeper into debt and passing on more of the bills that we're running up to our children?

KERRY: I'll tell you exactly how I can do it: by reinstating what President Bush took away, which is called pay as you go. 

During the 1990s, we had pay-as-you-go rules. If you were going to pass something in the Congress, you had to show where you are going to pay for it and how. 

President Bush has taken -- he's the only president in history to do this. 

He's also the only president in 72 years to lose jobs -- 1.6 million jobs lost. He's the only president to have incomes of families go down for the last three years; the only president to see exports go down; the only president to see the lowest level of business investment in our country as it is today. 

Now, I'm going to reverse that. I'm going to change that. We're going to restore the fiscal discipline we had in the 1990s. 

Every plan that I have laid out -- my health-care plan, my plan for education, my plan for kids to be able to get better college loans -- I've shown exactly how I'm going to pay for those. 

And we start -- we don't do it exclusively -- but we start by rolling back George Bush's unaffordable tax cut for the wealthiest people, people earning more than $200,000 a year, and we pass, hopefully, the McCain-Kerry Commission which identified some $60 billion that we can get.

We shut the loophole which has American workers actually subsidizing the loss of their own job. They just passed an expansion of that loophole in the last few days: $43 billion of giveaways, including favors to the oil and gas industry and the people importing ceiling fans from China.

I'm going to stand up and fight for the American worker. And I am going to do it in a way that's fiscally sound. I show how I pay for the health care, how we pay for the education.

I have a manufacturing jobs credit. We pay for it by shutting that loophole overseas. We raise the student loans. I pay for it by changing the relationship with the banks.

This president has never once vetoed one bill; the first president in a hundred years not to do that.

And when you're the President of the United States and you're hit hard with fact after damning fact, what do you do? Why, you change the subject, of course. And, of course, you also make stuff up about your opponent:

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Well, his rhetoric doesn't match his record.

He been a senator for 20 years. He voted to increase taxes 98 times. When they tried to reduce taxes, he voted against that 127 times. He talks about being a fiscal conservative, or fiscally sound, but he voted over -- he voted 277 times to waive the budget caps, which would have cost the taxpayers $4.2 trillion.

He talks about PAYGO. I'll tell you what PAYGO means, when you're a senator from Massachusetts, when you're a colleague of Ted Kennedy, pay go means: You pay, and he goes ahead and spends.

That's the President: forget about what I did, lookit that librul over there!

Magicians do this trick all the time. It's called misdirection. A puff of smoke, a flash of light, a dash of the hand. It turns your eye away at the critical moment from the sleight of hand. Bush does it again on the topic of jobs:

SCHIEFFER: Let's go to a new question, Mr. President. Two minutes. And let's continue on jobs.

You know, there are all kind of statistics out there, but I want to bring it down to an individual. 

Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

BUSH: I'd say, Bob, I've got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here's some help for you to go get an education. Here's some help for you to go to a community college. 

We've expanded trade adjustment assistance. We want to help pay for you to gain the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century.

You know, there's a lot of talk about how to keep the economy growing. We talk about fiscal matters. But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works.

So, when questioned about jobs, Bush waves his hands and talks about his education plan. He'll do this again later. I'll point it out for you.

And Kerry calls him on it:

KERRY: I want you to notice how the president switched away from jobs and started talking about education principally. 

Let me come back in one moment to that, but I want to speak for a second, if I can, to what the president said about fiscal responsibility.

Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country.

(LAUGHTER)

This president has taken a $5.6 trillion surplus and turned it into deficits as far as the eye can see. Health-care costs for the average American have gone up 64 percent; tuitions have gone up 35 percent; gasoline prices up 30 percent; Medicare premiums went up 17 percent a few days ago; prescription drugs are up 12 percent a year. 

But guess what, America? The wages of Americans have gone down. The jobs that are being created in Arizona right now are paying about $13,700 less than the jobs that we're losing. 

And the president just walks on by this problem. The fact is that he's cut job-training money. $1 billion was cut. They only added a little bit back this year because it's an election year. 

They've cut the Pell Grants and the Perkins loans to help kids be able to go to college. 

They've cut the training money. They've wound up not even extending unemployment benefits and not even extending health care to those people who are unemployed.

I'm going to do those things, because that's what's right in America: Help workers to transition in every respect.

Later in the evening comes a question about the minimum wage, and the fact that real wages are dropping in the United States and more people are living in poverty. Here's what John Kerry had to say:

SCHIEFFER: The gap between rich and poor is growing wider. More people are dropping into poverty. Yet the minimum wage has been stuck at, what, $5.15 an hour now for about seven years. Is it time to raise it?

KERRY: Well, I'm glad you raised that question. 

It's long overdue time to raise the minimum wage. 

And, America, this is one of those issues that separates the president and myself.

We have fought to try to raise the minimum wage in the last years. But the Republican leadership of the House and Senate won't even let us have a vote on it. We're not allowed to vote on it. They don't want to raise the minimum wage. The minimum wage is the lowest minimum wage value it has been in our nation in 50 years.

If we raise the minimum wage, which I will do over several years to $7 an hour, 9.2 million women who are trying to raise their families would earn another $3,800 a year.

The president has denied 9.2 million women $3,800 a year, but he doesn't hesitate to fight for $136,000 to a millionaire.

One percent of America got $89 billion last year in a tax cut, but people working hard, playing by the rules, trying to take care of their kids, family values, that we're supposed to value so much in America -- I'm tired of politicians who talk about family values and don't value families.

What we need to do is raise the minimum wage. We also need to hold onto equal pay. Women work for 76 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That's not right in America.

And we had an initiative that we were working on to raise women's pay. They've cut it off. They've stopped it. They don't enforce these kinds of things.

Now, I think that it a matter of fundamental right that if we raise the minimum wage, 15 million Americans would be positively affected. We'd put money into the hands of people who work hard, who obey the rules, who play for the American Dream.

And if we did that, we'd have more consumption ability in America, which is what we need right in order to kick our economy into gear. I will fight tooth and nail to pass the minimum wage.

And what does George W. Bush have to say about living standards?

BUSH: Actually, Mitch McConnell had a minimum-wage plan that I supported that would have increased the minimum wage. 

But let me talk about what's really important for the worker you're referring to. And that's to make sure the education system works. It's to make sure we raise standards. 

Listen, the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it. The No Child Left Behind Act says, "We'll raise standards. We'll increase federal spending. But in return for extra spending, we now want people to measure -- states and local jurisdictions to measure to show us whether or not a child can read or write or add and subtract."

There's more of that famous misdirection. The only thing Bush can talk about in terms of the domestic situation is the No Child Left Behind Act, which is an underfunded set of empty promises. And it's all he has, so he's stretched it as far as he can. Yes, it really is a jobs act, Mr. President. Now settle down and drink your juice.

[update:] See World O'Crap for some more excellent snarkiness and fact-checking.

Corrente has more of Bush's lies tonight, and offers some excellent analysis. 

  As always, Angela nails it.

I honestly don't know where she finds these gems. While I suspect there are factual quibbles to be made with the article, you really do have to concede that (as I have previously maintained) today's taken-for-granted institutions are yesterday's liberal ideas. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a system for referencing "permalinks" or archived links (at least not until she archives them), so I'm going to reproduce her post here:

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.

The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

 

  Fan mail

One thing I've noticed lately is that there's been a huge increase in traffic to my website. My webhost allows me to buy ad-free hosting per set amount of bandwidth (a year or two gigabytes of data transfer, whichever comes first). When I first moved from my Carleton University webspace to bigjuicybrains.net, I actually found that this was plenty. Now, however, I've blown through over a gigabyte in transfers in a little over three months.

It may soon be time to upgrade.

Anyway, here's some mail I got today. It bugged me, not so much because it was critical, but because he seemed to base his conclusions on the most cursory of glances at my website, and so I felt both misjudged and insultingly condescended to. My response follows.

Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 18:49:55 -0600
From: Ian J beacom
Subject: A suggestion to improve your intellect.

I was surfing the net looking for more information on misanthropy when i discovered your website. All I can say is this: you need to learn a lot more...only then will you'll realize many things including how ignorant you are (non-informed), how arrogant (artificial inflated sense of self-importance) and what a low sense self-esteem you have. I suggest you read an excellent book by Alan de Botton, called Status Anxiety.
Just because you have a high intelligence quotient doesn't mean you're necessarily smart. "smart" invovles a mix of knowledge, experience (one area I can tell you lack in), and critical thinking.
Also, just because you have a high IQ doesn't mean you should ever have an attitude about it...after all, you never personally ACHIEVED IT, but rather lucked in in the gamble of nature (genetics). Having an ego about something you never personally achieved or worked for (especially when it is used to put down others) is a laughable attempt at trying to boost your own obviously low levels of self esteem. People with real self esteem don't care what others think about them. As well, they don't crave to be famous, take over the world, and base their pathetic attempt at grasping happiness on how much others love them.....You should evolve....Misanthropy does nobody any good...espacially the rest of the world....why don't you use your so called "great brains" and do something good for humanity (after all, you want to leave a legacy don't you?). Perhaps then you can actually start to feel proud of yourself (look up the term intelligent misanthropy!). Good luck. Ian.

My response:

Hi,

In regards to your e-mail, I'm always happy to get someone else's perspectives on the world, so thanks for writing. In one sense I agree with you when you say that raw intelligence doesn't necessarily equate with being "smart" but I do take exception with your e-mail mainly for the reason that I don't think you've read nearly enough of my website, or know nearly enough about me as a person, to begin pronouncing judgment.

It's true that some things I've written focus on notions of misanthropy, but most of those were written quite a few years ago, and I've written much more since then about political activism, legal change, and social justice. I really don't care about fame or exceptionalism in the way that you imply. My website has always been about showing my good AND bad sides to the world, and never trying to filter things out to leave the best possible impression of me. I could take down all the things that I don't really think or agree with any more, but I've always felt that would defeat the purpose and deny the fact that I have grown and changed.

In terms of "making a contribution to the world," all I can say is that I'm in my final year of law school and I've spent the past year of that serving the community at my school's poverty law clinic. I continuously put in 20-25 hours a week there with a heavy caseload above and beyond the obligations of my other classes because I love helping people in need, and never look for thanks or recognition for this. I'm also actively involved in my school's innocence project, which aims to exonerate the wrongfully convicted by presenting new evidence that was not available or not presented at trial. I'm also an active volunteer in the community and I'm going to work for a legal aid criminal law firm after I graduate so that I can continue to be of assistance to people who need advocates in a time of singular need. I have no interest in becoming rich or famous and certainly don't ask anyone to pat me on the back for following my social conscience.

Perhaps in some very superficial assessment you have determined that I am a self-aggrandizing and immature person with no life experience, but in all honesty I think you've completely missed the mark. You take things as literal when they are meant in jest, and seemed to have missed a whole boatload of content about my abhorrence of cruelty, greed, exploitation, and violence. My worst sin is probably that I have an uncensored web page and the odd lamentation against ignorance, but I think this just shows that I really DON'T care what other people think of me, or I'd spend more time tailoring it to show the best possible side.

Cheers,
Rob.
 

  Terrible news, everyone...

Christopher Reeve died this weekend at the age of 52.

Every major media outlet been mentioning this, so I'm not posting is so much because it's breaking news as I am because of the personal impact this news had on me. I almost cried when I heard this. When I was a boy, I absolutely loved the Superman movies, and since his starring role, Christopher Reeve has remained synonymous with Superman. People don't mention Village of the Damned when they talk about him. No, it's Superman.

The Superman movies thrilled me when I was a kid, and seeing Christopher Reeve as that superhuman boy scout, who could not tell a lie, who was never greedy or vindictive and never sought power over others, served as a very early role model for me. I don't think I'm alone in that either -- I'm sure that, for a generation of kids who tied towels around their necks like capes and ran around the house pretending they were heroes, too, Christopher Reeve embodied the ultimate good guy. Someone who would never let you down.

I've since grown up, and filled my life with real-life heroes and role models, but deep down I never let go of that ideal that Reeve's portrayal Superman embodies. I went into law because I want to help people, and I work in a poverty law clinic because I don't want people's ability to pay to be the determinative factor in how much I can help them. I want to defend the underdog, and do what's right over what is profitable. I can't jump over tall buildings, but I can be honest and dependable and concerned with truth and justice and playing by the rules. My moral compass is quite significantly oriented to those values I loved as a small boy -- doing good because you had power, and because it was right.

After Reeve's accident, he gained a new prominence as an active proponent of research aimed to help the disabled. I don't think there's a worse fate than to have your vital, active mind trapped in a paralyzed and helpless body, and Reeve helped shine the spotlight on new paths of research -- such as stem cell therapy -- that might one day improve the quality of life for the paralyzed. I think we should take a lesson from his passing, as well as the passing of Ronald Reagan -- and, without a doubt, the tragedies and struggles of the thousands of non-celebrities afflicted with grave trauma to the nervous system and degenerative diseases -- and redouble our focus and dedication on making those forms of research viable.

We need more stem cell lines.

Fetal stem cell tissue comes from unimplanted test tube babies that would be discarded in any event, and not aborted fetuses. When I heard of some people making light of Reeve's death because he supported stem cell resarch, saying things like "I hope there are wheelchair ramps in hell," I was enraged by the ignorance.

We need more knowledge.
We need more funding.
We need more courage in our government.

Make these lives and these deaths mean something - donate, vote, support. 

  Aw, who needs you?

[** updated ** October 12, 2004 at 4:47 pm]

It's not a good commentary on the either/both myself and/or the state of people these days when the romantically detached and unattainable girl of my dreams that I'm (not so) secretly in love with is nevertheless funnier, more literate, more interesting, and more interested in me than just about every real life lonely single gal actively looking for a man on lavalife.com.

I guess I should elaborate. Lately I've been feeling mopey, because I've been feeling very uncertain about what to do regarding my strong but unproductive feelings for someone special to me. I accept that this isn't the right time to be professing my affection, and decided that perhaps some distraction was in order. Accordingly, I reactivated my silly on-line dating profile for several days, thinking that even a couple of dates that went absolutely nowhere beyond long, drawn out efforts to politely drink coffee amidst a smattering of awkward chit-chat would lead me to realize that there were plenty of fish in the sea and that I needn't endure feverish, repetitive dreams about a certain someone every night.

So, several e-mail messages were sent (at 6 paid credits a pop!) over the course of a couple of days later, and for all of that sucking up of pride and making a real effort to reach out to people who by definition are lonely and desperate too, and -- nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Bah.

Profile deleted in a fit of self-loathing for having sunk so low and for having achieved so little.

Back to unfulfilling, lonesome, but more preferable dreams for me! 

  Buy this book

From America (The Book) by Jon Stewart:

A free and independent press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy. It serves to inform the voting public on matters relevant to its well-being. Why they've stopped doing this is a mystery. I mean, 300 camera crews outside a courthouse to see what Kobe Bryant is wearing when the judge sets his hearing date, while false information used to send our country to war goes unchecked? What the fuck happened? These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far. They have violated a trust. "Was the president successful in convincing the country?" Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! "Hey, we just give the people what they want." "What can we do, this administration is secretive." "But the last season of Friends really is news." The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed... You're supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit! I... fuck it. Just fuck it...

Buy online:

www.amazon.com
www.chapters.indigo.ca