Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

At his press conference yesterday, President Bush was asked about charges that he had received warnings prior to the September 11th attacks that a terrorist incident was imminent. He answered that even asking such a question was "an absurd insinuation."1 It was the same sentiment expressed by Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who said in May of 2002 that "[no one predicted] that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane."2

The problem for the president and the administration is that the White House has previously admitted that the president had personally received such specific warnings. As ABC News reported in May of 2002, "White House officials acknowledge that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the September 11th attacks that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." As Condoleezza Rice said at a hastily called press conference to spin these revelations, the President specifically received an "analytic report" on August 6th, 2001 at his Crawford mansion that "talked about Osama bin Laden's methods of operation" and "mentioned hijacking."4 According to Reuters, that report was congruent with "intelligence since 1998 that said followers of bin Laden were planning to strike U.S. targets, hijack U.S. planes."5

While the administration claims that the president's pre-9/11 warning was actually "not a warning," the threat was specific enough for Attorney General John Ashcroft to stop flying commercial airlines. While no warning was issued for the general public after Bush's personal intelligence warning, Ashcroft was flying exclusively by leased jet instead of commercial airlines because of an official "threat assessment by the FBI."6

1. President Bush Holds Press Conference, 12/15/2003.
2. "Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings", CBS News, 05/17/2002.
3. "Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11; Lawmakers Want Public Inquiry", ABC News, 05/16/2002.
4. National Security Advisor Holds Press Briefing, 05/16/2002.
5. Reuters, 7/24/03.
6. "Ashcroft Flying High", CBS News, 07/26/2001.

OK by me, but we start with France, and work down the list ranked by the degree of delusion, pomposity and silliness. It will take us some time to get out of Europe this way.

Hunger and homelessness increased in many of America's largest cities this year, with growing demand for emergency food supplies for families with children, the elderly and even people with jobs, a survey by U.S. mayors finds.

The report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, released Thursday, found that requests for emergency food assistance rose 17 percent overall from last year in the survey of 25 large cities. Requests for emergency shelter assistance increased by 13 percent, the report showed.

Give the chattering masses explosions on their tv screen, and they will smile their toothless smiles, eat their macaroni and cheese, and wave their polyester flags proudly.

On the question of 'what is it that we use as measure for to judge economic policies'...which may have been a conversation on this thread...it was somewhere...

Quote:

Hunger and homelessness increased in many of America's largest cities this year, with growing demand for emergency food supplies for families with children, the elderly and even people with jobs, a survey by U.S. mayors finds.

The report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, released Thursday, found that requests for emergency food assistance rose 17 percent overall from last year in the survey of 25 large cities. Requests for emergency shelter assistance increased by 13 percent, the report showed.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/wire/2003/12/18/homeless/index.html

Maybe, but I did see your usual amount of bitterness towards the average American.

The blue-collar vote is huge. Skilled and semi-skilled manual jobs are on the decline, of course, but if we count as blue-collar those workers without a college degree, as Ruy Teixeira and Joel Rogers do in their book Why the White Working Class Still Matters, then blue-collar voters represent 55 percent of all voters. They are, the authors note, the real swing vote in America. "Their loyalties shift the most from election to election and in so doing determine the winners in American politics."

This fact has not been lost on Republican strategists, who are now targeting right-leaning blue-collar men, or as they call them, "Nascar Dads." These are, reporter Liz Clarke of the Washington Post tells us, "lower or middle-class men who once voted Democratic but who now favor Republicans." Nascar Dads, commentator Bill Decker adds, are likely to be racing-car fans, live in rural areas, and have voted for Bush in 2000. Bush is giving special attention to steelworkers, autoworkers, carpenters and other building-trades workers, according to Richard Dunham and Aaron Bernstein of Business Week, and finding common cause on such issues as placing tariffs on imported steel and offering tax breaks on pensions.

We can certainly understand why Bush wants blue-collar voters. But why would a near majority of blue-collar voters still want Bush? Millionaires, billionaires for Bush, well, sure; he's their man. But why pipe fitters and cafeteria workers? Some are drawn to his pro-marriage, pro-church, pro-gun stands, but could those issues override a voter's economic self-interest?

Hochschild: Right. And this is a delicate point to try to get across. I think we all have feelings and they all can get appealed to. It doesn't mean a person is stupid if their feelings are getting appealed to. But I do think that this is going on, and that there's a kind of a dilemma here that the blue-collar guy, since the ?'70s on, has been suffering a giant economic downward slide. His paycheck is worth less. His job has become less secure. His benefits have been carved down. And all of this is bad, bad news for him. His wife's had to go to work, and now, 30 years later, the two of them earn what he alone would have earlier earned.

With this economic hit has come a cultural hit. Now I think it's a worldwide story, a kind of economic undermining of patriarchal customs and expectations. And so, with this economic decline may come marital instability -- a lot of hard things have hit this guy. And so how he feels psychologically becomes a really important question. And I think the story is that he believes -- whether it's true or not -- that a lot of people have come up from behind him. Women have come from behind. Minorities have come from behind and gotten ahead; immigrants, new arrivals, have come from behind and have gotten ahead. Even the spotted owl -- a lot of them are not environmentalists because they think somebody's now putting animal rights over their human rights. As he's sliding down, he imagines all these groups moving up.

And a very understandable thing to do is to look at them and want them to go back where they came from. The feeling is one of frustration, fear, anger. What he's not doing is looking at Bush, the guy at the top, who's rigging the whole economic game, and who's not doing a thing to support him, and who's actually deflecting blame away from the top. So it comes down to this: those feelings that come with a kind of loss of position, income and status among blue collar males is being exploited instead of addressed.