Bush Supporters' Aftermath Thread IV

I can't resist saying that the evidence showing OJ's guilt was overwhelming. The problem was that there was a racist jury.

Well, I agree, but I think you get the general point of my post.

How about we use Michael Jackson instead.

Can we please get back to the main point of this thread, attacking Mr Bush?

Here is another excellent piece by the Post's E. J. Dionne.

Smearing Like It's 2003

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, February 26, 2007; Page A15

Even as jurors pondered whether Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff should be convicted for lying about what the Bush administration did to smear one of its critics, there was Cheney accusing another adversary of doing the work of the terrorists.

The fabricate-and-smear cycle illustrated so dramatically during the case of I. Lewis "Scooter'' Libby explains why President Bush is failing to rally support for the latest iteration of his Iraq policy. The administration's willingness at the outset to say anything, no matter how questionable, to justify the war has destroyed its credibility. Its habit of attacking those who expressed misgivings has destroyed any goodwill it might have enjoyed. Bush and Cheney have lost the benefit of the doubt.


Al Sharpton's Stunning Reminder
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Richard Cohen: An Oscar for Gore's Second Act


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Yet Cheney has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. His latest demon is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he accuses of validating al-Qaeda's objectives.

"Al-Qaeda functions on the basis that they think they can break our will,'' Cheney told ABC News on Friday by way of explaining his earlier attack on the speaker. "That's their fundamental underlying strategy, that if they can kill enough Americans or cause enough havoc, create enough chaos in Iraq, then we'll quit and go home.''

Cheney added: "And my statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that then we will validate the strategy of al-Qaeda. I said it, and I meant it.''

No doubt he did, and those words illustrate the administration's political methodology from the very beginning of its public campaign against Iraq. Back in 2002 and early 2003, it browbeat a reluctant country into this war by making assertions about an Iraqi nuclear program that proved to be groundless and by inventing ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda that didn't exist.

Then, once our troops were committed, anyone who had second thoughts could be trashed and driven back as a pro-terrorist weakling. The quagmire would be self-perpetuating: Once you checked in, you could never leave.

The evidence presented at the Libby trial has demonstrated how worried Cheney was that this scheme could unravel. Thanks to Patrick Fitzgerald, the painstaking prosecutor, we know that Cheney was beside himself over former ambassador Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed article undercutting the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had sought nuclear materials in Niger.

Whatever the jury decides, Fitzgerald has amply demonstrated that Cheney directed Libby to destroy Wilson's credibility, partly by leaking that his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative who had suggested Wilson was well qualified to investigate the claims in Niger. For Libby, Fitzgerald said in closing his case, Valerie Wilson "wasn't a person. She was an argument, a fact to use against Joe Wilson.''

Libby-Cheney apologists have argued over and over that Cheney had a right to be angry because Wilson said that Cheney had sent him to Niger. But Wilson said no such thing. In his New York Times piece, Wilson wrote only that he had been "informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report.'' That was true.

The attack apparatus has now turned on Fitzgerald, whose record is that of a thoroughly nonpartisan prosecutor. Fitzgerald's perjury rap against Libby, Cheney allies say, is a cheap attempt to criminalize politics.

Really? Here's what Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) had to say about perjury: "Lying under oath is an ancient crime of great weight because it shields other offenses, because it blocks the light of truth in human affairs. It is a dagger in the heart of our legal system, and indeed in our democracy. It cannot, it should not, it must not be tolerated.''

Ros-Lehtinen made that statement not about Libby, but to justify the impeachment of Bill Clinton back in 1998. I have no idea where she stands on the Plame-Wilson case. But it's certainly amusing that so many who were eager to throw Clinton out of office for perjury and obstruction of justice when he lied about sex are now livid at Fitzgerald for bringing comparable charges in a controversy over the rationale for war. Do they think sex is more important than war?

Whatever price Scooter Libby pays, the country is already paying for the divisive practices of a crowd that wanted to go to war in Iraq in the very worst way -- and did exactly that. As a result, we confront the mess in Baghdad and the continued threat of terrorism as an angry, polarized nation.

McG, the statue toppling cartoon is brilliant. I hate it, but love it.

You ARE sorely delusional, aren't you, little one. As long as it supports your blinkered viewpoint, you'll buy into any old talking point without giving it any thought whatsoever.

Why doesn't the public get it? Bush's budget cuts health care for children, but maintains huge tax cuts for the very wealthy. This further buttresses my disdain for the American electorate.

While off the topic, I noted that Al Sharpton may be related to Strom Thurmond. I guess this establishes racism as hereditary.

I guess the air is a bit thin up there where you reside. Are you certain that your genes are free of the taint of racism and other forms of human frailty?

Advocate, after a member's idiotic proclamation of cuts in the VA funding which were subsequently thoroughly discredited, I thought you would not walk into a similar trap based on pure manufactured Democrat hype.

Repeat after me: A cut in the rate of growth in future spending is not a budget cut........A cut in the rate of growth in future spending is not a budget cut......A cut in the rate of growth in future spending is.......

The Democrats yell out of one side of their mouth that the President's deficits are too large while yelling out of the other that he's cutting funds to the needy. And the fact is that the President can move money around via executive order, but the Democrats are the ones who have the power to pass any spending budgets these days. If they don't like his proposals, they sure can rewrite them. But there's no political advantage in that--the President gets the credit or blame for whatever Congress does.

The Associated Press February 5, 2007, 1:22PM EST text size: TT
From BusinessWeek
By KEVIN FREKING
WASHINGTON

Health care providers would get smaller pay increases when caring for the elderly, poor and disabled under President Bush's budget plan submitted to Congress on Monday.

The recommendations, if adopted, would trim Medicare spending by $66 billion over five years. That means the health care program for seniors would grow at a 6.7 percent clip rather than a 7.6 percent rate, budget officials said.

Bush also calls for reducing Medicaid spending by about $25 billion over five years, which would just slightly dent the more than $1.2 trillion the federal government will spend on health care for the poor over the next five years. Congress would have to sign off on about half of the proposed Medicaid savings, while the remainder are regulatory changes that administration will pursue.

The president, who said he seeks a balanced budget by 2012, took aim at the two programs, which account for $1 out of every $4 spent by the federal government. However, the president called for smaller reductions last year, and those proposals went nowhere.

Democratic lawmakers were cool to the recommendations. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., described the Medicare and Medicaid proposals as "declaring war" on the poor and on Democrats. Stark, who oversees the House Ways and Means Committee's health subcommittee, said that savings can be achieved by targeting payments to health care providers, but not in the ways that President Bush sought.

For example, Stark said that he believes Congress can lower payments to insurance companies that provide managed care for seniors, a concept the administration opposes.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, noted that the proposed Medicare reductions are more than the president asked from any previous Congress.

Baucus said payments to insurance companies that provide managed care should be "on the table" of potential spending cuts. He took issue with the changes that Bush seeks for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides health coverage to about 6 million people.

The program cost about $5 billion annually. The president called for an additional $4.2 billion in funding over five years, but Baucus said it may take as much as $15 billion simply to maintain current coverage.
SOURCE

Hmm, let's see.

If you have an ever-expanding population which requires the same level of service, how do you provide this service when the amount spent per taxpayer drops without increasing the amount spent?

Cycloptichorn

If it's a problem, all Congress has to do is increase the funding. Congress passes the budget, not the President.

Yeah, I know. But if the number of taxpayers requiring services increases, and the money to give them that service doesn't increase, how is the same level of service provided?

That's why cutting increases is the same thing as cutting money for programs; it doesn't allow them to grow with the population.

Cycloptichorn

Foxy, first, I didn't say that Bush's proposals would be sustained. But we should know of his distorted proposals. Thank goodness that we now have the Dems to reign him in.

Second, the medical area has the highest rate of inflation. Thus, if Bush's spending proposals here are lower than inflation, they are real cuts. One doesn't have to be an economist to realize this.

So if you're concerned, lobby your elected representatives to spend more. They are the ones with the power to do so, not the President. And if they don't, just how concerned for the poor do you really think they are? Or perhaps my take on it that it is all purely partisan political hype is the right one.

It wouldn't bother me if the funding was cut so much if there weren't also massive tax breaks proposed in the same budget. Doesn't make any sense to be giving tax breaks during a time when services are pared back.

Cycloptichorn

Sure it does if it increases federal revenues and/or allows people to do for themselves and be less dependent on government. But you can also lobby your elected representatives to not cut taxes and/or raise taxes too.

Well, it doesn't increase federal revenues. The other part is arguable, though.

The only real problem is that this is a theory of how it would make sense to cut taxes when services are also being cut. There isn't any actual evidence to back up the theory, but the tax cuts? There's real evidence that they directly affect those who rely upon the programs.

So it's difficult for me to deny the reality of the tax cuts by believing in something for which there is no objective proof.

Cheers

Cycloptichorn

Foxy says that the people should do more for themselves. I guess this means that the elderly, children, and poor should drop dead before making demands on the government.

It is chilling that, in our system, the well-to-do can be healthier and live longer than those guilty of being poorer. I gather that, among the rich countries, this exists only in the USA.