DAYS OF THE LONG KNIVES

Seems the Un-prez is absolutely relishing the fit of the Offal Office. Only a little over a month and he has done so much to us. Charming the press corps, charming the greedy, charming the stock market into a relapse. No wonder the Conservatives on the Supreme Court appointed him!

A word to the wise: all politicians lie. In this last election none told as big a whopper as Ralph Nader when he said, "Democrats and Republicans are alike." Sure, both Parties take campaign money from big corporate donors, but the Democrats stay loyal to the voters who brung them to office -- US! Don't blame Nader for losing us the election. We lost that because we were careless, especially in Florida. We must learn from his lie and our carelessness.

Biggest Bush Lie to date: "tax cut is giving money back to the people." That is just plain bullshit. Most of the tax cut is going to 1% of the richest people. It is no coincidence that many of them contributed to Dubya's campaign. Bush will get plenty back and so will his cabinet. [see list at end of article]

He has flip-flopped on an environmental campaign pledge. He now declares that his administration will not regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant and will rescind President Clinton's ban on logging and road building in some federal forest lands. Bush has also put money interests over the public interest with his support for the bankruptcy bill and repetitive motion initiative repeal.

This is just the beginning because Dubya has a great debt to pay to the corporations, interests and people who supported his campaign with millions of dollars. What we are seeing here is called quid pro quo. It is illegal but will not be prosecuted because it is masquerading as politics.

Another quid pro quo to the religious right in the works is a bill that will not only outlaw late term abortions but also go even further toward outlawing all abortion. When [not if] it passes the Repugnant Congress, it will make it criminal to even assist another woman by driving or helping her go to another state where abortion is still permitted. This is just the tip of the anti-woman iceberg.

President Clinton issued a number of pardons that have been severely criticized. The Repugnants insist that some were issued as payment for money contributed to his library and to the Democratic Party -- quid pro quo. The media has been zealous in prosecuting him despite of the lack of evidence.

The media has ignored the many suspicious or unpopular pardons given by other presidents and pursued every possible avenue to convict Clinton in the public's mind. http://www.thenation.com/

No corporation or special interests gives large sums of money to political candidates out of the "goodness of their heart." They do it for access to the candidate and for the hope of support when s[he] wins the office. If Clinton is to be vilified for what Burton's Congressional committee and Ashcroft's office considers to be quid pro quo, than so should Dubya.

Now we are hearing how much Dubya has progressed in his speaking ability -- we know because the media is telling us. Here's what they aren't telling us -- how they have covered, and still are covering for him.

Excerpts from The Nation article Mangler-in-Chief by Ken Silverstein:

···· Last month, the Boston Globe broke the amazing news that President George W. Bush is rapidly becoming the Pericles of modern politics. Under the headline, "As a Speaker, Bush Is Gaining Command," Anne Kornblut reported that the President's "delivery of prepared speeches has grown steadier, interrupted by far fewer of the tongue-twisters that once defined his campaign."

···· Within the next few weeks, the mangler-in-chief committed a fresh flurry of rhetorical blunders

···· Bush's frequent verbal lapses sometimes turn up in news stories, but a surprising number go unreported, unless they're picked up by a columnist or used in a summary piece about his misstatements.

···· Jacob Weisberg of Slate, who has compiled a long and wonderful list of Bush's verbal screw-ups, says that during the campaign he received a lot of "Bushisms" from reporters who didn't put them in their own stories. "They didn't want to seem like they were beating up on the guy, so they'd only use them if they were especially egregious," he says.

···· In other cases, the press has doctored Bush's words outright, made creative use of snippets and paraphrased his rhetorical errors."

···· Going back to the campaign, Bush solemnly declared in Greensboro, North Carolina, last October that "our priorities is our faith," which came out in the local newspaper, the News & Record, as the then-candidate having "said his priorities are faith and family."

···· As Weisberg points out, the press can't be expected to report every "Bushism," since the President "says something that makes reporters chuckle almost every day."

···· Still, for those of us who like to get the straight Bush, it's imperative to read a full transcript of his remarks. If you rely on press accounts, you never know what you might be missing.

twanda@gendergappers.org       

2001-012

Copyright 2001 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@gendergappers.org.

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-- from Jim Hightower's newsletter: the Cheney/Bush Cabinet:

···· Elaine Chao (Labor): an investment banker and corporate director, former vice president of Bank of America and board member for Northwest Airlines, Dole Food, Clorox and Columbia/HCA Health Care.

···· Norman Mineta (Transportation): corporate VP for Lockheed Martin; also former chairman of the House Transportation Committee, where his major contributors were the American Trucking Association, Boeing, General Electric, Greyhound, Lockheed, Northwest Airlines, UPS, Union Pacific and United Airlines.

···· Paul O'Neill (Treasury): CEO of Alcoa, the aluminum giant, and previously CEO of International Paper Co. and on the boards of Eastman Kodak and Lucent Technologies.

···· Gale Norton (Interior): formerly with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, an anti-environmental group funded by oil companies. Prominent member of "property rights" groups funded by Boise Cascade, DuPont and Louisiana Pacific; national chairwoman of the Coalition for Republican Environmental Advocates, funded by the American Forest Paper Association, Amoco, ARCO, the Chemical Manufacturers Association and Ford.

···· John Ashcroft (attorney general): sponsor of last year's Senate bill to extend the patent on the super-profitable allergy pill Claritin, owned by the giant pharmaceutical firm Schering-Plough, which gave him $50,000 for his last Senate campaign. He also got $1.7 million from oil, chemical and paper companies that were grateful for Ashcroft's opposition to funding environmental enforcement, voting for rollback of clean water protections and letting mining companies dump cyanide and other wastes on public land.

···· Rod Paige (Education): formerly Houston school superintendent, where he promoted corporatization. Food service went to Aramark Inc., payroll to Peoplesoft and accounting to SAP. Last year, he cut an exclusive marketing deal with Coca-Cola to put machines in the school hallways. He also brought in Primed Corp.'s Channel One, the "educational channel" that spends two out of every 10 minutes of broadcast time selling M&M/Mars, Pepsico, Reebok and Nintendo.

···· Colin Powell (State): on the board of America Online and was recipient of $100,000 a speech to a list of corporations too long to believe.

···· Anthony Principi (Veterans Affairs): heir to family-owned real estate company, also former president of QTC Medical Services Inc.; later with Lockheed Martin and most recently president of the airless technology firm Federal Network.

···· Donald Rumsfeld (Defense): formerly CEO of General Instrument Corp. and drug giant G.D. Searle & Co., also on the boards of Asea Brown Boveri, a huge Swedish engineering firm, and the Rand Corp. Also on the advisory board of Salomon Smith Barney, the Wall Street investment firm.

···· Ann Veneman (Agriculture): lawyer with a firm specializing in representing agribusiness giants and biotech corporations. On board of Calgene Inc., a subsidiary of Monsanto, the first firm to market genetically altered food. Also a participant in the International Policy Council of Agriculture, Food and Trade, a group funded by Monsanto, Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Kraft and Nestle.

···· Tommy Thompson (Health and Human Services): former governor of Wisconsin whose major contributors were HMOs, hospital chains, nursing homes, clinics, doctors and insurance companies. Phillip Morris gave him $72,000 in campaign contributions.

···· Spencer Abraham (Energy): one-term senator from Michigan who once sponsored a bill to abolish the Energy Department. Especially active in fight over requiring greater fuel efficiency from SUVs, giving him special brownie points with the energy and the auto industries.

···· Mel Martinez (HUD): no corporate connections; formerly the top manager of Orange County, Fla. That's Orlando/Disney World, and if you have visited, you know that ending urban sprawl is not his specialty.