NEW YORK - Republicans portrayed President Bush as a strong wartime leader at their national convention Monday, adopting a platform endorsing his agenda and repeatedly recalling his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks just a few miles away.
He (Cheney) recently has said he would support Bush's decision on the matter.Cheney's office says that like Bush, the vice president is concerned that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act -- which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman -- is under attack because of actions by officials in certain states.
The Human Rights Campaign, the leading gay rights lobbying group, issued an enthusiastic statement after Mr Cheney's remarks. "President Bush must be feeling the heat," the group's president, Cheryl Jacques, said. "Millions of Republican families, like the Cheneys, have gay friends and family members and are offended by President Bush's efforts to put discrimination in the constitution."
Cheney's campaign press secretary, Anne Womack, said the vice president's position had not changed.
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"That's been his position for the past four years - his position has been completely consistent," she said. "The idea that he broke new ground or broke with the president today, people are just ignoring the reality of his statements over the past three and a half years."
ATHENS, Greece - Iraqi soccer players reacted angrily Friday after being told that their nation's Olympic participation was mentioned in TV commercial by the re-election campaign for President Bush.
The players called on Bush to stop using them to win votes in the United States.
“Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign,” midfielder Salih Sadir was quoted as saying. “He can find another way to advertise himself.”
“Our purpose is not to politicize the football team in any way,” Mark Clark, a consultant for the Iraqi Olympic Committee, said. “It seems the story was engineered.”
“It is a little naughty,” he said. “The players are not very sophisticated politically; they are a little naive. Whoever posed these questions knew that the reaction would be negative.
Another Iraqi player asked: “How will (Bush) meet his God having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes.”
“It is possible something was lost in translation. It’s a free, new Iraq, and the players are entitled to their opinions but we are disappointed.”
Iraq’s soccer players once lived in fear of Uday Hussein, son of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, who used to beat the soles of their feet or throw them in prison for slip-ups on the pitch.
Under current coach Adnan Hamd, they have defied the odds to reach the quarterfinals at the Athens Olympics, where they will play Australia on Saturday.
Hamd said, “The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the stadium and there are shootings on the road?”
Abbas, the swimmer, finished his military service two weeks before the war began in March 2003. "Thanks to God," he said.
He was sitting in his family's home in a quiet section of Baghdad when the bombing began. No one he knew was killed or injured. When the war ended, he trained for one week in Iraq's Olympic-size indoor pool. But then, he said, U.S. soldiers took over the pool and he no longer could swim there. He attended the world championships in Barcelona without training, he said, and didn't get a chance to swim again until this February, when he moved to Canada. Clearly, this was not the preferred way to prepare for the Games.
No. 747-04
IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 5, 2004DoD Identifies Marine Casualties
The Department of Defense announced today the death of three Marines who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Cpl. Dean P. Pratt, 22, of Stevensville, Mont., died Aug. 2 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Gunnery Sgt. Elia P. Fontecchio, 30, of Milford, Mass., died Aug. 4 from injuries received from enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif.
Lance Cpl. Joseph L. Nice, 19, of Nicoma Park, Okla., died Aug. 4 due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif.
July 8, 2004: "Another long day of speeches and fundraisers. Met with all these phony media company execs. Had to promise them some bill next term and shake a lot of stupid hands, but they did bring in two or three million or so. Whatever. Karl keeps a list. I got big laughs during my speech, so I'm happy."
Aug 6, 2004
US President Bush has told a roomful of top Pentagon brass that his administration would never stop looking for ways to harm the United States.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we," Bush said.
No one in Bush's audience of military brass or Pentagon chiefs reacted.
Texas educators are debating what will be taught in new sexual education textbooks for its high school students. The 15-member Texas Board of Education is considering and will likely approve four books, all of which extol the virtues of abstinence. Three make no mention of contraceptives at all while one makes passing reference to condoms.
The battle in Texas has national implications because the state is the second-biggest market for textbooks in the United States. Books approved by the state's school board are typically marketed nationally.
According to Centers for Disease Control figures, Texas has been among the top five states in the country for teen-age pregnancies for several years.
When he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush pushed for an abstinence-based sexual education curriculum. He raised his concerns to a national level when he said in this year's State of the Union address: ''We will double federal funding for abstinence programs, so schools can teach this fact of life: Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.''
If approved, the texts are likely to appear in classrooms in August 2005 -- where they could be the standard text for about 10 years.
Local school districts are not required to use one of the new books but they receive state funding to buy them if they do.
(CBS) During California's rolling blackouts, when streets were lit only by head lights and families were trapped in elevators, Enron Energy traders laughed, reports CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales.
One trader is heard on tapes obtained by CBS News saying, "Just cut 'em off. They're so f----d. They should just bring back f-----g horses and carriages, f-----g lamps, f-----g kerosene lamps."
Before the 2000 election, Enron employees pondered the possibilities of a Bush win.
"It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy," says one Enron worker.
That didn't happen, but they were sure President Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices.
"When this election comes Bush will f------g whack this s--t, man. He won't play this price-cap b------t."
Crude, but true.
"We will not take any action that makes California's problems worse and that's why I oppose price caps," said Mr. Bush on May 29, 2001.
Both the Justice Department and Enron tried to prevent the release of these tapes. Enron's lawyers argued they merely prove "that people at Enron sometimes talked like Barnacle Bill the Sailor."
CHICAGO, Aug. 3 — Laws passed by 18 states requiring guns to be safely stored away from children have reduced the rate of teenage suicides, researchers said Tuesday. The child access prevention laws implemented since 1989 may have prevented more than 300 suicides among 14- to 17-year-olds through 2001, according to the study by Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore.
Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among American teenagers, accounting for 1,883 deaths in 2001.
''There were 63,954 suicides among youth aged 14 through 20 years during the 1976-2001 study period, 39,655 (62 percent) of which were committed with firearms,'' according to the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Laws that raised the required age of gun buyers and owners, however, did not significantly reduce suicide rates, the study said.
As they start, Kerry has 14 states and the District of Columbia in his column for 193 electoral vote while Bush has 25 states for 217 votes, according to an Associated Press analysis of state polls as well as interviews with strategists across the country.
Both candidates are short of the magic 270 electoral votes. The margin of victory will come from:
* Tossups: Bush and Kerry are running even in 11 states with a combined 128 electoral votes. Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan and West Virginia are the toughest battlegrounds. Two other tossups, Pennsylvania and Oregon, could soon move to Kerry’s column.
* Leaning to Kerry: Maine, Minnesota and Washington (a combined 25 electoral votes) favor Kerry over Bush by a few percentage points. Gore carried them in 2000.
* Leaning to Bush: North Carolina, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, Virginia, Arkansas and Missouri (a combined 73 electoral votes) give Bush modest leads. He won all seven in 2000.Al total, 21 states are in play. Some will bounce between "lean" to "tossup" throughout the campaign.
Four years ago, Bush won 30 states and their 271 electoral votes — one more than needed. Gore, who won the popular vote, claimed 20 states plus the District of Columbia for 267 electoral votes.Reapportionment? Wasn't that called "redistricting" when we last heard of it? I guess the neocon press (I don't think they get irony, so I'm calling a spade a spade here) didn't want us to remember the GOP's, led by tom delay, big party power grab the last few years. Remember when the Texas democrats spent some time in Oklahoma In May 2003 to deprive the real evil-dooers (GOP members)a quarum in the Texas State House of Reps. It worked for a while then in August Texas became a true Banana Republic.
Since then, reapportionment added electoral votes to states with population gains and took them from states losing people. The result: Bush’s states are now worth 278 electoral votes and Gore’s are worth just 260.
Eleven of the twelve Democrats in the state senate refused to attend the special session, convening instead in Albuquerque, New Mexico July 29, outside the jurisdiction of the Republican-controlled Texas state government. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat, has rebuffed requests that the legislators be extradited.
The Democrats refused to return, defying the fines, which took effect on Thursday, August 14, starting at $1,000 each, doubling to $2,000 on Friday, $4,000 on Saturday and $5,000 on Sunday and every day following until the special session ends August 26. The total fine for boycotting the entire special session would amount to $57,000, and the Republican senators specified that this be paid from personal and not party funds.
Several Republican senators suggested that Democrats who do not pay the fines would be deprived of their votes in the state Senate, an action that would deprive as many as 8 million people of representation (each Senate district has about 700,000 residents). Neither Governor Rick Perry nor state Attorney General Greg Abbott have yet taken a position on disenfranchisement of senators, which has no precedent under the state constitution.
The boycott by the Democratic state senators repeats the tactic employed by Democratic members of the lower house who left Texas as a group three months ago. They waited at a hotel in Oklahoma until the regular session of the legislature ended, frustrating the initial Republicans effort to push through the redistricting plan.
Governor Perry called a special session of the legislature and the redistricting plan was passed through the lower house, but the bill failed in the state Senate for lack of a two-thirds majority. Perry then called a second special session of the legislature, for which the Republicans imposed new rules ending the traditional two-thirds requirement for a bill to pass the Senate.
Kerry’s best prospects may be in the five tossup states won by Bush in 2000: Ohio, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and West Virginia.
Winning either Ohio’s 20 electoral votes or Florida’s 27 would do the trick.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 - President Bush on Monday generally endorsed the two main recommendations of the 9/11 commission, saying he would support creation of a potentially powerful post, national intelligence director, and the establishment of a counterterrorism center to coordinate intelligence analysis and efforts to thwart attacks.
Commentary
Perhaps we prefer the lie?
Eight years ago, when I began writing for the Oklahoma Gazette, I named my column for the essential tension in life, as in any democracy: the difference between rhetoric and reality. I teach a class by the same name at Oklahoma City University because students need to learn the difference between spin and fact, between what Orwell called linguistic “insincerity” and the often painful truth. But this summer, there is no need to enroll in such a class to know the difference. All you have to do is pay attention.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by a Republican, says that not only were there no weapons of mass destruction, and no links to al-Qaida, but that Congress might also not have authorized the war against Iraq if they had known what they know now — which is the truth.
The so-called “defense of marriage” amendment failed, not because we are all of one mind about homosexuality, but because it has become abundantly clear that the whole thing has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage and everything to do with the politics of division — which is the truth.
When the British report exposed the big lie about the threat posed by Iraq, Tony Blair did what real leaders do and took “full personal responsibility.” Bush, on the other hand, in the words of syndicated columnist Maureen Dowd, “took full personal irresponsibility” and continues to press “the preposterous case that he has made America safer”— which is not the truth.
Facts are such pesky things to a true believer. Whether it’s global warming or the case for evolution, the true believer just winks at the evidence and claims that it’s all a test of faith. There are fundamentalists, for example, who believe that God placed ancient fossils in the earth to see whether we would choose science or Genesis. Meet God the trickster. And whatever you do, don’t let it slip that one can believe in both evolution and God — which is the truth.
We are all guilty of bias, of course, and prone to our prejudices and predispositions. But we are approaching a time when truth has absolutely nothing to do with anything. In other words, one can become a legend in one’s own mind and develop a complete immunity from either the truth or basic logic.
Bush continues to defend the extraordinary (and by the international standards we established, illegal) war against Iraq by saying, “So I had a choice to make: either take the word of a madman or defend America.” Any student in Critical Thinking 101 knows that this is a classic false dichotomy — and that’s the truth.
Once more comes the tired rhetoric of us against them: “We will confront them overseas so we do not have to confront them here at home.” That might fly if any reasonable person still believed that we were threatened by the mighty nation of Iraq. Remember the “elite Republican Guard,” which Bush called the fourth-most fearsome fighting force in the world? Turns out, they were pathetic — and that’s the truth.
It is possible, and this is the scary thing, to become flawless in one’s illogic. That is, it is sometimes a great comfort to believe the lie and to avoid the painful truth. This is true in politics, in religion and in the family — where all dysfunction is masked by the pretense of perfection.
On the day after you read this column, John Kerry and John Edwards will accept the nomination of the Democratic Party to oppose the policies and the record of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Immediately, the character assassination will begin, and we’ll be told it’s God and country over trial lawyers and Eastern liberals.
But that’s just one more lie in a long list of lies. The truth is a senator from Massachusetts with a lifetime of public service (and actual military service) will ask Americans to choose between four more years of what we have or a bloodless chance of direction at the ballot box — which is the genius of our democracy.
The debate should not be about whether you are “with us or against us,” “red or blue,” patriotic or peculiar. It should be about deficits, education, judges, women’s rights, gay rights, decent jobs, racism, help for the beleaguered middle class and America’s reputation around the world.
But we will not survive if we prefer the lie. And we will not survive if we don’t bother to vote.
And that’s the truth.
Meyers has been senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC Church since 1985 and is a professor of rhetoric at Oklahoma City University.
